IV
The great curve of the east shore of Lake Superior is so savage and desolate that it is the natural range of wolves. It is so lonely a land that there is little fear of meeting the contrivances of trappers. The pack to which Two Toes belonged crossed the Indians' lines running out of Pic River reservation—not very long lines. They ranged as far as the trappers' ventures out of Michipicoten, and out of the settlements north of the Soo.
These cunning wolves laughed at traps and poison. Such things as tallow pills and steel traps, as ordinarily placed, made them jeer.
Nevertheless, it was a trapper who made Two Toes the leader of the pack. That was when Two Toes was four years old, and when his body was more slender than that of any of his companions. His slenderness was due as much to nerves and catlike watchfulness as to the work he did, though he raced with his bloodthirsty crew and pirated upon the fat of the forest sea.
They had been down to Michipicoten on a foray. They found, in the first snow, the track of a strayed cow. That cow was the greatest temptation they had ever had; and the worst of it was that they didn't recognize the fact that it was a temptation. Following up the trail, they located the beast about four miles out of town, and raced in on it.
The poor bossy, who hardly knew a wolf's howl when she heard it, did not start to run till the trailers were within a hundred yards of her. Her frantic, lumbering gallop was the joke of the pack as they darted in from both sides and behind, cutting at her fat sides and clumsy legs. They had run down a young moose, and eating a cow was like licking up scattered pieces of fat, for all the race she could make.
They were too few to eat much more than half the cow, and they retreated at daybreak, to lie down under cover and digest their gorge. They had eaten so much of the soft beef and melting fat that they were heavy and sleepy.
After noon, when they were as inert as ever such wolves could be, and scattered over an acre or two of ground, each animal having picked a comfortable bed to his own taste, they were suddenly aroused by a near-by sound—a faint throb on the ground, a slight reverberation of the air.
Holding their heads down, but staring with all their eyes, the wolves listened and watched. They soon discovered that a man had come right among them. He had arrived within a-few jumps of them all.
Two Toes just faded away through the low brush. A light, agile beast, he need not raise his back ten inches from the ground, nor disturb blueberry-bushes four inches apart. As he crept away, his breastbone plowed through the top of three inches of snow.
The old, heavy, shaggy leader of the pack, whose strength was always greater than his wit, was caught napping for once. He had selected for his bed the dry needles under some low, compact spruces, upon whose branches the snow had fallen and stuck, arching over the bed underneath. The clump of spruces grew in the thin soil on a little rocky knob, separated from the woods by an open space about thirty feet wide.
The leader of the pack, hearing the sound, stared around cautiously, lying absolutely motionless till he could get his bearings. Then, right at the edge of the timber, appeared a man.
He was only thirty feet away. He had come like a ghost through the woods. He must have taken ten seconds to make each step. But there he was, closer to the big wolf than ever a man had been before by daylight.
The wolf, his nerves shaken, and in a panic, leaped straight out of the clump of spruce and down the snowy, rounded side of the rocky knob. His first leap was a short one, because he had to force his way through the stiff trunks of the dwarf spruces. It was a slow jump, too, as wolf-springs are made. His second leap was a magnificent bound, but as he landed there was a crash in the timber, and night fell upon the wolf like a thunder-clap.
The fleeing wolves, five in number, raced away in terror. They heard a yelp or two, and then caught a low rallying-cry ahead of them. They circled around, and all that afternoon they raced away. Two Toes, who had been running second, was now in the lead.
That night they took stock, so to speak, and then raced away again, this time not stopping till they were in the heart of the desert of stone and green timber that lies between the Old Bay Trail from Michipicoten northward and the shore of Lake Superior on the west.
The terror of that silent, unseen, unfelt approach never left the hearts of that wolf-pack, the far rangers of the green timber. They slunk in the mid wilderness, and in early spring or later, as they were attending to the burdens of housekeeping and pup-rearing, if they heard on the still night the blast of a steamer's whistle out on the lake, thirty miles distant, they shivered and crouched at the memory of the fatal day when their leader failed to take his place at their head.
Having done their duty, the wolves assembled again in the autumn. Two Toes led them. His pack numbered six, for an ambitious pup or two had forced recognition upon them. Their own pups had scattered far and wide.
The wolves went through that winter without mishap. They approached a trap-line that extended as far south as Oiseau Bay, and they circled down to the environs of Michipicoten, in spite of their terror of the silent and deadly timber-wraith; but they made their approach at night, and at dawn they were far away.
No trapper had ever raided their homeland in the memory of any of the wolves in Two Toes' pack. Their forays had been from a fastness of their own, where only moose, lynx, fisher, and other wild creatures like themselves were to be seen.
Sometimes, in the summer months, humans would appear along the outskirts of the rocks and the green timber. They would drive along the lake, in vile-smelling craft, and they would run up the rivers to catch fish. These fish were never poisoned by such visitors, and many a tasty morsel could be picked up in the vicinity of the places where they stopped beside the streams to build fires and cook meals.
Two Toes and his mates, when they came together late in August, would travel along the lake shore and watch the humans from safe hiding-places. Sometimes one of the strangers would kill a moose, take only a piece of ham and a strip of meat from along the backbone, and leave the rest of the carcass where it fell. No poison was in this meat, nor were any traps placed around it.
The wolves regarded such kills as real saving of energy, and the meat was far and away more juicy than that of any of the moose whom they could pursue and tear down. In fact, the meat which they could kill for themselves was seldom of the best quality, since something usually had to be the matter with a full-grown moose before they could capture it, if nothing more than hunger on account of sleet or crusty snow. Sometimes, however, if they were lucky, they would find a calf whose mother was not there to protect it; and then the wolves had a real feast, the kind that melts in the mouth!
Two Toes took life seriously all the while. He deplored waste of energy. One thing was always borne in upon him—that one of his paws was not as serviceable as the others. Sometimes, when he was running, the paw with two toes would slip on smooth rock or slide over sand, and he had to use all his strength on three paws when he was climbing over icy cliffs, or crossing a frozen lake back in the wilderness.
Other wolves were better able to twist and turn than he was, unless he exerted himself to the utmost; but because of his weakness he unconsciously applied himself to bringing up the strength and grip of his other paws.
He could do one thing which no other wolf of their acquaintance could do. He could climb a tree, for he had discovered that he could pull himself up with his teeth, or hold with his teeth while he drew his claws up and obtained nail-holds. This he had been compelled to learn to do, because otherwise his crippled paw would not hold when he and his pack went up almost sheer and perpendicular cliffs, grown at the crevices with roots and trees which offered toe-holds to his mates, but teeth-holds to him, in addition to the normal grip with three paws.
It is true that Two Toes climbed awkwardly, like a dog, and not with the free rush of a cat or the reaching clutch of a fisher or marten—but he could climb, nevertheless. He could climb a jagged paper birch-tree, and he swarmed up a low-branched balsam or spruce with increasing agility, to the terror of lynx, which, when Two Toes's pack came to the play, played to the death, unless the big cat tired out the wolves by leaping from tree to tree, or escaped over a cliff of stones.
One night they were ranging through the woods when they came to the trail of a man. They turned back from it, but they had not gone many miles before they struck the same man's trail again. They struck it again a third time, and on the other side was the lake.
They were surrounded by a trail marked by a series of cuts on the trees and a strong odor. Two Toes backed away from the menace, and then followed it along for miles, his pack trailing after him in his tracks.
They had never found a man's trail in the heart of their own country before, and Two Toes had to determine wherein that trail was dangerous and wherein it was not dangerous. That yellow blazed line through the woods might be a circlet that would narrow and hedge them in.
Two Toes crossed the trail first. He used infinite caution, and made a high, far spring to do it. His pack followed him faithfully, one by one, each watched anxiously by the others. Nothing happened.
The wolves gave over the latter part of the night and the morning that followed to hunting, for they were hungry. The following night they returned to the trail, and Two Toes studied it. He went ranging to determine its extent. They found bark teepees freshly built in the woods. They found little cabins, of the right size for a rabbit, which the man had built. They found many things to add to their disquiet.
They went down to Pukaso, where men had lived before they were born, where the cabins had long been abandoned and were now a happy hunting-ground for porcupines. They crossed the clearing fearlessly. Two Toes walking in the sand, and they headed up the lake shore toward Otter Harbor. While French Louie became acquainted with their tracks at Pukaso, they dreamed uneasily of his trail two or three miles back from his main cabin, where the wolves were resting for the day.