The Wolver/Chapter 3
III
In the mind of a puppy wolf there is not much of anything but nonsense and plastic memory. He plays and romps around, careless and enjoying himself. If mother wolves knew no more than their puppies, and if they did not have their dens far from enemies, few wolf-pups would reach the age of the long races on the winter crusts.
A wolf-pup whose mother lived in a split rock den up Dog River was particularly fortunate. In the first place, the four other pups in the litter of which he was one were killed—one was caught by a great owl, one choked to death on a bone, and two just died.
The survivor had all the care lavished on him which ordinarily would have been distributed among five. The she wolf, her heart gnawing with a thousand maternal anxieties, watched and favored this pup while he grew up gangling, awkward, and lank. She was not a gentle mother, but she was a thorough one.
She nipped the youngster's ears to make him chase rabbits; she taught him neck-holds, heel-holds, and the snap that hamstrings. She put him through a thousand tricks and experiments, from finding gull-eggs on rocks that had to be reached by swimming, to nosing out blind rabbits in their nests under logs. She drove him from lazy, yapping dependence to lurking, cunning self-help.
Out of Michipicoten, east of Dog River, a trapper ran a line, putting down traps with great cunning and spreading out poison with the malice of greed. On the day this wolf's mother swallowed a six-inch trout caught over a lump of frozen foam below a swirl in Dog River, the pup nosed his way along a tempting trail that led in the direction of sweet meat and fresh blood.
Inside the trout was a capsule containing prussic acid, and in the trail was a No. 3 double-spring trap, set for a fox. At about the same hour, by the moonlight, the old wolf started up stiff-legged, with the knowledge that something terrible was happening within her, and the hungry pup stepped upon a leaf that sagged a little under his foot. The next instant his pained yelp resounded through the woods.
Perhaps the last sound the mother wolf heard was that agonized yelp. She had backed up and stumbled sidewise, because of the inner agony, but the cry of her young for help caught her in a place which hurt more than anything physical that could happen to her. She stretched out at full gallop to the rescue, and raced down out of a ridge-top to that fatal trail whose jeopardy she would instantly have recognized.
She saw her pup struggling wildly, and her last thought was to reach him; but the trout had opened by this time, and the capsule had let flow the deadly acid. She stumbled, rolled over and over, struggled a little, and died within a few yards of her offspring, who was left to his own resources, struggling in a trap a bit too small for a wolf of his size.
Jumping, leaping, whining, and suffering real pain, with good grit in him which would not let him lie down, the pup jerked and snapped, and at last got free—with two toes cut off. He limped to his mother, but she had no comfort for him. He grew thirsty, and went to find a drink. He whimpered and whined, and found that wading in the cold water eased the burn of his paw.
He wandered around the rest of the night, and the following day, when he took his back track to look for his mother, all he could find was a red carcass hanging over a limb. Though he knew the odor, he did not know the carcass. He slunk away from that place, and later, in the first snow, found a track of his own kind.
He discovered three or four wolf-pups as lonely as himself. They liked company, and they hunted together. Others joined them, and they caught rabbits and ate dead fish along the lakes and streams. They caught a sick moose calf, and then an old cow.
After a time they fell into the company of older wolves, and the pup with two toes on one forefoot hunted, up near the head of the pack, for his old mother's faith in him, and care of him, had shown him many things to do. Besides, he knew when to throw caution aside and plunge to attack, shaking the throaty growls out of his gnashing jaws.
Other wolves might play and romp and waste their strength, but there was not much romp or play in Two Toes. He had been to school, and there had been no recess in his day! So while other pups rampaged around, nipping and biting one another, he fought. He bit in earnest, snapped with vengeance, and snarled with meaning.
An ugly wolf, sure enough, but a competent one! He knew, too, how to follow the old, hardened wolves and not get in their way. They did not play, either, but at their heels one would run up to fresh meat. Drawn out in a line, single file, chasing down big game, or tearing through the woods scattered out, all abreast, jumping up and snapping rabbits in two—there are a thousand ways for wolves to hunt!
Two Toes won his place in a pack of old ones, instead of waiting for the pups he had joined to grow up. There were only four or five of these veterans, and Two Toes had to suffer assault and battery and make his fight for the privilege of hunting with them. He took his place in the rear, and followed the pack into deep snow in a burning, where they had cornered a late yearling moose. There he dived past his new mates and showed what he could do, hamstringing the brute and then cutting its throat with three snaps or so.
He did not rush to the front during the race, of course. The older wolves would have cut his hips to the bone; but he waited till the moose was at bay, and till the leaders of the hunt had been trampled and beaten back. Then he dashed in, and, following his attack, the pack had meat. That was the test of the newcomer!
On their side, these old wolves knew many things which one by one were passed on to Two Toes. They had a thousand tricks to play on game they wanted to eat. They ranged the wilderness as free rovers, too, having no bounds to their country.
They moved north to the railroad track, and looked down in the February cold upon the passing trains, whose smoke blotched the night sky, and whose headlights were a wonder of the dark. In the other direction they swung down to the environs of Michipicoten, around the ends of the mine railroad there, and down to the woods clearings a few miles up from the slough.
Wolves of meaner instincts, less free, dreaded to leave the land they knew, and would not migrate except under spur of hunger. There was a pack at Agawa, another up Twin Falls River, another around Swallow River, who were all home-stayers, afraid for their lives if they got beyond a ridge they had not crossed before.
The pack in which Two Toes made his place was composed of a different breed. They were wolves who traveled not entirely for food, which they consumed in prodigious quantities, though they could go without meat for a long and agonizing period. They traveled to see what part of the big woods satisfied them best.
They had fun with the creatures of the timber. It was a kind of fun that did not come from the desire to laugh, perhaps, but an instinctive, brutal kind of humor. When they were not hungry, when they had pretty well digested a paunchful of meat, desire to make another kill did not afflict them. They wanted a change, and they found the change in characteristic fashion. They would hunt cats!
Now the cats of the big woods are particularly worth a wolf's hunting. They are three or four feet long and stand as high as a wolf, and when one of them grows excited it fills the woods with a delightful caterwauling.
The Canadian lynx, sixty pounds of muscular convulsion, is to a wolf about what a Manx cat is to a pair of pugs or terriers. So, lacking another form of excitement, Two Toes and his comrades would hunt around until they found a lynx-track, which they would follow till they routed the big cat out of its lair. They would circle around the lynx, leap in and snap, yelp, bark, growl, and jump stiff-legged.
A blue jay will fly two miles to be present at the pestering of a lynx by a small pack of wolves. The lynx does not at all care for that kind of entertainment, but the wolves and the other woods creatures take an interest in it!
Sometimes, but not very often, a pack of wolves will catch a lynx out in the open and rush upon it, tearing it to pieces with all the joyous acclaim that a pack of dogs and humans raises when it rides in to tear up a fox. As a general rule, however, the lynx escapes. A lynx escaping a pack of wolves is a spectacle! There is a saying in the Canadian woods that the lynx lost its tail because wolves seized the trailing end away back yonder.
Another form of wolf sport is chasing the savage pekan, or fisher. A fisher is a large weasel, gray-black, and all its muscles go to two purposes—first, to make its teeth efficient, and, second, to make all four sets of its claws good for its needs. A large fisher in good health will take on almost any sort of fight. Sometimes it is so imprudent as to stand and face a pack of wolves.
A lone wolf, after one or two experiences, will not trouble a fisher. A pack of wolves, feeling the need of exercise and excitement, will round up a fisher and plague it. A cornered fisher, in a hole, with its jaws and claws to the front, will defy even a pack; but the wolves will take turns trying to drag the brute into the open, where, while one wolf serves for the pekan to bite and tear at, the others will drive in and cut its back in two, or pull its legs off. This, at least, seems to be the plan of action, as disclosed by the tracks of such episodes in the snow.