The Passing Of The Black Whelps

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Title:     The Passing Of The Black Whelps
Author: Charles G. D. Roberts [More Titles by Roberts]

I.

A lopsided, waning moon, not long risen, looked over the ragged crest of the ridge, and sent long shadows down the sparsely wooded slope. Though there was no wind, and every tree was as motionless as if carved of ice, these spare, intricate shadows seemed to stir and writhe, as if instinct with a kind of sinister activity. This confusion of light and dark was increased by the patches of snow that still clung in the dips and on the gentler slopes. The air was cold, yet with a bitter softness in it, the breath of the thaw. The sound of running water was everywhere--the light clamour of rivulets, and the rush of the swollen brooks; while from the bottom of the valley came the deep, pervading voice of the river at freshet, labouring between high banks with its burden of sudden flood.

Over the crest of the ridge, inky black for an instant against the moon, came a leaping deer. He vanished in a patch of young firs. He shot out again into the moonlight. Down the slope he came in mighty bounds, so light of foot and so elastic that he seemed to float through the air. From his heaving sides and wild eyes it was evident that he was fleeing in desperation from some appalling terror. Straight down the slope he came, to the very brink of the high bluff overlooking the river. There he wheeled, and continued his flight up the valley, his violent shadow every now and then, as he crossed the spaces of moonlight, projecting grotesquely out upon the swirling flood.

Up along the river bluff he fled for perhaps a mile. Then he stopped suddenly and listened, his sensitive ears and dilating nostrils held high to catch the faintest waft of air. Not a sound came to him, except the calling of the waters; not a scent, save the raw freshness of melting snow and the balsamic tang of buds just beginning to thrill to the first of the rising sap. He bounded on again for perhaps a hundred yards, then with a tremendous leap sprang to one side, a full thirty feet, landing belly-deep in a thicket of scrub juniper. Another leap, as if he were propelled by steel springs, carried him yet another thirty feet aside. Then he turned, ran back a couple of hundred yards parallel to his old trail, and lay down in a dense covert of spruces to catch breath and ease his pounding heart. He was a very young buck, not yet seasoned in the craft of the wilderness, and his terror shook him. But he knew enough to take his snatched rest at the very edge of his covert, where his eyes could watch the back trail. For a quarter of an hour, however, nothing appeared along that staring trail. Then he got up nervously and resumed his flight, still ascending the valley, but now slanting away from the river, and gradually climbing back toward the crest of the ridge. He had in mind a wide reach of swales and flooded meadows, still miles away, wherein he might hope to elude the doom that followed him.

Not long after the buck had vanished there arose a strange sound upon the still, wet air. It came in a rising and falling cadence from far behind the ridge, under the lopsided moon. It was a high, confused sound, not unmusical, but terrifying--a cry of many voices. It drifted up into the silvery night, wavered and diminished, swelled again, and then died away, leaving a sense of fear upon the quiet that followed. The soft clamour of the waters, when one noticed them again, seemed to have taken a new note from the menace of that cadenced cry.

Presently over the top of the ridge, at the gap wherein had first appeared the form of the leaping buck, a low, dark shape came, moving sinuously and with deadly swiftness. It did not bound into the air and float, as the buck had seemed to do, but slid smoothly, like a small, dense patch of cloud-shadow--a direct, inevitable movement, wasting no force and fairly eating up the trail of the fleeing deer.

As it came down the slope, disappearing in the hemlock groves and emerging upon the bright, snowy hollows, the dread shape resolved itself into a pack of seven wolves. They ran so close, so evenly, with fanged muzzles a little low, and ample, cloudy tails a little high, that one might have almost covered the whole deadly pack with a table-cloth. Their tongues were hanging out, and their eyes shot green fire. They were fiercely hungry, for game was scarce and cunning that winter on their much ravaged range, and this chase was already a long one. When the trail of the buck wheeled at the river-brink, the leader of the pack gave one short howl as he turned, barely escaping the abyss. It seemed to him that the buck must have been nearly winded, or he would not, even for an instant, have contemplated taking to such mad water. With the renewed vigour of encouragement, he swept his pack along up the edge of the bluff.

On the pack-leader's right flank ran a sturdy wolf of a darker colour than his fellows--nearly black, indeed, on the top of his head, over his shoulders, and along his stiff-haired backbone. Not quite so tall or so long-flanked as the leader, he had that greater breadth of skull between the eyes which betokens the stronger intelligence, the more individualized resourcefulness. He had a look in his deep-set, fierce eye which seemed to prophesy that unless the unforeseen should happen he would ere long seize the leadership to himself.

But--the unforeseen did happen, at that moment. The trail, just there, led across a little dip wherein the snow still lingered. Thinly covered by the snow lay a young pine-tree, lightning shivered and long dead. Thrust up from the trunk was a slim, sharp-pointed stub, keen and hard and preserved by its resin. Upon this hidden dagger-point, as he ran, the dark wolf planted his right fore foot--planted it fair and with a mighty push. Between the spreading toes, between the fine bones and sinews and the cringing nerves of the foot, and out by the first joint of the leg it thrust its rending way.

At the suddenness of the anguish the dark wolf yelped, falling forward upon his muzzle as he did so, and dropping from his place as the pack sped on. But as he wrenched his foot free and took one stumbling stride forward, the pack stopped, and turned. Their long white fangs snapped, and the fire in their eyes took a different hue.

Very well the dark wolf knew the meaning of the halt, the turn, the change in his fellows' eyes. He knew the stern law of the pack--the instant and inevitable doom of its hurt member. The average gray wolf knows how to accept the inevitable. Fate itself--the law of the pack--he does not presume to defy. He will fight--to justify his blood, and, perhaps, to drug his despair and die in the heat of the struggle. But he does not dream of trying to escape.

And in this fashion, fighting in silence, this dark wolf would have died at the brink of the river bluff, and been eaten by his fellows ere they continued their chase of the leaping buck--in this fashion would he have died, but for that extra breadth of skull between the eyes, that heightened individualism and resourcefulness. Had there been any chance to escape by fighting, fighting would have been the choice of his fierce and hardy spirit. But what was he against six?

Defying the fiery anguish in his foot, he made a desperate leap which took him to the extreme overhanging edge of the bluff. Already the jaws of the executioners were gnashing at his heels. A second more and they would have been at his throat. But before that second passed he was in mid-air, his legs spread wide like those of a squirrel, falling to the ice-cakes of the swollen river. From the brink above, the grim eyes of the baffled pack flamed down upon him for an instant, and then withdrew. What was a drowned wolf, when there was a winded buck not far ahead?

But the black-shouldered wolf was not drowned. The flood was thick, indeed, with crunching ice-cakes and wallowing logs and slowly turning islets of uprooted trees and the _debris_ of the winter forest. But fortune so favoured the wolf that he fell in a space of clear water, instead of being dashed to a pulp on ice-cake or tree trunk. He disappeared, came to the surface gasping, struck out hardily through the grim and daunting turmoil, and succeeded in gaining one of those islets of toughly interlaced _debris_ which turned slowly in the flood. Upon this precarious refuge, crouched shivering on the largest tree root and licking persistently at his wounded paw, he was carried swiftly down-stream through the roar of waters.

II.

When the lopsided moon, now hung high over a low, desolate shore of blanched rampikes, was fading to a papery whiteness against a sky of dawn, the roar of the river grew louder, and the islet, no longer slowly revolving, plunged forward, through a succession of wallowing waves, over a wild half-mile of ledges, and joined itself to a wider and mightier stream. The wolf, drenched, shivering, and appalled by the tumult, clung to his refuge by tooth and claw; and the islet, being well compacted, held together through the wrenching plunges, and carried its burden safely forth upon the quiet current.

For a day and a night and a day the starving wolf voyaged down the flood, till his gaunt sides clung together, and a fierce ache gnawed at his vitals. But with the fasting and the ceaseless soothing of his tongue his wound rapidly healed; and when, after sunset of his second evening on the river, the islet grounded in an eddy under the bank, he sprang ashore with speed little impaired. Only a limp and an ache remained to remind him of the hurt which had so nearly cost him his life and had exiled him to untried hunting-grounds.

His feet once more on firm ground, the wolf halted warily. The air that came down the bank carried a strange and warning scent. Noiselessly he crept up the steep, went through a few yards of shrubbery like a ghost, and peered forth upon a rough back-settlement road. At one side he saw a cabin, with a barn near it, and two long-horned steers (he had seen steers at a lumber camp in his own wild land), thrusting their muzzles over the fence. Down the road toward the cabin came a man, in gray homespun and cowhide larrigans, with an axe over his shoulder. It was the man-smell which had made the wolf so cautious.

With savage but curious eyes he watched the man, with no thought of attacking alone so redoubtable a foe. Presently the latter began to whistle, and at the incomprehensible sound the wolf shrank back, fear mingled with his curiosity. But when the man was well past, there came a new scent upon the air, a scent quite unknown to him; and then a small black and white cur trotted into view, nosing along the roadside in quest of chipmunks. The jaws of the starving wolf dripped water at the sight. He gathered himself for a rush. He saw that the man had disappeared. The dog ran across the road, sniffing a new chipmunk trail, and halted, in sudden apprehension, not five feet from the hidden wolf. There was a rustle, a leap, a sharp yelp; and the wolf was back into cover with his prey.

Emboldened by the success of this, his first hunting in the unknown land, the wolf slept for a few hours in his bushy retreat, and then, when the misshapen moon was up, went prowling cautiously around the outskirts of the scattered little settlement. Everywhere the man-smell kept him on his guard. Once he was careless enough to get between the wind and a farmyard, whereupon a watchful cur started a barking, which was taken up and kept up for an hour by all the dogs of the village. At this the wolf, with snarling, contemptuous jaws apart, withdrew to a knoll, sat quietly erect upon his haunches, and waited for the din to subside. He noted carefully the fact that one or two men were aroused by the alarm, and came out to see what was the matter. When all was quiet again he sought the house of the nearest yelper, took him by surprise, and killed him in sheer rage, leaving his torn body beside the very door-step, instead of dragging it away for a later meal. This was a mistake in hunting craft. Had he been more familiar with the man-folk, his wide-skulled intelligence would have taught him better than to leave a clue behind him in this careless fashion.

From the farmyard he wandered back toward the hills, and came upon a lonely sheep pasture. Here he found killing so easy that he slew in wantonness; and then, about daybreak, gorged and triumphant, withdrew to a rocky hillside, where he found a lair to his taste.

Later in the day, however, he realized his mistake. He had called down upon himself the wrath of the man-folk. A din of dogs aroused him, and, mounting a rock, he saw a motley crowd of curs upon his trail, with half a dozen men following far behind them. He bared his fangs disdainfully, then turned and sought the forest at a long gallop, which, for all his limp and his twinge, soon carried him beyond ear-shot of his pursuers.

For hours he pressed on ever eastward, with a little trend to the south, crossing many a trail of deer, caribou, and moose, passing here and there a beaver village, and realizing that he had come to wonderful hunting-grounds. But when he came to the outskirts of another settlement, he halted. His jaws ran water at the thought of finding another sheep pasture, and he decided to range for awhile in this neighbourhood. He was quick to realize the disadvantage of man's proximity, but he would dare it for a little before retiring into the untainted wilderness. He had learned his lesson quickly, however. That night he refrained from stirring up the dogs of the settlement; and he killed but one sheep, in a secluded corner of the pasture.

Now, by singular chance, it happened that at this particular settlement there was already a sheep-killer harrying the thick-wooled flocks. A wandering peddler, smitten with a fever while visiting the settlement, had died, and left to pay for his board and burial only his pack and his dog. The dog, so fiercely devoted to him as to have made the funeral difficult, was a long-legged, long-haired, long-jawed bitch, apparently a cross between a collie and a Scotch deerhound. So unusual a beast, making all the other dogs of the settlement look contemptible, was in demand; but she was deaf, for a time, to all overtures. For a week she pined for the dead peddler; and then, with an air of scornful tolerance, consented to take up her abode with the village shopkeeper. Her choice was made not for any distinction in the man, but for a certain association, apparently, with the smell of the contents of her late master's pack. For months she sulked and was admired, making friends with neither man, woman, nor child, and keeping all the village curs at a respectful distance.

A few days, however, before the arrival of the journeying wolf, a new interest had entered into the life of the long-jawed bitch. Her eyes resumed their old bright alertness, and she grew perceptibly less ungracious to the loafers gathered around the stove in the back store. She had entered upon a career which would have ended right speedily with a bullet in her reckless brain, but for an utterly unlooked-for freak of fate. She had discovered that, if every night she could hunt, run down, and kill one sheep, life might again become worth living, and the coarse-clodded grave in the little lonely cemetery might be forgotten. It was not the killing, but the chase, that she craved. The killing was, of course, merely the ecstatic culmination. So she went about the sport with artistic cunning. To disguise her trail she came upon the flocks from the side of the forest, as any wild beast would. Then she would segregate her victim with a skill born of her collie ancestry, set it running, madden it to the topmost delirium of fear and flight, and almost let it escape before darting at its throat and ending the game with the gush of warm blood between her jaws.

Such had been her adventures for three nights: and already the settlement was concerned, and already glances of half-formed suspicion had been cast upon the long-legged bitch so innocently asleep by the stove, when the wandering wolf arrived upon the outskirts of the settlement. The newcomer was quick to note and examine the tracks of a peculiarly large dog--a foeman, perhaps, to prove not unworthy of his fangs. And he conducted his reconnoitring with more care. Then he came upon the carcass of a sheep, torn and partly eaten. It was almost like a wolf's work--though less cleanly done--and the smell of the cold trail was unmistakably dog. The black-backed wolf was puzzled. He had a vague notion that dogs were the protectors, not the hunters, of all the four-legged kindred belonging to men. The problem seemed to him an important one. He crouched in ambush near the carcass to consider it for a time, before setting out upon his own sheep-hunting.

As he crouched, watching, he saw the killer approach. He saw a tall, lean bitch come up, tear carelessly at the dead sheep for a moment or two, in a manner of ownership, and turn to leave. She was as long in leg and flank as himself, and possessed of the like punishing jaws; but she was not so massive in the shoulder. The wolf felt that he could master her in combat; but he felt no disposition for the fight. The dog-smell that came to his nostrils did not excite the usual hot aversion. On the contrary, it made him desire to know more of the sheep-killing stranger.

But acquaintance is not made lightly among the wild kindred, who are quick to resent a presumption. The wolf slipped noiselessly back into his covert, emerged upon the farther side of the thicket, and at a distance of some twenty paces stood forth in the glimmering light. To attract the tall bitch's attention he made a soft, whining sound.

At the unexpected noise behind her the bitch wheeled like lightning. At sight of the big wolf the hair rose along her back, her fangs bared themselves dangerously, and she growled a deep note of challenge. For some seconds the wolf thought she would fly at him,; but he stood motionless, tail drooping humbly, tongue hanging a little way from his lips, a soft light in his eyes. Then he sat back upon his haunches, let his tongue hang out still farther, and drooped his head a little to one side--the picture of conciliation and deference.

The long-jawed bitch had never before seen a wolf, but she recognized him at once as a natural enemy. There was something in his attitude of unoffending confidence, however, which made her hesitate to attack, although he was plainly a trespasser. As she eyed him, she felt her anger melting away. How like he was to certain big, strong dogs which she had seen once or twice in her wanderings with the peddler! and how unlike to the diminutive, yelping curs of the settlement! Her bristling hairs smoothed themselves, the skin of her jaws relaxed and set itself about her teeth in a totally different expression; her growling ceased, and she gave an amicable whine. Diffidently the two approached each other, and in a few minutes a perfect understanding was established.

That night they hunted sheep together. In the joy of comradeship and emulation, prudence was scattered to the winds, and they held a riot of slaughter. When day broke a dozen or more sheep lay dead about the pastures. And the wolf, knowing that men and dogs would soon be noisy on their trail, led his new-found mate far back into the wilderness.

III.

The tall bitch, hating the settlement and all the folk therein, was glad to be quit of it. And she found the hunting of deer far more thrilling than the tame pursuit of sheep. Slipping with curious ease the inherited sympathies of her kind, she fell into the ways of the wild kindred, save for a certain brusque openness which she never succeeded in laying off.

For weeks the strangely mated pair drifted southward through the bright New Brunswick spring, to come to a halt at last in a region to their liking between the St. John and the Chiputneticook chain of lakes. It was a land of deer and rabbits and ducks, with settlements small and widely scattered; a land where never a wolf-snout had been seen for half a hundred years. And here, on a thick-wooded hill-slope, the wanderers found a dry cave and made it their den.

In due course the long-jawed bitch bore a litter of six sturdy whelps, which throve amazingly. As they grew up they showed almost all wolf, harking back to the type--save that in colour they were nearly black, with a touch of tan in the gray of their under parts. When they came to maturity, and were accredited hunters all, they were in general larger and more savage than either of their parents, differing more widely, one from another, than would the like number of full-blooded wolves. The eight, when they hunted together, made a pack which, for strength, ferocity, and craft, no like number of full-blooded wolves in all Canada could have matched.

The long-jawed bitch, whose highly developed brain guided, for the most part, the destinies of the pack, for a time kept them from the settlement and away from the contact with men; and the existence of wolves in the Chiputneticook country was not dreamed of among the backwoods settlements. In this policy she was backed by the sagacity and strength of her mate, under whose wide-arched skull was a clear perception of the truth that man is the one master animal. But the hybrid whelps, by some perversion of inherited instinct, hated man savagely, and had less dread of him than either of their parents. More than once was the authority of the leaders sharply strained to prevent a disastrous attack upon some unsuspecting pair of lumbermen, with their ox-team and their axes.

The second winter of the wolves in the Chiputneticook country proved a very hard one--game scarce and hunting difficult; and toward the end of February the pack drew in toward the settlements, in the hope of more abundant foraging. Fate promptly favoured the move. Some sheep, and a heifer or two, were easily killed, with no calamitous result; and the authority of the leaders was somewhat discredited. Three of the young wolves even went so far as to besiege a solitary cabin, where a woman and some trembling children awaited the return of the man. For two hideous moonlit hours they prowled and howled about the door, sniffing at the sill, and grinning in through the low window; and when the sound of bells came near they withdrew sullenly, half-minded to attack the man and horse.

A few nights after this, when the pack was following together the discouraging trail of a long-winded and wily buck, they crossed the trail of a man on snow-shoes. This trail was fresher, and to the young wolves it seemed to promise easier hunting. The leaders were overruled, and the new trail was taken up with heat.

The trail was that of a gaunt, tan-faced backwoodsman, on his way to a lumber camp a few miles down the other side of the lake. He was packing a supply of light needfuls, of which the lumbermen had unexpectedly run short, and he was pressing forward in haste to avoid a second night on the trail. The pack was carried high on his powerful shoulders, in a manner to interfere as little as possible with his long, snow-shoeing stride. In one hand he carried his axe. From under the brim of his coonskin cap his piercing gray eyes kept watch with a quiet alertness--expecting no danger, indeed, and fearing none, but trained to cool readiness for every vicissitude of the wild.

He was travelling through a stretch of heavy timber, where the moonlight came down in such scant streaks that he had trouble in picking a clear path, when his ear was caught by an unwonted sound far behind him. He paused to listen, no unwonted sound being matter of indifference to them who range the wood. It came again, long-drawn and high and cadenced. The big woodsman looked surprised. "I'd 'a' took my oath," said he to himself, "ther' wa'n't a wolf in New Brunswick! But I knowed the deer'd bring 'em back afore long!" Then, unconcernedly, he resumed his tramp, such experience as he had had with wolves in the West having convinced him that they would not want to meddle with a man.

In a few minutes, however, the instinct of the woods awoke in him suddenly, and told him that it was not some buck, but himself, whom the hunting pack were trailing. Then the sound came again, perceptibly nearer, though still far off. The woodsman gave a grunt of impatience, angry to think that any four-foot creature of the forest should presume to hunt _him_. But the barest prudence told him that he should make haste for the open. Under protest, as it were, he broke into a long trot, and swerved to the right, that he might sooner reach the lake.

As he ran, the novel experience of feeling himself pursued got on his nerves, and filled him with rage. Were there not plenty of deer in the woods? he thought, indignantly. He would teach the vermin a lesson. Several times he was on the point of stopping and waiting, to have it out with them as soon as possible. But wisdom prevailed, and he pushed on to the open. On the lake, the moonlit snow was packed hard, and the running good. About a mile from shore a little, steep, rocky island, upthrusting itself boldly, suggested to the woodsman that if his pursuers were really going to have the audacity to attack him, it might be well to have his back to a rock, that he might not be surrounded. He headed for the island, therefore, though with protest in his heart. And just as he got to it the wolves emerged from cover, and darted out upon the shining level.

"Looks like they really meant it!" growled the big woodsman, loosing his pack-strap, and setting his jaws for a fight.

When the pack came near he was astonished first at the stature and dark colour of its members, and he realized, with a sudden fury, that the outcome was not so assured as he had taken for granted it would be. Perhaps he would never see camp, after all! Then he was further astonished to note that one of the pack-leaders looked like a dog. He shouted, in a voice of angry command; and the onrushing pack hesitated, checked themselves, spread apart. From that dominating voice it was evident that this was a creature of power--not to be attacked carelessly, but to be surrounded.

That voice of command had thrilled the heart of the long-jawed bitch. Something in it reminded her of the dead peddler, who had been a masterful man. She would have none of this hunting. But she looked at each of her savage whelps, and knew that any attempt to lead them off would be worse than vain. A strange hatred began to stir within her, and her fangs bared toward them as if they, not the man against the rock, were the enemy. She looked again at the man, and saw the bundle, so like a peddler's pack, at his feet! Instantly her heart went out to him. She was no longer a wolf, but a dog; and there was her master--not her old master, but such a one as he had been. At his side, and fighting his foes, was her place. Like a flash, she darted away from her companions, stopped a few feet in front of the ready woodsman, turned about, and faced the pack with a savage growl. Her hair was stiffly erect from neck to tail; her long, white teeth were bared to the roots; her eyes were narrowed to slits of green flame; she half-crouched, ready to spring in mad fury and tear the throat of any beast which should try to hurt the man.

As for the woodsman, he knew dogs, and was not greatly surprised at his strange ally. At her sudden approach he had swung his axe in readiness, but his cool eye had read her signals aright. "Good dog!" he said, with cheerful confidence. "We'll lick the varmints!"

But the young wolves went wild with rage at this defection and defiance, and rushed in at once. They sprang first upon the bitch; though one, rushing past, leaped venomously at the woodsman's throat. This one got the axe in his skull, and dropped without a sound. Meanwhile, the old wolf, who had been holding back in uncertainty, had made his decision. When he saw his mate attacked, his doubts vanished, and a red haze for an instant went over his eyes. These unnatural whelps that attacked her--he suddenly saw them, not as wolves at all, but as dogs, and hated them with a deadly hate. Silently he fell upon the nearest, and tore him savagely. He was too late, however, to save his mistress. The long-jawed bitch, for all her strength and her valiant spirit, was overwhelmed by her powerful offspring. One she had killed, and for one she had crunched a leg-joint to splinters; but now she lay mangled and still under the struggle. The brute whose leg-joint she had smashed dragged out from the _melee_; and her faithful mate, the wide-skulled old wanderer wolf, found himself in the death-grapple with three raging adversaries, each fairly his match for weight and strength. True wolf, he fought in silence; but in his antagonists the mixed breed came out, and they fought with yelps and snarls.

At this juncture, fortunately for the old wolf, the woodsman's understanding eye had penetrated the whole situation. He saw that the black-haired beasts were the common enemy; and he fell upon the three with his axe. His snow-shoes he had kicked off when making ready for the struggle. In his mighty grasp the light axe whirled and smote with the cunning of a rapier; and in a few seconds the old wolf, bleeding but still vigorous, found himself confronting the man across a heap of mangled black bodies. The man, lowering his axe, looked at the bleeding wolf with mingled doubt and approbation. The wolf glared back for an instant,--fear, hate, and grief in the green gleam of his eyes,--then turned and fled, his pace accelerated by the cheerful yell which the man sent after him.

"He's got the sand, sure!" muttered the woodsman, to himself, wiping his axe. "Glad I didn't hev to knock him on the head, too!"

Then turning about, he saw the disabled whelp trying to sneak off, and, with unerring aim, threw his axe. The black mongrel sank with a kick, and lay still. The woodsman got out his pipe, slowly stuffed it with blackjack, and smoked contemplatively, while he stood and pondered the slain. He turned over the bodies, and patted the fur of the long-jawed bitch, which had so splendidly turned back to her traditions in the time of need. As he thought, the main elements of the story unfolded themselves to him. Considerately he carried the limp body, and securely buried it under a heap of stones on the island. The rest he cached carelessly, intending to return and skin them on the morrow.

"Them black pelts'll be worth somethin', I reckon!" he said to himself with satisfaction as he took up his pack.

[The end]
Charles G. D. Roberts's essay: Passing Of The Black Whelps

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