[Illustration:  “As the mother’s long jaws closed over the small of the back”]

That one lesson was enough for the cubs, though years would pass before they could learn all the fine points of this beating the bush:  to know almost at a glance where the game, whether grouse or hare or fox or lucivee, was hiding in the cover, and then for one wolf to drive it, slowly or swiftly as the case might require, while the other hid beside the most likely path of escape.  A family of grouse must be coaxed along and never see what is driving them, else they will flit into a tree and be lost; while a cat must be startled out of her wits by a swift rush, and sent flying away before she can make up her stupid mind what the row is all about.  A fox, almost as cunning as Wayeeses himself, must be made to think that some dog enemy is slowly puzzling out his cold trail; while a musquash searching for bake-apples, or a beaver going inland to cut wood for his winter supplies of bark, must not be driven, but be followed up swiftly by the path or canal by which he has ventured away from the friendly water.

All these and many more things must be learned slowly at the expense of many failures, especially when the cubs took to hunting alone and the old wolves were not there to show them how; but they never forgot the principle taught in that first rabbit drive,—­that two hunters are better than one to outwit any game when they hunt intelligently together.  That is why you so often find wolves going in pairs; and when you study them or follow their tracks you discover that they play continually into each other’s hands.  They seem to share the spoil as intelligently as they catch it, the wolf that lies beside the runway and pulls down the game giving up a portion gladly to the companion that beats the bush, and rarely indeed is there any trace of quarreling between them.

Like the eagles—­which have long since learned the advantage of hunting in pairs and of scouting for game in single file—­the wolves, when hunting deer on the open barrens where it is difficult to conceal their advance, always travel in files, one following close behind the other; so that, seen from in front where the game is watching, two or three wolves will appear like a lone animal trotting across the plain.  That alarms the game far less at first; and not until the deer starts away does the second wolf appear, shooting out from behind the leader.  The sight of another wolf appearing suddenly on his flank throws a young deer into a panic, in which he is apt to lose his head and be caught by the cunning hunters.

Curiously enough, the plains Indians, who travel in the same way when hunting or scouting for enemies, first learned the trick—­so an old chief told me, and it is one of the traditions of his people—­from watching the timber wolves in their stealthy advance over the open places.