That was my first (and Noel’s last) shadowy glimpse of Wayeeses, the huge white wolf which I had come a thousand miles over land and sea to study.  All over the Long Range of the northern peninsula I followed him, guided sometimes by a rumor—­a hunter’s story or a postman’s fright, caught far inland in winter and huddling close by his fire with his dogs through the long winter night—­and again by a track on the shore of some lonely, unnamed pond, or the sight of a herd of caribou flying wildly from some unseen danger.  Here is the white wolf’s story, learned partly from much watching and following his tracks alone, but more from Noel the Indian hunter, in endless tramps over the hills and caribou marshes and in long quiet talks in the firelight beside the salmon rivers.

Where the Trail Begins

From a cave in the rocks, on the unnamed mountains that tower over Harbor Weal on the north and east, a huge mother wolf appeared, stealthily, as all wolves come out of their dens.  A pair of green eyes glowed steadily like coals deep within the dark entrance; a massive gray head rested unseen against the lichens of a gray rock; then the whole gaunt body glided like a passing cloud shadow into the June sunshine and was lost in a cleft of the rocks.

There, in the deep shadow where no eye might notice the movement, the old wolf shook off the delicious sleepiness that still lingered in all her big muscles.  First she spread her slender fore paws, working the toes till they were all wide-awake, and bent her body at the shoulders till her deep chest touched the earth.  Next a hind leg stretched out straight and tense as a bar, and was taken back again in nervous little jerks.  At the same time she yawned mightily, wrinkling her nose and showing her red gums with the black fringes and the long white fangs that could reach a deer’s heart in a single snap.  Then she leaped upon a great rock and sat up straight, with her bushy tail curled close about her fore paws, a savage, powerful, noble-looking beast, peering down gravely over the green mountains to the shining sea.

A moment before the hillside had appeared utterly lifeless, so still and rugged and desolate that one must notice and welcome the stir of a mouse or ground squirrel in the moss, speaking of life that is glad and free and vigorous even in the deepest solitudes; yet now, so quietly did the old wolf appear, so perfectly did her rough gray coat blend with the rough gray rocks, that the hillside seemed just as tenantless as before.  A stray wind seemed to move the mosses, that was all.  Only where the mountains once slept now they seemed wide-awake.  Keen eyes saw every moving thing, from the bees in the bluebells to the slow fishing-boats far out at sea; sharp ears that were cocked like a collie’s heard every chirp and trill and rustle, and a nose that understood everything was holding up every vagrant breeze and searching it for its message.  For the cubs were coming out for the first time to play in the big world, and no wild mother ever lets that happen without first taking infinite precautions that her little ones be not molested nor made afraid.