by the very power of my own feeling, never more strongly roused than now
for any wild creature.

I whistled a little tune softly, which always rouses the wood folk's
curiosity; but as he lay quiet, listening, his ears shot back and forth
nervously at a score of sounds that I could not hear, as if above the
music he caught faint echoes of the last fearful chase. Then I brought
out my lunch and, nibbling a bit myself, pushed a slice of black bread
over the crust towards him with a long stick.

It was curious and intensely interesting to watch the struggle. At first
he pulled away, as if I would poison him. Then a new rich odor began to
steal up into his hungry nostrils. For weeks he had not fed full; he had
been running hard since daylight, and was faint and exhausted. And in
all his life he had never smelled anything so good. He turned his head
to question me with his eyes. Slowly his nose came down, searching for
the bread. "If he would only eat!-that is a truce which I would
never break," I kept thinking over and over, and stopped eating in my
eagerness to have him share with me the hunter's crust. His nose touched
it; then through his hunger came the smell of the man--the danger smell
that had followed him day after day in the beautiful October woods, and
over white winter trails when he fled for his life, and still the man
followed. The remembrance was too much. He raised his head with an
effort and bounded away.

I followed slowly, keeping well out to one side of his trail, and
sitting quietly within sight whenever he rested in the snow. Wild
animals soon lose their fear in the presence of man if one avoids all
excitement, even of interest, and is quiet in his motions. His fear was
gone now, but the old wild freedom and the intense desire for life--a
life which he had resigned when I appeared suddenly before him, and the
pack broke out behind--were coming back with renewed force. His bounds
grew longer, firmer, his stops less frequent, till he broke at last
into a deer path and shook himself, as if to throw off all memory of the
experience.

From a thicket of fir a doe, that had been listening in hiding to the
sounds of his coming and to the faint unknown click, which was the voice
of my snowshoes, came out to meet him. Together they trotted down the
path, turning often to look and listen, and vanished at last, like gray
shadows, into the gray stillness of the March woods.

GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES