r heart was
touched, and when he found courage enough to put his nose up and smell
her nose, she made no angry demonstration except a short half-hearted
growl. Now, however, he had smelled something that he sorely needed. He
had not fed since the day before, and when the old Wolf turned to leave
him, he tumbled after her on clumsy puppy legs. Had the Mother-wolf
been far from home he must soon have been left behind, but the nearest
hollow was the chosen place, and the Cub arrived at the den's mouth
soon after the Mother-wolf.

A stranger is an enemy, and the old one rushing forth to the defense,
met the Cub again, and again was restrained by something that rose in
her responsive to the smell. The Cub had thrown himself on his back in
utter submission, but that did not prevent his nose reporting to him
the good thing almost within reach. The She-wolf went into the den and
curled herself about her brood; the Cub persisted in following. She
snarled as he approached her own little ones, but disarming wrath each
time by submission and his very cubhood, he was presently among her
brood, helping himself to what he wanted so greatly, and thus he
adopted himself into her family. In a few days he was so much one of
them that the mother forgot about his being a stranger. Yet he was
different from them in several ways--older by two weeks, stronger, and
marked on the neck and shoulders with what afterward grew to be a dark
mane.

Little Duskymane could not have been happier in his choice of a
foster-mother, for the Yellow Wolf was not only a good hunter with a
fund of cunning, but she was a Wolf of modern ideas as well. The old
tricks of tolling a Prairie Dog, relaying for Antelope, houghing a
Bronco or flanking a Steer she had learned partly from instinct and
partly from the example of her more experienced relatives, when they
joined to form the winter bands. But, just as necessary nowadays, she
had learned that all men carry guns, that guns are irresistible, that
the only way to avoid them is by keeping out of sight while the sun is
up, and yet that at night they are harmless. She had a fair
comprehension of traps, indeed she had been in one once, and though she
left a toe behind in pulling free, it was a toe most advantageously
disposed of; thenceforth, though not comprehending the nature of the
trap, she was thoroughly imbued with the horror of it, with the idea
indeed that iron is dangerous, and at any price it should be avoi