ng poles. A mere
nothing, which I mention only because it was destined to be an important
landmark for me on future drives.

We drove on. At the next mile-corner all signs of human habitation
ceased. I had now on both sides that same virgin ground which I have
described above. Only here it was interspersed with occasional thickets
of young aspen-boles. It was somewhere in this wilderness that I saw a
wolf, a common prairie-wolf with whom I became quite familiar later on.
I made it my custom during the following weeks, on my return trips, to
start at a given point a few miles north of here eating the lunch which
my wife used to put up for me: sandwiches with crisply fried bacon for a
filling. And when I saw that wolf for the second time, I threw a little
piece of bacon overboard. He seemed interested in the performance and
stood and watched me in an averted kind of way from a distance. I have
often noticed that you can never see a wolf from the front, unless it
so happens that he does not see you. If he is aware of your presence, he
will instantly swing around, even though he may stop and watch you. If
he watches, he does so with his head turned back. That is one of the
many precautions the wily fellow has learned, very likely through
generations of bitter experience. After a while I threw out a second
piece, and he started to trot alongside, still half turned away; he
kept at a distance of about two hundred yards to the west running in a
furtive, half guilty-looking way, with his tail down and his eye on me.
After that he became my regular companion, an expected feature of my
return trips, running with me every time for a while and coming a little
bit closer till about the middle of November he disappeared, never to be
seen again. This time I saw him in the underbrush, about a hundred yards
ahead and as many more to the west. I took him by surprise, as he took
me. I was sorry I had not seen him a few seconds sooner. For, when I
focused my eyes on him, he stood in a curious attitude: as if he was
righting himself after having slipped on his hindfeet in running a sharp
curve. At the same moment a rabbit shot across that part of my field
of vision to the east which I saw in a blurred way only, from the very
utmost corner of my right eye. I did not turn but kept my eyes glued to
the wolf. Nor can I tell whether I had stirred the rabbit up, or whether
the wolf had been chasing or stalking it. I should have liked to know,
for