had torn it out
without difficulty; but the old he-wolf limped painfully and held up one
fore leg, pierced by a seal shot, as he loped away over the snow.

It was their first rough experience with men, and probably the one
feeling in every shaggy head was of puzzled wonder as to how and why it
had all happened. Hitherto they had avoided men with a certain awe, or
watched them curiously at a distance, trying to understand their
superior ways; and never a hostile feeling for the masters of the woods
had found place in a wolf's breast. Now man had spoken at last; his
voice was a brutal command to be gone, and curiously enough these
powerful big brutes, any one of which could have pulled down a man more
easily than a caribou, never thought of questioning the order.

It was certainly time to follow the caribou--that was probably the one
definite purpose that came upon the wolves, sitting in a silent,
questioning circle in the moonlight, with only the deep snows and the
empty woods around them. For a week they had not touched food; for
thrice that time they had not fed full, and a few days more would leave
them unable to cope with the big caribou, which are always full fed and
strong, thanks to nature's abundance of deer moss on the barrens. So
they started as by a single impulse, and the mother wolf led them
swiftly southward, hour after hour at a tireless pace, till the great
he-wolf weakened and turned aside to nurse his wounded fore leg. The
lop-eared cub drew out of the race at the same time. His own wound now
required the soft massage of his tongue to allay the fever; and besides,
the fear that was born in him, one night long ago, and that had slept
ever since, was now awake again, and for the first time he was afraid to
face the famine and the wilderness alone. So the pack swept on, as if
their feet would never tire, and the two wounded wolves crept into the
scrub and lay down together.

A strange, terrible feeling stole swiftly over the covert, which had
always hitherto been a place of rest and quiet content. The cub was
licking his wound softly when he looked up in sudden alarm, and there
was the great he-wolf looking at him hungrily, with a frightful flare in
his green eyes. The cub moved away startled and tried to soothe his
wound again; but the uncanny feeling was strong upon him still, and when
he turned his head there was the big wolf, which had crept forward till
he could see the cub behind a twisted spruce r