e little cubs that played with
the feathers and grasshoppers and cloud shadows, all unconscious that
any eyes but their mother's saw or cared for their wild, free playing.

[Illustration: "Watching her growing youngsters"]

Something bothered the old she-wolf in these days of watching. The den
was still secure, for no human foot had crossed the deep ravine or
ventured nearer than the opposite hilltop. Her nose told her that
unmistakably; but still she was uneasy, and whenever the cubs were
playing she felt, without knowing why, that she was being watched. When
she trailed over all the ridges in the twilight, seeking to know if
enemies had been near, she found always the scent of two human beings on
a flat rock under the dwarf spruces; and there were always the two
trails coming up and going down the brook. She followed once close
behind the two children, seeing them plainly all the way, till they came
in sight of the little cabin under the cliff, and from the door her
enemy man came out to meet them. For these two little ones, whose trail
she knew, the old she-wolf, like most mother animals in the presence of
children, felt no fear nor enmity whatever. But they watched her den and
her own little ones, that was sure enough; and why should any one watch
a den except to enter some time and destroy? That is a question which no
mother wolf could ever answer; for the wild animals, unlike dogs and
blue jays and men, mind strictly their own business and pay no attention
to other animals. They hate also to be watched; for the thought of
watching always suggests to their minds that which follows,--the hunt,
the rush, the wild break-away, and the run for life. Had she not herself
watched a hundred times at the rabbit's form, the fox's runway, the deer
path, the wild-goose nest? What could she expect for her own little
ones, therefore, when the man cubs, beings of larger reach and unknown
power, came daily to watch at her den?

All this unanswered puzzle must have passed through the old wolf's head
as she trotted up the brook away from the Indian cabin in the twilight.
When in doubt trust your fears,--that is wolf wisdom in a nutshell; and
that marks the difference between a wolf and a caribou, for instance,
which in doubt trusts his nose or his curiosity. So the old wolf took
counsel of her fears for her little ones, and that night carried them
one by one in her mouth, as a cat carries her kittens, miles away over
rocks and ravi