top of a stump in the
center of the thicket.

The old mother's eyes began to blaze as Eleemos drew near. There was a
rush, swift and sudden as the swoop of an eagle; a sharp call to follow
as the mother's long jaws closed over the small of the back, just as the
fox turned to leap away. Then she flung the paralyzed animal back like a
flash; the young wolves tumbled in upon him; and before he knew what had
happened Eleemos the Sly One was stretched out straight, with one cub at
his tail and another at his throat, tugging and worrying and grumbling
deep in their chests as the lust of their first fighting swept over
them. Then in vague, vanishing glimpses the old he-wolf appeared,
quartering swiftly, silently, back and forth through the thicket,
driving every living thing down-wind to where the cubs and the mother
were waiting to receive it.

[Illustration: "As the mother's long jaws closed over the small of the
back"]

That one lesson was enough for the cubs, though years would pass before
they could learn all the fine points of this beating the bush: to know
almost at a glance where the game, whether grouse or hare or fox or
lucivee, was hiding in the cover, and then for one wolf to drive it,
slowly or swiftly as the case might require, while the other hid beside
the most likely path of escape. A family of grouse must be coaxed along
and never see what is driving them, else they will flit into a tree and
be lost; while a cat must be startled out of her wits by a swift rush,
and sent flying away before she can make up her stupid mind what the row
is all about. A fox, almost as cunning as Wayeeses himself, must be made
to think that some dog enemy is slowly puzzling out his cold trail;
while a musquash searching for bake-apples, or a beaver going inland to
cut wood for his winter supplies of bark, must not be driven, but be
followed up swiftly by the path or canal by which he has ventured away
from the friendly water.

All these and many more things must be learned slowly at the expense of
many failures, especially when the cubs took to hunting alone and the
old wolves were not there to show them how; but they never forgot the
principle taught in that first rabbit drive,--that two hunters are
better than one to outwit any game when they hunt intelligently
together. That is why you so often find wolves going in pairs; and when
you study them or follow their tracks you discover that they play
continually into each other'