angely enough did not return to the attack as the caribou charged
back, driving the cubs and the old he-wolf away like a flock of sheep.
The coast was now clear, not an enemy in the way; and the mother
caribou, with a triumphant bleat to her fawns to follow, plunged back
into the woods whence she had come.

One fawn only followed her. The other took a step or two, sank to his
knees, and rolled over on his side. When the wolves drew near quietly,
without a trace of the ferocity or the howling clamor with which such
scenes are usually pictured, the game was quite dead, one quick snap of
the old wolf's teeth just behind the fore legs having pierced the heart
more surely than a hunter's bullet. And the mother caribou, plunging
wildly away through the brush with the startled fawn jumping at her
heels, could not know that her mad flight was needless; that the
terrible enemy which had spared her and let her go free had no need nor
desire to follow.

* * * * *

The fat autumn had now come with its abundant fare, and the caribou were
not again molested. Flocks of grouse and ptarmigan came out of the thick
coverts, in which they had been hiding all summer, and began to pluck
the berries of the open plains, where they could easily be waylaid and
caught by the growing wolf cubs. Plover came in hordes, sweeping over
the Straits from the Labrador; and when the wolves surrounded a flock of
the queer birds and hitched nearer and nearer, sinking their gray bodies
in the yielding gray moss till they looked like weather-worn logs, the
hunting was full of tense excitement, though the juicy mouthfuls were
few and far between. Fox cubs roamed abroad away from their mothers,
self-willed and reveling in the abundance; and it was now easy for two
of the young wolves to drive a fox out of his daytime cover and catch
him as he stole away.

After the plover came the ducks in myriads, filling the ponds and
flashets of the vast barrens with tumultuous quacking; and the young
wolves learned, like the foxes, to decoy the silly birds by rousing
their curiosity. They would hide in the grass, while one played and
rolled about on the open shore, till the ducks saw him and began to
stretch their necks and gabble their amazement at the strange thing,
which they had never seen before. Shy and wild as he naturally is, a
duck, like a caribou or a turkey, must take a peek at every new thing.
Now silent, now gabbling all togeth