Around the Camp-fire. Roberts Charles G. D.
up with a roar at my very feet. It was a narrow, a very narrow escape.
“With a sigh of relief and gratitude I sat me down to rest, and took some satisfaction in poking the ribs of the baffled brute below. Then, lightly balancing my pole in one hand, I turned my face toward the ‘bito,’ and made my way thoughtfully homeward. It was altogether too literally a ‘hair’s-breadth’ adventure.”
When Ranolf concluded there was a general stir. Pipes were refilled, and a “snack” (of biscuits, cheese, and liquids to taste) was passed around. Then Stranion said, —
“It’s your turn, O. M.”
“But it’s bedtime,” pleaded I; “and besides, as I have the writing to do, let others do the speaking!”
My arguments were received with a stony stare, so I made haste to begin.
“Like Magnus,” said I, “modesty forbids me to be my own hero. I’ll tell you a story which I picked up last fall, when I was alleged to be pigeon-shooting twenty miles above Fredericton. We will call the yarn —
“I was talking to an old farmer whom I had chanced to come across, and who had passed me a cheery good-day. After I had spoken of the crops, and he had praised my new gun, I broached a subject of much interest to myself.
“How do you account for the fact, if it is a fact,” said I, slipping a cartridge into my right barrel, “that the caribou are getting yearly more numerous in the interior of New Brunswick, while other game seems to be disappearing. As for the wild pigeons, you may say they are all gone. Here I have been on the go since before sunrise, and that bird is the only sign of a pigeon I have so much as got a glimpse of.”
“‘Well,’ replied my companion, as for the pigeons, I can’t say how it is. In old times I’ve seen them so plenty round here you could knock them down with a stick; that is, if you were anyways handy with a stick. But they do say that caribou are increasing because the wolves have disappeared. You see, the wolves used to be the worst enemy of the caribou, because they could run them down nice and handy in winter, when the snow was deep and the crust so thin that the caribou were bound to break through it at every step. However, I don’t believe there has been a wolf seen in this part of the country for fifty years, and it’s only within the last ten years or so that the caribou have got more plenty.”
“We had seated ourselves, the old farmer and I, on a ragged snake-fence that bounded a buckwheat-field overlooking the river. The field was a new clearing, and the ripened buckwheat reared its brown heads among a host of blackened and distorted stumps. It was a crisp and delicious autumn morning, and the solitary pigeon that had rewarded my long tramp over the uplands was one that I had surprised at its breakfast in the buckwheat. Now, finding that my new acquaintance was likely to prove interesting, I dropped my gun gently into the fence corner, loosened my belt a couple of holes, and asked the farmer if he had himself ever seen any wolves in New Brunswick.
“‘Not to say many,’ was the old man’s reply; ‘but they say that troubles never come single, and so, what wolves I have seen, I saw them all in a heap, so to speak.’
“As he spoke, the old man fixed his eyes on a hilltop across the river, with a far-off look that seemed to promise a story. I settled into an attitude of encouraging attention, and waited for him to go on. His hand stole deep into the pocket of his gray homespun trousers, and brought to view a fig of ‘black-jack,’ from which he gnawed a thoughtful bite.
“Instinctively he passed the tobacco to me; and on my declining it, which I did with grave politeness, he began the following story: —
“When I was a little shaver about thirteen years old, I was living on a farm across the river, some ten miles up. It was a new farm, which father was cutting out of the woods; but it had a good big bit of ‘interval,’ so we were able to keep a lot of stock.
“One afternoon late in the fall, father sent me down to the interval, which was a good two miles from the house, to bring the cattle home. They were pasturing on the aftermath; but the weather was getting bad, and the grass was about done, and father thought the ‘critters,’ as we called them, would be much better in the barn. My little ten-year-old brother went with me, to help me drive them. That was the time I found out there were wolves in New Brunswick.
“The feed being scarce, the cattle were scattered badly; and it was supper-time before we got them together, at the lower end of the interval, maybe three miles and a half from home. We didn’t mind the lateness of the hour, however, though we were getting pretty hungry, for we knew the moon would be up right after sundown. The cattle after a bit appeared to catch on to the fact that they were going home to snug quarters and good feed, and then they drove easy and hung together. When we had gone about half-way up the interval, keeping along by the river, the moon got up and looked at us over the hills, very sharp and thin. ‘Ugh!’ says Teddy to me in half a whisper, ‘don’t she make the shadows black?’ He hadn’t got the words more than out of his mouth when we heard a long, queer, howling sound from away over the other side of the interval; and the little fellow grabbed me by the arm, with his eyes fairly popping out of his head. I can see his startled face now; but he was a plucky lad for his size as ever walked.
“‘What’s that?’ he whispered.
“‘Sounds mighty like the wind,’ said I, though I knew it wasn’t the wind, for there wasn’t a breath about to stir a feather.
“The sound came from a wooded valley winding down between the hills. It was something like the wind, high and thin, but by and by getting loud and fierce and awful, as if a lot more voices were joining in; and I just tell you my heart stopped beating for a minute. The cattle heard it, you’d better believe, and bunched together, kind of shivering. Then two or three young heifers started to bolt; but the old ones knew better, and hooked them back into the crowd. Then it flashed over me all at once. You see, I was quite a reader, having plenty of time in the long winters. Says I to Teddy, with a kind of sob in my throat, ‘I guess it must be wolves.’ – ‘I guess so,’ says Teddy, getting brave after his first start. And then, not a quarter of a mile away, we saw a little pack of gray brutes dart out of the woods into the moonlight. I grabbed Teddy by the hand, and edged in among the cattle.
“‘Let’s get up a tree!’ said Teddy.
“‘Of course we will,’ said I, with a new hope rising in my heart. We looked about for a suitable tree in which we might take refuge, but our hopes sank when we saw there was not a decent-sized tree in reach. Father had cleared off everything along the river-bank except some Indian willow scrub not six feet high.
“If the cattle, now, had scattered for home, I guess it would have been all up with Teddy and me, and father and mother would have been mighty lonesome on the farm. But what do you suppose the ‘critters’ did? When they saw those gray things just lengthening themselves out across the meadow, the old cows and the steers made a regular circle, putting the calves – with me and Teddy – in the centre. They backed in onto us pretty tight, and stood with their heads out and horns down, for all the world like a company of militia forming square to receive a charge of cavalry. And right good bayonets they made, those long, fine horns of our cattle.
“To keep from being trodden on, Teddy and I got onto the backs of a couple of yearlings, who didn’t like it any too well, but were packed in so tight they couldn’t help themselves. As the wolves came streaking along through the moonlight, they set up again that awful, shrill, wind-like, swelling howl, and I thought of all the stories I had read of the wolves of Russia and Norway, and such countries; and the thought didn’t comfort me much. I didn’t know what I learned afterward, that the common wolf of North America is much better fed than his cousin in the Old World, and consequently far less bloodthirsty. I seemed to see fire flashing from the eyes of the pack that were rushing upon us; and I thought their white fangs, glistening in the moonlight, were dripping with the blood of human victims.
“‘I expect father’ll hear that noise,’ whispered Ted, ‘and he and Bill’ (that was the hired man) ‘will come with their guns and save us.’
“‘Yes,’ said I scornfully; ‘I suppose you’d like them