6o 
Northern Trails. Book I 
nostrils; whereupon they yelped louder than ever. But 
they did not begin to understand the matter till they 
caught glimpses of gray backs bounding hither and yon 
in the underbrush, while the two great wolves raced 
easily on either side, yapping sharply to increase the 
excitement, and guiding the startled, foolish deer as 
surely, as intelligently, as a pair of collies herd a flock 
of frightened sheep. 
When the cubs broke out of the dense cover at last 
they found the two old wolves sitting quietly on their 
tails before a rugged wall of rocks that stretched away 
on either hand at the base of a great bare hill. In front 
of them was a.young cow caribou, threatening savagely 
with horns and hoofs, while behind her cowered two 
half-grown fawns crowded into a crevice of the rocks. 
Anger, rather than fear, blazed out in the mother’s 
mild eyes. Now she turned swiftly to press her excited 
young ones back against the sheltering wall; now she 
whirled with a savage grunt and charged headlong at 
the wolves, which merely leaped aside and sat down 
silently again to watch the game, till the cubs raced out 
and hovered uneasily about with a thousand questions 
in every eye and ear and twitching nostril. 
The reason for the hunt was now plain enough. Up 
to this time the caribou had been let severely alone, 
though they were very numerous, scattered through 
the dense coverts in every valley and on every hillside. 
