62 
Northern Trails. Book I 
of small game and their unbearable hunger, the wolves 
turn to the caribou as a last resort, killing a few here by 
stealth, rather than speed, and then, when the game 
grows wild, going far off to another range where the 
deer have not been disturbed and so can be approached 
more easily. 
On this afternoon, however, the old mother wolf had 
run plump upon the caribou and her fawns in the midst 
of a thicket, and had leaped forward promptly to round 
them up for her hungry cubs. It would have been the 
easiest matter in the world for an old wolf to hamstring 
one of the slow fawns, or the mother caribou herself as 
she hovered in the rear to defend her young; but there 
were other thoughts in the shaggy gray head that had 
seen so much hunting. So the mother wolf drove the 
deer slowly, puzzling them more and more, as a collie 
distracts the herd by his yapping, out into the open 
where her cubs might join in the hunting 
The wolves now drew back, all save the mother, 
which advanced hesitatingly to where the caribou stood 
with lowered head, watching every move. Suddenly the 
cow charged, so swiftly, furiously, that the old wolf 
seemed almost caught, and tumbled away with the 
broad hoofs striking savagely at her flanks. Farther 
and farther the caribou drove her enemy, roused now 
to frenzy at the wolf’s nearness and apparent cowardice. 
Then she whirled in a panic and rushed back to her 
