sink farther into the north and west before resuming his marauding
adventures; the fox was taking his midday slumber and the restless
moose-birds were fluffing themselves lazily in the warm glow that was
beginning to melt the snows of late winter.

It was that hour when the old hunter on the trail takes off his pack,
silently gathers wood for a fire, eats his dinner and smokes his pipe,
eyes and ears alert;--that hour when if you speak above a whisper, he
will say to you,

"Sh-h-h-h! Be quiet! You can't tell how near we are to game.
Everything has had its morning feed and is lying low. The game won't
be moving again for an hour or two, and there may be moose or caribou
a gunshot ahead. We couldn't hear them--now!"

And yet, after a time one thing detached itself from this lifeless
solitude. At first it was nothing more than a spot on the sunny side
of a snow-covered ridge. Then it moved, stretched itself like a dog,
with its forefeet extended far to the front and its shoulders hunched
low--and was a wolf.

A wolf is a heavy sleeper after a feast. A hunter would have said that
this wolf had gorged itself the night before. Still, something had
alarmed it. Faintly there came to this wilderness outlaw that most
thrilling of all things to the denizens of the forest--the scent of
man. He came down the ridge with the slow indifference of a full-fed
animal, and with only a half of his old cunning; trotted across the
softening snow of an opening and stopped where the man-scent was so
strong that he lifted his head straight up to the sky and sent out to
his comrades in forest and plain the warning signal that he had struck