The two wolves passed on between two small herds of grazing deer, ignoring them and being ignored in their turn. My bewilderment increased when, as the wolves swung up a slope and disappeared over the next crest, I jumped up to follow and the two bucks who had been so apathetic in the presence of the wolves leaped to their feet, staring at me in wild-eyed astonishment. As I sprinted past them they thrust their heads forward, snorted unbelievingly, then spun on their heels and went galloping off as if pursued by devils. It seemed completely unjust that they should have been so terrified of me, while remaining so blasй about the wolves. However, I solaced myself with the thought that their panic might have resulted from unfamiliarity with the spectacle of a white man, slightly pink, and clad only in boots and binoculars, racing madly across the landscape.
I nearly ran right into the wolves over the next crest. They had assembled in a little group on the forward slope and were having a social interlude, with much nose smelling and tail wagging. I flung myself down behind some rocks and waited. After a few moments the white wolf started off again and the others followed. They were in no hurry, and there was considerable individual meandering as they went down the slopes toward the valley floor where scores of deer were grazing. Several times one or another of the wolves stopped to smell a clump of moss, or detoured to one side to investigate something on his own. When they reached the valley they were strung out in line abreast and about a hundred feet apart, and in this formation they turned and trotted along the valley floor.
Only those deer immediately in front of the wolves showed any particular reaction. When a wolf approached to within fifty or sixty yards, the deer would snort, rise on their hind feet and then spring off to one side of the line of advance. After galloping a few yards some of them swung around again to watch with mild interest as the wolf went past, but most returned to their grazing without giving the wolf another glance.
Within the space of an hour the wolves and I had covered three or four miles and had passed within close range of perhaps four hundred caribou. In every case the reaction of the deer had been of a piece—no interest while the wolves remained at a reasonable distance; casual interest if the wolves came very close; and avoiding-tactics only when a collision seemed imminent. There had been no stampeding and no panic.
Up to this time most of the deer we had encountered had been bucks; but now we began to meet numbers of does and fawns, and the behavior of the wolves underwent a change.
One of them flushed a lone fawn from a hiding place in a willow clump. The fawn leaped into view not twenty feet ahead of the wolf, who paused to watch it for an instant, then raced off in pursuit. My heart began to thud with excitement as I anticipated seeing a kill at last.
It was not to be. The wolf ran hard for fifty yards without gaining perceptibly on the fawn, then suddenly broke off the chase and trotted back to rejoin his fellows.
I could hardly believe my eyes. That fawn should have been doomed, and it certainly would have been if even a tenth of the wolfish reputation was in fact deserved; yet during the next hour at least twelve separate rushes were made by all three wolves against single fawns, a doe with a fawn, or groups of does and fawns, and in every case the chase was broken off almost before it was well begun.
I was becoming thoroughly exasperated. I had not run six miles across country and exhausted myself just to watch a pack of wolves playing the fool.
When the wolves left the next valley and wandered over the far crest, I went charging after them with blood in my eye. I’m not sure what I had in mind—possibly I may have intended to chase down a caribou fawn myself, just to show those incompetent beasts how it was done. In any event I shot over the crest—and straight into the middle of the band.
They had probably halted for a breather, and I burst in among them like a bomb. The group exploded. Wolves went tearing off at top speed in all directions—ears back, tails stretching straight behind them. They ran scared, and as they fled through the dispersed caribou herds the deer finally reacted, and the stampede of frightened animals which I had been expecting to witness all that afternoon became something of a reality. Only, and I realized the fact with bitterness, it was not the wolves who had been responsible—it was I.
I gave it up then, and turned for home. When I was still some miles from camp I saw several figures running toward me and I recognized them as the Eskimo woman and her three youngsters. They seemed to be fearfully distrait about something. They were all screaming, and the woman was waving a two-foot-long snowknife while her three offspring were brandishing deer spears and skinning knives.
I stopped in some perplexity. For the first time I became uncomfortably aware of my condition. Not only was I unarmed, but I was stark naked. I was in no condition to ward off an attack—and one seemed imminent, although I had not the slightest idea what had roused the Eskimos to such a mad endeavor. Discretion seemed the better part of valor, so I stretched my weary muscles and sprinted hard to bypass the Eskimos. I succeeded, but they were still game, and the chase continued most of the way back to the camp where I scrambled into my trousers, seized my rifle, and prepared to sell my life dearly. Fortunately Ootek and the men arrived back at the camp just as the woman and her crew of furies swept down upon me, and battle was averted.
Somewhat later, when things had quieted down, Ootek explained the situation. One of the children had been picking berries when he had seen me go galloping naked across the hills after the wolves. Round-eyed with wonder, he had hastened back to report this phenomenon to his mother. She, brave soul, assumed that I had gone out of my mind (Eskimos believe that no white man has very far to go in this direction), and was attempting to assault a pack of wolves bare-handed and bare everything else. Calling up the rest of her brood, and snatching what weapons were at hand, she had set out at top speed to rescue me.
During the remainder of our stay, this good woman treated me with such a wary mixture of solicitude and distrust that I was relieved beyond measure to say farewell to her. Nor was I much amused by Ootek’s comment as we swept down the river and passed out of sight of the little camp.
“Too bad,” he said gravely, “that you take off your pants. I think she like you better if you left them on.”
20
The Worm i’ the Bud
I QUERIED Ootek about the apparently inexplicable behavior of the band of wolves I had seen at the Eskimo camp, and in his patient and kindly fashion he once more endeavored to put me straight.
To begin with, he told me that a healthy adult caribou can outrun a wolf with ease, and even a three-week-old fawn can outrun all but the swiftest wolf. The caribou were perfectly well aware of this, and therefore knew they had little to fear from wolves in the normal course of events. The wolves were fully aware of it too, and, being highly intelligent, they seldom even attempted to run down a healthy caribou—knowing full well that this would be a senseless waste of effort.
What the wolves did instead, according to Ootek, was to adopt a technique of systematically testing the state of health and general condition of the deer in an effort to find one which was not up to par. When caribou were abundant this testing was accomplished by rushing each band and putting it to flight for just long enough to expose the presence, or absence, of a sick, wounded or otherwise inferior beast. If such a one was revealed, the wolves closed on it and attempted to make a kill. If there was no such beast in the herd, the wolves soon desisted from the chase and went off to test another group.