The den ridge was, as I had expected (and as the Norseman would have made quite certain in any case), wolfless. Reaching the entrance to the burrow I shed my heavy trousers, tunic and sweater, and taking a flashlight (whose batteries were very nearly dead) and measuring-tape from my pack, I began the difficult task of wiggling down the entrance tunnel.

The flashlight was so dim it cast only an orange glow—barely sufficient to enable me to read the marks on the measuring-tape. I squirmed onward, descending at a forty-five-degree angle, for about eight feet. My mouth and eyes were soon full of sand and I was beginning to suffer from claustrophobia, for the tunnel was just big enough to admit me.

At the eight-foot mark the tunnel took a sharp upward bend and swung to the left. I pointed the torch in the new direction and pressed the switch.

Four green lights in the murk ahead reflected back the dim torch beam.

In this case green was not my signal to advance. I froze where I was, while my startled brain tried to digest the information that at least two wolves were with me in the den.

Despite my close familiarity with the wolf family, this was the kind of situation where irrational but deeply ingrained prejudices completely overmaster reason and experience. To be honest, I was so frightened that paralysis gripped me. I had no weapon of any sort, and in my awkward posture I could barely have gotten one hand free with which to ward off an attack. It seemed inevitable that the wolves would attack me, for even a gopher will make a fierce defense when he is cornered in his den.

The wolves did not even growl.

Save for the two faintly glowing pairs of eyes, they might not have been there at all.

The paralysis began to ease and, though it was a cold day, sweat broke out all over my body. In a fit of blind bravado, I shoved the torch forward as far as my arm would reach.

It gave just sufficient light for me to recognize Angeline and one of the pups. They were scrunched hard against the back wall of the den; and they were as motionless as death.

The shock was wearing off by this time, and the instinct for self-preservation was regaining command. As quickly as I could I began wiggling back up the slanting tunnel, tense with the expectation that at any instant the wolves would charge. But by the time I reached the entrance and had scrambled well clear of it I had still not heard nor seen the slightest sign of movement from the wolves.

I sat down on a stone and shakily lit a cigarette, becoming aware as I did so that I was no longer frightened. Instead an irrational rage possessed me. If I had had my rifle I believe I might have reacted in brute fury and tried to kill both wolves.

The cigarette burned down, and a wind began to blow out of the somber northern skies. I began to shiver again; this time from cold instead of rage. My anger was passing and I was limp in the aftermath. Mine had been the fury of resentment born of fear: resentment against the beasts who had engendered naked terror in me and who, by so doing, had intolerably affronted my human ego.

I was appalled at the realization of how easily I had forgotten, and how readily I had denied, all that the summer sojourn with the wolves had taught me about them…and about myself. I thought of Angelina and her pup cowering at the bottom of the den where they had taken refuge from the thundering apparition of the aircraft, and I was shamed.

Somewhere to the eastward a wolf howled; lightly, questioningly. I knew the voice, for I had heard it many times before. It was George, sounding the wasteland for an echo from the missing members of his family. But for me it was a voice which spoke of the lost world which once was ours before we chose the alien role; a world which I had glimpsed and almost entered…only to be excluded, at the end, by my own self.

Epilogue

During the winter of 1958–1959 the Canadian Wildlife Service, in pursuance of its continuing policy of wolf control, employed several Predator Control officers to patrol the Keewatin Barrens in ski-equipped aircraft for the purpose of setting out poison bait stations.

In early May of 1959, one of these officers landed at Wolf House Bay. He remained in the vicinity for some hours and placed a number of cyanide “wolf getters” in appropriate places near the which, so he ascertained, was occupied. He also spread a number of strychnine-treated baits in the vicinity.

He was unable to return at a later date to check on this control station, because of the early onset of the spring thaws.

It is not known what results were obtained.

 CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Preface

1 The Lupine Project

2 Wolf Juice

3 Happy Landings

4 When Is a Wolf Not a Wolf?

5 Contact!

6 The Den

7 The Watcher Watched

8 Staking the Land

9 Good Old Uncle Albert

10 Of Mice and Wolves

11 Souris а la Crкme

12 Spirit of the Wolf

13 Wolf Talk

14 Puppy Time

15 Uncle Albert Falls in Love

16 Morning Meat Delivery

17 Visitors from Hidden Valley

18 Family Life

19 Naked to the Wolves

20 The Worm i’ the Bud

21 School Days

22 Scatology

23 To Kill a Wolf

24 The World We Lost

Epilogue