The Youths Companion | Page 9

we stored our "salts" as it was made.
In the night.--it must have been after midnight, for the fire was out--I
was roused from sleep by Ed, who was moving about the shed. I
thought at first that he was walking in his sleep,--for he was a
somnambulist,--and gave him a shake.
"Sh!" whispered he. "There's something sniffing round the arch."
We both peered sharply, but it was so dark that we could see nothing.
"It's the mate to that old bear, I guess," Ed whispered. "He's lonely, and
wants company."
"More likely he has smelled the fat," said I, "and intends to steal it."
"Perhaps so," said Ed. "I thought we should draw some beast or other
to us. Sh! I believe I can see him. Keep still! I'll teach him not to steal
from his neighbors."
Ed reached for the gun, which at night always lay loaded at the head of
our bunk.

Cocking the gun, he took aim and fired.
There was a yell almost as loud as the report, and it startled me a good
deal worse. I once heard a vicious hound when shot make almost just
such a noise. It was really a blood-curdling sound.
Vet had been sound asleep. The gun and the yell brought him suddenly
to his feet.
"What is it?" he screamed. "What's the matter?"
"Matter?" exclaimed Ed; "that was a wolf! An ugly customer, too."
The creature had ran yelping away, and now the whole swamp
resounded to its cries, as it crossed the frozen stream and ran for the
mountain-side. What we took for the echoes at first, came back
amazingly distinct from the mountains all about us. "Why," cried Vet,
"those cries are other wolves answering him!"
It is strange what a distance the smell of burned bones and scraps will
be carried to the noses of carnivorous beasts. A hunter in the woods
better not burn such refuse unless he wants to draw dangerous game
about him. It may be a wild opinion, but I haven't a doubt that the odor
of those bones drew wolves twenty-five miles off to us that night.
As soon as Vet spoke, Ed and I both knew there must be other wolves
howling. It made us feel almost frightened, there, in the dead of night,
for we soon found that the creatures were drawing together and coming
nearer, large numbers of them. Ed loaded the gun again.
"But what good will that do if there's a pack of 'em?" Vet exclaimed.
If we had had a log camp with a door, we shouldn't have felt uneasy;
but our open shed would not afford us safety. There was no time to be
lost, for the wolves were racing and scurrying about the swamp, not
half a mile away.
"I'm going into that old stooping hemlock!" said Vet, and he ran for it.

This large mossy hemlock was a few yards to the right of our camp. It
leaned down and rested partly in a great elm that stood on the bank of
the stream.
Any one could make a run and scramble up the trunk of this tree to the
first limbs, twelve or fourteen feet. Ed and I only waited to place two
big stones from the arch upon our pork cask, and also to throw our
flour-bag and meal-bag upon the roof of the shed. Then we scrambled
after Vet.
We got amongst the green boughs, and perched ourselves as
comfortably as we could. There was no wind, and the temperature
could not have been below freezing, much.
We had but just got into the hemlock when two or three wolves ran by,
and were soon scurrying about our "arch" and camp,--going and
coming, here and there, uttering, now and then, a quick, eager yelp, like
hounds hunting a track.
Though it was pretty dark, we could distinguish their dusky forms. We
could hear them eating, too, the bones, scraps and offal we hand thrown
out,--quarrelling, snapping and fighting with one another.
[Illustration (woods-2) Trying Oil]
Several times, one or more of them were on the shed-roof. They
dragged off the meal-bag, and tugged at the cloths, and dragged the bag
about the ground. Then they began to jump into the little spotted maple.
This was so near that we could see them better. They tore down the tin
dishes, and still kept leaping up.
"Good-by, candles!" muttered Ed. "They're after that pail of bear's
grease."
Pretty soon, we heard the pail go down, thump! into the box of "salts,"
that was, as I have said, underneath it. Then there was a great rush and
snapping of the whole pack--twenty to thirty of them, we thought--as
they licked it up from among the salts.

They hurried hither and thither around the camp