trapped, wounded, or
cornered--just as a muskrat will; but of all the wolf stories I have
ever heard, in which wolves killed a man, the following is the only one
I have any reason to believe, as it was told me first-hand by a
gentleman whose word I honour, and whose unusual knowledge of animal
life and northern travel places his story beyond a doubt.

One winter's day in the seventies, when Mr. William Cornwallis King was
in charge of Fort Rae, one of the Hudson's Bay Company's posts on Great
Slave Lake, he was snowshoeing to a number of Indian camps to collect
furs, and had under his command several Indians in charge of his
dog-trains. On the way they came upon a small party of Dog-rib
Indians, who, after a smoke and a chat, informed him that, being in
need of meat, one of their party, named Pot-fighter's-father, had set
out three days before to hunt caribou; and as he had not returned, they
were afraid lest some evil had befallen him. When Mr. King learned
that it had been Pot-fighter's-father's intention to return to camp on
the evening of the first day, he advised the Indians to set out at once
in search of him.

After following his tracks for half a day they came suddenly upon the
footprints of an unusually large wolf which had turned to trail the
hunter. For some miles the brute had evidently followed close beside
the trail of Pot-fighter's-father, diverging at times as though seeking
cover, and then again stalking its prey in the open. One Indian
continued to follow the old man's trail, while another followed that of
the wolf. They had not gone far before they discovered that
Pot-fighter's-father had come upon a herd of caribou, and a little
farther on they found, lying on the snow, a couple of caribou carcasses
that he had shot. Strange to say, the animals had not been skinned,
nor had their tongues been removed. More remarkable still, the
wolf--although passing close to them--had not stopped to feed. Soon
they came upon another dead caribou, and this time Pot-fighter's-father
had skinned it, and had cut out its tongue; but again the wolf had
refused to touch the deer.

Continuing their pursuit, they discovered a brush windbreak where the
hunter had evidently stopped to camp for the night. Now they noticed
that the tracks of the wolf took to cover among the scrub. Approaching
the shelter, they read in the snow the signs of a terrible struggle
between a man and a wolf. The hunter's gun, snowshoes, a