w nearer than before, and the wolf, assuming a
still more fierce and terrible appearance, growling, rolling her eyes,
snapping her teeth, and dropping her head between her legs, was
evidently on the point of springing at him. At this critical instant he
leveled his gun and fired at her head. Stunned with the shock and
suffocated with the smoke, he immediately found himself drawn out of the
cave. But, having refreshed himself, and permitted the smoke to
dissipate, he went down the third time. Once more he came within sight
of the wolf, who appearing very passive, he applied the torch to her
nose, and perceiving her dead, he took hold of her ears, and then
kicking the rope (still tied round his legs), the people above, with no
small exultation, dragged them both out together."

This is the story, told by one who knew Putnam intimately and who had it
from his own lips, while neighbors were still living who were "in at the
death" and could have refuted any misstatement or exaggeration. The
deed, in truth, was characteristic of the dauntless young farmer, whose
courage and heroic character (as his eulogist justly remarks) "were ever
attended by a serenity of soul, a clearness of conception, a degree of
self-possession, and a superiority to all vicissitudes of fortune,
entirely distinct from anything that can be produced by a ferment of the
blood and flutter of spirits, which not unfrequently precipitate men to
action when stimulated by intoxication or some other transient
exhilaration."

That was "Wolf Put," or "Old Wolf Putnam," as he came to be called
thenceforth. But at no time in his active and wonderful career was he
an old man when he performed his deeds of valor. The wolf-hunt, in fact,
was mainly a young men's and boys' affair, Putnam himself being only
twenty-four at the time, and the wolf having been traced to her lair by
young John Sharp, a boy of seventeen.

The slayer of the old she-wolf was the hero of the time; but he bore his
laurels modestly, though exaggerated accounts of the affair were
published all over the colonies, and even in England, where they were
exploited in the public prints. By rising to the occasion, and doing the
right thing at the right time, he acquired a reputation for valor and
firmness that stood him in good stead in those coming conflicts, the
Seven Years' War and the Revolution.

Unknown to him, however, and unsuspected, were the heights to which he
subsequently rose. He devoted hi