of the interesting things
that wild animals do continually in their native state, when they are
not frightened by dogs and hunters, or when we are not blinded by our
preconceived notions in watching them. I have no doubt that romancing is
rife just now on the part of men who study animals in a library; but
personally, with my note-books full of incidents which I have never yet
recorded, I find the truth more interesting, and I cannot understand why
a man should deliberately choose romance when he can have the greater
joy of going into the wilderness to see with his own eyes and to
understand with his own heart just how the animals live. One thing seems
to me to be more and more certain: that we are only just beginning to
understand wild animals, and it is chiefly our own barbarism, our lust
of killing, our stupid stuffed specimens, and especially our prejudices
which stand in the way of greater knowledge. Meanwhile the critic who
asserts dogmatically what a wild animal will or will not do under
certain conditions only proves how carelessly he has watched them and
how little he has learned of Nature's infinite variety.

WILLIAM J. LONG

STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT

CONTENTS

WAYEESES THE STRONG ONE

THE OLD WOLF'S CHALLENGE

WHERE THE TRAIL BEGINS

NOEL AND MOOKA

THE WAY OF THE WOLF

THE WHITE WOLF'S HUNTING

TRAILS THAT CROSS IN THE SNOW

GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

"A QUICK SNAP WHERE THE HEART LAY"

"THE TERRIBLE HOWL OF A GREAT WHITE WOLF"

"WATCHING HER GROWING YOUNGSTERS"

"AS THE MOTHER'S LONG JAWS CLOSED OVER THE SMALL OF THE BACK"

"THE SILENT, APPALLING DEATH-WATCH BEGAN"

WAYEESES THE STRONG ONE

_The Old Wolf's Challenge_

We were beating up the Straits to the Labrador when a great gale swooped
down on us and drove us like a scared wild duck into a cleft in the
mountains, where the breakers roared and the seals barked on the black
rocks and the reefs bared their teeth on either side, like the long jaws
of a wolf, to snap at us as we passed.

In our flight we had picked up a fisherman--snatched him out of his
helpless punt as we luffed in a smother of spray, and dragged him
aboard, like an enormous frog, at the end of the jib sheet--and it was
he who now stood at the wheel of our little schooner and took her
careening in through the tickle of Harbor Woe. There, in a desolate,
rock-bound refuge on the Newfoundland coast, the _Wild Duck_ swung