see it; but
when the fleet staghounds are slipped, as has been more than once tested
in Newfoundland, try as hard as they will they cannot keep within sight
of the deer for a single quarter-mile, and no limit has ever yet been
found, either by dog or wolf, to Megaleep's tirelessness. So the old
wolves, relying possibly upon past experience, keep the cubs and hold
themselves strictly to small game as long as it can possibly be found.
Then when the bitter days of late winter come, with their scarcity of
small game and their unbearable hunger, the wolves turn to the caribou
as a last resort, killing a few here by stealth, rather than speed, and
then, when the game grows wild, going far off to another range where the
deer have not been disturbed and so can be approached more easily.

On this afternoon, however, the old mother wolf had run plump upon the
caribou and her fawns in the midst of a thicket, and had leaped forward
promptly to round them up for her hungry cubs. It would have been the
easiest matter in the world for an old wolf to hamstring one of the slow
fawns, or the mother caribou herself as she hovered in the rear to
defend her young; but there were other thoughts in the shaggy gray head
that had seen so much hunting. So the mother wolf drove the deer slowly,
puzzling them more and more, as a collie distracts the herd by his
yapping, out into the open where her cubs might join in the hunting.

The wolves now drew back, all save the mother, which advanced
hesitatingly to where the caribou stood with lowered head, watching
every move. Suddenly the cow charged, so swiftly, furiously, that the
old wolf seemed almost caught, and tumbled away with the broad hoofs
striking savagely at her flanks. Farther and farther the caribou drove
her enemy, roused now to frenzy at the wolf's nearness and apparent
cowardice. Then she whirled in a panic and rushed back to her little
ones, only to find that all the other wolves, as if frightened by her
furious charge, had drawn farther back from the cranny in the rocks.

Again the old she-wolf approached cautiously, and again the caribou
plunged at her and followed her lame retreat with headlong fury. An
electric shock seemed suddenly to touch the huge he-wolf. Like a flash
he leaped in on the fawns. One quick snap of the long jaws with the
terrible fangs; then, as if the whole thing were a bit of play, he loped
away easily with the cubs, circling to join the mother wolf, which
str