Then
for days at a time they would forget the coming winter, and play as
heedlessly as if the woods would always be as full of game as now; and
again the mood would be upon them strongly, and they would kill all they
could find and hide it in another place. But the instinct--if indeed it
were instinct, and not the natural result of the mother's own
experience--was weak at best; and the first time the cubs were hungry or
lazy they would trail off to the hidden store. Long before the spring
with its bitter need was upon them they had eaten everything, and had
returned to the empty storehouse at least a dozen times, as a dog goes
again and again to the place where he once hid a bone, and nosed it all
over regretfully to be quite sure that they had overlooked nothing.
More interesting to the wolves in these glad days than the game or the
storehouse, or the piles of caplin which they cached under the sand on
the shore, were the wandering herds of caribou,--splendid old stags with
massive antlers, and long-legged, inquisitive fawns trotting after the
sleek cows, whose heads carried small pointed horns, more deadly by far
than the stags' cumbersome antlers.
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