At times, when the cubs were hungry after a two-days fast, they would
hear, faint and far away, the food cry, _yap-yap-yooo! yap-yap-yoooooo!_
quivering under the stars in the tense early-morning air, and would dart
away to find game freshly killed by one of the old wolves awaiting them.
Again, at nightfall, a cub's hunting cry, _ooooo, ow-ow! ooooo, ow-ow!_
a deep, almost musical hoot with two short barks at the end, would come
singing down from the uplands; and the wolves, leaving instantly the
game they were following, would hasten up to find the two cubs herding a
caribou in a cleft of the rocks,--a young caribou that had lost his
mother at the hands of the hunters, and that did not know how to take
care of himself. And one of the cubs would hold him there, sitting on
his tail in front of the caribou to prevent his escape, while the other
cub called the wolves away from their own hunting to come and join the
feast.
Whether this were a conscious attempt to spare the game, or to alarm it
as little as need be, it is impossible to say. Certainly the wolves
know, better apparently than men, that persistent hunting destroys its
own object, and that caribou especially, when much alarmed by dogs or
wolves or men, will take the alarm quickly, and the scattered herds,
moved by a common impulse of danger, will trail far away to other
ranges.
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