Left to themselves the trail must end here,
for they could go no farther; but somewhere ahead in the vast silent
barren the cubs were trailing, and somewhere beyond them the old mother
wolf was laying her ambush.--Hark! from a spur of the valley, far below
on their left, rang out the food cry, singing its way in the frosty air
over woods and plains, and hurrying back over the trail to tell those
who had fallen by the way that they were not forgotten. And when they
leaped up, as at an electric shock, and raced for the cry, there were
the cubs and the mother wolf, their hunger already satisfied, and there
in the snow a young bull caribou to save them.
So the long, hard winter passed away, and spring came again with its
abundance. Grouse drummed a welcome in the woods; the _honk_ of wild
geese filled the air with a joyous clangor, and in every open pool the
ducks were quacking. No need now to cling like shadows to the herds of
caribou, and no further need for the pack to hold together. The ties
that held them melted like snows in the sunny hollows. First the old
wolves, then the cubs, one by one drifted away whither the game or their
new mates were calling them.
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