THE WOLF HUNTERS
A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness
BY
JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
1908
To my comrades of the great northern wilderness, those faithfulcompanions with whom I have shared the joys and hardships of the "longsilent trail," and especially to Mukoki, my red guide and belovedfriend, does the writer gratefully dedicate this volume
CONTENTS:
- I. The Fight in the Forest
- II. How Wabigoon Became a White Man
- III. Roderick Sees the Footprint
- IV. Roderick's First Taste of the Hunter's Life
- V. Shots in the Wilderness
- VI. Mukoki Disturbs the Ancient Skeletons
- VII. Roderick Discovers the Buckskin Bag
- VIII. How Wolf Became the Companion of Men
- IX. Wolf Takes Vengeance Upon His People
- X. Roderick Explores the Chasm
- XI. Roderick's Dream
- XII. The Secret of the Skeleton's Hand
- XIII. Snowed In
- XIV. The Rescue of Wabigoon
- XV. Roderick Holds the Woongas at Bay
- XVI. The Surprise at the Post
ILLUSTRATIONS:
- With his rifle ready Rob approached the fissure (Frontispiece)
- Knife—fight—heem killed!
- The leader stopped in his snow-shoes
THE WOLF HUNTERS
THE FIGHT IN THE FOREST
Cold winter lay deep in the Canadian wilderness. Over it the moon wasrising, like a red pulsating ball, lighting up the vast white silence ofthe night in a shimmering glow. Not a sound broke the stillness of thedesolation. It was too late for the life of day, too early for thenocturnal roamings and voices of the creatures of the night. Like thebasin of a great amphitheater the frozen lake lay revealed in the lightof the moon and a billion stars. Beyond it rose the spruce forest, blackand forbidding. Along its nearer edges stood hushed walls of tamarack,bowed in the smothering clutch of snow and ice, shut in by impenetrablegloom.
A huge white owl flitted out of this rim of blackness, then back again,and its first quavering hoot came softly, as though the mystic hour ofsilence had not yet passed for the night-folk. The snow of the day hadceased, hardly a breath of air stirred the ice-coated twigs of thetrees. Yet it was bitter cold—so cold that a man, remaining motionless,would have frozen to death within an hour.
Suddenly there was a break in the silence, a weird, thrilling sound,like a great sigh, but not human—a sound to make one's blood run fasterand f