And here may well end the story of Buck. The years were not many when
the Yeehats noted a change in the breed of timber wolves; for some were
seen with splashes of brown on head and muzzle, and with a rift of
white centring down the chest. But more remarkable than this, the
Yeehats tell of a Ghost Dog that runs at the head of the pack. They are
afraid of this Ghost Dog, for it has cunning greater than they,
stealing from their camps in fierce winters, robbing their traps,
slaying their dogs, and defying their bravest hunters.
Nay, the tale grows worse. Hunters there are who fail to return to the
camp, and hunters there have been whom their tribesmen found with
throats slashed cruelly open and with wolf prints about them in the
snow greater than the prints of any wolf. Each fall, when the Yeehats
follow the movement of the moose, there is a certain valley which they
never enter. And women there are who become sad when the word goes over
the fire of how the Evil Spirit came to select that valley for an
abiding-place.
In the summers there is one visitor, however, to that valley, of which
the Yeehats do not know. It is a great, gloriously coated wolf, like,
and yet unlike, all other wolves. He crosses alone from the smiling
timber land and comes down into an open space among the trees. Here a
yellow stream flows from rotted moose-hide sacks and sinks into the
ground, with long grasses growing through it and vegetable mould
overrunning it and hiding its yellow from the sun; and here he muses
for a time, howling once, long and mournfully, ere he departs.
But he is not always alone. When the long winter nights come on and the
wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running
at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering
borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow
as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.
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