Far away on the ridge top, a pair of wolves sat together with no more evidence of life than two shadows. One of the most effective accomplishments a wolf possesses is its ability to freeze into a motionless thing, so the sharpest eye can scarcely detect him in the thickets. It is an advantage in hunting, and it is an even greater advantage when being hunted. Yet at the same second they sprang up, simply seemed to spin in the dead pine needles, and brought up with sharp noses pointed and ears erect, facing the valley.
A human being likely would have wondered at their action. It is doubtful that human ears could have detected that faint tremor in the air which was all that was left of the rifle report. But of course this is a question that would be extremely difficult to prove; for as a rule the senses of the larger forest creatures, with the great exception of scent, are not as perfectly developed as those of a human being. A wolf can see better than a man in the darkness, but not nearly as far in the daylight. But the wolves knew this sound. Too many times they had seen their pack-fellows die in the snow when such a report as this, only intensified a thousand times, cracked at them through the winter air. No animal in all the forest has been as relentlessly hunted as the wolves, and they have learned their lessons. For longer years than most men would care to attempt to count, men have waged a ceaseless war upon them. And they have learned that their safety lies in flight.
Very quietly, and quite without panic, the wolves turned and headed farther into the forests. Possibly no other animal would have been frightened at such a distance. And it is certainly true that in the deep, winter snows not even the wolves would have heeded the sound. The snows bring Famine; and when Famine comes to keep its sentry-duty over the land, all the other forest laws are immediately forgotten or ignored. The pack forgets all its knowledge of the deadliness of men in the starving times.
The grouse heard the sound, and, silly creatures that they are, even they raised their heads for a single instant from their food. The felines--the great, tawny mountain lions and their smaller cousins, the lynx--all devoted at least an instant of concentrated attention to it. A raccoon, sleeping in a pine, opened its eyes, and a lone bull elk, such as some people think is beyond all other things the monarch of the forest, rubbed his neck against a tree trunk and wondered.