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WOLVES IN THE SNOW
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    “Well”, related Anthony, “five years ago last winter, I was employed by a logging company driving a tote team, hauling sup-plies to the camps. The trip was a distance of twenty miles and I was supposed to make the round trip in two days, using up part of the nights, in order to finish the trip on time. That was a cold, hard winter with very deep snow. The wolves were numerous and the game was scarce. As the wolves became famished and ravenous, there were tales passed about among the logging camps of the killing of teamsters and their teams, the wolves had become so bold.
    One morning, I got my team ready and pulled out at four A. M., with a load of quartered beef. It was one of those dead cold mornings, better than thirty below zero. Fine particles of icy snow filled the air, urging one to watch out for his face to see that it did not freeze.”
    At this point, the man with the sunflower face interrupted, “What did you do to keep your nose from freezing?”
    “Kept rubbing it with snow”, Anthony answered.
    “Supposing you could not reach out to the end of your nose, what then?” the stranger asked, trying to kid Anthony.
    “Oh I would rub snow on my nose as far out as I could reach and snowball the rest of it,” Anthony answered. Everyone laughed at the expense of the sunflower face and Anthony went on with his story.
    “The road was drifted in places, making bad going but I plugged along through the cold, silent forest. Occasionally, the silence was broken by the loud report of the frost cracking in a tree. These sounds made the horses jump. At eleven o’clock, by my watch, I met a tote team and we had some trouble passing each other in the narrow road on account of the deep snow.
    As we stopped our teams for a minute, the driver told me that he had seen wolf tracks ten miles back on his trail and asked me if I had a rifle. When I told him that I had, he said to have it handy for sudden use.
    My rifle was an old forty five and I had plenty of shells. I also had twelve quarters of beef that I could throw to the wolves, if there were too many of the beasts for me to handle alone. I drove along and was not worrying any about the wolves.
    The next time I looked at my watch, it was twelve thirty, so I thought that it was time to stop and feed the horses. I pulled off the road into the deep snow and spreading a blanket on a snowdrift in front of the horses, I dumped half a bushel of oats on the blanket. Then I took the bits from the horses’ mouths so that they could eat. I blanketed the sweating animals and got out some meat sandwiches which were frozen and proceeded to munch them.
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xTHE HODAG
BY LAKE SHORE KEARNEYx
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