A WOLF SLATER OF WOLVES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2209, 2 July 1896, Page 49

A WOLF SLATER OF WOLVES.

, " The Stkangb Yolk Dvorsa and its Relentless Chase. " Two years ago I was travelling, in late autumn, over the steppes of Central and Eastern Russia," said Frederic Hoffman, who returned reoently from a long sojourn in the Czar's dominions.' "At that season it was a bare and desolate country. 1 One could see. on every band only a dead level of treeless, brown plain, stretching away to the horizon line. Iv place's, near the watercourses, the monotony of the scene was broken by rolling country and leagues of dark evergreen forest. Few people or signs of people were to be seen, except at the little villages of huts and haystacks clustered about the post stations. Away from these a human being was seen rarely. A wolf or fox skulking along in the distance was a more common sight, and these were so frequently seen that they seldom excited comment from the traveller, " But there came a little ripple of excitement into my journey one day. I chanced to be the single passenger in the mail coaoh. We were travelling in a gently-rolling country with a forest on the right. As I nodded, half asleep, wrapped up in furs and blankets, while the horses bowled us along at an easy six-mile gait, I saw Starof, the stolid mujik that drove, start forward on his seat, gather the reins well in hand, and urge the horses forward with whip and outcry, Seeing him look anxiously off to the right; I glanced in the same direction and saw a band of nine wolves a quarter of a mile away, galloping along together in a course that would "take them across our path about a mile ahead. It looked as if they meant us and nothing else, and there were quite enough of them to have pulled our horses down. The driver was clearly worried, the horses snuffed and shied as H they would leave the road and run from the wolves, and I picked up my travelling bag from the bottom of the coach and got out my revolver. As the wolves came nearer the driver became more anxious, and, instead of advancing in a direotion to meet them, pulled the horses down to a walk, ts if to see what the wolves would do then. They kept straight on, never notfeipg us, it Beamed, and orosslng the wafl.

three hundred yards ahead of us, went on without stopping. " Starof's face cleared, he settled baok at ease oh his seat, and hummed a folk-song as he put his horses again to their six-mile gait. It was plain nothing was to be feared from the wolves. By this time I had noticed that they were running with their heads up, and not held low as when they hunt their prey. I said as much to the driver. " • No, father, they are not out for prey,' he answered ; • they are running away from something they fear. There is a battue off to the south, or else they are fleeing from the yolk dvorsa.' " ' The yolk dvorsa I What may that be, pray 7 ' I asked, as eager to add to my knowledge of Russian folk words as to find out what had frightened the wolves. " ' It is the dog wolf, the dog born sometimes to the she wolE among her litter of cubs,' he answered. 'It suckles with the young wolves, but when it has grown up becomes their deadly enemy, and the enemy of all wolves. It follows and kills them everywhere that it can overtake them. Every wolf is in mortal fear of the yolk dvoraa. Have you ever seen rats flee before the coming of a ferret ? Well, so the wolves, even if there be SO or 100 or 150 together, will fly from the yolk dvorsa.' " ' Bat it is rare that a dog wolf cub lives to grow up,' he added. 'A3 soon as the mother wolf finds one among her litter she kills it. Can you gness how Bbc distinguishes it from the other cubs 2 It is by its manner of drinking." The dog laps up the water : the wolf drinks silently. When she finds that one of her cubs laps its drink she kills it with no more ado.' "He looked back over the wheel in the direction from which the wolves had appeared. " ' Ah, there he is now I ' he oried in high excitement. " He pointed as he spoke to where, upon a swell of ground 200 yds away, a lone wolf had appeared — or wolf it seemed to me. At sigtit of us it had paused, and now was watching us warily, as if neither inclined to turn back nor come nearer. At a second glance I noted that his manner of standing, of pricking his ears, and tbo expression of his face suggested a fierce, shaggy dog rather than a wolf. I waited for the driver to speak. " You see it, father, there upon the brow of the slope ? ' - ' •"The wolf? Yes. What of it? He seems to have lingered behind the others.' "•Hehas not lingered.. He is in pursuit of the wolves, apd has stopped for us to pass. It is not a wolf, you see. It is a dog— the yolk dvorsa, the wolf destroyer.' " The carriage had been stopped, and for several minutes. we gazed upon the creature, which now bad lain down with its bead between its paws, lolling with its tongue after the manner' of a dog, and all the time watching' us closely with a bold, open look unlike the furtive espial of the wolf. It remained in that -position until we had passed on, then leaped up and bounded onward in the direction the wolves had taken. Its running was lighter and freer than theirs had been, and its spead far greater, suggesting the movement of the coursing hound rather than that of the wolf. 'It was in full pursuit of the' frightened pack and plainly gaining upon it as we passed from the view of both. 11 Naturally pndugh, after snob an episode, our conversation continued with the yolk dvorea as the topic. Oar talk was somewhat hampered by my imperfect knowledge of the Russian language, but I managed, after a time, to get from the driver the'information I sought. His belief in the existence of the dog wolf was implicit, and, after what I had just seen; I was inclined to share it. j " ' Fierce as is the ' beast against its wolf kindred,' he said, ' it' cannot be brought to attack man except when driven to selfdefence. Then it is more dangerous than five wolves. The country people welcome its coming into a neighbourhood, for there soon is an end to the wolves there for many miles around. At the same time he is untamable, and will suffer no one to approach him. If food be placed for him and left he sometimes will eat it, but he is very suspicious, and none was ever known to have been caught in a trap. " ' One came into the neighbourhood where our family have always dwelt, when my father was a little child, The story of the way he first made his presence known will be handed down in the family from father to son for many generations. There was much oold and snow- that winter, and, as the season wore on, the wolveß, pressed by hunger, came nearer the villages, and were many and fierce. " ' It was one afternoon, near sundown, that a party of a dozen people, my grandparents among them, were retnrning home from market. They rode in two sledges through the forest, in which the snow rose high on each side of the narrow beaten track. In the hindmost sledge my grandparents rode upon the front seat. On the rear seat my father, then less than two years old, was in charge of a young girl. Wrapped up warmly in blankets, he lay in her lap, fast asleep. They were losing no time in getting home, for behind them and about j^em they could hear the baying of wolees, and they kaqw that the cowardly beasts would grow bolder at nightfall. "'Well, the girl fell asleep, my father rolled out into the snow by the roadside without awakening, and the sledges glided on with no one the wiser for what bad happened. Perhaps some of the older ones had drunk too much vodki at the market town that day, At any rate, the sledges bad got nearly a mile beyond before the girl woke up and shrieked when she found the baby gone. Of oourse, the sledges were stopped, but they could not be turned back on account of the deep snow at the roadBides. While my # grandmother, screamed and lamented, my grandfather and old Oalov, the hunter, gob out of the sledges and ran back down the road to find the child, if he could be found— for, as they ran, they could hear the cries of wolves coming nearer. 41 Old Oslov had his guns, and my grandfather was armed with a sabre that he bad carried in the wars against Napoleon. They came at last to a place where the road made a long sweep round the head of a deep hollow, and then followed back down the | other tide. Across the hollow they oould see the road, and, best of all, upon the snow y tbe roa.djid.9 the baby lying where be. baa

rolled from the sledge, still fast asleep. But to get to him they must go a quarter of a mile round. Just as they were starting, tot him the baying of wolves beyond the hollow rose suddenly, close at hand, in the nota that showed the hungry beasts had scented prey. With this evil sound oame a sight which filled the hearts of the two men with I fear for the child, for up the road toward thai baby galloped s]x or seven wolves. A minuto more would bring them upon 16. "'My grandfather sank down In tha snow, covered his eyes with his hands and prayed. Old Oslov, white and trembling, raised his gun and made ready to fire a shot; among them when they came to the child. Then he lowered hia gun and gazed in amazement at something that occurred there before his eyes. •"Oat from among the trees by the roadBide, just ahead of the running wolves, came what seemed to be a large wolf, but its fur was dark grey in cojpur, and ■ smoother than that of the others. With a cry like that of a hound as it dashes in at the finish of the chase, it made two bounds towards the wolves. The first took him to the roadside, and with the second he was among the wolves and seized one by the baok of the neck, shook it, and crushed it down into the snow. The wolf shrieked and whimpered and tried to break away. The others howled in fright and scattered. Three of them ran up the road directly past the child without seeming to notice it, so great was their fear. ... _ .. " ' Oalov knew then that he was beholding; the work of a yolk dvoraa. He stood gazing too .much astonished to move or speak. In a minute the wolf- lay still, and giving it * shake as if to make sure it was dead, the yolk dvorsa dropped ' it back into the snow and looked toward my father, who had now awakened, and was beginning to cry. The* yolk dvorsa left the wolf, walked and bounded over to where the child lay; and once more old Oslov's heart came into his mouth in hit fear and breathless suspense. The oreature looked at the child wonderiugly, sniffed at it 9 and then, not offering to molest it, returned to the dead wolf and shook it again by the neck. " ' Oslov caught my grandfather by the shoulder. " ' Come, come,' he shouted. ' Run with me. Your child is safe. Run I ' " ' Down the road, round the bend of the hollow they ran, and soon my grandfather had his child in his arms and once again prayed in thankfulness for its preservation. Old Oolov kept his gun in readiness and looked at the creature as it stood with its paws on the dead wolf, facing them, as the dog-wolf faced us to-day, neither advanoing nor retreating. Then the two men went back to the sledges, and glad enough everybody was to see them coming with the ohild. "'" ' This is the way the yolk dvorsa oame into my father's neighbourhood 70 years ago. Do you wonder that we keep the story aliyfl in our family 2 ' "—New York Sun.