Part 6

What this thought of ours is we do not know. Beyond the fact that we have it and use it, thought still remains a profound mystery. That it is a living force of some kind; that it projects itself or its waves outward, as the sun cannot but send forth his light; that it affects men as surely as gravitation or heat or the blow of a hammer affects them,—all this is reasonably clear and certain. But how thought travels; what refined mental ether conveys it outward with a speed that makes light as slow as a glacier by comparison, and with a force that sends it through walls of stone and into every darkness that the light cannot penetrate,—this and the origin of thought are questions so deep that our science has barely formulated them, much less dreamed of an answer. Yet if we once grant the simple proposition that thought is a force, that it moves inevitably from its source to its object, the conclusion is inevitable that any thinking mind should be able to send its silent message to any other mind in the universe. There is nothing in the nature of either mind or matter to preclude such a possibility; only our present habit of speech, of too much speech, prevents us from viewing it frankly.

As a purely speculative consummation, therefore, the time may come when telepathy shall appear as the natural or perfect communication among enlightened minds, and language as a temporary or evolutionary makeshift. But that beckons us away to an imaginative flight among the clouds, and on the earth at our feet is the trail we must follow.

The question why our dogs, if they have the faculty of receiving a master’s message at a distance, do not use it more obviously, is one that I cannot answer. Perhaps the reason is obvious enough to some of the dogs, which have a sidelong way of coming home from their roving, as if aware they had long been wanted. Or, possibly, the difficulty lies not in the dog, but in his master. Every communication has two ends, one sending, the other receiving; and of a thousand owners there are hardly two who know how properly to handle a dog either by speech or by silence. Still again, one assumption implied in the question is that dogs or any other animals of the same kind are all alike; and that common assumption is very wide of the fact. Animals differ as widely in their instinctive faculties as men in their judgments; which partly explains why one setter readily follows his master’s word or hand, or enters into his mood, while another remains hopelessly dumb or unresponsive. The telepathic faculty appears more frequently, as we shall see, among birds or animals that habitually live in flocks or herds, and I have always witnessed its most striking or impressive manifestation between a mother animal and her young, as if some prenatal influence or control were still at work.

For example, I have occasionally had the good luck to observe a she-wolf leading her pack across the white expanse of a frozen lake in winter; and at such times the cubs have a doggish impulse to run after any moving object that attracts their attention. If a youngster breaks away to rush an animal that he sees moving in the woods (once that moving animal was myself), the mother heads him instantly if he is close to her; but if he is off before she can check him by a motion of her ears or a low growl, she never wastes time or strength in chasing him. She simply holds quiet, lifts her head high, and looks steadily at the running cub. Suddenly he wavers, halts, and then, as if the look recalled him, whirls and speeds back to the pack. If the moving object be proper game afoot, the mother now goes ahead to stalk or drive it, while the pack follows stealthily behind her on either side; but if the distant object be a moose or a man, or anything else that a wolf must not meddle with, then the mother wolf trots quietly on her way without a sound, and the errant cub falls into place as if he had understood her silent command.

You may observe the same phenomenon of silent order and ready obedience nearer home, if you have patience to watch day after day at a burrow of young foxes. I have spent hours by different dens, and have repeatedly witnessed what seemed to be excellent discipline; but I have never yet heard a vixen utter a growl or cry or warning of any kind. That audible communication comes later, when the cubs begin to hunt for themselves; and then you will often hear the mother’s querulous squall or the cubs’ impatient crying when they are separated in the dark woods. While the den is their home (they seldom enter it after they once roam abroad) silence is the rule, and that silence is most eloquent. For hours at a stretch the cubs romp lustily in the afternoon sunshine, some stalking imaginary mice or grasshoppers, others challenging their mates to mock fights or mock hunting; and the most striking feature of the exercise, after you have become familiar with the fascinating little creatures, is that the old vixen, who lies apart where she can overlook the play and the neighborhood, seems to have the family under perfect control at every instant, though never a word is uttered.

That some kind of communication passes among these intelligent little brutes is constantly evident; but it is without voice or language. Now and then, when a cub’s capers lead him too far from the den, the vixen lifts her head to look at him intently; and somehow that look has the same effect as the she-wolf’s silent call; it stops the cub as if she had sent a cry or a messenger after him. If that happened once, you might overlook it as a matter of mere chance; but it happens again and again, and always in the same challenging way. The eager cub suddenly checks himself, turns as if he had heard a command, catches the vixen’s look, and back he comes like a trained dog to the whistle.

As the shadows lengthen on the hillside, and the evening comes when the mother must go mousing in the distant meadow, she rises quietly to her feet. Instantly the play stops; the cubs gather close, their heads all upturned to the greater head that bends to them, and there they stand in mute intentness, as if the mother were speaking and the cubs listening. For a brief interval that tense scene endures, exquisitely impressive, while you strain your senses to catch its meaning. There is no sound, no warning of any kind that ears can hear. Then the cubs scamper quickly into the burrow; the mother, without once looking back, slips away into the shadowy twilight. At the den’s mouth a foxy little face appears, its nostrils twitching, its eyes following a moving shadow in the distance. When the shadow is swallowed up in the dusk the face draws back, and the wild hillside is wholly silent and deserted.

You can go home now. The vixen may be hours on her hunting, but not a cub will again show his nose until she returns and calls him. If a human mother could exercise such silent, perfect discipline, or leave the house with the certainty that four or five lively youngsters would keep out of danger or mischief as completely as young fox cubs keep out of it, raising children might more resemble “one grand sweet song” than it does at present.

So far as I have observed grown birds or beasts, the faculty of silent communication occurs most commonly among those that are gregarious or strongly social in their habits. The timber-wolves of the North are the first examples that occur to me, and also the most puzzling. They are wary brutes, so much so that those who have spent a lifetime near them will tell you that it is useless to hunt a wolf by any ordinary method; that your meeting with him is a matter of chance or rare accident; that not only has he marvelously keen ears, eyes that see in the dark, and a nose that cannot be deceived, but he can also “feel” a danger which is hidden from sight or smell or hearing. Such is the Indian verdict; and I have followed wolves often and vainly enough to have some sympathy with it.

The cunning of these animals would be uncanny if it were merely cunning; but it is naturally explained, I think, on the assumption that wolves, more than most other brutes, receive silent warnings from one another, or even from a concealed hunter, who may by his excitement send forth some kind of emotional alarm. When you are sitting quietly in the woods, and a pack of wolves pass near without noticing their one enemy, though he is in plain sight, you think that they are no more cunning than a bear or a buck; and that is true, so far as their cunning depends on what they may see or hear. Once when I was crossing a frozen lake in a snow-storm a whole pack of wolves rushed out of the nearest cover and came at me on the jump, mistaking me for a deer or some other game animal; which does not speak very highly for either their eyes or their judgment. They were the most surprised brutes in all Canada when they discovered their mistake. But when you hide with ready rifle near some venison which the same wolves have killed; when you see them break out of the woods upon the ice, running free and confident to the food which they know is awaiting them; when you see them stop suddenly, as if struck, though they cannot possibly see or smell you, and then scatter and run by separate trails to a meeting-point on another lake—well, then you may conclude, as I do, that part of a wolf’s cunning lies deeper than his five senses.

Another lupine trait which first surprised and then challenged my woodcraft is this: in the winter-time, when timber-wolves commonly run in small packs, a solitary or separated wolf always seems to know where his mates are hunting or idly roving or resting in their day-bed. The pack is made up of his family relatives, younger or older, all mothered by the same she-wolf; and by some bond or attraction or silent communication he can go straight to them at any hour of the day or night, though he may not have seen them for a week, and they have wandered over countless miles of wilderness in the interim.

We may explain this fact, if such it be (I shall make it clear presently), on the simple ground that the wolves, though incurable rovers, have bounds beyond which they seldom pass; that they return on their course with more or less regularity; and that in traveling, as distinct from hunting, they always follow definite runways, like the foxes. Because of these fixed habits, a solitary wolf might remember that the pack was due in a certain region on a certain day, and by going to that region and putting his nose to the runways he could quickly pick up the fresh trail of his fellows. There is nothing occult in such a process; it is a plain matter of brain and nose.

Such an explanation sounds reasonable enough; too reasonable, in fact, since a brute probably acts more intuitively and less rationally; but it does not account for the amazing certainty of a wounded wolf when separated from his pack. He always does separate, by the way; not because the others would eat him, for that is not wolf nature, but because every stricken bird or beast seeks instinctively to be alone and quiet while his hurt is healing. I have followed with keen interest the doings of one wounded wolf that hid for at least two days and nights in a sheltered den, after which he rose from his bed and went straight as a bee’s flight to where his pack had killed a buck and left plenty of venison behind them.

In this case it is possible to limit the time of the wounded wolf’s seclusion, because the limping track that led from the den was but a few hours old when I found it, and the only track leading into the den was half obliterated by snow which had fallen two nights previously. How many devious miles the pack had traveled in the interim would be hard to estimate. I crossed their hunting or roaming trails at widely separate points, and once I surprised them in their day-bed; but I never found the limit of their great range. A few days later that same limping wolf left another den of his, under a windfall, and headed not for the buck, which was now frozen stiff, but for another deer which the same pack had killed in a different region, some eight or ten straight miles away, and perhaps twice that distance as wolves commonly travel.

If you contend that this wounded wolf must have known where the meat was by the howling of the pack when they killed, I grant that may be true in one case, but certainly not in the other. For by great good luck I was near the pack, following a fresh trail in the gray, breathless dawn, when the wolves killed the second deer; and there was not a sound for mortal ears to hear, not a howl or a trail cry or even a growl of any kind. They followed, killed and ate in silence, as wolves commonly do, their howling being a thing apart from their hunting. The wounded wolf was then far away, with miles of densely wooded hills and valleys between him and his pack.

Do you ask, “How was it possible to know all this?” From the story the snow told. At daybreak I had found the trail of a hunting pack, and was following it stealthily, with many a cautious détour and look ahead, for they are unbelievably shy brutes; and so it happened that I came upon the carcass of the deer only a few minutes after the wolves had fed and roamed lazily off toward their day-bed. I followed them too eagerly, and alarmed them before I could pick the big one I wanted; whereupon they took to rough country, traveling a pace that left me hopelessly far behind. When I returned to the deer, to read how the wolves had surprised and killed their game, I noticed the fresh trail of a solitary wolf coming in at right angles to the trail of the hunting pack. It was the limper again, who had just eaten what he wanted and trailed off by himself. I followed and soon jumped him, and took after him on the lope, thinking I could run him down or at least come near enough for a revolver-shot; but that was a foolish notion. Even on three legs he whisked through the thick timber so much easier than I could run on snow-shoes that I never got a second glimpse of him.

By that time I was bound to know, if possible, how the limper happened to find this second deer for his comfort; so I picked up his incoming trail and ran it clear back to his den under the windfall, from which he had come as straight as if he knew exactly where he was heading. His trail was from eastward; what little air was stirring came from the south; so that it was impossible for his nose to guide him to the meat even had he been within smelling distance, as he certainly was not. The record in the snow was as plain as any other print, and from it one might reasonably conclude that either the wolves can send forth a silent food-call, with some added information, or else that a solitary wolf may be so in touch with his pack-mates that he knows not only where they are, but also, in a general way, what they are doing.

In comparison with timber-wolves the caribou is rather a witless brute; but he, too, has his “uncanny” moods, and one who patiently follows him, with deeper interest in his anima than in his antlered head, finds him frequently doing some odd or puzzling thing which may indicate a perception more subtle than that of his dull eyes or keen ears or almost perfect nose. Here is one example of Megaleep’s peculiar way:

I was trailing a herd of caribou one winter day on the barrens (treeless plains or bogs) of the Renous River in New Brunswick. For hours I had followed through alternate thick timber and open bog without alarming or even seeing my game. The animals were plainly on the move, perhaps changing their feeding-ground; and when Megaleep begins to wander no man can say where he will go, or where stop, or what he is likely to do next. Once, after trailing him eight or ten miles, twice jumping him, I met him head-on, coming briskly back in his own tracks, as if to see what was following him. From the trail I read that there were a dozen animals in the herd, and that one poor wounded brute lagged continually behind the others. He was going on three legs; his right forefoot, the bone above it shattered by some blundering hunter’s bullet, swung helplessly as he hobbled along, leaving its pathetic record in the snow.

On a wooded slope which fell away to a chain of barrens, halting to search the trail ahead, my eye caught a motion far across the open, and through the field-glass I saw my herd for the first time, resting unsuspiciously on the farther edge of the barren, a full mile or more away. From my feet the trail led down through a dense fringe of evergreen, and then straight out across the level plain. A few of the caribou were lying down; others moved lazily in or out of the forest that shut in the barren on that side; and as I watched them two animals, yearlings undoubtedly, put their heads together for a pushing match, like domestic calves at play.

Hardly had I begun to circle the barren, keeping near the edge of it but always out of sight in the evergreens, when I ran upon a solitary caribou trail, the trail of the cripple, who had evidently wearied and turned aside to rest, perhaps knowing that his herd was near the end of its journey. A little farther on I jumped him out of a fir thicket, and watched him a moment as he hobbled deeper into the woods, heading away to the west. The course surprised me a little, for his mates were northward; and at the thought I quickly found an opening in the cover and turned my glass upon the other caribou. Already they were in wild alarm. For a brief interval they ran about confusedly, or stood tense as they searched the plain and the surrounding woods for the source of danger; then they pushed their noses out and racked away at a marvelous pace, crossing the barren diagonally toward me and smashing into the woods a short distance ahead, following a course which must soon bring them and their wounded mate together. If I were dealing with people, I might say confidently that they were bent on finding out what the alarm was about; but as I have no means of knowing the caribou motive, I can only say that the two trails ran straight as a string through the timber to a meeting-point on the edge of another barren to the westward.

If you would reasonably explain the matter, remember that these startled animals were far away from me; that the cripple and myself were both hidden from their eyes, and that I was moving upwind and silently. It was impossible that they should hear or see or smell me; yet they were on their toes a moment after the cripple started up, as if he had rung a bell for them. It was not the first time I had witnessed a herd of animals break away when, as I suspected, they had received some silent, incomprehensible warning, nor was it the last; but it was the only time when I could trace the whole process without break or question from beginning to end. And when, to test the matter to the bottom, I ran the trail of the herd back to where they had been resting, there was no track of man or beast in the surrounding woods to account for their flight.

One may explain this as a mere coincidence, which is not an explanation; or call it another example of the fact that wild animals are “queer,” which is not a fact; but in my own mind every action of the caribou and all the circumstances point to a different conclusion—namely, that the fear or warning or impulse of one animal was instantly transferred to others at a distance. I think, also, that the process was not wholly unconscious or subconscious, but that one animal sent forth his warning and the others acted upon it more or less intelligently. This last is a mere assumption, however, which cannot be proved till we learn to live in an animal’s skin.

It is true that the event often befalls otherwise, since you may jump one animal without alarming others of the same herd; and it is possible that the degree or quality of the alarm has something to do with its carrying power, as we feel the intense emotion of a friend more quickly than his ordinary moods. In this case the solitary caribou was tremendously startled; for I was very near, and the first intimation he had of me, or I of him, was when my snow-shoe caught on a snag and I pitched over a log almost on top of him. Yet the difficulty of drawing a conclusion from any single instance appears in this: that I have more than once stalked, killed and dressed an animal without disturbing others of his kind near at hand (it may be that no alarm was sent out, for the animal was shot before he knew the danger, and in the deep woods animals pay little attention to the sound of a rifle); and again, when I have been trying to approach a herd from leeward, I have seen them move away hurriedly, silently, suspiciously, in obedience to some warning which seemed to spread through the woods like a contagion.