Low Down Articles
Echoes from the Past
Article 83 of 111
This article first appeared in the "Echoes from the Past" column of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
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The Boy who Shouted Wolf
The following story came from George H. Wilson's column OLD TIME STUFF in the Evening Citizen, Ottawa 10 Aug. 1929
This tale is by R.N. Sully (a grandfather of Mrs. Frank Welock whom I forgot to mention in an earlier column).
Mr. Sully, at the time, only a youth, was working under the head teamster, Anthony McKail, drawing logs for the Gilmours, in 1870, up at Lake Desables.
There was a point on a three-mile saw log road where the road forked. At this point the men were in the habit of eating their dinner each day and the remains were thrown away there.
One morning when the men passed with their first loads, they found the spot all padded down as through a large pack of wolves had been there.
That day Peter McLeod, the camp foreman, borrowed two traps from a nearby trapper and set them on the spot. The next morning when Mick Cables, a piler, went by the place with a yoke of oxen, he found a wolf in one trap with his head buried beneath a pile of brush. Cables waited till other teams came up, including the one Sully was driving. The men all seemed to be afraid of the wolf and wouldn't go near it.
Young Sully said he would pull the wolf out of the brush if someone would hit it over the head. One big Irishman said he would hit it with an axe. Sully pulled the animal from the pile till its head was visible. But the driver, instead of getting too close, fired the axe from about 20 feet and almost hit the lad who was holding the wolf by the tail.
Six or seven time the youth pulled the wolf out, but none of the teamsters or pilers would get to close quarters. The wolf, it should be said, as showing its cowardly nature, made no effort to turn on the young man. Its whole anxiety was to get back in its place of safety.
Finally, another big Irishman, name Tom Garvin, came along with a yoke of oxen and when it was explained to him what was wanted he promptly got close to the pulled-out animal and hit it on the head with an axe and ended its career.
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