The White Wolf

The White Wolf is a scary story about a man who hunts wolves. It is based on a folktale in "The Telltale Lilac Bush" by Ruth Ann Musick called "The White Wolf". A version of this tale appears in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.



The Story
The timber wolves around French Creek had gotten out of hand. There were so many wolves, the farmers could not stop them from killing their cattle and sheep. So the state put a bounty on them. It would pay a hunter ten dollars for every wolf pelt he turned in.

A butcher in town named Bill Wilson thought that was pretty good money, so he stopped working as butcher and began killing wolves. He was quite the shot. He was good at it. Every year he killed over five hundred of them. That came to more than five thousand dollars. It was quite a bit of money in those days.

After four or five years, Bill had killed so many wolves, there were hardly any left in that area. So he retired, and he vowed never to harm another wolf because wolves had made him rich.

Then one day a farmer reported that a white wolf had killed two of his sheep. He had shot at it and hit it, but the bullets didn't have any effect. Soon that wolf was seen all over the countryside, killing and running. But nobody could stop it.

One night, it even came into Bill’s yard and killed his pet cow. Bill forgot about his decision to never harm another wolf. He went into town the next morning and bought a young lamb for bait. He took it out into the hills and tied it to a tree. Then he backed off about fifty yards and sat down under another tree. With this gun in his lap, he waited.

When Bill didn't come back, his friends started looking for him. Finally they found the lamb. It was still tied to a tree. It was hungry, but it was alive. Then they found Bill. He was still sitting against the other tree, but he was dead. His throat had been torn open.

But there was no sign of a struggle. His gun hadn't been fired. And there were no tracks in the soil around him. As for the white wolf, it was never seen again.