White Fang, Jack London [classic romance novels .txt] 📗

it’s jes’ warm an’ anxious I am to be hearin’ you explain yourself,” he said.

“Spanker’s gone,” Henry answered.

Without haste, with the air of one resigned to misfortune Bill turned his head, and from where he sat counted the dogs.

“How’d it happen?” he asked apathetically.

Henry shrugged his shoulders.  “Don’t know.  Unless One Ear gnawed ’m loose.  He couldn’t a-done it himself, that’s sure.”

“The darned cuss.”  Bill spoke gravely and slowly, with no hint of the anger that was raging within.  “Jes’ because he couldn’t chew himself loose, he chews Spanker loose.”

“Well, Spanker’s troubles is over anyway; I guess he’s digested by this time an’ cavortin’ over the landscape in the bellies of twenty different wolves,” was Henry’s epitaph on this, the latest lost dog.  “Have some coffee, Bill.”

But Bill shook his head.

“Go on,” Henry pleaded, elevating the pot.

Bill shoved his cup aside.  “I’ll be ding-dong-danged if I do.  I said I wouldn’t if ary dog turned up missin’, an’ I won’t.”

“It’s darn good coffee,” Henry said enticingly.

But Bill was stubborn, and he ate a dry breakfast washed down with mumbled curses at One Ear for the trick he had played.

“I’ll tie ’em up out of reach of each other to-night,” Bill said, as they took the trail.

They had travelled little more than a hundred yards, when Henry, who was in front, bent down and picked up something with which his snowshoe had collided.  It was dark, and he could not see it, but he recognised it by the touch.  He flung it back, so that it struck the sled and bounced along until it fetched up on Bill’s snowshoes.

“Mebbe you’ll need that in your business,” Henry said.

Bill uttered an exclamation.  It was all that was left of Spanker—the stick with which he had been tied.

“They ate ’m hide an’ all,” Bill announced.  “The stick’s as clean as a whistle.  They’ve ate the leather offen both ends.  They’re damn hungry, Henry, an’ they’ll have you an’ me guessin’ before this trip’s over.”

Henry laughed defiantly.  “I ain’t been trailed this way by wolves before, but I’ve gone through a whole lot worse an’ kept my health.  Takes more’n a handful of them pesky critters to do for yours truly, Bill, my son.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Bill muttered ominously.

“Well, you’ll know all right when we pull into McGurry.”

“I ain’t feelin’ special enthusiastic,” Bill persisted.

“You’re off colour, that’s what’s the matter with you,” Henry dogmatised.  “What you need is quinine, an’ I’m goin’ to dose you up stiff as soon as we make McGurry.”

Bill grunted his disagreement with the diagnosis, and lapsed into silence.  The day was like all the days.  Light came at nine o’clock.  At twelve o’clock the southern horizon was warmed by the unseen sun; and then began the cold grey of afternoon that would merge, three hours later, into night.

It was just after the sun’s futile effort to appear, that Bill slipped the rifle from under the sled-lashings and said:

“You keep right on, Henry, I’m goin’ to see what I can see.”

“You’d better stick by the sled,” his partner protested.  “You’ve only got three cartridges, an’ there’s no tellin’ what might happen.”

“Who’s croaking now?” Bill demanded triumphantly.

Henry made no reply, and plodded on alone, though often he cast anxious glances back into the grey solitude where his partner had disappeared.  An hour later, taking advantage of the cut-offs around which the sled had to go, Bill arrived.

“They’re scattered an’ rangin’ along wide,” he said: “keeping up with us an’ lookin’ for game at the same time.  You see, they’re sure of us, only they know they’ve got to wait to get us.  In the meantime they’re willin’ to pick up anything eatable that comes handy.”

“You mean they think they’re sure of us,” Henry objected pointedly.

But Bill ignored him.  “I seen some of them.  They’re pretty thin.  They ain’t had a bite in weeks I reckon, outside of Fatty an’ Frog an’ Spanker; an’ there’s so many of ’em that that didn’t go far.  They’re remarkable thin.  Their ribs is like wash-boards, an’ their stomachs is right up against their backbones.  They’re pretty desperate, I can tell you.  They’ll be goin’ mad, yet, an’ then watch out.”

A few minutes later, Henry, who was now travelling behind the sled, emitted a low, warning whistle.  Bill turned and looked, then quietly stopped the dogs.  To the rear, from around the last bend and plainly into view, on the very trail they had just covered, trotted a furry, slinking form.  Its nose was to the trail, and it trotted with a peculiar, sliding, effortless gait.  When they halted, it halted, throwing up its head and regarding them steadily with nostrils that twitched as it caught and studied the scent of them.

“It’s the she-wolf,” Bill answered.

The dogs had lain down in the snow, and he walked past them to join his partner in the sled.  Together they watched the strange animal that had pursued them for days and that had already accomplished the destruction of half their dog-team.

After a searching scrutiny, the animal trotted forward a few steps.  This it repeated several times, till it was a short hundred yards away.  It paused, head up, close by a clump of spruce trees, and with sight and scent studied the outfit of the watching men.  It looked at them in a strangely wistful way, after the manner of a dog; but in its wistfulness there was none of the dog affection.  It was a wistfulness bred of hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, as merciless as the frost itself.

It was large for a wolf, its gaunt frame advertising the lines of an animal that was among the largest of its kind.

“Stands pretty close to two feet an’ a half at the shoulders,” Henry commented.  “An’ I’ll bet it ain’t far from five feet long.”

“Kind of strange colour for a wolf,” was Bill’s criticism.  “I never seen a red wolf before.  Looks almost cinnamon to me.”

The animal was certainly not cinnamon-coloured.  Its coat was the true wolf-coat.  The dominant colour was grey, and yet there was to it a faint reddish hue—a hue that was baffling, that appeared and disappeared, that was more like an illusion of the vision, now grey, distinctly grey, and again giving hints and glints of a vague redness of colour not classifiable in terms of ordinary experience.

“Looks for all the world like a big husky sled-dog,” Bill said.  “I wouldn’t be s’prised to see it wag its tail.”

“Hello, you husky!” he called.  “Come here, you whatever-your-name-is.”

“Ain’t a bit scairt of you,” Henry laughed.

Bill waved his hand at it threateningly and shouted loudly; but the animal betrayed no fear.  The only change in it that they could notice was an accession of alertness.  It still regarded them with the merciless wistfulness of hunger.  They were meat, and it was hungry; and it would like to go in and eat them if it dared.

“Look here, Henry,” Bill said, unconsciously lowering his voice to a whisper because of what he imitated.  “We’ve got three cartridges.  But it’s a dead shot.  Couldn’t miss it.  It’s got away with three of our dogs, an’ we oughter put a stop to it.  What d’ye say?”

Henry nodded his consent.  Bill cautiously slipped the gun from under the sled-lashing.  The gun was on the way to his shoulder, but it never got there.  For in that instant the she-wolf leaped sidewise from the trail into the clump of spruce trees and disappeared.

The two men looked at each other.  Henry whistled long and comprehendingly.

“I might have knowed it,” Bill chided himself aloud as he replaced the gun.  “Of course a wolf that knows enough to come in with the dogs at feedin’ time, ’d know all about shooting-irons.  I tell you right now, Henry, that critter’s the cause of all our trouble.  We’d have six dogs at the present time, ’stead of three, if it wasn’t for her.  An’ I tell you right now, Henry, I’m goin’ to get her.  She’s too smart to be shot in the open.  But I’m goin’ to lay for her.  I’ll bushwhack her as sure as my name is Bill.”

“You needn’t stray off too far in doin’ it,” his partner admonished.  “If that pack ever starts to jump you, them three cartridges’d be wuth no more’n three whoops in hell.  Them animals is damn hungry, an’ once they start in, they’ll sure get you, Bill.”

They camped early that night.  Three dogs could not drag the sled so fast nor for so long hours as could six, and they were showing unmistakable signs of playing out.  And the men went early to bed, Bill first seeing to it that the dogs were tied out of gnawing-reach of one another.

But the wolves were growing bolder, and the men were aroused more than once from their sleep.  So near did the wolves approach, that the dogs became frantic with terror, and it was necessary to replenish the fire from time to time in order to keep the adventurous marauders at safer distance.

“I’ve hearn sailors talk of sharks followin’ a ship,” Bill remarked, as he crawled back into the blankets after one such replenishing of the fire.  “Well, them wolves is land sharks.  They know their business better’n we do, an’ they ain’t a-holdin’ our trail this way for their health.  They’re goin’ to get us.  They’re sure goin’ to get us, Henry.”

“They’ve half got you a’ready, a-talkin’ like that,” Henry retorted sharply.  “A man’s half licked when he says he is.  An’ you’re half eaten from the way you’re goin’ on about it.”

“They’ve got away with better men than you an’ me,” Bill answered.

“Oh, shet up your croakin’.  You make me all-fired tired.”

Henry rolled over angrily on his side, but was surprised that Bill made no similar display of temper.  This was not Bill’s way, for he was easily angered by sharp words.  Henry thought long over it before he went to sleep, and as his eyelids fluttered down and he dozed off, the thought in his mind was: “There’s no mistakin’ it, Bill’s almighty blue.  I’ll have to cheer him up to-morrow.”

CHAPTER III—THE HUNGER CRY

The day began auspiciously.  They had lost no dogs during the night, and they swung out upon the trail and into the silence, the darkness, and the cold with spirits that were fairly light.  Bill seemed to have forgotten his forebodings of the previous night, and even waxed facetious with the dogs when, at midday, they overturned the sled on a bad piece of trail.

It was an awkward mix-up.  The sled was upside down and jammed between a tree-trunk and a huge rock, and they were forced to unharness the dogs in order to straighten out the tangle.  The two men were bent over the sled and trying to right it, when Henry observed One Ear sidling away.

“Here, you, One Ear!” he cried, straightening up and turning around on the dog.

But One Ear broke into a run across the snow, his traces trailing behind him.  And there, out in the snow of their back track, was the she-wolf waiting for him.  As he neared her, he became suddenly cautious.  He slowed down to an alert and mincing walk and then stopped.  He regarded her carefully and dubiously, yet desirefully.  She seemed to smile at him, showing her teeth in an ingratiating rather than a menacing way.  She moved toward him a few steps, playfully, and then halted.  One Ear drew near to her, still alert and cautious, his tail and ears in the air, his head held high.

He tried to sniff noses with her, but she retreated playfully and coyly.  Every advance on his part was accompanied by a corresponding retreat on her part.  Step by step she was luring him away from the security of his human companionship.  Once, as though a warning had in vague ways flitted through his intelligence, he turned his head and looked back at the overturned sled, at his team-mates, and at the two