The Wolf Hunters, James Oliver Curwood [best contemporary novels .TXT] 📗

his city-bound existence, with the exception of the thrilling conflict at Wabinosh House. He reconstructed that deadly hour in the cabin; saw the men in fierce altercation, saw them struggling, and almost heard the fatal blows as they were struck--the blows that slew one with the suddenness of a lightning bolt and sent the other, triumphant but dying, to breathe his last moments with his back propped against the wall. And the dog! What part had he taken? And after that--long days of maddening loneliness, days of starvation and of thirst, until he, too, doubled himself up on the floor and died. It was a terrible, a thrilling picture that burned in Roderick's brain. But why had they quarreled? What cause had there been for that sanguinary night duel? Instinctively Rod accepted it as having occurred at night, for the door had been locked, the window barred. Just then he would have given a good deal to have had the mystery solved.
At the top of the hill Rod awoke to present realities. Wabi, who had harnessed himself to the toboggan, was in high spirits.
"That cabin is a dandy!" he exclaimed as Rod joined him. "It would have taken us at least two weeks to build as good a one. Isn't it luck?"
"We're going to live in it?" inquired his companion.
"Live in it! I should say we were. It is three times as big as the shack we had planned to build. I can't understand why two men like those fellows should have put up such a large cabin. What do you think, Mukoki?"
Mukoki shook his head. Evidently the mystery of the whole thing, beyond the fact that the tenants of the cabin had killed themselves in battle, was beyond his comprehension.
The winter outfit was soon in a heap beside the cabin door.
"Now for cleaning up," announced Wabi cheerfully. "Muky, you lend me a hand with the bones, will you? Rod can nose around and fetch out anything he likes."
This assignment just suited Rod's curiosity. He was now worked up to a feverish pitch of expectancy. Might he not discover some clue that would lead to a solution of the mystery?
One question alone seemed to ring incessantly in his head. Why had they fought? _Why had they fought?_
He even found himself repeating this under his breath as he began rummaging about. He kicked over the old chair, which was made of saplings nailed together, scrutinized a heap of rubbish that crumbled to dust under his touch, and gave a little cry of exultation when he found two guns leaning in a corner of the cabin. Their stocks were decaying; their locks were encased with rust, their barrels, too, were thick with the accumulated rust of years. Carefully, almost tenderly, he took one of these relics of a past age in his hands. It was of ancient pattern, almost as long as he was tall.
"Hudson Bay gun--the kind they had before my father was born!" said Wabi.
With bated breath and eagerly beating heart Rod pursued his search. On one of the walls he found the remains of what had once been garments--part of a hat, that fell in a thousand pieces when he touched it; the dust-rags of a coat and other things that he could not name. On the table there were rusty pans, a tin pail, an iron kettle, and the remains of old knives, forks and spoons. On one end of this table there was an unusual-looking object, and he touched it. Unlike the other rags it did not crumble, and when he lifted it he found that it was a small bag, made of buckskin, tied at the end--and heavy! With trembling fingers he tore away the rotted string and out upon the table there rattled a handful of greenish-black, pebbly looking objects.
Rod gave a sharp quick cry for the others.
Wabi and Mukoki had just come through the door after bearing out one of their gruesome loads, and the young Indian hurried to his side. He weighed one of the pieces in the palm of his hand.
"It's lead, or--"
"Gold!" breathed Rod.
He could hear his own heart thumping as Wabi jumped back to the light of the door, his sheath-knife in his hand. For an instant the keen blade sank into the age-discolored object, and before Rod could see into the crease that it made Wabi's voice rose in an excited cry.
"It's a gold nugget!"
"And _that's_ why they fought!" exclaimed Rod exultantly.
He had hoped--and he had discovered the reason. For a few moments this was of more importance to him than the fact that he had found gold. Wabi and Mukoki were now in a panic of excitement. The buckskin bag was turned inside out; the table was cleared of every other object; every nook and cranny was searched with new enthusiasm. The searchers hardly spoke. Each was intent upon finding--finding--finding. Thus does gold--virgin gold--stir up the sparks of that latent, feverish fire which is in every man's soul. Again Rod joined in the search. Every rag, every pile of dust, every bit of unrecognizable debris was torn, sifted and scattered. At the end of an hour the three paused, hopelessly baffled, even keenly disappointed for the time.
"I guess that's all there is," said Wabi.
It was the longest sentence that he had spoken for half an hour.
"There is only one thing to do, boys. We'll clean out everything there is in the cabin, and to-morrow we'll tear up the floor. You can't tell what there might be under it, and we've got to have a new floor anyway. It is getting dusk, and if we have this place fit to sleep in to-night we have got to hustle."
No time was lost in getting the debris of the cabin outside, and by the time darkness had fallen a mass of balsam boughs had been spread upon the log floor just inside the door, blankets were out, packs and supplies stowed away in one corner, and everything "comfortable and shipshape," as Rod expressed it. A huge fire was built a few feet away from the open door and the light and heat from this made the interior of the cabin quite light and warm, and, with the assistance of a couple of candles, more home-like than any camp they had slept in thus far. Mukoki's supper was a veritable feast--broiled caribou, cold beans that the old Indian had cooked at their last camp, meal cakes and hot coffee. The three happy hunters ate of it as though they had not tasted food for a week.
The day, though a hard one, had been fraught with too much excitement for them to retire to their blankets immediately after this meal, as they had usually done in other camps. They realized, too, that they had reached the end of their journey and that their hardest work was over. There was no long jaunt ahead of them to-morrow. Their new life--the happiest life in the world to them--had already begun. Their camp was established, they were ready for their winter's sport, and from this moment on they felt that their evenings were their own to do with as they pleased.
So for many hours that night Rod, Mukoki and Wabigoon sat up and talked and kept the fire roaring before the door. Twenty times they went over the tragedy of the old cabin; twenty times they weighed the half-pound of precious little lumps in the palms of their hands, and bit by bit they built up that life romance of the days of long ago, when all this wilderness was still an unopened book to the white man. And that story seemed very clear to them now. These men had been prospectors. They had discovered gold. Afterward they had quarreled, probably over some division of it--perhaps over the ownership of the very nuggets they had found; and then, in the heat of their anger, had followed the knife battle.
But where had they discovered the gold? That was the question of supreme interest to the hunters, and they debated it until midnight. There were no mining tools in the camp; no pick, shovel or pan. Then it occurred to them that the builders of the cabin had been hunters, had discovered gold by accident and had collected that in the buckskin bag without the use of a pan.
There was little sleep in the camp that night, and with the first light of day the three were at work again. Immediately after breakfast the task of tearing up the old and decayed floor began. One by one the split saplings were pried up and carried out for firewood, until the earth floor lay bare. Every foot of it was now eagerly turned over with a shovel which had been brought in the equipment; the base-logs were undermined, and filled in again; the moss that had been packed in the chinks between the cabin timbers was dug out, and by noon there was not a square inch of the interior of the camp that had not been searched.
There was no more gold.
In a way this fact brought relief with it. Both Wabi and Rod gradually recovered from their nervous excitement. The thought of gold gradually faded from their minds; the joy and exhilaration of the "hunt life" filled them more and more. Mukoki set to work cutting fresh cedars for the floor; the two boys scoured every log with water from the lake and afterward gathered several bushels of moss for refilling the chinks. That evening supper was cooked on the sheet-iron "section stove" which they had brought on the toboggan, and which was set up where the ancient stove of flat stones had tumbled into ruin. By candle-light the work of "rechinking" with moss progressed rapidly. Wabi was constantly bursting into snatches of wild Indian song, Rod whistled until his throat was sore and Mukoki chuckled and grunted and talked with constantly increasing volubility. A score of times they congratulated one another upon their good luck. Eight wolf-scalps, a fine lynx and nearly two hundred dollars in gold--all within their first week! It was enough to fill them with enthusiasm and they made little effort to repress their joy.
During this evening Mukoki boiled up a large pot of caribou fat and bones, and when Rod asked what kind of soup he was making he responded by picking up a handful of steel traps and dropping them into the mixture.
"Make traps smell good for fox--wolf--fisher, an' marten, too; heem come--all come--like smell," he explained.
"If you don't dip the traps," added Wabi, "nine fur animals out of ten, and wolves most of all, will fight shy of the bait. They can smell the human odor you leave on the steel when you handle it. But the grease 'draws' them."
When the hunters wrapped themselves in their blankets that night their wilderness home was complete. All that remained to be done was the building of three bunks against the ends of the cabin, and this work it was agreed could be accomplished at odd hours by any one who happened to be in camp. In the morning, laden with traps, they would strike out their first hunting-trails, keeping their eyes especially open for signs of wolves; for Mukoki was the greatest wolf hunter in all the Hudson Bay region.


CHAPTER VIII
HOW WOLF BECAME THE COMPANION OF MEN
Twice that night Rod was awakened by Mukoki opening the cabin door. The second time he raised himself upon his elbows and quietly watched the old warrior. It was a brilliantly clear night and a flood of moonlight was pouring into the camp. He could hear Mukoki chuckling and grunting, as though communicating with himself, and at last, his curiosity getting the better of him, he wrapped his