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

unless spoken to first. Although his eyes were constantly on the alert, Rod could see no way in which a descent could be made into the chasm from the ridge they were on. This was a little disappointing, for he had made up his mind to explore the gloomy, sunless gulch at his first opportunity. He had no doubt that Wabi would join in the adventure. Or he might take his own time, and explore it alone. He was reasonably sure that from somewhere on the opposite ridge a descent could be made into it.
Wabi was in camp when they arrived. He had set eighteen traps and had shot two spruce partridges. The birds were already cleaned for their early supper, and a thick slice of venison steak was added to the menu. During the preparation of the meal Rod described their discovery of the chasm and revealed some of his thoughts concerning it, but Wabi betrayed only passing flashes of interest. At times he seemed strangely preoccupied and would stand in an idle, contemplative mood, his hands buried deep in his pockets, while Rod or Mukoki proceeded with the little duties about the table or the stove. Finally, after arousing himself from one of these momentary spells, he pulled a brass shell from his pocket and held it out to the old Indian.
"See here," he said. "I don't want to stir up any false fears, or anything of that sort--but I found that on the trail to-day!"
Mukoki clutched at the shell as though it had been another newly found nugget of gold. The shell was empty. The lettering on the rim was still very distinct. He read ".35 Rem."
"Why, that's--"
"A shell from Rod's gun!"
For a few moments Rod and Mukoki stared at the young Indian in blank amazement.
"It's a .35 caliber Remington," continued Wabi, "and it's an auto-loading shell. There are only three guns like that in this country. I've got one, Mukoki has another--and you lost the third in your fight with the Woongas!"
The venison had begun to burn, and Mukoki quickly transferred it to the table. Without a word the three sat down to their meal.
"That means the Woongas are on our trail," declared Rod presently.
"That is what I have been trying to reason out all the afternoon," replied Wabi. "It certainly is proof that they are, or have been quite recently, on this side of the mountain. But I don't believe they know we are here. The trail I struck was about five miles from camp. It was at least two days old. Three Indians on snow-shoes were traveling north. I followed back on their trail and found after a time that the Indians had come from the north, which leads me to believe that they were simply on a hunting expedition, cut a circle southward, and then returned to their camp. I don't believe they will come farther south. But we must keep our eyes open."
Wabi's description of the manner in which the strange trail turned gave great satisfaction to Mukoki, who nodded affirmatively when the young hunter expressed it as his belief that the Woongas would not come so far as their camp. But the discovery of their presence chilled the buoyant spirits of the hunters. There was, however, a new spice of adventure lurking in this possible peril that was not altogether displeasing, and by the time the meal was at an end something like a plan of campaign had been formed. The hunters would not wait to be attacked and then act in self-defense, possibly at a disadvantage. They would be constantly on the lookout for the Woongas, and if a fresh trail or a camp was found they would begin the man-hunt themselves.
The sun was just beginning to sink behind the distant hills in the southwest when the hunters again left camp. Wolf had received nothing to eat since the previous night, and with increasing hunger the fiery impatience lurking in his eyes and the restlessness of his movements became more noticeable. Mukoki called attention to these symptoms with a gloating satisfaction.
The gloom of early evening was enveloping the wilderness by the time the three wolf hunters reached the swamp in which Rod had slain the buck. While he carried the guns and packs, Mukoki and Wabigoon dragged the buck between them to the huge flat-top rock. Now for the first time the city youth began to understand the old pathfinder's scheme. Several saplings were cut, and by means of a long rope of babeesh the deer was dragged up the side of the rock until it rested securely upon the flat space. From the dead buck's neck the babeesh rope was now stretched across the intervening space between the rock and the clump of cedars in which the hunters were to conceal themselves. In two of these cedars, at a distance of a dozen feet from the ground, were quickly made three platforms of saplings, upon which the ambushed watchers could comfortably seat themselves. By the time complete darkness had fallen the "trap" was finished, with the exception of a detail which Rod followed with great interest.
From inside his clothes, where it had been kept warm by his body, Mukoki produced the flask of blood. A third of this blood he scattered upon the face of the rock and upon the snow at its base. The remainder he distributed, drop by drop, in trails running toward the swamp and plains.
There still remained three hours before the moon would be up, and the hunters now joined Wolf, who had been fastened half-way up the ridge. In the shelter of a big rock a small fire was built, and during their long wait the hunters passed the time away by broiling and eating chunks of venison and in going over again the events of the day.
It was nine o'clock before the moon rose above the edge of the wilderness. This great orb of the Northern night seemed to hold a never-ending fascination for Rod. It crept above the forests, a glowing, throbbing ball of red, quivering and palpitating in an effulgence that neither cloud nor mist dimmed in this desolation beyond the sphere of man; and as it rose, almost with visible movement to the eyes, the blood in it faded, until at last it seemed a great blaze of soft light between silver and gold. It was then that the whole world was lighted up under it. It was then that Mukoki, speaking softly, beckoned the others to follow him, and with Wolf at his side went down the ridge.
Making a circuit around the back of the rock, Mukoki paused near a small sapling twenty yards from the dead buck and secured Wolf by his babeesh thong. Hardly had he done so when the animal began to exhibit signs of excitement. He trotted about nervously, sniffing the air, gathering the wind from every direction, and his jaws dropped with a snarling whine. Then he struck one of the clots of blood in the snow.
"Come," whispered Wabi, pulling at Rod's sleeve, "come--quietly."
They slipped back among the shadows of the spruce and watched Wolf in unbroken silence. The animal now stood rigidly over the blood clot. His head was level with his quivering back, his ears half aslant, his nostrils pointing to a strange thrilling scent that came to him from somewhere out there in the moonlight. Once more the instinct of his breed was flooding the soul of the captive wolf. There was the odor of blood in his widening nostrils. It was not the blood of the camp, of the slaughtered game dragged in by human hands before his eyes. It was the blood of the chase!
A flashing memory of his captors turned the animal's head for an instant in backward inspection. They were gone. He could neither hear nor see them. He sniffed the sign of human presence, but that sign was always with him, and was not disturbing. The blood held him--and the strange scent, the game scent--that was coming to him more clearly every instant.
He crunched about cautiously in the snow. He found other spots of blood, and to the watchers there came a low long whine that seemed about to end in the wolf song. The blood trails were leading him away toward the game scent, and he tugged viciously at the babeesh that held him captive, gnawing at it vainly, like an angry dog, forgetting what experience had taught him many times before. Each moment added to his excitement He ran about the sapling, gulped mouthfuls of the bloody snow, and each time he paused for a moment with his open dripping jaws held toward the dead buck on the rock. The game was very near. Brute sense told him that. Oh, the longing that was in him, the twitching, quivering longing to kill--kill--kill!
He made another effort, tore up the snow in his frantic endeavors to free himself, to break loose, to follow in the wild glad cry of freed savagery in the calling of his people. He failed again, panting, whining in piteous helplessness.
Then he settled upon his haunches at the end of his babeesh thong.
For a moment his head turned to the moonlit sky, his long nose poised at right angles to the bristling hollows between his shoulders.
There came then a low, whining wail, like the beginning of the "death-song" of a husky dog--a wail that grew in length and in strength and in volume until it rose weirdly among the mountains and swept far out over the plains--the hunt call of the wolf on the trail, which calls to him the famished, gray-gaunt outlaws of the wilderness, as the bugler's notes call his fellows on the field of battle.
Three times that blood-thrilling cry went up from the captive wolf's throat, and before those cries had died away the three hunters were perched upon their platforms among the spruce.
There followed now the ominous, waiting silence of an awakened wilderness. Rod could hear his heart throbbing within him. He forgot the intense cold. His nerves tingled. He looked out over the endless plains, white and mysteriously beautiful as they lay bathed in the glow of the moon. And Wabi knew more than he what was happening. All over that wild desolation the call of the wolf had carried its meaning. Down there, where a lake lay silent in its winter sleep, a doe started in trembling and fear; beyond the mountain a huge bull moose lifted his antlered head with battle-glaring eyes; half a mile away a fox paused for an instant in its sleuth-like stalking of a rabbit; and here and there in that world of wild things the gaunt hungry people of Wolf's blood stopped in their trails and turned their heads toward the signal that was coming in wailing echoes to their ears.
And then the silence was broken. From afar--it might have been a mile away--there came an answering cry; and at that cry the wolf at the end of his babeesh thong settled upon his haunches again and sent back the call that comes only when there is blood upon the trail or when near the killing time.
There was not the rustle of a bough, not a word spoken, by the silent watchers in the spruce. Mukoki had slipped back and half lay across his support in shooting attitude. Wabi had braced a foot, and his rifle was half to his shoulder, leveled over a knee. It was Rod's turn with the big revolver, and he had practised aiming through a crotch that gave a rest to his arm.
In a few moments there came again the howl of the distant wolf on the plains, and this time it was joined by another away to the westward. And after that there came