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

several dead poplars, the best fuel in the world for a camp-fire, and by the time the venison and coffee were ready they had collected a huge pile of this, together with several good-sized backlogs.
Mukoki had spread the feast in the opening of the shelter where the heat of the fire, reflected from the face of the rock, fell upon them in genial warmth, suffusing their faces with a most comfortable glow. The heat, together with the feast, were almost overpowering in their effects, and hardly was his supper completed when Rod felt creeping over him a drowsiness which he attempted in vain to fight off a little longer. Dragging himself back in the shelter he wrapped himself in his blanket, burrowed into the mass of balsam boughs, and passed quickly into oblivion. His last intelligible vision was Mukoki piling logs upon the fire, while the flames shot up a dozen feet into the air, illumining to his drowsy eyes for an instant a wild chaos of rock, beyond which lay the mysterious and impenetrable blackness of the wilderness.


CHAPTER VI
MUKOKI DISTURBS THE ANCIENT SKELETONS
Completely exhausted, every muscle in his aching body still seeming to strain with exertion, the night was one of restless and uncomfortable dreams for Roderick Drew. While Wabi and the old Indian, veterans in wilderness hardship, slept in peace and tranquillity, the city boy found himself in the most unusual and thrilling situations from which he would extricate himself with a grunt or sharp cry, several times sitting bolt upright in his bed of balsam until he realized where he was, and that his adventures were only those of dreamland.
From one of these dreams Rod had aroused himself into drowsy wakefulness. He fancied that he had heard steps. For the tenth time he raised himself upon an elbow, stretched, rubbed his eyes, glanced at the dark, inanimate forms of his sleeping companions, and snuggled down into his balsam boughs again. A few moments later he sat bolt upright. He could have sworn that he heard real steps this time--a soft cautious crunching in the snow very near his head. Breathlessly he listened. Not a sound broke the silence except the snapping of a dying ember in the fire. Another dream! Once more he settled back, drawing his blanket closely about him. Then, for a full breath, the very beating of his heart seemed to cease.
What was that!
He was awake now, wide awake, with every faculty in him striving to arrange itself. He had heard--a step! Slowly, very cautiously this time, he raised himself. There came distinctly to his ears a light crunching in the snow. It seemed back of the shelter--then was moving away, then stopped. The flickering light of the dying fire still played on the face of the great rock. Suddenly, at the very end of that rock, something moved.
Some object was creeping cautiously upon the sleeping camp!
For a moment his thrilling discovery froze the young hunter into inaction. But in a moment the whole situation flashed upon him. The Woongas had followed them! They were about to fall upon the helpless camp! Unexpectedly one of his hands came in contact with the barrel of Wabi's rifle. The touch of the cold steel aroused him. There was no time to awaken his companions. Even as he drew the gun to him he saw the object grow larger and larger at the end of the rock, until it stood crouching, as if about to spring.
One bated breath--a thunderous report--a snarling scream of pain, and the camp was awake!
"We're attacked!" cried Rod. "Quick--Wabi--Mukoki!"
The white boy was on his knees now, the smoking rifle still leveled toward the rocks. Out there, in the thick shadows beyond the fire, a body was groveling and kicking in death agonies. In another instant the gaunt form of the old warrior was beside Rod, his rifle at his shoulder, and over their heads reached Wabigoon's arm, the barrel of his heavy revolver glinting in the firelight.
For a full minute they crouched there, breathless, waiting.
"They've gone!" broke Wabi in a tense whisper.
"I got one of them!" replied Rod, his voice trembling with excitement.
Mukoki slipped back and burrowed a hole through the side of the shelter. He could see nothing. Slowly he slipped out, his rifle ready. The others could hear him as he went. Foot by foot the old warrior slunk along in the deep gloom toward the end of the rock. Now he was almost there, now--
The young hunters saw him suddenly straighten. There came to them a low chuckling grunt. He bent over, seized an object, and flung it in the light of the fire.
"Heap big Woonga! Kill nice fat lynx!"
With a wail, half feigned, half real, Rod flung himself back upon the balsam while Wabi set up a roar that made the night echo. Mukoki's face was creased in a broad grin.
"Heap big Woonga--heem!" he repeated, chuckling. "Nice fat lynx shot well in face. No look like bad man Woonga to Mukoki!"
When Rod finally emerged from his den to join the others his face was flushed and wore what Wabi described as a "sheepish grin."
"It's all right for you fellows to make fun of me," he declared. "But what if they had been Woongas? By George, if we're ever attacked again I won't do a thing. I'll let you fellows fight 'em off!"
In spite of the general merriment at his expense, Rod was immensely proud of his first lynx. It was an enormous creature of its kind, drawn by hunger to the scraps of the camp-fire feast; and it was this animal, as it cautiously inspected the camp, that the young hunter had heard crunching in the snow. Wolf, whose instinct had told him what a mix-up would mean, had slunk into his shelter without betraying his whereabouts to this arch-enemy of his tribe.
With the craft of his race, Mukoki was skinning the animal while it was still warm.
"You go back bed," he said to his companions. "I build big fire again--then sleep."
The excitement of his adventure at least freed Rod from the unpleasantness of further dreams, and it was late the following morning before he awoke again. He was astonished to find that a beautiful sun was shining. Wabi and the old Indian were already outside preparing breakfast, and the cheerful whistling of the former assured Rod that there was now little to be feared from the Woongas. Without lingering to take a beauty nap he joined them.
Everywhere about them lay white winter. The rocks, the trees, and the mountain behind them were covered with two feet of snow and upon it the sun shone with dazzling brilliancy. But it was not until Rod looked into the north that he saw the wilderness in all of its grandeur. The camp had been made at the extreme point of the ridge, and stretching away under his eyes, mile after mile, was the vast white desolation that reached to Hudson Bay. In speechless wonder he gazed down upon the unblazed forests, saw plains and hills unfold themselves as his vision gained distance, followed a river until it was lost in the bewildering picture, and let his eyes rest here and there upon the glistening, snow-smothered bosoms of lakes, rimmed in by walls of black forest. This was not the wilderness as he had expected it to be, nor as he had often read of it in books. It was beautiful! It was magnificent! His heart throbbed with pleasure as he gazed down on it, the blood rose to his face in an excited flush, and he seemed hardly to breathe in his tense interest.
Mukoki had come up beside him softly, and spoke in his low guttural voice.
"Twent' t'ousand moose down there--twent' t'ousand caribou-oo! No man--no house--more twent' t'ousand miles!"
Roderick, even trembling in his new emotion, looked into the old warrior's face. In Mukoki's eyes there was a curious, thrilling gleam. He stared straight out into the unending distance as though his keen vision would penetrate far beyond the last of that visible desolation--on and on, even to the grim and uttermost fastnesses of Hudson Bay. Wabi came up and placed his hand on Rod's shoulder.
"Muky was born off there," he said. "Away beyond where we can see. Those were his hunting-grounds when a boy. See that mountain yonder? You might take it for a cloud. It's thirty miles from here! And that lake down there--you might think a rifle-shot would reach it--is five miles away! If a moose or a caribou or a wolf should cross it how you could see him."
For a few moments longer the three stood silent, then Wabi and the old Indian returned to the fire to finish the preparation of breakfast, leaving Rod alone in his enchantment. What unsolved mysteries, what unwritten tragedies, what romance, what treasure of gold that vast North must hold! For a thousand, perhaps a million centuries, it had lain thus undisturbed in the embrace of nature; few white men had broken its solitudes, and the wild things still lived there as they had lived in the winters of ages and ages ago.
The call to breakfast came almost as an unpleasant interruption to Rod. But it did not shock his appetite as it had his romantic fancies, and he performed his part at the morning meal with considerable credit. Wabi and Mukoki had already decided that they would not take up the trail again that day but would remain in their present camp until the following morning. There were several reasons for this delay.
"We can't travel without snow-shoes now," explained Wabi to Rod, "and we've got to take a day off to teach you how to use them. Then, all the wild things are lying low. Moose, deer, caribou, and especially wolves and fur animals, won't begin traveling much until this afternoon and to-night, and if we took up the trail now we would have no way of telling what kind of a game country we were in. And that is the important thing just now. If we strike a first-rate game country during the next couple days we'll stop and build our winter camp."
"Then you believe we are far enough away from the Woongas?" asked Rod.
Mukoki grunted.
"No believe Woongas come over mountain. Heap good game country back there. They stay."
During the meal the white boy asked a hundred questions about the vast wilderness which lay stretched out before them in a great panorama, and in which they were soon to bury themselves, and every answer added to his enthusiasm. Immediately after they had finished eating Rod expressed a desire to begin his study in snow-shoeing, and for an hour after that Wabi and Mukoki piloted him back and forth along the ridge, instructing him in this and in that, applauding when he made an especially good dash and enjoying themselves immensely when he took one of his frequent tumbles into the snow. By noon Rod secretly believed that he was becoming quite an adept.
Although the day in camp was an exceedingly pleasant one for Rod, he could not but observe that at times something seemed to be troubling Wabi. Twice he discovered the Indian youth alone within the shelter sitting in silent and morose dejection, and finally he insisted upon an explanation.
"I want you to tell me what the trouble is, Wabi," he demanded. "What has gone wrong?"
Wabi jumped to his feet with a little laugh.
"Did you ever have a dream that bothered you, Rod?" he asked. "Well, I had one last night, and since then--somehow--I can't keep from worrying about the people back at the Post, and especially about Minnetaki. It's all--what do you call it--bosh? Listen! Wasn't that Mukoki's whistle?"
As he paused Mukoki came