Impelled by an urge within himself Ben suddenly knelt beside his lupine
friend. He could not understand the flood of emotion, the vague sense of
impending and dramatic events that stirred him to the quick. He only
knew, with a knowledge akin to inspiration, that in Fenris lay the
answer to his problem.
The moment was misted over with a quality of unreality. In the east rose
the moon, shining incredibly on the tree tops, showering down through
the little rifts in the withholding branches, enchanting the place as by
the weaving of a dream. The moon madness caught up Ben like a flame,
enthralling him as never before. He knew that white sphere of old. And
all at once he realized that here, at his knees, was one who knew it
too,--with a knowledge as ancient and as infinite as his own. Not for
nothing had the wolf breed lived their lives beneath it through the long
roll of the ages. Its rising and its setting had regulated the hunting
hours of the pack time without end; its beams had lighted the game
trails where the gray band had bayed after the deer; its light had
beheld, since the world was young, the rapturous mating of the old pack
leader and his female. Fenris too knew the moon-madness; but unlike Ben
he had a means of expression of the wonder and mystery and vague longing
that thrilled his wild heart. No man who has heard the pack song to the
moon could doubt this fact. It is a long, melancholy wail, poignant with
the pain of living, but it tells what man can not.
Ben knew, now, why he was a forester, a woodsman famed even among
woodsmen. Most of his fellows had been tamed by civilization; they had
lived beneath roofs instead of the canopy of heaven, and they had almost
forgotten about the moon. Ben, on the other hand, was a recurrence of an
earlier type, inheriting little from his immediate ancestors but
reverting back a thousand centuries to the Cave and the Squatting Place.
His nature was that of prehistoric man rather than that of the son of
civilization; and in this lay the explanation for all that had set him
apart from the great run of men and had made him the master woodsman
that he was. And because his spirit was of the wildwood, because he also
knew the magic of the moon, he was able to make this wildwood thing at
his feet understand and obey his will.
The world of to-day seemed to fade out for him and left only the wolf,
its fierce eyes on his own. Time swung back, and this might have been a
scene of forgotten ages,--the wolf, the human hunter, the smoldering
camp fire, the dark, jagged line of spruce against the sky. It was thus
at the edge of the ice. Wolf and man--both children of the wild--had
understood each other then; and they could understand each other now.
"Fenris, old boy," the man whispered. "Can you find him for me, Fenris?
He's out there somewhere--" the man motioned toward the dark--"and I
want him. Can you take me to him?"
The wolf trembled all over, struggling to get his meaning. This was no
creature of subordinate intelligence: the great wolf of the North. He
had, besides the cunning of the wild hunters, the intelligence that is
the trait of the whole canine breed. Nor did he depend on his sense of
hearing alone. He watched his master's face, and more than that, he was
tuned and keyed to those mysterious vibrations that carry a message from
brain to brain no less clearly and swift than words themselves,--the
secret wireless of the wild.
"He's my buddy, old boy, and I want you to find him for me," Ben went
on, more patiently. He searched his pockets, drawing out at last the
copy of the letter Ezram had given him that morning, and, because the
old man had carried it for many days, it could still convey a message to
the keen nose of the wolf. He put it to the animal's nostrils, then
pointed away into the darkness.
Fenris followed the motion with his eyes; and presently his long body
stiffened. Ben watched him, fascinated. Then the wolf sniffed at the
paper again and trotted away into the night.
In one leap Ben was on his feet, following him. The wolf turned once,
saw that his master was at his heels, and sped on. They turned up a
slight draw, toward the hillside.
It became clear at once that Fenris was depending upon his marvelous
sense of smell. His nose would lower to the ground, and sometimes he
tacked back and forth, uncertainly. At such times Ben watched him with
bated breath. But always he caught the scent again.
Once more he paused, sniffing eagerly; then turned, whining. Just as
clearly as if they had possessed a mutual language Ben understood: the
animal had caught the clear scent at last. The wolf loped off, and his
fierce bay rang through the hushed forest.
It was a long-drawn, triumphant note; and the wild creatures paused in
their mysterious, hushed occupations to listen. It was also significant
that it made certain deadly inroads in the spirit of Ray Brent, sitting
in his distant cabin. He marked the direction of the sound, and he
cursed, half in awe, under his breath. He had always hated the gray
rangers. They were the uncanny demons of the forest.
Ben followed the running wolf as fast as he could; and in his eagerness
he had no opportunity for conjecture as to what he would find at the end
of the pursuit. Yet he did not believe for an instant this was a false
trail. The wolf's deep, full-ringing bays were ever more urgent and
excited, filling the forest with their uproar. But quite suddenly the
silence closed down again, seemingly more deep and mysterious than ever.
Ben's first sensation was one of icy terror that crept to the very
marrow of his bones. He knew instantly that there was a meaning of
dreadful portent in the abrupt cessation of the cries. He halted an
instant, listening, but at first could hear no more than the throb of
his heart in his breast and the whisper of his own troubled breathing.
But presently, at a distance of one hundred yards, he distinguished the
soft whining of the wolf.
Fenris was no longer running! He had halted at the edge of a distant
thicket. The cold sweat sprang out on Ben's forehead, and he broke into
a headlong run.
There was no later remembrance of traversing that last hundred yards.
The hillside seemed to whip under his feet. He paused at last, just at
the dark margin of an impenetrable thicket. The wolf whined
disconsolately just beyond the range of his vision.
"Ezram!" he called, a curious throbbing quality in his voice. "Are you
there, Ez? It's me--Ben."
But the thickets neither rustled nor spoke. The cracked old voice he had
learned to love did not speak in relief, in that moment of unutterable
suspense. Indeed, the silence seemed to deepen about him. The spruce
trees were hushed and impassive as ever; the moon shone and the wind
breathed softly in his face. Fenris came whimpering toward him.
Together, the man and the wolf, they crept on into the thicket. They
halted at last before a curious shadow in the silvered covert. Ben knew
at once he had found his ancient comrade.
He and Ezram had had their last laugh together. He lay very still, the
moonlight ensilvering his droll, kindly face,--sleeping so deeply that
no human voice could ever waken him. An ugly rifle wound yawned darkly
at his temple.