The match flared out in Ben's fingers, and the only light that was left
was the pale moonlight, like a cobweb on the floor of the glade, and the
faint glow from the dying fire. About the glade ranged the tall spruce,
Watching breathlessly; and for a termless second or two a profound and
portentous silence descended on the camp. No leaf rustled, not a tree
limb cracked. The creature that had pushed through the thickets to the
edge of the glade was evidently standing motionless, deciding on his
course.
Only the wild things seem to know what complete absence of motion means.
To stand like a form in rock, not a muscle quivering or a hair stirring,
is never a feat for ragged, over stretched human nerves; and it requires
a perfect muscle control that is generally only known to the beasts of
the forest. Only a few times in a lifetime in human beings are the
little, outward motions actually suspended; perhaps under the paralysis
of great terror or, with painstaking effort, before a photographer's
camera. But with the beasts it is an everyday accomplishment necessary
to their survival. The fawn that can not stand absolutely motionless,
his dappled skin blending perfectly with the background of shrubbery
shot with sunlight, comes to an end quickly in the fangs of some great
beast of prey. The panther that can not lurk, not a muscle quivering, in
his ambush beside the deer trail, never knows full feeding. The creature
on the opposite side of the glade seemed as bereft of motion as the
spruce trees in the moonlight, or the cliff above the cave.
"What is it?" Beatrice whispered. The man's eyes strained into the
gloom.
"I don't know. It may be just a moose, or maybe a caribou. But it may
be--"
He tiptoed to the door of the cave, and his eye fell to the crouching
form of Fenris. The creature outside was neither moose nor caribou. The
great wolf of the North does not stand at bay to the antlered people. He
was poised to spring, his fangs bared and his fierce eyes hot with fire,
but he was not hunting. Whatever moved in the darkness without, the wolf
had no desire to go forth and attack. Perhaps he would fight to the
death to protect the occupants of the cave; but surely an ancient and
devastating fear had hold of him. Evidently he recognized the intruder
as an ancestral enemy that held sovereignty over the forest.
At that instant Ben leaped through the cavern maw to reach his gun.
There was nothing to be gained by waiting further. This was a savage and
an uninhabited land; and the great beasts of prey that ranged the forest
had not yet learned the restraint born of the fear of man. And he knew
one breathless instant of panic when his eye failed to locate the weapon
in the faint light of the fire.
Holding hard, he tried to remember where he had left it. The form across
the glade was no longer motionless. Straining, Ben saw the soft roll of
a great shadow, almost imperceptible in the gloom--advancing slowly
toward him. Then the faint glow of the fire caught and reflected in the
creature's eyes.
They suddenly glowed out in the half-darkness, two rather small circles
of dark red, close together and just alike. This night visitor was not
moose or caribou, or was it one of the lesser hunters, lynx or
wolverine, or a panther wandered far from his accustomed haunts. The
twin circles were too far above the ground. And whatever it was, no
doubt remained but that the creature was steadily stalking him across
the soft grass.
At that instant Ben's muscles snapped into action. Only a second
remained in which to make his defense--the creature had paused, setting
his muscles for a death-dealing charge. "Go back into the cave--as far
as you can," he said swiftly to Beatrice. His own eyes, squinted and
straining for the last iota of vision in that darkened scene, made a
last, frantic search for his rifle. Suddenly he saw the gleam of its
barrel as it rested against the wall of the cliff, fifteen feet distant.
At once he knew that his only course was to spring for it in the instant
that remained, and trust to its mighty shocking power to stop the charge
that would in a moment ensue. Yet it seemed to tear the life fiber of
the man to do it. His inmost instincts, urgent and loud in his ear, told
him to remain on guard, not to leave that cavern maw for an instant but
to protect with his own body the precious life that it sheltered. His
mind worked with that incredible speed that is usually manifest in a
crisis; and he knew that the creature might charge into the cavern
entrance in the second that he left it. Yet only in the rifle lay the
least chance or hope for either of them.
"At him, Fenris!" he shouted. The wolf leaped forward like a thrown
spear,--almost too fast for the eye to follow. He was deathly afraid,
with full knowledge of the power of the enemy he went to combat, but his
fears were impotent to restrain him at the first sound of that masterful
voice. These were the words he had waited for. He could never disobey
such words as these--from the lips of his god. And Ben's mind had worked
true; he knew that the wolf could likely hold the creature at bay until
he could seize his rifle.
In an instant it was in his hands, and he had sprung back to his post in
front of the cavern maw. And presently he remembered, heartsick, that
the weapon was not loaded.
For his own safety he had kept it empty on the outward journey, partly
to prevent accident, partly to be sure that his prisoner could not turn
it against him. But he had shells in the pocket of his jacket. His hand
groped, but his reaching fingers found but one shell, dropping it
swiftly into the gun. And now he knew that no time remained to seek
another. The beast in the darkness had launched into the charge.
Thereafter there was only a great confusion, event piled upon event with
incredible rapidity, and a whole lifetime of stress and fear lived in a
single instant. The creature's first lunge carried him into the brighter
moonlight; and at once Ben recognized its breed. No woodsman could
mistake the high, rocking shoulders, the burly form, the wicked ears
laid back against the flat, massive head, the fangs gleaming white, the
long, hooked claws slashing through the turf as he ran. It was a
terrible thing to see and stand against, in the half-darkness. The
shadows accentuated the towering outline; and forgotten terrors,
lurking, since the world was young, in the labyrinth of the germ plasm
wakened and spread like icy streams through the mortal body and seemed
to threaten to extinguish the warm flame of the very soul.
The grizzly bawled as he came, an explosive, incredible storm of sound.
Few indeed are the wilderness creatures that can charge in silence:
muscular exertion can not alone relieve their gathered flood of madness
and fury. And at once Ben sensed the impulse behind the attack. He and
the girl had made their home in the grizzly's cave--perhaps the lair
wherein he had hibernated through the winter and which he still slept in
from time to time--and he had come to drive them out. Only death could
pay for such insolence as this,--to make a night's lair in the den of
his sovereignty, the grizzly.
It is not the accustomed thing for a grizzly to make an unprovoked
attack. He has done it many times, in the history of the west, but
usually he is glad enough to turn aside, only launching into his
terrible death-charge when a mortal wound obliterates his fear of man,
leaving only his fear of death. But this grizzly, native to these
uninhabited wilds, had no fear of man to forget. He did not know what
man was, and he had not learned the death that dwells in the shining
weapon he carries in his arms. No trappers mushed through his snows of
spring; no woodsman rode his winding trails. True, from the first
instant that the human smell had reached him on the wind he had been
disturbed and discomfited; yet it was not grizzly nature to yield his
den without a fight. The sight of the wolf--known to him of old--only
wakened an added rage in his fierce heart.
The wolf met him at his first leap, springing with noble courage at his
grizzled throat; and the bear paused in his charge to strike him away.
He lashed out with his great forepaw; and if that blow had gone straight
home the ribs of the wolf would have been smashed flat on his heart and
lungs. The tough trunk of a young spruce would have been broken as
quickly under that terrible, blasting full-stroke of a grizzly. The
largest grizzly weighs but a thousand pounds, but that weight is simple
fiber and iron muscle, of a might incredible to any one but the woodsmen
who know this mountain king in his native haunts. But Fenris whipped
aside, and the paw missed him.
Immediately the wolf sprang in again, with a courage scarcely compatible
with lupine characteristics, ready to wage this unequal battle to the
death. But his brave fight was tragically hopeless. For all that his
hundred and fifty pounds were, every ounce, lightning muscle and vibrant
sinew, it was as if a gopher had waged war with a lynx. Yet by the law
of his wild heart he could not turn and flee. His master--his stalwart
god whose words thrilled him to the uttermost depths--had given his
orders, and he must obey them to the end.
The second blow missed him also, but the third caught a small shrub that
grew twenty feet beyond the dying fire. The shrub snapped off under the
blow, and its branchy end smote the wolf across the head and neck. As if
struck by a tornado he was hurled into the air, and curtailed and
indirect though the blow was, he sprawled down stunned and insensible in
the grass. The bear paused one instant; then lunged forth again.
But the breath in which the wolf had stayed the charge had given Ben his
chance. With a swift motion of his arm he had projected the single rifle
shell into the chamber of the weapon. The stock snapped to his shoulder;
and his keen, glittering eyes sought the sights.