AT BAY
Bill Carmody was no coward; but neither was he a fool, and for the
first time the seriousness of his position dawned upon him. Other
shapes appeared and ranged themselves beside their leader, and as the
man looked upon their gaunt, sinewy leanness, the slavering jaws, and
blazing eyes, he shuddered. Here, indeed, was a very real danger.
He decided to camp. Fire, he remembered to have read, would hold the
brutes at bay. Wood there was in plenty, and, quickly clearing a space
in the snow, he soon had the satisfaction of seeing tiny tongues of
flame crackle in a pile of dry branches.
He unslung his light axe and attacked the limbs of a dead pine that lay
at the edge of the road.
After an hour's work his cleared space was flanked on either side by
piles of dry firewood, and at his back the great pile of tops afforded
shelter from the wind which swept down the roadway, driving before it
stinging volleys of snow.
He spread his blanket and drew from his pack the unappetizing food. He
warmed the remaining half-can of salmon and whittled at his nubbin of
bread.
"Dinner is served, sir," he announced to himself, "dead fish with
formaldehyde dressing, petrified dough, and _aqua nivis_." The storm
continued, and as he smoked the gravity of his plight forced itself
upon him.
The laggards had caught up, and at the edge of the arc of firelight a
wide semicircle of insanely glaring eyeballs and gleaming fangs told
where the wolf-pack waited.
There was a terrifying sense of certainty in their method. They took no
chance of open attack, wasted no breath in needless howling or
snarling, but merely sat upon their haunches beyond the circle of the
firelight--waiting.
Again the man shuddered. Before him, he knew, lay at least fifteen
miles of trail knee-deep with snow, and he had left but one small
ration of unpalatable and unnutritious food.
"I seem to be up against a tough proposition," he mused. "What was it
Appleton said about battle, murder, and sudden death? It looks from
here as if the old boy knew what he was talking about. But it is kind
of rough on a man to roll them all up into one bundle and hand it to
him right on the kick-off."
He had heard of men who became lost in the woods and died horribly of
cold and starvation, or went down to the rush of the wolf-pack.
"As long as I stick to this road I won't get lost," he thought. "I may
freeze to death, or starve, or furnish a cozy meal for the wolves
yonder, but even at that I still have the edge on those others--I'm
damned if I'm _lost_!"
And, strange as it may seem, the thought gave him much comfort.
He tossed more wood on the fire and watched the shower of sparks which
shot high above the flames.
"To-morrow will be my busy day," he remarked, addressing the wolves.
"Good night, you hell-hounds! Just stick around and see that nothing
sneaks up and bites me."
He hurled a blazing firebrand among the foremost of the hungry hoard,
but these did not retreat--merely leaped back, snarling, to lurk in the
outer shadows.
Bill's sleep was fitful. The snow ceased to fall during the early hours
of the night, and the pair of blankets with which he had provided
himself proved entirely inadequate protection against the steadily
increasing cold.
Time and again he awoke and replenished the fire, for, no matter in
what position he lay, one side of his body seemed freezing, while the
other toasted uncomfortably in the hot glare of the flames. And
always--just at the rim of the fire-light--sat the wolves, waiting in
their ominous circle of silence.
But in the interims between these awakenings he slept profoundly,
oblivious alike to discomfort and danger--as the dead sleep.
At the first hint of dawn Bill hastily consumed the last of his
unpalatable food and resumed his journey.
Hour after hour he toiled through the snow, and always the wolf-pack
followed, haunting his trail in the open roadway and flanking him in
the deep shade of the evergreen forest, moving tirelessly through the
loose snow in long, slow leaps.
Seventeen of them he counted--seventeen murderous, ill-visaged curs of
the savage kill! And the leader of the pack was a very demon wolf. A
monstrous female, almost pure white, huge, misshapen, hideous--the
ultimate harridan of the wolf-breed--she stood a full two hands above
the tallest of the rank and file of her evil clan.
The foot and half of a foreleg had been left between iron jaws where
she had gnawed herself out of a trap, and the shrunken stub, depending
from a withered shoulder, dragged over the surface of the snow, leaving
a curious mark like the trail of a snake.
The remaining foreleg was strong and thick and, from redistribution of
balance, slanted inward from the massive shoulder, which was developed
out of all proportion to its mate, giving the great white brute a
repulsive, lopsided appearance.
The long, stiff hair stood out upon her neck in a great ruff, which
accentuated the fiendish ferocity of her, adding a hyena-like slope to
her ungainly body. But it was in the expression of her face that she
reached the climax of hideous malevolence.
One pointed ear stood erect upon her head, while the other, mangled and
torn into a serried red excrescence, formed the termination of a broad,
ragged scar which began at the corner of her mouth, giving her face the
expression of a fiendish grin that belied the green glare of her
venomous, opalescent eyes.
The loss of the leg seemed in nowise to hamper her freedom of action.
She moved ceaselessly among the pack with a peculiar bounding gallop,
fawning in subtle cajolery upon those in the forefront, slashing right
and left among the laggards with vicious clicks of her long, white
fangs; and always she watched the tiring man who found his own gaze
fixed upon her in horrid fascination.
There was something sinister in the wolf-pack's noiseless pursuit. The
brutes drew nearer as the man's pace slowed to the wearying of his
muscles.
Instinctively he knew that at the last there would be no waiting--no
delay. The very minute he sank exhausted into the snow they would be
upon him--the great white leader and her rapacious horde--and in his
imagination he could feel the viselike clench of iron jaws and the
tearing rip with which the quivering flesh would be stripped from his
bones.
At midday the man placed the sheath-knife in his belt and threw away
the pack. Relieved of the burden, his shoulders felt strangely light.
There was a new buoyancy in his stride.
But the relief was temporary, and as the sun sank early behind the
pines his brain was again driving his wearied muscles to their work.
The wolves were following close in now, and the silence of their
relentless persistence filled the man with a dumb terror which no
pandemonium of howling could have inspired.
His advance was halting. Each step was a separate and conscious
undertaking, and it was with difficulty that he lifted his moccasins
clear of the snow.
Suddenly he stumbled. The leaders were almost upon him as he recovered
and faced them there in the white reach of the tote-road. They halted
just out of reach of the swing of his axe, and as the man looked into
their glaring eyes a frenzy of unreasoning fury seized him.
His nerves could no longer stand the strain. Something seemed to snap
in his brain, and through his veins surged the spirit of his fighting
ancestors.
A sudden memory flash, as of deeds forgotten through long ages, and
with it came strength--the very abandon of fierce, brute strength of a
man with the mind to kill.
"Come on!" he cried. "Fight it out, you fiends! I may die, but I'll be
damned if I'll be hounded to death! You may get me, but you'll _fight_!
When a McKim goes down some one pays! And if it is die--By God!
There'll be fun in the dying!"
With a weird primordial scream, as the first man might have screamed in
the face of the first saber-tooth, he hurled his axe among them and
sprang forward, flashing the cold, gray blade of his sheath-knife!