The next morning Miki set out again for the trapline of Jacques Le
Beau. It was not the thought of food easily secured that tempted him.
There would have been a greater thrill in killing for himself. It was
the trail, with its smell of the man-beast, that drew him like a
magnet. Where that smell was very strong he wanted to lie down, and
wait. Yet with his desire there was also fear, and a steadily growing
caution. He did not tamper with the first KEKEK, nor with the second.
At the third Le Beau had fumbled in the placing of his bait, and for
that reason the little ball of fat was strong with the scent of his
hands. A fox would have turned away from it quickly. Miki, however,
drew it from the peg and dropped it in the snow between his forefeet.
Then he looked about him, and listened for a full minute. After that he
licked the ball of fat with his tongue. The scent of Le Beau's hands
kept him from swallowing it as he had swallowed the caribou meat. A
little suspiciously he crushed it slowly between his jaws. The fat was
sweet. He was about to gulp it down when he detected another and less
pleasant taste, and what remained in his mouth he spat out upon the
snow. But the acrid bite of the poison remained upon his tongue and in
his throat. It crept deeper--and he caught up a mouthful of snow and
swallowed it to put out the burning sensation that was crawling nearer
to his vitals.
Had he devoured the ball of fat as he had eaten the other baits he
would have been dead within a quarter of an hour, and Le Beau would not
have gone far to find his body. As it was, he was beginning to turn
sick at the end of the fifteen minutes. A premonition of the evil that
was upon him drew him off the trail and in the direction of the
windfall. He had gone only a short distance when suddenly his legs gave
way under him, and he fell. He began to shiver. Every muscle in his
body trembled. His teeth clicked. His eyes grew wide, and it was
impossible for him to move. And then, like a hand throttling him, there
came a strange stiffness in the back of his neck, and his breath hissed
chokingly out of his throat. The stiffness passed like a wave of fire
through his body. Where his muscles had trembled and shivered a moment
before they now became rigid and lifeless. The throttling grip of the
poison at the base of his brain drew his head back until his muzzle was
pointed straight up to the sky. Still he made no cry. For a space every
nerve in his body was at the point of death.
Then came the change. As though a string had snapped, the horrible grip
left the back of his neck; the stiffness shot out of his body in a
flood of shivering cold, and in another moment he was twisting and
tearing up the snow in mad convulsions. The spasm lasted for perhaps a
minute. When it was over Miki was panting. Streams of saliva dripped
from his jaws into the snow. But he was alive. Death had missed him by
a hair, and after a little he staggered to his feet and continued on
his way to the windfall.
Thereafter Jacques Le Beau might place a million poison capsules in his
way and he would not touch them. Never again would he steal the meat
from a bait-peg.
Two days later Le Beau saw where Miki had fought his fight with death
in the snow and his heart was black with rage and disappointment. He
began to follow the footprints of the dog. It was noon when he came to
the windfall and saw the beaten path where Miki entered it. On his
knees he peered into the cavernous depths--and saw nothing. But Miki,
lying watchfully, saw the man, and he was like the black, bearded
monster who had almost killed him with a club a long time ago. And in
his heart, too, there was disappointment, for away back in his memory
of things there was always the thought of Challoner--the master he had
lost; and it was never Challoner whom he found when he came upon the
man smell.
Le Beau heard his growl, and the man's blood leapt excitedly as he rose
to his feet. He could not go in after the wild dog, and he could not
lure him out. But there was another way. He would drive him out with
fire!
Deep back in his fortress, Miki heard the crunch of Le Beau's feet in
the snow. A few minutes later he saw the man-beast again peering into
his lair.
"BETE, BETE," he called half tauntingly, and again Miki growled.
Jacques was satisfied. The windfall was not more than thirty or forty
feet in diameter, and about it the forest was open and clear of
undergrowth. It would be impossible for the wild dog to get away from
his rifle.
A second time he went around the piled-up mass of fallen timber. On
three sides it was completely smothered under the deep snow. Only where
Miki's trail entered was it open.
Getting the wind behind him Le Beau made his ISKOO of birch-bark and
dry wood at the far end of the windfall. The seasoned logs and
tree-tops caught the fire like tinder, and within a few minutes the
flames began to crackle and roar in a manner that made Miki wonder what
was happening. For a space the smoke did not reach him. Le Beau,
watching, with his rifle in his bare hands, did not for an instant let
his eyes leave the spot where the wild dog must come out.
Suddenly a pungent whiff of smoke filled Miki's nostrils, and a thin
white cloud crept in a ghostly veil between him and the opening. A
crawling, snake-like rope of it began to pour between two logs within a
yard of him, and with it the strange roaring grew nearer and more
menacing. Then, for the first time, he saw lightning flashes of yellow
flame through the tangled debris as the fire ate into the heart of a
mass of pitch-filled spruce. In another ten seconds the flames leapt
twenty feet into the air, and Jacques Le Beau stood with his rifle half
to his shoulder, ready to kill.
Appalled by the danger that was upon him, Miki did not forget Le Beau.
With an instinct sharpened to fox-like keenness his mind leapt
instantly to the truth of the matter. It was the man-beast who had set
this new enemy upon him; and out there, just beyond the opening, the
man-beast was waiting. So, like the fox, he did what Le Beau least
expected. He crawled back swiftly through the tangled tops until he
came to the wall of snow that shut the windfall in, and through this he
burrowed his way almost as quickly as the fox himself would have done
it. With his jaws he tore through the half-inch outer crust, and a
moment later stood in the open, with the fire between him and Le Beau.
The windfall was a blazing furnace, and suddenly Le Beau ran back a
dozen steps so that he could see on the farther side. A hundred yards
away he saw Miki making for the deeper forest.
It was a clear shot. At that distance Le Beau would have staked his
life that it was impossible for him to miss. He did not hurry. One
shot, and it would be over. He raised his rifle, and in that instant a
wisp of smoke came like the lash of a whip with the wind and caught him
fairly in the eyes, and his bullet passed three inches over Miki's
head. The whining snarl of it was a new thing to Miki. But he
recognized the thunder of the gun--and he knew what a gun could do. To
Le Beau, still firing at him through the merciful cloud of smoke, he
was like a gray streak flashing to the thick timber. Three times more
Le Beau fired. From the edge of a dense clump of spruce Miki flung back
a defiant howl. He disappeared as Le Beau's last shot shovelled up the
snow at his heels.
The narrowness of his escape from the man-beast did not frighten Miki
out of the Jackson's Knee country. If anything, it held him more
closely to it. It gave him something to think about besides Neewa and
his aloneness. As the fox returns to peer stealthily upon the deadfall
that has almost caught him, so the trapline was possessed now of a new
thrill for Miki. Heretofore the man-smell had held for him only a vague
significance; now it marked the presence of a real and concrete danger.
And he welcomed it. His wits were sharpened. The fascination of the
trapline was deadlier than before.
From the burned windfall he made a wide detour to a point where Le
Beau's snowshoe trail entered the edge of the swamp; and here, hidden
in a thick clump of bushes, he watched him as he travelled homeward
half an hour later.
From that day he hung like a grim, gray ghost to the trapline.
Silent-footed, cautious, always on the alert for the danger which
threatened him, he haunted Jacques Le Beau's thoughts and footsteps
with the elusive persistence of a were-wolf--a loup-garou of the Black
Forest. Twice in the next week Le Beau caught a flash of him. Three
times he heard him howl. And twice he followed his trail until, in
despair and exhaustion, he turned back. Never was Miki caught unaware.
He ate no more baits in the trap-houses. Even when Le Beau lured him
with the whole carcass of a rabbit he would not touch it, nor would he
touch a rabbit frozen dead in a snare. From Le Beau's traps he took
only the living things, chiefly birds and squirrels and the big
web-footed snowshoe rabbits. And because a mink jumped at him once, and
tore open his nose, he destroyed a number of minks so utterly that
their pelts were spoiled. He found himself another windfall, but
instinct taught him now never to go to it directly, but to approach it,
and leave it, in a roundabout way.
Day and night Le Beau, the man-brute, plotted against him. He set many
poison-baits. He killed a doe, and scattered strychnine in its
entrails. He built deadfalls, and baited them with meat soaked in
boiling fat. He made himself a "blind" of spruce and cedar boughs, and
sat for long hours, watching with his rifle. And still Miki was the
victor.
One day Miki found a huge fisher-cat in one of the traps. He had not
forgotten the battle of long ago with Oochak, the other fisher-cat, or
the whipping he had received. But there was no thought of vengeance in
his heart on the early evening he became acquainted with Oochak the
Second. Usually he was in his windfall at dusk, but this afternoon a
great and devouring loneliness had held him on the trail. The spirit of
Kuskayetum--the hand of the mating-god--was pressing heavily upon him;
the consuming desire of flesh and blood for the companionship of other
flesh and blood. It burned in his veins like a fever. It took away from
him all thought of hunger or of the hunt. In his soul was a vast,
unfilled yearning.
It was then that he came upon Oochak. Perhaps it was the same Oochak of
months ago. If so, he had grown even as Miki had grown. He was
splendid, with his long silken fur and his sleek body, and he was not
struggling, but sat awaiting his fate without excitement. To Miki he
looked warm and soft and comfortable. It made him think of Neewa, and
the hundred and one nights they had slept together. His desire leapt
out to Oochak. He whined softly as he advanced. He would make friends.
Even with Oochak, his old enemy, he would lie down in peace and
happiness, so great was the gnawing emptiness in his heart.
Oochak made no response, nor did he move, but sat furred up like a huge
soft ball, watching Miki as he crept nearer on his belly. Something of
the old puppishness came back into the dog. He wriggled and thumped his
tail, and as he whined again he seemed to say.
"Let's forget the old trouble, Oochak. Let's be friends. I've got a
fine windfall--and I'll kill you a rabbit."
And still Oochak did not move or make a sound. At last Miki could
almost reach out with his forepaws and touch him. He dragged himself
still nearer, and his tail thumped harder.
"And I'll get you out of the trap," he may have been saying. "It's the
man-beast's trap--and I hate him."
And then, so suddenly that Miki had no chance to guard himself, Oochak
sprang the length of the trap-chain and was at him. With teeth and
razor-edged claws he tore deep gashes in Miki's nose. Even then the
blood of battle rose slowly in him, and he might have retreated had not
Oochak's teeth got a hold in his shoulder. With a roar he tried to
shake himself free, but Oochak held on. Then his jaws snapped at the
back of the fisher-cat's neck. When he was done Oochak was dead.
He slunk away, but in him there was no more the thrill of the victor.
He had killed, but in killing he had found no joy. Upon him--the
four-footed beast--had fallen at last the oppression of the thing that
drives men mad. He stood in the heart of a vast world, and for him that
world was empty. He was an outcast. His heart crying out for
comradeship, he found that all things feared him or hated him. He was a
pariah; a wanderer without a friend or a home. He did not reason these
things but the gloom of them settled upon him like black night.
He did not return to his windfall. In a little open he sat on his
haunches, listening to the night sounds, and watching the stars as they
came out. There was an early moon, and as it came up over the forest, a
great throbbing red disc that seemed filled with life, he howled
mournfully in the face of it. He wandered out into a big burn a little
later, and there the night was like day, so clear that his shadow
followed him and all other things about him cast shadows, And then, all
at once, he caught in the night wind a sound which he had heard many
times before.
It came from far away, and it was like a whisper at first, an echo of
strange voices riding on the wind, A hundred times he had heard that
cry of the wolves. Since Maheegun, the she-wolf, had gashed his
shoulder so fiercely away back in the days of his puppyhood he had
evaded the path of that cry. He had learned, in a way, to hate it. But
he could not wipe out entirely the thrill that came with that call of
the blood. And to-night it rode over all his fear and hatred. Out there
was COMPANY. Whence the cry came the wild brethren were running two by
two, and three by three, and there was COMRADESHIP. His body quivered.
An answering cry rose in his throat, dying away in a whine, and for an
hour after that he heard no more of the wolf-cry in the wind. The pack
had swung to the west--so far away that their voices were lost. And it
passed--with the moon straight over them--close to the shack of
Pierrot, the halfbreed.
In Pierrot's cabin was a white man, on his way to Fort O' God. He saw
that Pierrot crossed himself, and muttered.
"It is the mad pack," explained Pierrot then. "M'sieu, they have been
KESKWAO since the beginning of the new moon. In them are the spirits of
devils."
He opened the cabin door a little, so that the mad cry of the beasts
came to them plainly. When he closed it there was in his eyes a look of
strange fear.
"Now and then wolves go like that--KESKWAO (stark mad)--in the dead of
winter," he shuddered. "Three days ago there were twenty of them,
m'sieu, for I saw them with my own eyes, and counted their tracks in
the snow. Since then they been murdered and torn into strings by the
others of the pack. Listen to them ravin'! Can you tell me why, m'sieu?
Can you tell me why wolves sometimes go mad in the heart of winter when
there is no heat or rotten meat to turn them sick? NON? But I can tell
you. They are the loups-garous; in their bodies ride the spirits of
devils, and there they will ride until the bodies die. For the wolves
that go mad in the deep snows always die, m'sieu. That is the strange
part of it. THEY DIE!"
And then it was, swinging eastward from the cabin of Pierrot, that the
mad wolves of Jackson's Knee came into the country of the big swamp
wherein trees bore the Double-X blaze of Jacques Le Beau's axe. There
were fourteen of them running in the moonlight. What it is that now and
then drives a wolf-pack mad in the dead of winter no man yet has wholly
learned. Possibly it begins with a "bad" wolf; just as a "bad"
sledge-dog, nipping and biting his fellows, will spread his distemper
among them until the team becomes an ugly, quarrelsome horde. Such a
dog the wise driver kills--or turns loose.
The wolves that bore down upon Le Beau's country were red-eyed and
thin. Their bodies were covered with gashes, and the mouths of some
frothed blood. They did not run as wolves run for meat. They were a
sinister and suspicious lot, with a sneaking droop to their haunches,
and their cry was not the deep-throated cry of the hunt-pack but a
ravening clamour that seemed to have no leadership or cause. Scarcely
was the sound of their tongues gone beyond the hearing of Pierrot's
ears than one of the thin gray beasts rubbed against the shoulder of
another, and the second turned with the swiftness of a snake, like the
"bad" dog of the traces, and struck his fangs deep into the first
wolf's flesh. Could Pierrot have seen, he would have understood then
how the four he had found had come to their end.
Swift as the snap of a whip-lash the fight between the two was on. The
other twelve of the pack stopped. They came back, circling in
cautiously and grimly silent about their fighting comrades. They ranged
themselves in a ring, as men gather about a fistic battle; and there
they waited, their jaws drooling, their fangs clicking, a low and eager
whining smothered in their throats. And then the thing happened. One of
the fighting wolves went down. He was on his back--and the end came.
The twelve wolves were upon him as one, and, like those Pierrot had
seen, he was torn to pieces, and his flesh devoured. After that the
thirteen went on deeper into Le Beau's country.
Miki heard them again, after that hour's interval of silence. Farther
and farther he had wandered from the forest. He had crossed the "burn,"
and was in the open plain, with the rough ridges cutting through and
the big river at the edge of it. It was not so gloomy out here, and his
loneliness weighed upon him less heavily than in the deep timber.
And across this plain came the voice of the wolves.
He did not move away from it to-night. He waited, silhouetted against
the vivid starlight at the crest of a rocky knoll, and the top of this
knoll was so small that another could not have stood beside him without
their shoulders touching. On all sides of him the plain swept away in
the white light of the stars and moon; never had the desire to respond
to the wild brethren urged itself upon him more fiercely than now. He
flung back his head, until his black-tipped muzzle pointed up to the
stars, and the voice rolled out of his throat. But it was only half a
howl. Even then, oppressed by his great loneliness, there gripped him
that something instinctive which warned him against betrayal. After
that he remained quiet, and as the wolves drew nearer his body grew
tense, his muscles hardened, and in his throat there was the low
whispering of a snarl instead of a howl. He sensed danger. He had
caught, in the voice of the wolves, the ravening note that had made
Pierrot cross himself and mutter of the loups-garous, and he crouched
down on his belly at the top of the rocky mound.
Then he saw them. They were sweeping like dark and swiftly moving
shadows between him and the forest. Suddenly they stopped, and for a
few moments no sound came from them as they packed themselves closely
on the scent of his fresh trail in the snow. And then they surged in
his direction; this time there was a still fiercer madness in the wild
cry that rose from their throats. In a dozen seconds they were at the
mound. They swept around it and past it, all save one--a huge gray
brute who shot up the hillock straight at the prey the others had not
yet seen. There was a snarl in Miki's throat as he came. Once more he
was facing the thrill of a great fight. Once more the blood ran
suddenly hot in his veins, and fear was driven from him as the wind
drives smoke from a fire. If Neewa were only there now, to fend at his
back while he fought in front! He stood up on his feet. He met the
up-rushing pack-brute head to head. Their jaws clashed, and the wild
wolf found jaws at last that crunched through his own as if they had
been whelp's bone, and he rolled and twisted back to the plain in a
dying agony. But not until another gray form had come to fill his
place. Into the throat of this second Miki drove his fangs as the wolf
came over the crest. It was the slashing, sabre-like stroke of the
north-dog, and the throat of the wolf was torn open and the blood
poured out as if emptied by the blade of a knife. Down he plunged to
join the first, and in that instant the pack swept up and over Miki,
and he was smothered under the mass of their bodies. Had two or three
attacked him at once he would have died as quickly as the first two of
his enemies had come to their end. Numbers saved him in the first rush.
On the level of the plain he would have been torn into pieces like a
bit of cloth, but on the space at the top of the KOPJE, no larger than
the top of a table, he was lost for a few seconds under the snarling
and rending horde of his enemies. Fangs intended for him sank into
other wolf-flesh; the madness of the pack became a blind rage, and the
assault upon Miki turned into a slaughter of the wolves themselves. On
his back, held down by the weight of bodies, Miki drove his fangs again
and again into flesh. A pair of jaws seized him in the groin, and a
shock of agony swept through him. It was a death-grip, sinking steadily
into his vitals. Just in time another pair of jaws seized the wolf who
held him, and the hold in his groin gave way. In that moment Miki felt
himself plunging down the steep side of the knoll, and after him came a
half of what was left alive of the pack.
The fighting devils in Miki's brain gave way all at once to that
cunning of the fox which had served him even more than claw and fang in
times of great danger. Scarcely had he reached the plain before he was
on his feet, and no sooner had he touched his feet than he was off like
the wind in direction of the river. He had gained a fifty-yard start
before the first of the wolves discovered his flight. There were only
eight that followed him now. Of the thirteen mad beasts five were dead
or dying at the foot of the hillock. Of these Miki had slain two. The
others had fallen at the fangs of their own brethren.
Half a mile away were the steep cliffs of the river, and at the edge of
these cliffs was a great cairn of rocks in which for one night Miki had
sought shelter. He had not forgotten the tunnel into the tumbled mass
of rock debris, nor how easily it could be defended from within. Once
in that tunnel he would turn in the door of it and slaughter his
enemies one by one, for only one by one could they attack him. But he
had not reckoned with that huge gray form behind him that might have
been named Lightning, the fiercest and swiftest of all the mad wolves
of the pack. He sped ahead of his slower-footed companions like a
streak of light, and Miki had made but half the distance to the cairn
when he heard the panting breath of Lightning behind him. Even Hela,
his father, could not have run more swiftly than Miki, but great as was
Miki's speed, Lightning ran more swiftly. Two thirds of the distance to
the cliff and the huge wolf's muzzle was at Miki's flank. With a burst
of speed Miki gained a little. Then steadily Lightning drew abreast of
him, a grim and merciless shadow of doom.
A hundred yards farther on and a little to the right was the cairn. But
Miki could not run to the right without turning into Lightning's jaws,
and he realized now that if he reached the cairn his enemy would be
upon him before he could dive into the tunnel and face about. To stop
and fight would be death, for behind he could hear the other wolves.
Ten seconds more and the chasm of the river yawned ahead of them.
At its very brink Miki swung and struck at Lightning. He sensed death
now, and in the face of death all his hatred turned upon the one beast
that had run at his side. In an instant they were down. Two yards from
the edge of the cliff, and Miki's jaws were at Lightning's throat when
the pack rushed upon them. They were swept onward. The earth flew out
from under their feet, and they were in space. Grimly Miki held to the
throat of his foe. Over and over they twisted in mid-air, and then came
a terrific shock. Lightning was under. Yet so great was the shock,
that, even though the wolf's huge body was under him like a cushion,
Miki was stunned and dazed. A minute passed before he staggered to his
feet. Lightning lay still, the life smashed out of him. A little beyond
him lay the bodies of two other wolves that in their wild rush had
swept over the cliff.
Miki looked up. Between him and the stars he could see the top of the
cliff, a vast distance above him. One after the other he smelled at the
bodies of the three dead wolves. Then he limped slowly along the base
of the cliff until he came to a fissure between two huge rocks. Into
this he crept and lay down, licking his wounds. After all there were
worse things in the world than Le Beau's trapline. Perhaps there were
even worse things than men.
After a time he stretched his great head out between his fore-paws, and
slowly the starlight grew dimmer, and the snow less white, and he slept.