examine it in detail or with care, the animal, sitting in this ghastly
fashion, seemed to feel his eyes fixed on it. It slowly turned and
looked him in the face, and for the first time Hyde felt a full-blooded,
superstitious fear flood through his entire being. He seemed transfixed
with that nameless terror that is said to attack human beings who
suddenly face the dead, finding themselves bereft of speech and
movement. This moment of paralysis certainly occurred. Its passing,
however, was as singular as its advent. For almost at once he was aware
of something beyond and above this mockery of human attitude and pose,
something that ran along unaccustomed nerves and reached his feeling,
even perhaps his heart. The revulsion was extraordinary, its result
still more extraordinary and unexpected. Yet the fact remains. He was
aware of another thing that had the effect of stilling his terror as
soon as it was born. He was aware of appeal, silent, half expressed,
yet vastly pathetic. He saw in the savage eyes a beseeching, even a
yearning, expression that changed his mood as by magic from dread to
natural sympathy. The great grey brute, symbol of cruel ferocity, sat
there beside his dying fire and appealed for help.
This gulf betwixt animal and human seemed in that instant bridged. It
was, of course, incredible. Hyde, sleep still possibly clinging to his
inner being with the shades and half shapes of dream yet about his
soul, acknowledged, how he knew not, the amazing fact. He found himself
nodding to the brute in half consent, and instantly, without more ado,
the lean grey shape rose like a wraith and trotted off swiftly, but with
stealthy tread, into the background of the night.
When Hyde woke in the morning his first impression was that he must have
dreamed the entire incident. His practical nature asserted itself. There
was a bite in the fresh autumn air; the bright sun allowed no half
lights anywhere; he felt brisk in mind and body. Reviewing what had
happened, he came to the conclusion that it was utterly vain to
speculate; no possible explanation of the animal's behaviour occurred to
him; he was dealing with something entirely outside his experience. His
fear, however, had completely left him. The odd sense of friendliness
remained. The beast had a definite purpose, and he himself was included
in that purpose. His sympathy held good.
But with the sympathy there was also an intense curiosity. "If it shows
itself again," he told himself, "I'll go up close and find out what it
wants." The fish laid out the night before had not been touched.
It must have been a full hour after breakfast when he next saw the
brute; it was standing on the edge of the clearing, looking at him in
the way now become familiar. Hyde immediately picked up his axe and
advanced toward it boldly, keeping his eyes fixed straight upon its own.
There was nervousness in him, but kept well under; nothing betrayed it;
step by step he drew nearer until some ten yards separated them. The
wolf had not stirred a muscle as yet. Its jaws hung open, its eyes
observed him intently; it allowed him to approach without a sign of what
its mood might be. Then, with these ten yards between them, it turned
abruptly and moved slowly off, looking back first over one shoulder and
then over the other, exactly as a dog might do, to see if he was
following.
A singular journey it was they then made together, animal and man. The
trees surrounded them at once, for they left the lake behind them,
entering the tangled bush beyond. The beast, Hyde noticed, obviously
picked the easiest track for him to follow; for obstacles that meant
nothing to the four-legged expert, yet were difficult for a man, were
carefully avoided with an almost uncanny skill, while yet the general
direction was accurately kept. Occasionally there were windfalls to be
surmounted; but though the wolf bounded over these with ease, it was
always waiting for the man on the other side after he had laboriously
climbed over. Deeper and deeper into the heart of the lonely forest
they penetrated in this singular fashion, cutting across the arc of the
lake's crescent, it seemed to Hyde; for after two miles or so, he
recognized the big rocky bluff that overhung the water at its northern
end. This outstanding bluff he had seen from his camp, one side of it
falling sheer into the water; it was probably the spot, he imagined,
where the Indians held their medicine-making ceremonies, for it stood
out in isolated fashion, and its top formed a private plateau not easy
of access. And it was here, close to a big spruce at the foot of the
bluff upon the forest side, that the wolf stopped suddenly and for the
first time since its appearance gave audible expression to its feelings.
It sat down on its haunches, lifted its muzzle with open jaws, and gave
vent to a subdued and long-drawn howl that was more like the wail of a
dog than the fierce barking cry associated with a wolf.
By this time Hyde had lost not only fear, but caution too; nor, oddly
enough, did this warning howl revive a sign of unwelcome emotion in
him. In that curious sound he detected the same message that the eyes
conveyed--appeal for help. He paused, nevertheless, a little startled,
and while the wolf sat waiting for him, he looked about him quickly.
There was young timber here; it had once been a small clearing,
evidently. Axe and fire had done their work, but there was evidence to
an experienced eye that it was Indians and not white men who had once
been busy here. Some part of the medicine ritual, doubtless, took place
in the little clearing, thought the man, as he advanced again towards
his patient leader. The end of their queer journey, he felt, was close
at hand.
He had not taken two steps before the animal got up and moved very
slowly in the direction of some low bushes that formed a clump just
beyond. It entered these, first looking back to make sure that its
companion watched. The bushes hid it; a moment later it emerged again.
Twice it performed this pantomime, each time, as it reappeared, standing
still and staring at the man with as distinct an expression of appeal in
the eyes as an animal may compass, probably. Its excitement, meanwhile,
certainly increased, and this excitement was, with equal certainty,
communicated to the man. Hyde made up his mind quickly. Gripping his axe
tightly, and ready to use it at the first hint of malice, he moved
slowly nearer to the bushes, wondering with something of a tremor what
would happen.
If he expected to be startled, his expectation was at once fulfilled;
but it was the behaviour of the beast that made him jump. It positively
frisked about him like a happy dog. It frisked for joy. Its excitement
was intense, yet from its open mouth no sound was audible. With a sudden
leap, then, it bounded past him into the clump of bushes, against whose
very edge he stood, and began scraping vigorously at the ground. Hyde
stood and stared, amazement and interest now banishing all his
nervousness, even when the beast, in its violent scraping, actually
touched his body with its own. He had, perhaps, the feeling that he was
in a dream, one of those fantastic dreams in which things may happen
without involving an adequate surprise; for otherwise the manner of
scraping and scratching at the ground must have seemed an impossible
phenomenon. No wolf, no dog certainly, used its paws in the way those
paws were working. Hyde had the odd, distressing sensation that it was
hands, not paws, he watched. And yet, somehow, the natural, adequate
surprise he should have felt was absent. The strange action seemed not
entirely unnatural. In his heart some deep hidden spring of sympathy and
pity stirred instead. He was aware of pathos.
The wolf stopped in its task and looked up into his face. Hyde acted
without hesitation then. Afterwards he was wholly at a loss to explain
his own conduct. It seemed he knew what to do, divined what was asked,
expected of him. Between his mind and the dumb desire yearning through
the savage animal there was intelligent and intelligible communication.
He cut a stake and sharpened it, for the stones would blunt his
axe-edge. He entered the clump of bushes to complete the digging his
four-legged companion had begun. And while he worked, though he did not
forget the close proximity of the wolf, he paid no attention to it;
often his back was turned as he stooped over the laborious clearing
away of the hard earth; no uneasiness or sense of danger was in him any
more. The wolf sat outside the clump and watched the operations. Its
concentrated attention, its patience, its intense eagerness, the
gentleness and docility of the grey, fierce, and probably hungry brute,
its obvious pleasure and satisfaction, too, at having won the human to
its mysterious purpose--these were colours in the strange picture that
Hyde thought of later when dealing with the human herd in his hotel
again. At the moment he was aware chiefly of pathos and affection. The
whole business was, of course, not to be believed, but that discovery
came later, too, when telling it to others.
The digging continued for fully half an hour before his labour was
rewarded by the discovery of a small whitish object. He picked it up and
examined it--the finger-bone of a man. Other discoveries then followed
quickly and in quantity. The _cache_ was laid bare. He collected nearly
the complete skeleton. The skull, however, he found last, and might not
have found at all but for the guidance of his strangely alert companion.
It lay some few yards away from the central hole now dug, and the wolf
stood nuzzling the ground with its nose before Hyde understood that he
was meant to dig exactly in that spot for it. Between the beast's very
paws his stake struck hard upon it. He scraped the earth from the bone
and examined it carefully. It was perfect, save for the fact that some
wild animal had gnawed it, the teeth-marks being still plainly visible.
Close beside it lay the rusty iron head of a tomahawk. This and the
smallness of the bones confirmed him in his judgment that it was the
skeleton not of a white man, but of an Indian.
During the excitement of the discovery of the bones one by one, and
finally of the skull, but, more especially, during the period of intense
interest while Hyde was examining them, he had paid little, if any,
attention to the wolf. He was aware that it sat and watched him, never
moving its keen eyes for a single moment from the actual operations, but
of sign or movement it made none at all. He knew that it was pleased and
satisfied, he knew also that he had now fulfilled its purpose in a great
measure. The further intuition that now came to him, derived, he felt
positive, from his companion's dumb desire, was perhaps the cream of the
entire experience to him. Gathering the bones together in his coat, he
carried them, together with the tomahawk, to the foot of the big spruce
where the animal had first stopped. His leg actually touched the
creature's muzzle as he passed. It turned its head to watch, but did not
follow, nor did it move a muscle while he prepared the platform of
boughs upon which he then laid the poor worn bones of an Indian who had
been killed, doubtless, in sudden attack or ambush, and to whose remains
had been denied the last grace of proper tribal burial. He wrapped the
bones in bark; he laid the tomahawk beside the skull; he lit the
circular fire round the pyre, and the blue smoke rose upward into the
clear bright sunshine of the Canadian autumn morning till it was lost
among the mighty trees far overhead.
In the moment before actually lighting the little fire he had turned to
note what his companion did. It sat five yards away, he saw, gazing
intently, and one of its front paws was raised a little from the ground.
It made no sign of any kind. He finished the work, becoming so absorbed
in it that he had eyes for nothing but the tending and guarding of his
careful ceremonial fire. It was only when the platform of boughs
collapsed, laying their charred burden gently on the fragrant earth
among the soft wood ashes, that he turned again, as though to show the
wolf what he had done, and seek, perhaps, some look of satisfaction in
its curiously expressive eyes. But the place he searched was empty. The
wolf had gone.
He did not see it again; it gave no sign of its presence anywhere; he
was not watched. He fished as before, wandered through the bush about
his camp, sat smoking round his fire after dark, and slept peacefully
in his cosy little tent. He was not disturbed. No howl was ever audible
in the distant forest, no twig snapped beneath a stealthy tread, he saw
no eyes. The wolf that behaved like a man had gone for ever.
It was the day before he left that Hyde, noticing smoke rising from the
shack across the lake, paddled over to exchange a word or two with the
Indian, who had evidently now returned. The Redskin came down to meet
him as he landed, but it was soon plain that he spoke very little
English. He emitted the familiar grunts at first; then bit by bit Hyde
stirred his limited vocabulary into action. The net result, however, was
slight enough, though it was certainly direct:
"You camp there?" the man asked, pointing to the other side.
"Yes."
"Wolf come?"
"Yes."
"You see wolf?"
"Yes."
The Indian stared at him fixedly a moment, a keen, wondering look upon
his coppery, creased face.
"You 'fraid wolf?" he asked after a moment's pause.
"No," replied Hyde, truthfully. He knew it was useless to ask questions
of his own, though he was eager for information. The other would have
told him nothing. It was sheer luck that the man had touched on the
subject at all, and Hyde realized that his own best role was merely to
answer, but to ask no questions. Then, suddenly, the Indian became
comparatively voluble. There was awe in his voice and manner.
"Him no wolf. Him big medicine wolf. Him spirit wolf."
Whereupon he drank the tea the other had brewed for him, closed his lips
tightly, and said no more. His outline was discernible on the shore,
rigid and motionless, an hour later, when Hyde's canoe turned the
corner of the lake three miles away, and landed to make the portages up
the first rapid of his homeward stream.
It was Morton who, after some persuasion, supplied further details
of what he called the legend. Some hundred years before, the tribe
that lived in the territory beyond the lake began their annual
medicine-making ceremonies on the big rocky bluff at the northern end;
but no medicine could be made. The spirits, declared the chief medicine
man, would not answer. They were offended. An investigation followed. It
was discovered that a young brave had recently killed a wolf, a thing
strictly forbidden, since the wolf was the totem animal of the tribe. To
make matters worse, the name of the guilty man was Running Wolf. The
offence being unpardonable, the man was cursed and driven from the
tribe:
"Go out. Wander alone among the woods, and if we see you we slay you.
Your bones shall be scattered in the forest, and your spirit shall not
enter the Happy Hunting Grounds till one of another race shall find and
bury them."
"Which meant," explained Morton laconically, his only comment on the
story, "probably for ever."
IV
FIRST HATE
They had been shooting all day; the weather had been perfect and the
powder straight, so that when they assembled in the smoking-room after
dinner they were well pleased with themselves. From discussing the day's
sport and the weather outlook, the conversation drifted to other, though
still cognate, fields. Lawson, the crack shot of the party, mentioned
the instinctive recognition all animals feel for their natural enemies,
and gave several instances in which he had tested it--tame rats with a
ferret, birds with a snake, and so forth.
"Even after being domesticated for generations," he said, "they
recognize their natural enemy at once by instinct, an enemy they can
never even have seen before. It's infallible. They know instantly."
"Undoubtedly," said a voice from the corner chair; "and so do we."
The speaker was Ericssen, their host, a great hunter before the Lord,
generally uncommunicative but a good listener, leaving the talk to
others. For this latter reason, as well as for a certain note of
challenge in his voice, his abrupt statement gained attention.
"What do you mean exactly by 'so do we'?" asked three men together,
after waiting some seconds to see whether he meant to elaborate, which
he evidently did not.
"We belong to the animal kingdom, of course," put in a fourth, for
behind the challenge there obviously lay a story, though a story that
might be difficult to drag out of him. It was.
Ericssen, who had leaned forward a moment so that his strong, humorous
face was in clear light, now sank back again into his chair, his
expression concealed by the red lampshade at his side. The light played
tricks, obliterating the humorous, almost tender lines, while
emphasizing the strength of the jaw and nose. The red glare lent to the
whole a rather grim expression.
Lawson, man of authority among them, broke the little pause.
"You're dead right," he observed, "but how do you know it?"--for John
Ericssen never made a positive statement without a good reason for it.
That good reason, he felt sure, involved a personal proof, but a story
Ericssen would never tell before a general audience. He would tell it
later, however, when the others had left. "There's such a thing as
instinctive antipathy, of course," he added, with a laugh, looking
around him. "That's what you mean probably."
"I meant exactly what I said," replied the host bluntly. "There's first
love. There's first hate, too."
"Hate's a strong word," remarked Lawson.
"So is love," put in another.
"Hate's strongest," said Ericssen grimly. "In the animal kingdom, at
least," he added suggestively, and then kept his lips closed, except to
sip his liquor, for the rest of the evening--until the party at length
broke up, leaving Lawson and one other man, both old trusted friends of
many years' standing.
"It's not a tale I'd tell to everybody," he began, when they were alone.
"It's true, for one thing; for another, you see, some of those good
fellows"--he indicated the empty chairs with an expressive nod of his
great head--"some of 'em knew him. You both knew him too, probably."
"The man you hated," said the understanding Lawson.
"And who hated me," came the quiet confirmation. "My other reason," he
went on, "for keeping quiet was that the tale involves my wife."
The two listeners said nothing, but each remembered the curiously long
courtship that had been the prelude to his marriage. No engagement had
been announced, the pair were devoted to one another, there was no known
rival on either side; yet the courtship continued without coming to its
expected conclusion. Many stories were afloat in consequence. It was a
social mystery that intrigued the gossips.
"I may tell you two," Ericssen continued, "the reason my wife refused
for so long to marry me. It is hard to believe, perhaps, but it is true.
Another man wished to make her his wife, and she would not consent to
marry me until that other man was dead. Quixotic, absurd, unreasonable?
If you like. I'll tell you what she said." He looked up with a
significant expression in his face which proved that he, at least, did
not now judge her reason foolish. "'Because it would be murder,' she
told me. 'Another man who wants to marry me would kill you.'"
"She had some proof for the assertion, no doubt?" suggested Lawson.
"None whatever," was the reply. "Merely her woman's instinct. Moreover,
_I_ did not know who the other man was, nor would she ever tell me."
"Otherwise you might have murdered him instead?" said Baynes, the second
listener.
"I did," said Ericssen grimly. "But without knowing he was the man." He
sipped his whisky and relit his pipe. The others waited.
"Our marriage took place two months later--just after Hazel's
disappearance."
"Hazel?" exclaimed Lawson and Baynes in a single breath. "Hazel! Member
of the Hunters!" His mysterious disappearance had been a nine days'
wonder some ten years ago. It had never been explained. They had all
been members of the Hunters' Club together.
"That's the chap," Ericssen said. "Now I'll tell you the tale, if you
care to hear it." They settled back in their chairs to listen, and
Ericssen, who had evidently never told the affair to another living soul
except his own wife, doubtless, seemed glad this time to tell it to two
men.
"It began some dozen years ago when my brother Jack and I came home from
a shooting trip in China. I've often told you about our adventures
there, and you see the heads hanging up here in the smoking-room--some
of 'em." He glanced round proudly at the walls. "We were glad to be in
town again after two years' roughing it, and we looked forward to our
first good dinner at the club, to make up for the rotten cooking we had
endured so long. We had ordered that dinner in anticipatory detail many
a time together. Well, we had it and enjoyed it up to a point--the point
of the _entree_, to be exact.
"Up to that point it was delicious, and we let ourselves go, I can tell
you. We had ordered the very wine we had planned months before when we
were snow-bound and half starving in the mountains." He smacked his lips
as he mentioned it. "I was just starting on a beautifully cooked
grouse," he went on, "when a figure went by our table, and Jack looked
up and nodded. The two exchanged a brief word of greeting and
explanation, and the other man passed on. Evidently they knew each other
just enough to make a word or two necessary, but enough.
"'Who's that?' I asked.
"'A new member, named Hazel,' Jack told me. 'A great shot.' He knew him
slightly, he explained; he had once been a client of his--Jack was a
barrister, you remember--and had defended him in some financial case or
other. Rather an unpleasant case, he added. Jack did not 'care about'
the fellow, he told me, as he went on with his tender wing of grouse."
Ericssen paused to relight his pipe a moment.
"Not care about him!" he continued. "It didn't surprise me, for my own
feeling, the instant I set eyes on the fellow, was one of violent,
instinctive dislike that amounted to loathing. Loathing! No. I'll give
it the right word--hatred. I simply couldn't help myself; I hated the
man from the very first go off. A wave of repulsion swept over me as I
followed him down the room a moment with my eyes, till he took his seat
at a distant table and was out of sight. Ugh! He was a big, fat-faced
man, with an eyeglass glued into one of his pale-blue cod-like eyes--out
of condition, ugly as a toad, with a smug expression of intense
self-satisfaction on his jowl that made me long to----
"I leave it to you to guess what I would have liked to do to him. But
the instinctive loathing he inspired in me had another aspect, too. Jack
had not introduced us during the momentary pause beside our table, but
as I looked up I caught the fellow's eye on mine--he was glaring at
me instead of at Jack, to whom he was talking--with an expression of
malignant dislike, as keen evidently as my own. That's the other aspect
I meant. He hated me as violently as I hated him. We were instinctive
enemies, just as the rat and ferret are instinctive enemies. Each
recognized a mortal foe. It was a case--I swear it--of whoever got first
chance."
"Bad as that!" exclaimed Baynes. "I knew him by sight. He wasn't pretty,
I'll admit."
"I knew him to nod to," Lawson mentioned. "I never heard anything
particular against him." He shrugged his shoulders.
Ericssen went on. "It was not his character or qualities I hated," he
said. "I didn't even know them. That's the whole point. There's no
reason you fellows should have disliked him. _My_ hatred--our mutual
hatred--was instinctive, as instinctive as first love. A man knows his
natural mate; also he knows his natural enemy. I did, at any rate, both
with him and with my wife. Given the chance, Hazel would have done me
in; just as surely, given the chance, I would have done him in. No
blame to either of us, what's more, in my opinion."
"I've felt dislike, but never hatred like that," Baynes mentioned. "I
came across it in a book once, though. The writer did not mention the
instinctive fear of the human animal for its natural enemy, or anything
of that sort. He thought it was a continuance of a bitter feud begun in
an earlier existence. He called it memory."
"Possibly," said Ericssen briefly. "My mind is not speculative. But I'm
glad you spoke of fear. I left that out. The truth is, I feared the
fellow, too, in a way; and had we ever met face to face in some wild
country without witnesses I should have felt justified in drawing on him
at sight, and he would have felt the same. Murder? If you like. I should
call it self-defence. Anyhow, the fellow polluted the room for me. He
spoilt the enjoyment of that dinner we had ordered months before in
China."
"But you saw him again, of course, later?"