But when the morning came the impress of the night was dim. A long
howl came over the hill, and the thought that a wolf was on the trail
that he was quitting smote sadly on Yan's heart. They all set out for
the settlement, but within an hour Yan only wanted an excuse to stay.
And when at length they ran onto the fresh track of the Sandhill Stag
himself, the lad was all ablaze once more.
"I cannot go back--something tells me that I must stay--I must see him
face to face again."
The rest had had enough of the bitter frost, so Yan took from the
sleigh a small pot, a blanket, and some food, and left them, to follow
alone the great sharp imprint in the snow.
"Good-by--good luck!"
[Illustration]
He watched the sleigh out of sight, in the low hills, and then felt as
he never had before. Though he had been so many months alone in the
wilds, he had never known loneliness, but as soon as his friends were
gone he was overwhelmed by a sense of the utter heart-sickening
dreariness of the endless, snowy waste. Where were the charms that he
had never failed to find until now? He wanted to recall the sleigh,
but pride kept him silent.
[Illustration]
In a little while it was too late, and soon he was once more in the
power of that fascinating, endless chain of tracks,--a chain begun
years ago, when in a June the track of a mother Blacktail was suddenly
joined by two little ones' tracks. Since then the three had gone on
winding over the land the trail-chains they were forging,--knotted and
kinked, and twisted with every move and thought of the makers,
imprinted with every hap of their lives, but interrupted never wholly.
At times the tracks were joined by that of some fierce foe and the
kind of mark was changed, but the chains went on for months and years,
now fast, now slow, but endless, until some foe more strong joined on
and there one trail was ended. But this great Stag was forging still
that mystic chain. A million roods of hills had he overlaid with its
links, had scribbled over in this oldest script with the story of his
life. If only our eyes were bright enough to follow up that twenty
thousand miles of trail, what light unguessed we might obtain where
the wisest now are groping!
[Illustration]
But skin deep, man is brute. Just a little while ago we were mere
hunting brutes--our bellies were our only thought, that telltale line
of dots was the road to food. No man can follow it far without
feeling a wild beast prickling in his hair and down his spine. Away
Yan went, a hunter-brute once more, all other feelings swamped.
[Illustration]
Late that day the trail, after many a kink and seeming break, led into
a great dense thicket of brittle, quaking asp. Yan knew that the Stag
was there to lie at rest. The deer went in up-wind, of course. His
eyes and ears would watch his trail, and his nose would guard in
front, so Yan went in at one side, trusting to get a shot. With a very
agony of care he made his way, step by step, and, after many minutes,
surely found the track, still leading on. Another lengthy crawl, with
nerves at tense, and then the lad thought he heard a twig snapped
behind him, though the track was still ahead. And after long he found
it true. Before lying down the Stag had doubled back, and while Yan
had thought him still ahead, he was lying far behind, so had gotten
wind of the man and now was miles away.
Once more into the unknown north away, till cold, black night came
down; then Yan sought out a sheltered spot and made a tiny, red-man's
fire. As Chaska had taught him long ago--'Big fire for fool.'
When the lad curled up to sleep he felt a vague wish to turn three
times like a dog, and a well-defined wish that he had fur on his face
and a bushy tail to lay around his freezing hands and feet, for it was
a night of northern frost. Old Peboan was stalking on the snow. The
stars seemed to crackle, so one could almost hear. The trees and earth
were bursting with the awful frost. The ice on a near lake was rent
all night by cracks that went whooping from shore to shore; and down
between the hills there poured the cold that burns.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A prairie-wolf came by in the night, but he did not howl or treat Yan
like an outsider now. He gave a gentle, doglike '_Woof, woof_,' a sort
of 'Oho! so you have come to it at last,' and passed away. Toward
morning the weather grew milder, but with the change there came a
driving snow. The track was blotted out. Yan had heeded nothing else,
and did not know where he was. After travelling an aimless mile or two
he decided to make for Pine Creek, which ought to lie southeastward.
But which way was southeast? The powdery snow was driven along through
the air, blinding, stinging, burning. On all things near it was like
smoke, and on farther things, a driving fog. But he made for a quaking
asp grove, and there, sticking through the snow, he found a crosier
golden-rod, dead and dry, but still faithfully delivering its
message, 'Yon is the north.' With course corrected, on he went, and,
whenever in doubt, dug out this compass-flower, till the country
dipped and Pine Creek lay below.
[Illustration]
There was good camping here, the very spot indeed where, fifteen years
before, Butler had camped on his Loneland Journey; but now the
blizzard had ceased, so Yan spent the day hunting without seeing a
track, and he spent the night as before, wishing that nature had been
kinder to him in the matter of fur. During that first lone night his
face and toes had been frozen and now bore burning sores. But still he
kept on the chase, for something within had told him that the Grail
was surely near. Next day a strange, unreasoning guess sent him east
across the creek in a deerless-looking barren land. Within half a mile
he came on dim tracks made lately in the storm. He followed, and soon
found where six deer had lain at rest, and among them a great, broad
bed and a giant track that only one could have made. The track was
almost fresh, the sign unfrozen still. "Within a mile," he thought.
But within a hundred yards there loomed up on a fog-wrapped hillside
five heads with ears regardant, and at that moment, too, there rose up
from the snowy top a great form like a blasted trunk with two dead
boughs still on. But they had seen him first, and before the deadly
gun could play, six beacons waved and a friendly hill had screened
them from its power.
[Illustration]
The Sandhill Stag had gathered his brood again, yet now that the
murderer was on the track once more, he scattered them as before. But
there was only one track for Yan.
At last the chase led away to the great dip of Pine Creek--a mile-wide
flat, with a long, dense thicket down the middle.
"There is where he is hiding and watching now, but there he will not
rest," said the something within, and Yan kept out of sight and
watched; after half an hour a dark spot left the willow belt and
wandered up the farther hill. When he was well out of sight over the
hill Yan ran across the valley and stalked around to get the trail on
the down-wind side. He found it, and there learned that the Stag was
as wise as he--he had climbed a good lookout and watched his back
trail, then seeing Yan crossing the flat, his track went swiftly
bounding, bounding--.
[Illustration: "Scanned the White World for his Foe."]
The Stag knew just how things stood; a single match to a finish now,
and he led away for a new region. But Yan was learning something he
had often heard--that the swiftest deer can be run down by a hardy
man; for he was as fresh as ever, but the great Stag's bounds were
shortening, he was surely tiring out, he must throw off the hunter
now, or he is lost.
He often mounted a high hill to scan the white world for his foe, and
the after-trail was a record of what he learned or feared. At last his
trail came to a sudden end. This was a mystery until long study showed
how he had returned backward on his own track for a hundred yards,
then bounded aside to fly in another direction. Three times he did
this, and then passed through an aspen thicket and, returning, lay
down in this thicket near his own track, so that in following, Yan
must pass where the Stag could smell and hear him long before the
trail brought the hunter over-close.
All these doublings and many more like them were patiently unravelled
and the shortening bounds were straightened out once more till, as
daylight waned, the tracks seemed to grow stale and the bounds again
grow long. After a little, Yan became wholly puzzled, so he stopped
right there and spent another wretched night. Next day at dawn he
worked it out.
He found he had been running the trail he had already run. With a long
hark-back, the doubt was cleared. The desperate Stag had joined onto
his old track and bounded aside at length to let the hunter follow the
cold scent. But the join-on was found and the real trail read, and
the tale that it told was of a great Stag wearing out, too tired to
eat, too scared to sleep, with a tireless hunter after.
[Illustration]