edged his herd back a little way into the host, so that it no longer
formed the vanguard. The white men killed savagely and insatiably all
along both flanks, as if not the need of hides and meat, but the sheer
lust of killing possessed them. One hunter, whose pony had stepped into
a badger-hole and fallen with him, was gored and trampled by a wounded
bull. This fired his comrades to a more implacable savagery. They
noticed that the host was a scanty one compared with the countless
myriads of preceding years. "Them redskins up north have been robbing
us!" they shouted, with fine logic. Then they remembered that the
migrating herds were anxiously awaited by other tribes of Indians
further south, who largely depended upon the bison for their living. An
inspiration seized them. "Let's fix the red varmints! If we jest wipe
these 'ere buffalo clean out, right now, the redskins'll starve, an'
this country'll be well quit o' them!"
But strive as they might to carry out this humane intention, for all
their slaughter on the flanks, the solid nucleus of the host remained
unshaken, and kept drifting steadily southward. It began to look as if,
in spite of Fate, a mighty remnant would yet make good its way into the
broken country, dangerous with hostile Indians, whither the white
hunters would hesitate to pursue. It was decided, therefore, to check
the southward march of the host by splitting it up into sections and
scattering it to this side and that, thus depriving it of the united
migrant impulse, and leaving its destruction to be completed at more
leisure.
These men knew the bison and his deep-rooted habits. In knots of three
and four they stationed themselves, on their ponies, directly in the
path of the advancing host.
On the flanks they attracted small attention. But directly in front,
the sight of them aroused the leaders of the march to fury. They pawed
the ground, snorted noisily, and then charged with their massive heads
low down. And the whole host, with sudden rising rage, charged with
them. It looked as if those little knots of waiting men and ponies must
be annihilated.
But when that dark, awful torrent of rolling manes, wild eyes, keen
horns, and shattering hoofs drew close upon the waiting groups of men,
these lifted their guns and fired, one after the other, straight in the
faces of the nearest bulls.
The result was instantaneous, as usual. Whether, as in most cases, the
leaders fell, or, as in other instances, they escaped, the rolling
torrent split and parted at once to either side as if the flame and roar
from the muzzles of the guns had been so many shoulders of rock. Once
divided, and panic-stricken by finding their foes at the heart of their
array, the herds went to pieces hopelessly, and were easily driven off
toward all points of the compass.
But in one instance--just one--the plan of the slaughterers did not
work out quite as anticipated.
Three of the hunters had taken station exactly opposite the center of
the host. Brown Bull and his herd were immediately behind the front rank
at this point. When the great charge was met by the roar and the
spirting flames, the leading bull went down, and the front rank split,
as a matter of course, to pass on either side of this terrifying
obstacle. But Brown Bull seemed to feel that here and now, straight
before him, was the unknown peril which had been shaking his heart
throughout the whole long march. In this moment his heart was no more
shaken, and the tradition of his ancestors, which bade him follow his
leaders like a sheep, was torn up by the roots. He did not swerve, but
swept down straight upon the astonished knot of horsemen; his trusting
herd came with him; and all behind, as usual, followed blindly.
[Illustration: "The shambles of the plain."]
The three white men turned to flee before the torrent of death. But
Brown Bull caught the leader's pony in the flank, ripped it and bore it
down, passing straight on over the bodies, which, in a dozen seconds,
were hardly to be distinguished from the earth to which they had so
suddenly and so awfully been rendered back. Of the other two, one made
good his escape, because his pony had taken alarm more quickly than its
master and turned in time. The third was overtaken because a cow which
he had wounded stumbled in his way, and he and his pony went out along
with her beneath the hoofs of Brown Bull's herd.
Brown Bull gave no heed to his triumph, if, indeed, he realized it at
all.
What he realized was that the apprehended doom had fallen upon the host,
and the host was no more. He kept on with his long, lumbering gallop,
till he had his herd well clear of all the struggling remnants of the
host, which he saw running aimlessly this way and that, the slaughterers
hanging to them like wolves. The sight did not interest him, but, as it
covered the whole plain behind him, he could not escape it if he looked
back. Forward the way was clear. Far forward and to the right, he saw
woods and ridgy uplands, and purple-blue beyond the uplands a range of
ragged hills. Thither he led his herd, allowing them not a moment to
rest or pasture so long as the shambles of the plain remained in view.
But that night, the tiny, lonely remnant of the vanished myriads of
their kin, they fed and slept securely in a well-grassed glade among the
hills.
A Master of Supply
Unlike his reserved and supercilious red cousin of kindlier latitudes,
Blue Fox was no lover of solitude; and seeing that the only solitude he
knew was the immeasurable desolation of the Arctic barrens, this was not
strange. The loneliness of these unending and unbroken plains, rolled
out flat beneath the low-hung sky to a horizon of white haze, might have
weighed down even so dauntless a spirit as his had he not taken care to
fortify himself against it. This he did, very sagaciously, by
cultivating the companionship of his kind. His snug burrow beneath the
stunted bush-growth of the plains was surrounded by the burrows of
perhaps a score of his race.
During the brief but brilliant Arctic summer, which flared across the
lonely wastes with a fervor which strove to compensate for the weary
duration of its absence, the life of Blue Fox was not arduous. But
during the long, sunless winters, with their wild snows, their yelling
gales, their interminable night, and their sudden descents of still,
intense frost, so bitter that it seemed as if the incalculable cold of
outer space were invading this undefended outpost of the world, then
Blue Fox and his fellows would have had a sorry time of it but for two
considerations. They had their cheer of association in the snug burrows
deep beneath the covering of the snows; and they had their food
supplies, laid by with wise forethought in the season when food was
abundant.
Therefore, when the old bear, grown too restless and savage to
hibernate, had often to roam the darkness hungry, and when the wolf-pack
was forced to range the frozen leagues for hardly meat enough to keep
their gaunt flanks from falling in, the provident foxes had little to
fear from either cold or famine.
The burrow of Blue Fox was dug in a patch of dry, sandy soil that formed
a sort of island half a dozen acres broad in the vast surrounding sea of
the swampy tundra. The island was not high enough or defined enough to
be called a knoll. To the eye it was nothing more than an almost
imperceptible bulge in the enormous monotony of the levels. But its
elevation was enough to secure it good drainage and a growth of more
varied herb and bush than that of the moss-covered tundra, with here and
there a little open space of turf and real grass which afforded its
tenants room to bask deliciously in the glow of the precipitate summer.
Hot and melting as the Arctic summer might be, it could never reach with
its ardent fingers the foundations of eternal frost which underlay all
that land at a depth of a very few feet. So Blue Fox dug his burrow not
too deep, but rather on a gentle slant, and formed his chamber at a
depth of not much more than two feet below the roots of the bushes.
Abundantly lined with fine, dry grasses, which he and his family kept
scrupulously clean, it was always warm and dry and sweet.
It was an afternoon in the first of the summer, one of those long,
unclouded, glowing, warm afternoons of the Arctic, when the young shoots
of herb and bush seem to lengthen visibly under the eye of the watcher,
and the flower-buds open impetuously as if in haste for the caresses of
the eager moths and flies. For the moment the vast expanses of the
barren were not lonely. The nesting juncos and snow-buntings twittered
cheerfully among the busy growths. The mating ducks clamored harshly
along the bright coils of the sluggish stream which wound its way
through the marshes. On an islet in the middle of a reedy mere, some
half-mile to the east, a pair of great white trumpeter swans had their
nest, scornful of concealment. A mile or more off to the west a herd of
caribou browsed the young green shoots of the tundra growth, moving
slowly northward. The windless air was faintly musical with the hum of
insects and with the occasional squeaks and scurryings of unseen lemming
mice in their secret roadways under the dense green sphagnum. Blue Fox
sat up, not far from the entrance to his tunnel, blinking lazily in the
glow and watching the play of his fuzzy cubs and their slim, young,
blue-gray mother in and out their doorway. Scattered here and there over
their naked little domain he saw the families of his kindred, similarly
care-free and content with life.
But care-free as he was, Blue Fox never forgot that the price of freedom
from care was eternal vigilance. Between his eyes and the pallid horizon
he detected a wide-winged bird swinging low over the marshes. He knew at
once what it was that with slow-moving, deliberate wings came up,
nevertheless, so swiftly. It was no goose, or brant, or fish-loving
merganser, or inland wandering saddleback gull that flew in such a
fashion. He gave a shrill yelp of warning, answered at once from all
over the colony; and at once the playing cubs whisked into their burrows
or drew close to their mothers, and sat up to stare with bright,
suspicious eyes at the strong-winged flier.
Blue Fox himself, like most of his full-grown fellows, never stirred.
But his eyes never swerved for a second from the approach of that
ominous, winnowing shape. It was a great Arctic hawk-owl, white mottled
with chocolate; and it seemed to be hunting in a leisurely fashion, as
if well fed and seeking excitement rather than a meal. It came straight
on toward the colony of the foxes, flying lower and lower, till Blue Fox
began to gather his steel-like muscles to be ready for a spring at its
throat if it should come within reach. It passed straight over his head,
its terrible hooked beak half open, its wide, implacable eyes,
jewel-bright and hard as glass, glaring downward with still menace. But,
with all its courage, it did not dare attack any one of the calmly
watchful foxes. It made a sweeping half-circuit of the colony, and then
sailed on toward the mere of the white swans. Just at the edge of the
mere it dropped suddenly into a patch of reeds, to flap up again, a
second later, with a limp form trailing from its talons--the form of a
luckless mother-duck surprised in brooding her eggs. A great hubbub of
startled and screaming water-fowl pursued the marauder; but the swans
from their islet, as the foxes from their colony, looked on with silent
indifference.
Blue Fox, basking in the sun, was by and by seized with a restlessness,
a sense of some duty left undone. He was not hungry, for the wastes were
just now so alive with nesting birds and swarming lemmings, and their
fat little cousins, the lemming mice, that his hunting was a swift and
easy matter. He did not even have to help his mate, occupied though she
was, in a leisurely way, with the care of her cubs. But across his mind
came an insistent memory of the long and bitter Arctic night, when the
world would seem to snap under the deadly intensity of the cold, and
there would be no birds but a few ptarmigan in the snow, and the fat
lemmings would be safe beneath the frozen roofs of their tunnels, and
his cleverest hunting would hardly serve him to keep the keen edge off
his hunger. In the first sweet indolence of spring he had put far from
him the remembrance of the famine season. But now it was borne in upon
him that he must make provision against it. Shaking off his nonchalance,
he got up, stretched himself elaborately, and trotted down briskly into
the tundra.
He picked his way daintily over the wide beds of moist sphagnum, making
no more sound as he went than if his feet had been of thistledown. At
some distance from the skirts of the colony the moss was full of
scurrying and squeaking noises. Presently he crouched and crept forward
like a cat. The next instant he pounced with an indescribable speed and
lightness, his head and forepaws disappearing into the moss. He had
penetrated into one of the screened runways of the little people of the
sphagnum. The next moment he lifted his head with a fat lemming dangling
from either side of his fine jaws. He laid down the prize and inspected
it with satisfaction--a round-bodied creature some six inches long, of a
gray color mottled with rusty red, with a mere apology for a tail, and
with the toes of its forepaws exaggeratedly developed, for use, perhaps,
in constructing its mossy tunnels. For a few seconds Blue Fox pawed his
prey playfully, as one of his cubs would have done. Then, bethinking
himself of the serious business which he had in hand, he picked it up
and trotted off to a dry spot which he knew of, just on the fringe of
the island.
Now, of one thing Blue Fox was well aware, it having been borne in upon
him by experience--viz., that a kill not soon eaten would speedily spoil
in this weather. But he knew something else, which he could only have
arrived at by the strictly rational process of putting two and two
together--he understood the efficacy of cold storage.
Burrowing down through the light soil, he dug himself a little cellar,
the floor of which was the stratum of perpetual frost. Here, in this
preservative temperature, he deposited the body of the fat lemming, and
covered the place from prying eyes with herbage and bush drawn lightly
over it. Hunting easily and when the mood was upon him, he brought three
more lemmings to the storehouse that same day. On the next day and the
next an Arctic tempest swept over the plain, an icy rain drove level in
whipping sheets, the low sky was crowded with hurrying ranks of torn
black vapor, and the wise foxes kept to their holes. Then the sun came
back to the waste places, and Blue Fox returned to his hunting.
Without in any way pushing himself, without stinting his own repasts or
curtailing his hours of indolence or of play, Blue Fox attended to his
problem of supply so efficiently that in the course of a couple of weeks
he had perhaps two score plump carcasses, lemmings and mice, laid out in
this cold storage cellar of his. Then he filled it in right to the top
with grass roots, turf, and other dry stuff that would not freeze into
armor-plate, covered it over with light soil and bushes, and left it to
await the hour of need.
In the course of the summer, Blue Fox, like all his fellows, established
a number of these lemming _caches_, till by the time when the southward
bird-flight proclaimed the summer at an end, the question of supply was
one to give him no further anxiety. When the days were shrunken to an
hour or two of sunlight, and the tundra was frozen to stone, and the
winds drove the fine snow before them in blinding drifts, then Blue Fox
dismissed his stores from his mind and devoted himself merrily to the
hunting of his daily rations. The Arctic hares were still abundant, and
not yet overwild from ceaseless harrying; and though the chase of these
long-legged and nimble leapers was no facile affair, it was by no means
too arduous for the tastes of an enterprising and active forager like
Blue Fox.
In the meantime the household of Blue Fox, like all the other households
in the little colony, had been substantially reduced in numbers. All
the cubs, by this time grown nearly to full stature, if not to full
wisdom, had migrated. There was neither room nor supply for them now in
the home burrows, and they had not yet arrived at the sense of
responsibility and forethought that would lead them to dig burrows for
themselves. Gently enough, perhaps, but with a firmness which left no
room for argument, the youngsters had all been turned out of doors.
There seemed but one thing for them to do--to follow the southward
migration of the game; and lightly they had done it. They had a hard
winter before them, but with good hunting, and fair luck in dodging the
traps and other perils that were bound to dog their inexperienced feet,
they would return next spring, ripe with wisdom and experience, dig
burrows of their own, and settle down to the responsibilities of Arctic
family life.
To Blue Fox, sleeping warm in his dry burrow when he would, and secure
in the knowledge of his deep-stored supplies, the gathering menace of
the cold brought no terrors. By the time the sun had disappeared
altogether, and the often brilliant but always terrible and mysterious
Arctic night had settled firmly upon the barrens, game had grown so
scarce and shy that even so shrewd a hunter as Blue Fox might often
range a whole day without the luck to capture a ptarmigan or a hare. The
hare, of course, like the ptarmigan, was at this season snowy-white; and
Blue Fox would have had small fortune, indeed, in the chase had he
himself remained in summer livery. With the setting in of the snow, he
had quickly changed his coat to a like color; and therefore, with his
wariness, his unerring nose, and his marvelous lightness of tread, he
was sometimes able to surprise the swift hare asleep. In this fashion,
too, he would often capture a ptarmigan, pouncing upon it just as the
startled bird was spreading its wings for flight. When he failed in
either venture--which was often enough the case--he felt himself in no
way cast down. He had the excitement of the chase, the satisfaction of
stretching his strong, lithe muscles in the race across the hard snow.
And then, when the storm clouds were down close upon the levels, and all
the world was black, and the great winds from the Pole, bitterer than
death, raved southward with their sheeted ghosts of fine drift--then
Blue Fox, with his furry mate beside him, lay blinking contentedly in
the deep of his burrow, with food and to spare close at hand.
But happy as he was in the main, Blue Fox was not without his cares. Two
enemies he had, so strong and cunning that the menace of them was never
very far from his consciousness. The wolf, his master in strength,
though not in craft, was always ready to hunt him with a bitter
combination of hunger and of hate. And the wolverine, cunning beyond all
the other kindreds of the wild, and of a sullen ferocity which few would
dare to cross, was forever on the search for the stored supplies of the
foxes.
The wolverine, solitary and morose, slow of movement, and defiant even
toward the Polar storm, prowled in all weathers. One day chance led him
upon one of Blue Fox's storage cellars. The snow had been recently pawed
away, and the wolverine, quick to take the hint, began instantly to dig.
It was astonishingly easy work. His short, powerful forepaws made the
dry turf and light earth fly, and speedily he came to the store of
frozen lemmings. But before he had quite glutted his great appetite, he
was interrupted.
Though the storm was raging over the outer world, to Blue Fox in his
burrow had come a monition of evil. He had whisked out to inspect his
stores. He found the wolverine head downward in his choicest cellar.
Hot as was his rage, it did not burn up his discretion. This was a peril
to be dealt with drastically. He knew that, if the robber was merely
driven off, he would return and haunt the purlieus of the colony, and
end by finding and rifling every storehouse in the neighborhood.
Blue Fox stole back and roused the occupants of the nearest burrows. In
two minutes a dozen angry foxes were out and creeping through the storm.
In vengeful silence they fell upon the thief as he feasted carelessly;
and in spite of the savage fight he put up, they tore him literally to
pieces.
[Illustration: "He found the wolverine head downward in his choicest
cellar."]
The danger of the wolves was more terrible and more daunting. All
through the first half of the winter there had been no sign of a wolf in
the neighborhood, the trail of the wandering caribou having lured them
far to the eastward. Then it chanced, when Blue Fox was chasing a hare
over the snow, beneath the green, rose, and violet dancing flames of the
aurora, that a thin, quavering howl came to his ears. He stopped short.
He lost all interest in the hare. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a
grayish patch moving swiftly under the shifting radiance. It was on his
trail, that patch of death. He lengthened himself out, belly to earth,
and sped for the burrows. And the dancing lights, shifting from color to
color as they clustered and hurtled across the arch of sky, seemed to
stoop in cold laughter over his lonely and desperate flight.
Blue Fox could run fast, but his best speed was slow in comparison with
that of his gaunt and long-limbed foes. He knew that, had the race
before him been a long one, it could have but one result. A glance over
his shoulder, as he ran, showed him that the gray shapes were
overhauling him; and, knowing that the distance to his burrow was not
long, he felt that he had a chance. A sporting chance, however small,
was enough for his courageous spirit, and he raced on with good heart
at a pace which soon stretched his lungs near to bursting. But he spared
breath for a sharp yelp of warning, which carried far in the stillness
and signaled to his fellows the peril that approached.
As the wolves came up, the fugitive could hear the strong, relentless
padding of their feet, and then, half a minute later, the measured hiss
of their breathing, the occasional hard click of their fangs. But he did
not look back. His ears gave him all the information he required, and he
could not afford to risk the loss of the slenderest fraction of a
second. As he reached the nearest burrow--it was not his own--it seemed
as if the dreadful sounds were already overwhelming him. He dived into
the burrow, and jaws of steel clashed at his tail as he vanished.
With a chorus of snarls, the disappointed pack brought up abruptly,
checking themselves back upon their haunches. The leaders fell to
digging at the burrow, while others scattered off to try the same
experiment at the other burrows of the colony. But Blue Fox, breathless
and triumphant, only showed his teeth derisively. He knew that no
wolf-claws could make any impression on the hard-frozen earth
surrounding the inner portals of the colony. The wolves discovered by
chance one of the supply cellars, and quarreled for a moment over the
dozen or so of tit-bits which it contained. And then, realizing that it
was no use hanging about in the expectation that any fox would come out
to be eaten, the wise old pack-leader swung the pack into ranks and
swept them off to hunt other quarry. When the thudding rhythm of their
footsteps died into silence, the foxes all came out and sat under the
dancing lights, and stared after the terrible receding shapes with a
calm and supercilious scorn.
The White Wolf
On the night when he was born, in the smoke-smelling wigwam beside the
lone Michikamaw, there had come a strange, long howling of the wind amid
the cleft granite heights which overhung the water. At the sound the
fainting girl on the pile of deerskins opened eyes which grew suddenly
wild and dark. She listened intently for a moment, and then groped for
the little form which had been laid at her breast.
"That is his name," she muttered. "He shall be called
Wind-in-the-Night."
The old squaw, her husband's mother, who was attending upon her, shook
her head.
"Hush, my daughter!" she said soothingly. "That is not the wind. That is
the old white wolf howling on the mountain. Let us call him White Wolf,
since he is of the totem of the wolf. And perhaps the old white
wanderer, who disdains to hunt with the pack, will befriend him and
bring him good fortune."
"His name is Wind in-the-Night," said the young mother, in a voice
suddenly loud and piercing. Then she turned her head toward the wall of
the wigwam wearily, and, with a sharp sigh, her spirit passed from her
lips, hurrying out over the black spruce ridges and barren hills to seek
the happy hunting grounds of her fathers.
The old woman snatched up the child, lest the mother's spirit in passing
should lure it away with her.
"Yes," she cried hastily, hiding the little one in a fold of her blanket
and glancing over her shoulder, "his name _is_ Wind-in-the-Night."