THE ADVENTURE OF JUMPING WOLF
Jumping Wolf was a young man of twenty years of age, who belonged to
a big village in the south. His father had been chief of the village
until an enemy--a coward who knew a little magic--had first worked his
downfall by secret methods, and then killed him with his own hand. Then
Jumping Wolf killed the murderer with a blow of his club, knocked three
of the false villagers senseless, and ran for his life. That happened
in March, when the snow still lay deep, but with a crust over it in
most places.
Twenty men, old and young and of middle-age, gave hot chase to Jumping
Wolf. They filled the woods with their cries of anger; but the fugitive
ran quietly, saving his breath and his strength. He was a good runner,
and had been named for his agility. Within a half-hour of the fight
in the village, five of the oldest men gave up the pursuit and leaned
heavily against the trunks of trees, gasping for breath. They felt so
many pains in their insides from the unwonted exertions, that they were
sorry they had left the village. It was not long before more of the
pursuers stopped running; and they were so spent that they simply fell
flat on the snow, in agonies of exhaustion. They were very fat, and
wondered why they had been such fools as to join the chase.
Within an hour of the commencement of the flight, only four men
continued to run on the trail of Jumping Wolf. These were strong men,
tireless and courageous. Two of them were seasoned warriors and two
were youths of the fugitive’s age. At last the chase led to an open
barren which, after a mile of level, sloped up to a bleak hill. Here
and there on the barren were ponds and great boulders, and clumps of
spruce-tuck.
Jumping Wolf headed straight across the barren, running evenly and
steadily; and, as he ran, he slipped his bow from his shoulder and
pulled an arrow from the quiver at his belt. He had done nothing but
slay the murderer of his good father, and there was neither relenting
nor fear in his heart. His had been the hand of justice; and if he
must die for it he would die fighting. Death was nothing for a man to
fear--but, life?--ah, it was surely a pleasant state. So he fitted the
notch of an arrow on the string of his bow, and ran on until he reached
a little clump of spruce-tuck. Here he turned, breathing deep. One of
his pursuers was already half-way across the intervening open and the
other three were clear of the woods.
“Go back,” shouted Jumping Wolf.
But the warrior who led the chase paid no heed to the warning. Then
Jumping Wolf raised his bow, pulled the notch of the arrow back to
his ear and let the shaft fly. It struck at the feet of the leading
pursuer, piercing the crust and bringing the warrior to a standstill.
“Go back,” shouted Jumping Wolf, again. This time the enemy obeyed.
Turning quickly, he ran back and joined his companions.
At that they all halted and looked uncertainly toward their quarry,
across the white expanse of snow. One of them carried a spear and the
others clubs or knives; but none of them had bows or arrows. They did
not know what to do next, and stood there, panting and staring. They
had not counted on finding the young man so formidably armed, for his
club had been knocked from his hand during the fight in the village
and they had not seen, during the long run through the woods, the bow
on his back.
Jumping Wolf stepped forward six paces.
“There is no mercy in my heart,” he cried, and again raised his bow,
with an arrow fitted to the string. “You have hunted me like a lone
wolf, now feel how long and sharp are the fangs of Jumping Wolf,” he
shouted, and loosed the shaft. They dodged this way and that; but one
of them stumbled, leaped up again and scooted into the forest with a
flake of sharpened flint sunk in the muscles of his shoulder. Next
moment, another felt the pang of a wound in the flesh of his leg; and
the young man laughed fiercely to see the barren so suddenly cleared of
his enemies.
As only four arrows remained in his quiver, he retraced his steps
to where the first arrow stood upright in the crust and returned it
among its fellows. Then, after a keen scrutiny of the forest woods
into which his enemies had retired, he turned again and continued his
journey across the barren and up the side of the bleak hill. He looked
back, from the ridge of the hill, but could detect no sign of his late
pursuers. Before him lay more barren ground, and beyond that the black
forests stretching on every side. He looked up at the sun, a silver
ball in a sky of March blue.
“I shall go east and south,” he said, and went forward bravely. He
felt no ill effect from the desperate run he had been forced to make.
But grief and anger, and hate for the village that had been his home,
glowed in his heart.
So he travelled for days; and, for a time, he spent his nights without
the cheerful company of fire, not sure that his enemies had left his
trail. He killed enough small game to supply himself with food, and
suffered from nothing except loneliness, and sorrow for his father’s
death. He had known no other care save a father’s since his earliest
years. On the tenth day after his escape from the village, he wounded a
young stag with his arrows and then ran it down in the melting snow. So
he built a small shelter where the stag was killed, and paused in his
journey to make a pair of snow-shoes, and smoke some of the meat.
In this manner he spent more than a week very comfortably. When the
snow-shoes were made, and the best parts of the meat were cured, and a
dozen blunt-headed arrows shaped, for the killing of partridges and
hares, he set out again on his journey.
[Illustration: “HE SPRANG ASIDE INTO THE SHELTER OF A TREE TRUNK, AND
PEERED BACK ALONG THE WAY HE HAD COME.”]
By this time, the soft voices of spring were awake in the
wilderness,--the murmur of streams gnawing at rotten ice, the dull
creakings of subsiding snows, the swish of thawing winds across the
miles of forest. The snow was wet and heavy, where it still lay deep in
drifted places, and Jumping Wolf was glad that he had halted to make
the snow-shoes, rough as they were.
The spring advanced swiftly. Soon the streams were roaring free and
the great rivers were swinging the pans of broken ice in mid-current;
boiling over them, and driving them together, mass upon mass, in
tumbled barriers of white and gray. The lakes and ponds moved in their
depths at the sure call, split the roofs of their prisons, and sent the
sullen fragments adrift.
The shades of night were gathering through the forest, and Jumping Wolf
was beginning to look about him for a suitable place to camp when an
arrow whistled past him, close to his head. He sprang aside, into the
shelter of a tree trunk, and peered back along the way he had come. His
keen sight detected a movement, as of a shadow, slipping among shadows.
He unslung his bow from his shoulder, and in so doing was reminded of
the fact that his snow-shoes, crude, heavy affairs, still hung over his
back, where he had been carrying them since the previous day. He was
about to free himself from their weight, the better to flee or fight,
as the case might be, but he stayed his hand. He might need them.
Anyway, he was pressed for time, now.
He still possessed five barbed arrows. He drew one of these, placed the
notch on the string, and slipped the blunted arrows on the ground. Then
he stood motionless, watching and listening. A small stream, swollen
with snow-water, ran somewhere near at hand, and he could hear no sound
save its gurgling and booming. After a long suspense he saw, by the
faint light, the figure of a man stealing toward him. He waited, alert
and breathless, until it came so near that he knew it for the warrior
at whose feet he had shot the arrow into the crust, on the first day of
his flight. Then, without a word of warning, with the rage of a hunted
beast in his heart, he drew the bow and loosed the shaft. The warrior
uttered a piercing scream, sprang forward and fell on his face.
Jumping Wolf ran, keeping straight to his course through the twilight
forest. He had heard cries of rage in answer to the scream of the
wounded pursuer, and another arrow had passed near him; but now, save
for an occasional swish of underbrush on his track, the hunters made no
sound. He ran steadily, but with care, for the ground was treacherous.
Beyond the bow and four remaining arrows, he was unarmed. He had not
even the flint blade with which he was in the habit of preparing his
meat for cooking. The knife had dropped from his belt, unnoticed, early
in the day. He had not so much as a well-balanced stick, with which to
fight at close quarters.
Presently the ground began to slant before him. He slackened his pace
a little and ran more cautiously; and the pursuit drew nearer. Now the
slope became very marked, and twice, in the thickening darkness, he
stumbled heavily. But friendly underbrush saved him from falling. His
face and body were switched painfully by branches and he bruised his
feet on roots and rocks.
Suddenly, through the dark wood in front, he saw a glimmer of open
spaces, a gray glimmer dotted with lighter spots, and in another second
he stood at the edge of a great lake whose farther shores were hidden
in the night. Pans of ice dotted the grim water for as far as he could
see, and one, of good proportions, swung within sixteen feet of the
shore.
He had been well named when the chief, his father, had called him
Jumping Wolf. Without a moment’s hesitation he retreated a few paces,
then ran forward to the lip of the cold tide and leaped into the air.
And even as he alighted on the raft of ice, on feet and hands, with
bent knees under him, he felt something strike and glance from the
snow-shoes on his back. He had been saved from the flinthead of an
arrow.
The shock of contact drove the ice-pan, sullenly rocking, farther away
from shore. Jumping Wolf steadied himself for a second, crouched low.
An arrow struck the ice close to his hand; another zipped into the
water a few feet beyond. He turned, still crouched low, and loosed his
remaining arrows, in quick succession, at the black shadows. A sharp
cry and more arrows answered him. Two of the shafts struck ringing on
the ice, and glanced across into the water. He removed his snow-shoes
from his back, bound them firmly together, face to face, lay flat as
near one edge of the pan as he dared, and used them for a paddle.
The unwieldy craft answered to the strokes, circling and wallowing,
but drawing steadily away from the dangerous shore. He paddled with
all his strength, and once narrowly escaped pulling himself into the
water. Now the arrows flew wider, and he knew that his enemies were
judging his position, and the distance, without the help of their eyes.
He was already congratulating himself on his temporary escape, when a
shock and pang numbed his wrist. With a groan, he lost his hold on the
improvised paddle. One of the chance arrows had found him out.
The jagged flint had torn an ugly wound in his wrist, which bled
freely; and the pain of it, for a time, was bewildering. His belt was
of soft leather, and with this he bound the wound securely, tying the
bandage with a spare bow-string. After a while he began feeling about,
in the darkness, for his snow-shoes. He probed here and there, on
every side, with his bow; but they had either sunk, with the weight of
raw-hide thongs, or drifted out of reach.
It was cold out on the swollen, ice-drifted lake; and it grew colder
and colder as the hours passed. The night was black and clouded,
without so much as the glint of a star in the sky. A chill wind was
afoot, driving the ice-pans down the lake.
Poor Jumping Wolf found himself in a very discouraging situation. His
right arm from finger tips to shoulder throbbed steadily with the pain
of his hurt. Cold bit every bone and hunger gnawed at his stomach;
and the desolation of this strange, black lake, the extent and name
of which were both unknown to him, got into his soul. But he would
not give up the fight, or even so much as contemplate despair. He had
travelled so far, and made three such brave escapes from his enemies,
that he could not believe the end of his career was at hand. So he
kept on his feet, constantly shifting backward and forward a few steps
each way, and waving his uninjured arm about to keep his blood in
circulation. His great hope was that the pan on which he stood would
be driven to the shore by daylight, or that the ice would be massed
sufficiently close to allow him to gain the shore by leaping from cake
to cake. He knew that, in his condition, weakened from cold and loss of
blood, it would be sure death to attempt a swim of any distance in that
icy water.
The night dragged out its black length. The wind fell; and by the time
a lift of gray dawn showed in the east, Jumping Wolf was crouching on
the ice, fighting an awful weariness and craving for sleep that weighed
on brain, eyes, and limbs. But as the light strengthened, he raised
his head and looked about him. He saw, with a dull disgust (for he was
almost past caring) that the shores were far away and the ice-pans
drifting wide apart. He staggered to his feet and gazed around. Was
that a trail of smoke above the dark trees? If so, perhaps it was from
the camp-fire of his enemies. But smoke meant fire, and fire seemed the
very spirit of life to his chilled brain. He should like to see that
fire, to get close to it, even if death were the price. He could not
persuade himself that death was to be escaped, in any case; so he sent
a shrill cry ringing across the water. Next instant he tottered, and
fell within a finger’s-breadth of the edge of the pan. Horror of the
icy colourless flood sickened him, and he crawled back to safety and
lay quiet.