Through the thick drive of the snowflakes—small, hard, bitter flakes,
borne on the long wind of the terrible Coppermine barrens—the man and the
beast stood staring at each other, motionless. In the beast’s eyes was a
heavy wonder, mixed with curiosity and dread. Never before had he seen
any being like this erect slim shape, veiled and vague and dark in the
whirling drift. He felt it to be dangerous, but he was loath to tear
himself away from the scrutiny of it.
The man, on the other hand, had neither wonder, curiosity, nor dread in
his gaze. He knew that the black and massive apparition before him was a
musk-ox. His first impulse had been to snatch up his rifle and shoot,
before the beast could fade off into the white confusion of the storm.
But his practised eye had told him that the animal was an old bull. His
necessity was not fierce enough to drive him to the eating of such
flesh—tough and reeking to nausea with musk. He wanted a young cow whose
meat would be tender and sweet as caribou. He was content to wait,
knowing that the herd must be near, and would not leave these
feeding-grounds unless frightened. At this season the black bull, there
staring at him heavily through the drift, would not be solitary.
The man was a trapper, who was making his way down the river to the
Hudson Bay Company’s post at the mouth. Through failure of the caribou to
come his way according to their custom, his supplies had run short, and
he was seeking the post in good time before the pinch of hunger should
fix itself upon him. But he had had bad luck. The failure of the caribou
had hit others besides himself. The wolves had suffered by it. Perhaps,
in their shrewd and savage spirits, they had blamed the man for the
absence of their accustomed quarry. Some weeks before his start they had
craftily picked off his dogs—a reasonable and satisfying retaliation. And
now the man was hauling the sledge himself.
In a moment’s lift of the storm, the man had noted a little valley, a
depression in the vast wind-swept level of the barrens, lying but a
couple of stone’s-throws aside from the banks of the river which was his
guide. He knew that there he would find a dense growth of the stunted
firs which spring up wherever they can find shelter from the wind. There
he knew he would find dry stuff in plenty for his fire. There he would
take covert till the storm should go down and suffer him to trail the
musk-ox herd. After eying the black bull steadily for some minutes, he
softly turned away, and without haste made for the valley of the little
firs, dragging the laden sledge behind him.
The black bull snorted thickly and took several steps forward. The
strange figure fading silently away through the drift evidently feared
him. A fleeing foe was surely to be followed. But that long dark shape
crawling at the stranger’s heels—_that_ looked formidable and very
mysterious. The beast stopped, shook his head, snorted again more loudly,
and drew back those few paces which he had advanced. Perhaps it was just
as well not to be too bold in interrogating the unknown. After a few
moments of hesitation he wheeled aside, lifted his massive and shaggy
head, sniffed the air, listened intently, and withdrew to rejoin the
little herd, which was lying down and contentedly chewing the cud, all
indifferent to the drive of the polar storm.
The black bull of the barrens, as he stood and eyed contemplatively the
resting herd, showed small in stature but extraordinarily massive in
build. A scant six feet in length from muzzle to root of tail, and not
much over three feet high at the shoulder, he was modelled, nevertheless,
on lines that for power a mammoth might have envied. His square frame was
clothed with long blackish hair reaching almost to the fetlocks. His
ponderous head, maned and shaggy, was armed with short crescent horns,
keen-tipped and serviceable for battle. And he carried it swung low,
muzzle in and front well forward, always ready for defence against the
enemies of the herd.
The herd numbered some dozen or fifteen cows, armed and powerful like
their mates, several younger bulls, and perhaps a dozen yearling or
two-year-old calves. At one moment, as the fierce drift slackened, they
would all be more or less visible—shrouded, dark forms with contemplative
eyes, peacefully ruminating. A moment more and they would vanish, as the
snow again closed down about them.
It was the old bull alone who seemed to be thoroughly on the alert.
Hither and thither, with a certain slow vigilance, he moved through the
herd. All at once he lifted his head sharply and questioned the air with
dilating nostrils, while his eyes gleamed with anger and anxiety. The
next instant he stamped his foot and gave a loud abrupt call, half bleat,
half bellow.
Plainly it was a signal well understood. In a second the whole herd was
on its feet. In another, with lightning precision, it had formed itself
into a compact circle, using the watchful leader as the basic point of
its formation. The calves, butted unceremoniously into the centre,
hustled one upon the other, with uplifted muzzles over each other’s
shoulders and mild eyes staring with startled fright. The outer rim of
the circle became a fringe of sullen lowering foreheads, angry eyes and
keen horns jutting formidably from snow-powdered manes of dark hair.
Not a member of the musk-ox herd, to the youngest calf, but knew very
well against what enemy the old bull had so suddenly marshalled them into
fighting phalanx. For some moments, however—long, tense, vigilant
moments—nothing appeared. Then at last, through the driving flakes, they
caught sight of several gaunt, leaping forms, gray and shadowy, which
swept down upon them in silence out of the storm.
With terrible suddenness and speed they came, these leaping forms, as if
they would hurl themselves blindly upon the massed herd. But the line of
lowered horns never flinched or wavered, and with a short snarl from
their leader the wolves swerved, just in time to escape a savage thrust
from the old bull. They swerved, strung out into line, and went loping
round the circle, their narrowed, greenish, merciless eyes glaring into
the obstinate ones of the musk-oxen. Again and again they circled the
rampart of horns, again and again they drew off and swept up furiously to
the assault, hoping to find some weak point in the defences—some timorous
young cow who would shrink and swerve at their assault and open a breach
in the line. But there was no cow in that herd afflicted with any such
suicidal folly. The snow-spotted, lowering line of heads waited unshaken,
and presently the wolves—there were seven of them—bunched together a few
paces from the circle and seemed to consider. Two of them sat down upon
their haunches with their tongues hanging out, and eyed the rampart of
horned fronts evilly, while the others stood with their heads together,
or prowled restlessly back and forth. They might, indeed, with the vast
leaping power of their long legs and muscular haunches, have sprung clear
over the line of defence, and gained in two seconds the helpless calves
in the centre; but they knew what that would mean. The herd would turn in
upon them in a blind, uncalculating fury and trample them underfoot. For
the moment, therefore, they hung wavering in irresolution, looking for a
sign from the leader of the pack.
In the meantime the man had found his valley hollow and the shelter of
the expected colony of dwarf firs. Here the snow lay soft and undrifted.
In a recess of the fir-thicket he trod it down with his snowshoes, and
made haste to build himself a little fire of dead sticks. Above his head,
above the shrouded fir-tops, above the rim of the hollow, the storm drove
by unabated; but the snowflakes that escaped from the tumult to filter
down into this retreat were too light and fine and dry to interfere with
the fire. In two or three minutes the flames were crackling up clear and
free, with little spittings and fine hissings where the flakes fell at
their thin edges.
Having collected a pile of dry sticks within easy reach, the man
stretched a couple of stitched caribou hides on poles to form a sloping
roof over his head, cooked himself a hasty stew of pemmican and biscuit,
made a hearty meal, and squatted before the fire with his back against
his sledge, to smoke and wait. He knew how to wait, like an Indian, when
there was anything to be gained by it, and his heart, weary of pemmican,
was set on fresh meat.
There was no sign of the storm breaking; there was no use hunting in the
storm. There was nothing to fear, for it was now three weeks since he had
seen sign of the wolves which had eaten his dogs, and he knew that they
had ranged off on the trail of the vanished caribou. There was nothing to
do. He was warm and filled, and free from care. Some hundred miles or so
away there was a post and human companionship, to which he looked forward
with unhurried content. In due time he would arrive there and find it, as
always before, unchanged, like all else in that land of inevitable
recurrence. Meanwhile—this afternoon, perhaps, or to-morrow—he would
shoot a young musk-ox cow. He drew his furs well about him and dozed off
to sleep, knowing that the moment the fire began to get dangerously low
an unfailing instinct would bid him awake to tend it.
While he slept, the storm drove unrelenting over the place of his
retreat, and kept heaping the thin dry snow in fringes and wreaths upon
the shaggy, lowering fronts of the musk-ox phalanx. From time to time, a
massive head would shake off the burden and emerge black and menacing.
And always, with unwavering vigilance, the army of angry eyes and short
sharp horns confronted the group of discontented wolves.
Now, as it chanced, the trapper was wrong in his assumption as to the
wolves. The truth—which would have made a great difference in his
calculations had he known it—was that they had been cautiously trailing
him ever since he left his hut. But they knew something of man, those
wolves, and they feared him. They were not yet quite mad with hunger, so
they had not yet quite plucked up courage to reveal themselves to him,
still less to commit themselves to an open attack. They dreaded his eye,
they dreaded his sharp, authoritative voice. They dreaded the strange,
menacing smell of him. They dreaded his mysterious power of striking
invisibly from very far off. Had they had any choice, they would far
rather have been running down the caribou than trailing this solitary
trapper. But the craving belly is a hard master, and they had no choice
but to hasten wherever it scourged them on. Moreover, they knew along the
trail of the man there were liable to be pickings, for man, a fastidious
feeder, never eats all he kills.
When at last the trail of the man had led them into that of the
musk-oxen, the pack had been glad. So much the more, therefore, their
disappointed rage, when they found the herd ready for their attack, and
too strong, in point of numbers and experienced leadership, to be
stampeded. Seeing the prey so near, with each moment of their
discomfiture their hunger and their fury grew.
Suddenly, without visible sign or warning, it seemed to boil over all at
once. The whole pack sprang together, swift as the snap of a whip, into a
compact mass, and hurled itself straight upon the circle of lowered
horns. The charge looked irresistible. It seemed that the most dauntless
must cringe and shrink before it.
But the point attacked was a strong one in the array. It was held by the
wise old bull. To either side of him the shaggy black heads breathed hard
or snorted loudly, but not a horn wavered. And in the face of this
steadfastness the attack was not driven home. In the very last fraction
of a second the leader swerved; the pack swept swiftly aside, but it was
very close. As the hindmost wolf went by, the old bull lunged forward,
head and shoulders beyond the circle, with a savage twist of his short,
polished horns. There was a startled yelp. He had just managed to catch
his foe a rending prod in the thick of the haunch. The wolf never
paused—he was under the iron discipline of the pack,—but as he ran he
left a scarlet trail along the snow behind him.
To the slow amazement of the herd, their enemies now, in the next
instant, had vanished through the thin whirl of the drift. Heavy heads,
thrust far out from the phalanx, turned to stare after them. There was
nothing to be seen but the endless, sheeted procession of the snow. There
was nothing to be heard but the muffled rush of the wind and their own
snortings and tramplings. For a long time, however, they kept their array
unbroken, fearing a trick on the part of their adversaries. Then at last
the old bull, after sniffing the wind in all directions with uplifted
muzzle, stepped forth from the ranks. Immediately the circle dissolved.
There was a moment of whirling and grunting, of butting at stupid calves
or reorganizing the array, then, at a swift walk, the whole herd moved
off toward the northeast, where they knew of a region of low huddled
hills which would give them the kind of shelter that they loved.
In the meantime the pack, maddened by failure and ravenous from the view
of food denied, had resumed the trail of the man. They were different
beings now from the wary skulkers who had been following him from afar.
Silent and swift, their eyes flaming coldly and their thin lips wrinkled
back from long white fangs, they swept over the brink and down into the
windless hollow of the stunted firs.
The man, sleeping in his furs by the little fire, had a bad dream. With a
struggle and a yell he awoke from it, to find himself half erect, upon
one knee, battling frantically for his life. One great hairy form he had
clutched by the throat with both hands, as its fangs snapped within an
inch of his face, and its huge hot breath daunted him with a sense that
the end of things had come. With a monstrous effort he hurled it off, but
in the same moment he was borne down from behind. It seemed to him that a
wave of furred, fighting bodies, enormous and irresistible, went over
him, blotting out everything, even to the desire of life. He was but half
conscious of the fangs that sank into his flesh, strangely without pain.
He was but half conscious of struggling—the mere instinctive struggle of
his strong muscles, and already condemned as futile by his aloof and
scornful spirit. Then nothing but a knot of great gray wolves, tussling
and snarling over something on the snow.
* * * * * * * *
After everything on the sledge had been torn open and investigated, and
scattered over the blood-stained snow, the wolves drew off to a little
distance from the fire, which they hated and dreaded. It was a victory
which would make that pack for the future tenfold more dangerous. They
had dared and vanquished man. But what was one man and a little bag of
dry pemmican to such hunger as theirs? All at once, as if moved
simultaneously by one impulse, they gathered, sped up out of the firs
into the wind, and swept away through the storm on the trail of the
musk-ox herd.
The herd, though travelling fast, had not gone far. On a sudden, as if at
a premonition of peril, the old bull halted with a loud snort. Neither
smell nor sound of his enemies had reached him, but he took alarm, and
gave the signal to form phalanx for defence, at the same time galloping
around the flank of the herd to close up and strengthen the rear. The
evolution was prompt and swift. But before it was quite accomplished, up
from the white obscurity of the storm, in silence, came the leaping
wolves.
Straight into the gap in the rear of the herd they hurled themselves,
slashing on every side with the aim of spreading a panic. A young bull,
just in the act of whirling furiously to confront the attack, was caught
full on the flank, and went down coughing, his throat torn clean out. A
young cow, with one wolf snapping at her side, but failing to gain a
vital spot, and another on her back, biting for her neck through the
matted mane, went mad with terror, and charged straight in among the
calves at the centre of the herd, making a way for the whole pack.
In a second several of the calves, bawling frantically, were pulled down.
The wolves, mad with blood and their late triumph over the man, were in a
riot of slaughter. The herd was cleft and rent asunder to the heart. The
victory seemed overwhelming.
But there was one thing which the pack had _not_ reckoned with—the
indomitable pluck and generalship of the old bull. Blindly confident in
their leader, the herd hung together stolidly, instead of disintegrating.
The front ranks turned inward upon the bloody convulsion of the centre.
At the same time the old bull, followed by a couple of raging cows in
quest of their young calves, came plunging in behind the pack and fell
upon its rear like battering rams. In a moment the flanks closed in
behind them, and the completed circle, instead of flying to pieces, began
ponderously to constrict.
As the wolves realized what was happening, the two hindermost whirled
about, just in time to leap savagely at the old bull’s neck, one on each
side. But they had no room to act effectively, no chance to choose their
hold. As he charged with head down and the full impetus of his bulk,
their fangs gashed him to the shoulder, but slantingly, so that the
wounds were not deep. In his rage he never felt them. The next moment his
two assailants were borne down, gored and trampled, by the frantic cows,
while he lurched onward into the hideous _mêlée_ at the centre. A second
more, and the churning, snorting mass became wedged almost solid.
Snapping silently at whatever was in reach, the wolves were overborne,
trodden down with the dead or dying calves. The leader of the pack, with
two of the more astute of his followers, succeeded in dragging himself
forth upon the packed shoulders of his adversaries, ran over the heaving
sea of backs, and raced away through the storm, gored and streaming. Soon
there was no sign of a wolf anywhere to be seen. But still the packed
herd went on with its trampling and churning, sullenly resolute to make
an end of the matter, till even the sturdy unwounded calves were in
danger of being downed, and the weaker ones perished miserably. At last,
in some way, the old bull managed to make his orders understood. The
milling slackened, the pressure relaxed. Ponderously he shouldered his
way out, and started off once more toward the northeast. Instantly the
herd followed, lumbering at his heels. A few, badly wounded, limped and
staggered in the rear, and three cows, their eyes rolling wildly,
remained standing over certain shapeless masses that lay trodden into the
red snow. For some minutes they stood there, mooing disconsolately; then,
one after the other, they shook their shaggy heads and galloped away in
pursuit of the herd, appalled at the solitude and the sight of so much
death.