north, but he overtook the dog within an hour. He went straight up to
the helpless elk, whose legs still pawed the air. He aimed, pulled the
trigger, and the bull elk moved no more.
“H’m”—Gaupa wondered.
“That is an elk bull,” he mused, “but in what a strange position! How
in all the world did he happen to lie on his back between that stump
and the spruce tree? It is inexplicable.”
He investigated the bog, picked up a tuft of hair which was dark, and
then another which was lighter. But the whole bog looked as if someone
had driven a harrow from end to end, and from side to side criss-cross.
“H’m,” Gaupa mused once more. Lord, what a fight there had been! He
walked about studying the spoors. His eyes searched the earth. Two
bulls had been here. One remained down there on the slope, and he had
blown life out of him with his own “Tempest.” But the other bull was
larger—and why, of course it was Rauten, the wizard elk. The cleft
spoors stood out with curved outer edges as the spoors of a bull
generally are.
Gaupa raised his head reflectingly. Round about him the calm glow
of autumn burned in the air and on the earth. The slopes were
multicoloured with pinewood and leafage intermingled, spotted like the
coat of a lynx.
He began to flay the dead elk; but as it was too late in the day to
go down in Lower Valley with the news that he had killed an elk, he
decided to go east and spend the night in the nearest highland farm.
On his way he meditated on Rauten, but he was not such a fool as to
try to trace him. That would be sheer waste of time. He was not such a
fool as to try that. For many are the hunters who have returned with
sore-pawed and worn-out dogs when they have had the wizard elk before
them.
Rauten had peculiar ways. He rarely ran faster than the dogs could
go, but he never really stopped, never long enough for the hunter to
overtake him. He sought out all the lakes and ponds in existence, and
crossed them. You might follow him for hours and hours if your dog did
not give up—as he was sure to do sooner or later. Very eager dogs were
known to chase Rauten till they completely lost their way, and they
had been found in far-off districts past the mountain gap. Also all
foresters in those parts agreed that bad luck went with the wizard elk.
Petter Kleivaberget fell and broke his arm when chasing Rauten. Arne
Öigarden shot his own dog in mistake for the elk—a fine dog, too, worth
a hundred dollars. And the man from Krödsherred who attempted to run
down Rauten on ski one winter broke both skis and as nearly as anything
died in the snow. He was so weak when he reached the Tolleiv Mountain
Farm that he could not walk across the pasture—he crawled on all fours
and was a whole hour about it too, so it was clear to anybody how near
to death’s door he had been.
No, Gaupa would not follow Rauten.
He went east to Morsæter. The house lies in a little valley branching
out from the Ré Valley proper. As he walked he felt uneasy. His head
was heavy and he coughed now and then; he breathed heavily going
uphill—he who never used to notice a hill, he who could mount the
slopes at a run. Presently he began to perspire also. Gaupa did not
usually perspire for just nothing.
It was probably because he had sat down on a peak last night and felt
exceedingly cold, after sunset. He had been running pretty hard just
before, so that he was a little moist. And that mountain peak was
quite bare, and such places are invariably rather cold.
Some years before Gaupa had had pneumonia. An epidemic raged in the
district at that time, and there were many funeral parties and many
sad-looking pine branches along all roads. And the young people did not
dance again until Midsummer Eve.
Gaupa had really been very bad at that time, and Harald Övrejordet, the
lay preacher of the valley, the high priest as they called him, came
up to him and begged him to be converted from all his sins. Perhaps he
would have turned from his evil ways, if he had not felt that selfsame
day that the sickness had taken a turn for the better, and that he was
going to get well. Therefore he was in no hurry, he would wait and see.
He recovered completely and remained in sin for the time being.
But ever since then Gaupa found that if he ran really very hard a sharp
needle seemed to run through his right lung. That needle was a perfect
nuisance. It had cost him several horse-loads of meat, for it had
forced him to stop while the elk ran away.
He felt that needle now, but, curse it, it was sure to go away again.
Towards evening the sky grew filmy, the sun dull-eyed, the earth grey.
A lake to the north was just then gleaming pale under the wooded
slopes. The fire went out and the lake was nothing but water.
The wet, naked rocks in the east mountains were also fiery while the
sun shone. They seemed to be drops of fire which had fallen amongst
mountain peaks and forests. They too went out.
Gaupa walked towards Morsæter, Bjönn on the lead. The needle in his
lung was burning—a confounded nuisance and no doubt about it. It came
like lightning, and so unexpectedly that it jerked his whole body. But
it was sure to go away again.
In the gloaming he saw the flat pasture round the Morsæter. The forest
yawned, and he reached the fence. The roof had been freshly shingled,
and looked very white and clean.
He searched for the key of the door. It was usually to be found in a
hole in the wall, but not so that day. He tried other places, but there
was no key.
As a matter of fact Gaupa was man enough to open a lock. He also knew
how to take out window frames, so tenderly and carefully that they bore
no mark of axe or knife. No house was locked to him, and if the worst
came to the worst he would crawl down the chimney!
The padlock was opened without trouble. Gaupa merely gave it a few
mysterious taps with his sheath knife. The hook released the body of
the lock and seemed to say, “Please enter.”
While Gaupa was cutting wood for the night behind the house, the echo
from his axe beat his ears like shots. The sky was sleepy and cloudy.
Perhaps there would be rain.
He stood by the hearth cutting chips to start a fire, and felt his head
reeling. But his will controlled the knife, so that the fat pine-root
chips curled before him like small bouquets.
The fire was lit, and then three living things were in the hut—Gaupa
and Bjönn and the Fire. Gaupa sat on the hearth stone, creeping close
to the fire. For it was cold and shivery that night, ever so cold. The
boiling-hot coffee helped a little against the cold, glowing inside
him for a little while, but very soon he shivered again. Cold blasts
went down his spine, and they made him start and say “Damn” to the fire.
He pulled his bed near the fire. Two sheepskin rugs were there, and he
found another in the next room. He went to bed with one under and two
over him, but even then he felt cold. It was as if his body had ceased
to produce warmth, he was cold from within, and a pang shot through his
right side and would not leave him, however much he rubbed himself with
his hard hand.
After a short time he fell asleep and dreamed—that he was chasing
Rauten, running till he was quite winded—it was quite absurd how very
much he was out of breath. And Rauten with the half-ear stood before
him looking at him out of deep human eyes, but Bjönn lay still beside
him licking his paw—what an idiot of a dog! But when Gaupa fired he saw
the bullet leap out of the muzzle of the gun and run slowly through the
air as if time was of no account, and when at last it reached Rauten’s
forehead the bullet rolled down as if it were a pea, which Rauten
bending low picked up and chewed, very much as Bjönn did when you gave
him sugar.... And at that moment Rauten was changed into a man, the Ré
Valley Swede, only he had those enormous elk horns on his head. Gaupa’s
hand fumbled for another cartridge, but then he woke up, perspiring.
Morning came—after a long, long night. Gaupa wanted to go to Lower
Valley with news of the elk. He flung his legs out of bed and stood on
the floor. But what the devil was the matter? His head had grown so
heavy; the floor rose, he had to stretch out a foot to keep it from
upsetting him. He had never felt anything like it! Perhaps he was going
to be taken ill out there! Perhaps he would remain in that bed as
helpless as a baby! “No,” he muttered, “I’m damned if I do.”
He sat down again and put his shoes on. That was better, but he could
not swallow a bite. The food seemed to grow in his mouth as soon as he
had bitten it. All the same he packed his sack and went outside.
Mist engulfed him like an enormous white wave. He saw the trees like
shadows, and the little barn in the meadow was hidden from sight.
With Bjönn on the lead he staggered across the meadow; and when he
opened the gate in the fence, nature was so silent that the slightest
noise seemed to saturate the air with sound.
He crossed the brook that runs from the little lake, and a few fish ran
back into the lake, their backs so high that they moved the surface of
the water. They are playing already, he thought; the trouts are laying
their roe now about Michaelmas time.
Gaupa sat down. Bjönn pulled at the lead as if wishing to investigate
the mist.
Gaupa felt that he was far from being well. For by that time there was
a hot pang in both his sides, and his chest seemed too small for his
breathing. It was four full hours’ walk to the Lower Valley. He might
meet people before that. He had seen wood cutters at a place near
Spæende Lake, where he passed a couple of days before, but even that is
two hours’ walk, and Gaupa, the Lynx, was so uncertain of himself that
he doubted whether he could manage that little bit in two hours.
In fact he began to see himself as he was that winter with pneumonia,
a helpless man, whom his legs would not carry. At times he was in this
world and at times in another, where everything went awhirl and upside
down.
If now he should lie like that under a spruce tree between Morsæter and
Spænde Lake, it would be anything but funny, No one would find him, for
who could know the ways of the Lynx? It would be better to crawl back
to his bed of last night than risk a sick-bed under a spruce tree.
And then Gaupa behaved in a strange way. As usual he was wearing his
brown cap with a very small peak, which he had worn for ever so many
years. It may seem strange that he should drag about such a rag of a
cap, but there is nothing so strange about it after all, for it was
a Lucky Cap, and after Bjönn and “The Tempest” it was Gaupa’s most
cherished possession. Gaupa, it may be said, never went into the woods
without that cap, and it showed signs of wear, for in the middle of the
crown there was a round hole all through to the lining. The branches
had made that when he moved about under the trees.
Gaupa took off his cap as solemnly and earnestly as if he were
entering the Lower Valley Church on a Mass Sunday, but he was sitting
by a mountain lake, bareheaded and black-haired in the mountain mist.
Then he flung the cap through the air, watching its flight with tense
eyes. The cap turned a few somersaults, described an arch, struck the
heather with a soft whisper, and lay still. Gaupa walked softly up to
it and noticed very carefully the direction of the peak. It pointed to
the house, and Gaupa knew then that he would go back. There could be no
doubt about it.
For he believed in the power of the cap, and had never had cause to
regret it. Many a time the cap had shown its remarkable power of giving
good advice. When uncertain about the direction to be taken in order to
find game, he had often thrown his cap, and where the peak pointed when
it fell, there he went, and there the elks were, even when he could
never have dreamed of finding them there. The cap was as good as a dog
with a supernaturally fine scent.
Gaupa returned to the hut, and one need not laugh at him for that.
Anyone living like he did sees many strange things which sound even
strange in the telling. Beasts and bird and fish, yea, even trees and
grass possess strange powers and may tell the future to those who have
ears to hear.
Inside the but Gaupa tore off some bits of stale bread, hard as stone,
for Bjönn, and then he crept in under his sheepskins.
* * * * *
It cleared up later in the day. The earth changed her face and began to
smile, the last flakes of mist vanished in the air as if by magic.
At sunset a red eye seemed to shut among the peaks. A long ridge of
shadows made its way up an eastern slope. It rose slowly, inexorably,
like water in a lock. The last rays of the evening sun covered a hill
like a red cap.
Dusk fell, but the yellow birches round the bogs seemed to have
drunk the sunshine and kept it in them, so that even in the gloaming
the silver birches stood out like patches of sunlight that had been
forgotten. On the fence round the pasture a tiny bird poured forth
clear ripples of song into the stillness of the evening.
There were no signs of life near the hut.
Inside, Bjönn was crouching at the foot of the bed, his nose under
his tail and his ears flat. The hearth was black and dead, under the
sheepskin rugs Gaupa lay, a quick breathing was heard. Once the dog
rose to lick Gaupa’s hairy head. Then a rough hand with black nails was
extended to stroke him. “Poor doggie,” someone whispered.
Then the dog curled up again at the foot of the bed, swallowed noisily
a few times, and then there was no sound but the laboured breathing
from the bed.
A silent fight was fought in that lonely mountain hut. A hardened body
rose up against something intangible something that could not be hit,
a trembling of every muscle, a heaviness in head and chest not to be
shaken off. At last he was conscious that his whole body noted every
single sensation, and he could not ward off a feeling of dread. Nobody
had any errand up there at that time of the year. The manure had been
spread over the pasture, and he could not think of any other work for
the people from the valley, knowing that they had no wood-cutting to
do.
[Illustration]
Then he thought of Bjönn, whom he could feel like a warm cushion across
his feet. Bjönn was a wise dog. Often when the elk had fallen, far
away, the dog returned to him to tell with eyes and gesture, and he
followed him to where the elk lay. Would he not also be wise enough to
fetch people, if his master rose no more?
Dusk came, even in Gaupa’s brain. The sheepskins were so hot that he
longed to throw them off, only he knew it would be dangerous to do so.
Sometimes his eyes opened, and then they were moist as if he were moved
to tears or as if he had done a long, hard sprint. The corner of his
mouth worked incessantly; he was never without that, but it did not
disturb him then.
A sharp gleam of light played upon a tin pan on the wall for a very
long time. Then the face of night lay close up to the window panes,
looking in, and the pan ceased to gleam! Only the newly-shingled roof
of the cowshed stood out white in the darkness.
§ 9
On such September nights moonlight in the mountains seems like magic.
That night the moon was full and round, a glowing pupil in the blue
eye of heavens. A light mist floated over the lake, the outlines of
the mountains blurred like shadows. The western Ré Mountains looked as
if they had opened to let out all their hidden treasure of silver. The
streamlets wormed their way like molten metal down the steep slopes;
far below they foamed like avalanches of snow. When the water went to
rest in the lakelets down at the bottom of the valleys, the silver
gleam moved lazily below the wooded slopes. A big animal crossed a
moonlit glade. It was not an animal at all, but a dream which the
forest and the night see in their sleep. Long shadows fell on the glade
and the deer waded in them. But the rays of the moon caressed its back
with soft, trembling touch, and its eyes were wet.
Noiseless like a cat Rauten went forward, no sound under his hoofs, no
crack from a broken branch. He walked as if careful not to waken what
sleeps about him; but he did not quite succeed. A capercailzie was
perched in a tree just above him. Her head crept out from under her
wing and her hairless eyelids opened; her neck hung down as she stared,
but Rauten disappeared, and the bird hid her head under the wing once
more.
A hare jumped up—a spirit in flight.
Now and then Rauten’s nose nearly touched the earth. He sought the
scent of a cow elk. For he was alone again to-day. The cow he had
fought for so valiantly the day before no longer wanted him. Cows are
unstable like all females. Rauten was not the one and only elk for her
any longer.
But Rauten might find other mates; he was never at rest, because of the
cows. He wanted to fight for them all, to strike terror in the heart
of every bull he met, beat them with his antlers till they would writhe
limply like willow twigs.
He stopped sniffing towards a faint movement in the air, his ears
eagerly caught a tiny sleepy murmur from the brooks. But there was no
scent but that of bogs and woods.
He went on silently with enormous strides—a fairy-tale walk towards
sunrise.
In the mountain hut there was nothing but that laboured breathing from
the bed. Every once in a while Bjönn would sigh deeply as if he were
greatly troubled. Then he would lick his jaws a few times and sleep on,
while the moonlit square moved across the floor like a living thing.
A breath of wind soughed round the walls—hush—sh—sh; a loose window
pane let in a tiny draught.
Then the dog’s head was raised instantly, suddenly as when a wild
animal is disturbed in his lair. Bjönn was awake and alert. Eyes
glowing, nostrils alternately large and small. He smelt some scent
which that breath of air had carried into the hut.
He jumped on to the floor with a soft thud and stood with both forepaws
on the window-sill. His triangular ears were stiff with eagerness;
he saw something out there, growled deep down in his throat as if in
anger. What did he see?
Suddenly he left the window and stood by the door. With an impatient
bark he scratched the door to get out. Realising the futility of that,
he rushed back to the window and the floorboards groaned beneath his
weight. Again he stood up, his forepaws on the sill, howling as if in
pain. What did he see out there?
In the bog below the pasture there was an elk. No bush could be more
immovable than he. The elk seemed to sleep or to listen for something.
His antlers appeared to float on the silvery lake below—full of shining
silver bowls gently rocking on its surface.
Gaupa sat up in the bed. There must be something very special to make
Bjönn carry on like that....
He could see through the window from where he sat, and it seemed to
him that never before were air and mountains so fiery yellow and so
strange-looking. They seemed to him to be burning with fever....
Farthest away and highest up he saw the sky, blue and teeming with
stars. Below there swam a mountain, revealing its bristling back, and
the slope was wrapped in a misty veil. Nearer to him at the bottom of
the valley the lake flamed so brightly as to hurt his eyes, and on the
bog nearer still he saw ... he saw——
He stroked his eyes with his finger and looked again.
An elk was standing on the bog between the pasture and the lake, asleep
or listening.
Gaupa wondered whether he was losing his senses or beginning to see
visions.
Once more his hand touched his eyelids, and he felt how weak and
limp his arm was. He turned his head. There was Bjönn, whining and
scratching at the door, so the fever had not quite mastered him. There
was his rifle, “the Tempest,” leaning against the wall. It had the same
flashing steel trigger as always, and he saw the elk’s head which he
himself had carved on the butt. These could not be mere visions. He was
quite in his senses, and there _was_ an elk down there on the bog.
He threw off the sheepskin rugs, stepped out of the bed, leaning on the
bedpost. He was no longer the Lynx, the man of muscles and sinews—no,
he was a staggering uncertain thing, bereft of his strength. His head
throbbed as if a thousand little animals were trying to break out
through his skull. His chest was too small, and he drew in air in short
laboured gasps....
Gaupa somehow managed to get across the floor and seize “the Tempest.”
How delightfully cool the steel felt to his hot palms!
After a while he reached the window and stared out. The elk remained
immovable, looking northwards towards the Big Bear which unceasingly
runs along its azure path in the sky.
Then Gaupa pushed the muzzle of his gun straight through the
window-pane. A crisp clang of breaking glass followed, some pieces
falling on the window-sill, others on the floor.
Dead silence reigned in the hut once more. The dog stood erect beside
the man, his ears cocked, trembling with excitement, waiting for the
shot.
Gaupa crouched, his knees bent, his chin pressed against the butt. How
nice and cool it felt! He took aim, and when his eye caught the shining
sight on the muzzle a calm relief seemed to fill his body, killing the
fever....
Rauten stood down there. What was that he heard in the moonlight? The
sound immediately begot a picture in his brain. He saw and heard an
icicle breaking from a precipice and falling down on to the glacier
below. It was broken to pieces and shattered with a shrill clang.... It
was the sound of the falling window-pane.
Up in the hut Gaupa took aim. First his aim sought the starry flowers
in the sky. Then it sank past the multitude of stars, sank lower and
lower, crossed the mountain slope, skirted the lake, stole along the
bog, fumbled for the elk’s antlers and found them. There it rested
awhile, only to glide downwards along the dark body, stopped again, and
remained.
Gaupa’s forefinger crooked. His eyelids did not move, nor did Bjönn’s.
[Illustration]
Rauten was listening all the time for that icicle. Then a hot pang in
his left shoulder startled him, but the sensation was drowned in a
roar of thunder which broke upon the stillness of the night. The elk
stretched out and lay flat in the air, touched the earth, and stretched
out in the air again. Moonlight streamed between the tines of his
antlers when he ran, each leap double the length of his own body. He
was chasing a mad shadow in front of him, chasing it into the forest
which swallowed shadow and elk alike.
Shortly afterwards something splashed in a lake to the north, and the
water spouted white before Rauten where he started to swim. He swam
across the lakelet, swam across molten silver. On the farther side he
rose, dripping, and ran on.
§ 10
Gaupa lay in bed once more. The hut was filled with nauseating fumes
from the powder, and Bjönn ran from window to door and back again.
Finally he stopped at the door, nose to the chink, scenting the draught.
Gaupa knew what elk that was. It had incredibly large shovel-shaped
antlers, like Rauten was said to have. Few elks in these parts have
shovel-shaped antlers nowadays. Undoubtedly it was Rauten. Lead could
not wound him, and he had vanished through the moonlight when the shot
rang out, like one possessed.
After a time Bjönn lay down before the door. Once more silence reigned.
But to Gaupa it was as if he and Bjönn were not alone in the hut. A
breath of wind came down the chimney, and to Gaupa’s ear it was as if
something breathed. The silence afterwards was filled with that strange
murmuring which comes from nowhere and everywhere. Was it the voices of
the dead returning? It sounded like a faint whisper, always the same
intonation, always alike. The whisper grew into words: “Beast, beast,
beast....”
Even the hills round that hut bore marks of Ré Valley Swede’s pickaxe,
deep holes, mossgrown by now. Did he hear steps outside? Two stealthy
steps at long intervals? No, surely not. Bjönn would have barked if
there had been real steps.
And lying there with his eyes shut, Gaupa recalled many strange things
which had been told in Lower Valley during those last years.
One day the cow-boy at Lyhussæter came running home struggling to
regain his breath. The dairy maid stood agape. At the same time Martin
Lyhus scrambled up with his packhorse, and he heard the nonsense the
boy had to tell.
“An elk bull has mounted our 'Drople’!” he says.
Martin tied his horse to the fence.
“What ails ye, lad? Don’t you come here to grown-up folks with child’s
talk. What you say has neither rhyme nor reason.”
“But it’s gospel truth,” the boy maintained, and Martin noticed that he
was purple with running.
“That elk had antlers as big as never was,” says the boy.