man, the forest seemed to become unsafe for him, wherever he went.
Perhaps it was a reminiscence from that autumn when his mother fell
north of Black Mountain, when she blew a golden dust out of her
nostrils and moved no more. Ever since that day he had the same feeling
when he met a dog. Something alive was close to him, something he could
not see, but which he knew was there all the same. From every tree,
from every copse something spied upon him; fear threatened from them
all....
He felt it then, as he drew his breath after the long run from Owl
Glen. He did not catch the scent of Gaupa over there, or he would not
have stopped so soon.
“Wow! Wow!”
At each bark Bjönn threw up his nozzle, half closing his eyes, his ears
flattened backwards and teeth gleaming. Then he looked at Rauten a
little and barked a little again, somewhat quietly, as if to convince
Rauten that he was not dangerous at all. He was only out for a friendly
chat....
Suddenly the spruce copse vomited a long grey figure, and Rauten’s
fore-feet stood where Bjönn had been but was no longer, for Bjönn knew
his business and needed no time to get out of the way.
“Wow! Wow!”
Once more there was nothing but those restless grey tree trunks and
those brownish-grey living branches in the undergrowth.
But then Bjönn was once more the dog he really was, the dog from Lynx
Hut, a beast who took his food from Gaupa’s hand.
As he regarded the elk’s rough throat until he imagined it between his
own teeth, he remembered the throats of other elks, which Gaupa used
to cut open so that Bjönn could drink the blood. That happened quite
often when the deer were standing still among the copses, and the idea
made Bjönn look round expectantly. Gaupa ought to come and make thunder
about him, the elk ought to stagger, fall on one side, and remain on
the earth. “Wow! Wow!”
But Rauten had come to the conclusion that the thing which disconcerted
him was something very real, which made dry twigs crackle, and so he
ran on again. Bjönn whimpered with disappointment and followed him. The
steady barking ceased.
Beads of sweat appeared on Gaupa’s bald head as he ran. When he heard
how the elk had broken away he swore softly, being wholly and entirely
out of breath.
[Illustration]
§ 20
It was late in the day when the snow began to fall.
The first snowflake came alone, thin and light as down.
The flake could not keep its equilibrium, but flew here and there
aimlessly, and took its own time about settling down on earth. It had
been on earth before, swimming in the white marsh mist one raw morning
in the autumn. Afterwards it had lived where the clouds live, but now
it came down again and settled on an aspen leaf, white on red, the
first snow of winter.
Little by little the air filled with innumerable white butterflies,
floating down from the heavens, a gift from God to earth and man,
falling, falling.
On the Tolleivsæter Mountain which falls off steeply towards Ré Valley
two animals were crawling, one larger, the other small. The first was
Rauten, the other was Bjönn.
They followed a narrow gully in the mountain, a chasm which meandered
downwards first to the north, then southwards, and then north again.
It was no more than a narrow ledge in the mountain where the animals
walked. They were hanging at the edge of an abyss and far below the
bottom of the valley made a dark shadow in the white whirl.
Rauten led the way, and there was no longer anything long and clumsy
about him now. His feet felt each step, carefully seeking a foothold.
The knee-joints bent with a little noise, once in a while his hoofs
slid a little and scraped the grey reindeer moss.
After him went Bjönn, crouching and frightened, without a sound. They
were climbing between earth and heaven, but the snowflakes danced past
them into the abyss, and Ré River was heard faintly somewhere far below.
Thus the elk and the dog went on, slowly, slowly. Once they passed
some large black holes among the rocks, and then both Rauten and Bjönn
felt very uncomfortable. Rauten stopped, his nostrils dilated and eyes
ablaze, Bjönn lowered his tail and sniffed towards the rocks, his
muzzle quivering, for the animal after which he was named had been in
there recently to seek for a winter lair.
After a long time the elk and the dog reached the foot of the mountain.
Rauten tore through the birch bushes, and the dog’s voice woke up
again. They came to a deep gully—two rocky precipices and between
them water boiling into foam far below.... Rauten leapt twice his own
length. He flew through the air before he reached earth once more, and
ran on. Bjönn made a detour, found a short cut, and when Rauten sprang
into Ré River he was not alone. Two splashes were heard from the river,
one for the elk and one for the dog, and they ran on straight up the
western slope, Bjönn now and then giving vent to short barks.
After a while Gaupa reached the eastern slope. He was like a well-wrung
rag. His cap was in his pocket now, his hair was plastered to his
skull, his eyes were red and strained, like those of one who has kept
awake many nights. His mouth was gaping open, the muscles of his jaws
being too tired to keep it shut.
He stopped to regain his breath. What time could it be? Nearly two.
He thought as much. Six, seven hours had passed since Bjönn had begun
driving the wizard elk. Gaupa had heard the song from the dog’s throat
many times that day, east and west. He had been north and south, God
only knows exactly where he had been, running and walking. He had
stopped at all the well-known elk stations, but Rauten had passed them
all, for he did not run like other elks. And now it was two hours since
Gaupa had last heard Bjönn.
Gaupa laid his hand behind his ear as he had done that morning in Owl
Glen. He tried to hold his breath so that it should not drown the
slightest sound in the silence of Ré Valley. He seemed to listen for a
message from the snowflakes, but the flakes bore no message. They were
like a whirling swarm of silent butterflies. Only when he turned his
back to the weather, the flying atoms battered on his knapsack with a
barely audible sound as from elfin artillery.
He sat down. The mountains about him were changing their colour,
growing white. The weather lightened a little and the earth was
revealed, far, far away. He saw Gipsy Lake straight below, pitch black
amongst the whiteness.
Hark!
Out of the north-west came a sound, the bark of an almost exhausted
dog, a slight break in the silence. Gaupa lifted his head; his entire
face, framed in dark beard, stiffened with excitement.
Was that Bjönn? Yes it was! He saw the mountain ridges west of the
valley and followed their outlines northwards, as they rose and
sank, wave upon wave towards the sky. And farthest north two specks
grew out of their white slopes, one larger than the other. First they
grew in size, then they rapidly diminished, and at last they vanished
altogether.
Bjönn and Rauten had gone into the western mountains. Well, Gaupa had
better follow them.
He found a descent not far from where he stood, and went at a jog-trot
across the marshes around Gipsy Lake.
Then came the western slope, a sky-high precipice difficult to ascend.
The minutes crawled slowly, as evening shadows pass over the fields.
And Gaupa crept slowly upwards.
Once or twice he lay down on his back, face upturned. A few snowflakes
settled on his skin. They felt like a wet tongue licking him,
pleasantly cool. He gathered a little snow from the heather about him,
placing it against his hot head, enjoying the coolness of it.
Then he rose and went on his way. A dry branch hooked on to his
trousers and made a big rent in them. He heard the brooks grow
strangely mute; their voices were no longer natural, and when close at
hand they sounded far off. And in his ears there rang a song, thin and
high like the buzzing of a gnat.
Oh to lie down and rest, rest a long, long time.... Nonsense, Bjönn and
Rauten had gone westwards, and Gaupa had better follow them.
In an hour he reached the barren mountain, the naked bulk of which
stretched before him. About a league to the west was another valley,
Three Valley. Gaupa knew that an elk would occasionally go there when
fleeing from a hound. It had happened often to himself and Bjönn.
Probably Rauten had gone that way too.
But he had to rest before descending. He took out food from his
knapsack and tried to eat, only his mouth was so dry that it was like
biting sawdust. There seemed to be no moisture left in his mouth.
Ever since the chase began Gaupa had not rightly considered the fact
that Bjönn was following no ordinary elk. Mystical ideas do not
generally go with laboured running in broad daylight.
Then his brain was so strangely empty and weak. He felt as if the power
of reasoning had been sweated out of him. His head seemed full of
mist, out of which the ideas could not find their way. They worked at
the things nearest and immediate, with the spoors and the chase.
But he knew that Rauten would have great difficulty in leaving Bjönn
that day. Bjönn was well-rested, his paws hardened and muscles as tough
as pemmican—very devil of a rugged deer-hound ready to follow an elk to
Hallingdal—or even to the valley beyond that.
Gaupa jogged along west once more. He felt better after his rest, and
he began to think. The people of the valley had given him a nickname,
Gaupa, the Lynx, although by rights his name was Sjur Renden, as could
be seen on his baptismal certificate as well as on his assessment—and
they called his hut Lynx Hut, although the correct name was “Elvely”
(River Shelter). Christened so by the parson who happened to pass by
when they were building it.
But if they had given him a nickname like that, by hell, they should be
made to respect it and to recognise the fact that he did honour to the
name, for he would show them that he was a Lynx who could go on when
other men failed. He would chase him into hottest hell, that elk with
the enormous antlers and the restless soul of the Swede. And when he,
Gaupa, returned to Lower Valley, clothes in rags and hands bloody, the
news would spread like wildfire that Rauten was killed, shot somewhere
in the western mountains towards Hallingdal—driven out of Owl Glen
at seven in the morning—and the man who shot him was no other than
Gaupa—of course.
And even the papers would print the fact: “The well-known hunter Sjur
Renden....”
[Illustration]
Thoughts slipped away again, as fatigue filled his body once more after
the rest his brain held nothing but mist, mist. But somewhere in his
consciousness one thing remained hard and fast, the thing that said,
“Run, run, for God’s sake run.” Such was the will of Gaupa, the slayer
of elks.
§ 21
In the Three Valley a dog had opened full cry, a glorious cry, for his
quarry was standing still.
Rauten stood still because he was so tired that he had to. During the
last run earth seemed unstable beneath him, and wherever he went he
saw a lair before him, full of peace and quiet; he might go to rest
under that spruce, or there—and there. Only he could not get rid of
that eternal worrying by a big black fox that followed him like his own
meaningless shadow. He had tried everything—climbing mountains, jumping
across gullies, but the dog followed him with an endless succession of
angry barks.
In the course of all those hours those barks had become no more than
a habit to the ear; they did not feel like real terror any more, only
a slight fear, a subconsciousness of danger. But Rauten was at length
compelled to rest now, standing in a spruce copse in Three Valley.
Bjönn was there, lying down. The dog also was nearly spent. His legs
seemed to have disappeared of late, and when they ran it was from
innate habit.
Several times he had crossed the spoors of Gaupa. The earth threw up
the familiar scent into his nostrils, like a message from his master to
say that he was there, only “Go on!” And Bjönn went on, he was going
for ever now.
His hair was soaking wet; both he and the elk were steaming like
fast-running horses in cold weather. The snow lay on the heather like
white wool, a frozen bilberry stood up from it, a reminiscence of
summer in the midst of winter. Two pine trunks rose tall, straight, and
copper-red behind both the animals.
“Wow! Wow!” said Bjönn. There was an interval between each bark, and
his voice was so hoarse as hardly to be recognised. He snatched a
mouthful of snow now and then, for his thirst. “Wow!”
Both animals felt themselves stiffening after they stopped. Rauten had
a broad gash across one of his thighs made by a dry branch. There was
reproach in his eyes as they regarded the little animal before him,
whom he had never hurt and who would not let him be in peace. But
rest, rest, that was all, the only thing.... Rauten stood still.
In the meanwhile Gaupa was hurrying westwards towards Three Valley. His
footfall made no sound in the snow, as if he were running on soft moss.
He jogged along, walked at times, eating snow.
He found the spoors of the dog and elk, indistinct but unmistakable:
long lines across a tuft of wiregrass from the elk hoofs, and close by
them clear marks of Bjönn’s paws. He followed the spoors with childish
joy, lost them, found them again, and made straight for Three Valley.
All idea of time had long since left him. Only the mountain seemed
endless. The snow continued to fall, and the ever-falling white flakes
made him dizzy. At last he saw a tall, narrow rock on a ridge before
him, a rock exactly like a tall chimney, that he knew to be on the
slope towards Three Valley.
He was soon there. The earth sank before him, the valley could be
seen—thin forest on the slopes, long marshes with a sleepy river, a
large lake, a white summer pasture with a couple of dark houses, far
away near the bend of the valley.
A pang of joy rang through Gaupa, vivifying and exciting, for a dog’s
bark floated out in the grey air straight below him from the slope.
More barks followed; the whole valley filled with the song of it. Gaupa
wondered at the sound. “Poor old dog, he has gone hoarse,” thought he.
But what a dog! He was an animal without blemish, no dog like him. He
would soon have assistance, warm drink, a taste of warm meat....
Gaupa slipped down the wooded slopes quickly and carefully. Just down
there, just down there, he thought time after time. Ten minutes, five
minutes more, and the Swede’s Bullet should fly unseen from the muzzle
of “The Tempest.”
The next day he would return to Lower Valley, clothes in rags, with
bloody hands. And Martin Lyhus would have to take his pipe out of his
mouth to ask, staring in astonishment:
“What is it you say? Have you shot him?”
Gaupa stopped to make sure of the movement of the air.... He was in
luck, it was straight against him. He could see it in the flying snow.
But it would soon clear up. The flakes were restless, flying about like
gnats, not falling quietly. That was a sure sign of approaching clear
weather.
Gaupa followed a small spruce-grown gully in the slope, and just in
front of him, very close now, stood Bjönn holding the wizard elk in
check. To Gaupa stealing downwards, the forest grew alive, every
tree listened for the dog’s barking, he felt as if on the point of
discovering a wonderful secret.
He could not see the animals and heard only one, though he knew there
were two. He stopped to look round for cover, and observed something
strange about his hands. He stood petrified looking at them, he did not
recognise them as his own. They were trembling now, however much he
willed them not to do—trembling in spite of himself.
Then he felt a slight shiver in his whole body, something he could
not control—and a cool feeling across the lower part of his body. The
hunter’s shivers! he thought.
“Wow!” was heard from below, and then a sudden silence. Gaupa held his
breath, waiting for the next bark. Surely he could not have frightened
him? The wind could not have turned, taking his scent with it to those
sensitive nostrils?... Then the barking started again, Rauten was still
standing—like a rock.
Gaupa could not rid himself of this inexplicable trembling, and he
could not shoot while it lasted. He was no longer the master of his
own body, he was not the real Gaupa any more. The real Gaupa had never
shivered before an elk—the devil he hadn’t!
Now he really had to be calm. For ten hours dog and man had been hard
at work. At last they were at their goal, nearly near enough to touch
it, and his hand trembled; he might make a false movement, and the goal
might once more dart away to unknown distances.
He knelt down, filled his hands with snow and held it to his skull. It
cooled first, then felt too cold.
Bjönn suddenly gave the angry bark which tokened that his prey was
escaping, the bark so well known to Gaupa that the sound of it raised
anger within him....
Escaped again!
[Illustration]
Gaupa stayed kneeling while the thawing snow ran in big drops down his
head. His dark-blue eyes changed colour. They were lighter and glazed.
His lucky cap was white with snow; his gun lay in the hollow of his
arm, held tight to his breast—lay as if listening like Gaupa himself.
Silence. Dead silence. Running water somewhere in Three Valley gave an
echo of life.
Gaupa rose. Silence. No barking then.
He ran out of the hollow up to a bare ridge. Then he heard Bjönn again
and he understood that the dog was running beside the elk, even in
front of him now and then. He could even see the two animals on the
long marshes at the bottom of the valley. Rauten ran his jogging even
trot, long and tall, forever turning his head from one side or the
other as if listening. “A hopeless range,” thought Gaupa. Distance
was simply mocking him. At such a range he would not dare to risk the
Swede’s Bullet.
The elk crossed Three River and his legs raised white arches of
water. Bjönn swam and was on the other side as soon as Rauten. They
disappeared, but were seen again, Rauten heading straight for Three
Lake.
Gaupa threw back his rifle, breathed deeply and went down the slope.
* * * * *
Rauten and Bjönn came to Three Lake, which lay black and still as
night. A waterlily leaf was riding on the surface at rest. The whole
lake was all peace, and the green heart-shaped leaf in conjunction with
the two animals, the hunted and the hunter, formed as it were a picture
of the very life of the wilderness, eternal peace of eternal time,
painful efforts of the moment, life or death.
Rauten went straight into the lake, making openings in its smooth
surface with his hoofs, cutting it with his thin legs where he waded
out quickly, the water rising along his shoulders and flanks. A
startled trout ran out from under the bank like a shadow across the
white sand into the dark depths. Beside the elk was Bjönn, swimming.
The water gurgled higher and higher about Rauten; at last he swam, his
snout so low that he ploughed through the water like a boat’s keel.
Bjönn scraped the elk’s back with one paw, found no hold, and tried
again. Then he caught the mane with his teeth and soon stood on the
back of the wizard elk who was swimming across Three Lake.
The dog did not feel worn out then. He was tasting the fiercest joy.
Under him he heard the laboured breath of Rauten, felt the entire huge
body trembling with effort, muscles hardening and slackening as the elk
trod the water. It was Bjönn from Lynx Hut, sailing! The elderly elk
hunter from Lower Valley who never gave up from dawn to dusk—even to
another dawn.
Then he poured out his joy from his hoarse, dry throat, and mingling
with his song of conquest came the groans from Rauten, who was
swimming, wild-eyed. He steered towards a pine top on the farther side
of the lake. Terror sat on his back as he swam for his life. Once he
felt teeth in his back, and the same icy shiver ran through him as
ran through his forefathers when they broke down in the snow with the
wolves swarming fiercely over them.
Bjönn bent down and tugged a big tuft of hair out of the elk’s back he
dropped it on the water, where it remained floating.
“Wow! Wow!”
He plucked out another tuft.
One might say a raft was sailing along the water, with Rauten’s horns
for rowlocks.
Bjönn noticed a tall tree-stump moving across the marshes. It was
Gaupa, his master, and his pride knew no bounds. He could conquer every
elk from one mountain to the other, if they were many times his own
size. He could drive them, bark exhaustion into them, until at last he
would drink his fill out of their throats. “Wow! Wow! Wow!”
Gaupa crouched on the marshes north of Three Lake.
He was in pain. The elk’s head and Bjönn floated away farther and
farther, and if he were to shoot there was an even chance that he might
shoot his dog as easily as the elk. But when Rauten went ashore he
would try a shot, howover hopeless.
The Swede’s Bullet could not be risked at such uncertain range, and
therefore he changed cartridges quickly. Then he crouched in position
for shooting, left elbow on left knee. His cheek caressed the gun. He
sat immovable, a huntsman stiffened in the last decisive movement of
the hunt.
He trembled no more, although the tension burnt in him like a hidden
fire. He saw out of the water a large body grow through the falling
snow.
And one of Gaupa’s eyes shut as if sleepy. The other, however, was
open, and icy cold. He did not breathe, his whole body was taut calm.
“The Tempest” roared, shooting out its breath with a white handful of
smoke, and for a moment Gaupa’s ears were plugged up with sound.
But Rauten, who was wading ashore, heard something like a woodpecker
hammering at a tree on the shore. Then came the roar of the shot,
behind him, and he stretched himself off into the forest, a rain of
waterdrops about him. Bjönn followed.
[Illustration]
§ 22
Gaupa pursued the chase once more.
Dusk was falling. He did not hear Bjönn any longer, but he had the
spoor.
The weather cleared up towards evening. The sky seemed to absorb the
snowflakes, making them light and dry. The heavens became fixed and
formed a pale-yellow dome over the earth.
The silence increased after the shot and the barking. A man followed a
spoor in the new snow, but Sjur Renden did not run any more. He walked!
His face showed signs of utter exhaustion. The cheek, chin, and eyelids
were hanging down. His mouth, too, hung open, although he did not
breathe heavily. The corners of his mouth were drawn into a grimace of
contempt.
The marshes were white, but the ground under the trees was not covered
with snow. The woods had assumed an air of solemn grandeur which was
not diminished by the oncoming dusk.
Gaupa was fairly staggering. That last effort near Three Lake seemed to
have drained his last forces. All the same he went on and on, always
showing that grin of contempt, as if he were mocking at the elk spoor
before him.
In the middle of an open space where the pines had once been burnt
down and never grown up again to their former state, he stroked his
eyes with the back of his hand, as people do when they wake up and yet
are not really awake.
He walked on a few steps, stopped again and touched his eyes. What
devilry disturbed his sight? He saw as clearly as clearly a shiny
yellow moon, not quite round, but slightly elliptical as the moon is
when she is on the wane. This moon stood in the air a few gun-lengths
before his eyes and it moved when he moved. It was so blazingly,
glaringly yellow that it made the air gleam yellow. Gaupa felt as if
everything glowed and blazed before him. The very dusk flamed. He was
dazzled, and shut his eyes for a long time. When he opened them again
the air was as it ought to be, soft and nearly dark. But after a few
steps that idiotic moon came back.
He knew well enough what moon this was. He had seen it before.
Over-exertion, curse it. And his knees felt as they always did when
that glaring yellow moon appeared. All the sinews seemed to have been
taken out of his joints, all elasticity had left his legs. They moved
about anyhow beneath him, without his volition.
Then Gaupa went under a spruce tree and lay face downwards. His face
touched some whortleberry ling and he could smell the soil. A bunch
of berries caught his eyes, a large, bright red bunch, and they made
so intense an impression on him that he seemed to feel the juice
seething inside them. Never in all his life had he seen so red a bunch
of whortleberries. His eager hands seized them and pushed them into
his mouth. He crushed them with his tongue and their juice ran in his
dry mouth, an exquisite joy. He looked for more berries, crawling on
all-fours round the spruce tree like a child—an oldish man with a
flowing beard.