backwards. The dog gave up before reaching his master, and lay down a
little way off. He was utterly exhausted.
Gaupa went up to him, knelt down, talking to him and stroking him.
And it seemed to him that those dog’s eyes spoke. Why had he not come
when Rauten stood still on the northern slopes? they asked. Why had
he missed when the wizard elk rose up from Three Lake? Bjönn had done
what he could, the dog’s eyes declared. All the same Rauten was running
about in the valley, free, unwounded.
Gaupa sat still, stroking Bjönn’s head.
“I also could do no more,” he said aloud; “but wait till to-morrow.”
The weather cleared up as evening came on. The sky turned blue as the
sea, the stars twinkled like tiny lanterns, some clear white, some
dullish red. In a small barn near Three River Gaupa and Bjönn slept.
Farthest out in the valley where the moon was rising like a yellow
lantern where earth and sky met an elk stood for a long time snuffing
towards the north. He was dripping wet. After a while he lay down, and
the snow thawed slowly under him.
Thus Rauten lay all that night, his eyes ever open, ears alive,
nostrils working. Towards morning it was so cold that his wet back grew
white with hoar-frost.
§ 23
About dawn Gaupa and Bjönn dug themselves out from the hay in the barn.
Gaupa had lost his matches the day before, and could make no fire. The
only way was to bury himself in the contents of the barn.
His shoes stood frozen stiff at the door. They were so hard that it was
out of the question to put them on. He tried many times, but in vain.
To wait for the sun to thaw them would take too long—so he thawed them
with the warmth of his own body. They softened, and soon after he and
Bjönn were following the spoor of the wizard elk.
They found his night lair where the snow was thawed and some hairs lay
about. But Rauten had left several hours before, Gaupa could read that
much in the spoor. It had hardened, there was a crust on, and also
Bjönn told him they were not near him yet.
They chased the elk from sunrise to sunset.
The spoors were there, and there was something alive about them. Every
mark of the hoofs meant a movement forwards—one footmark after the
other from one slope to another, an endless chase.
The spoor, so strangely alive, kept Gaupa’s interest warm. It was like
turning leaf after leaf of an exciting book where the end cannot be
guessed.
Once they found fresh excrements after Rauten, and Bjönn grew doubly
eager after smelling them. But Gaupa would not let go until he was
fairly sure of being near enough.
He did not think much that day either of the fact that he was hunting
no ordinary earthly animal; Rauten was only an elk who had wandered for
many years among Ré Mountains, mocking all efforts on the part of those
who tried to get at him. He was the elk that Gaupa himself had rather
avoided. But now he would measure himself against him. As long as he
had a bite of food, as long as Bjönn could move, he would stick to that
spoor—and he swore loudly and forcibly.
He went towards the west for several hours. The weather was wonderfully
fine. The mountain plains in their majestic calm reflected the sunlight
like a mirror. The light dazzled his eyes and made him sun-blind.
Little black lakelets looked like spots of ink on a white tablecloth.
Rauten had gone into a long lake, and Gaupa found no spoors up from the
water. He went round the lake several times, but no tracks could be
seen.
He reflected. Could this lakelet, without even a name, be Rauten’s
tomb? Could the elk have been drowned out there? It seemed impossible.
He circled the lakelet once more, and in the little brooklet which
fed the lake he saw some strange holes in the mud at the bottom. The
brook was shallow, and the sun showed him the bottom quite plainly.
Those holes down there had a distance between them about as long as the
stride of an elk.
He followed the brook for about a quarter of an hour, and found the
place where Rauten had left the water. Gaupa had never seen an elk try
to hide his tracks so cunningly.
About noon he went straight towards the sun, ignorant of the names of
the mountains around him. Then the earth yawned before him, and he
perceived a valley so large and deep that it must be Hallingdal.
He heard also that the air was vibrant with some sound, a dull, heavy
roar with some sort of rhythm in it. He could not understand what it
was. The wind shifted, and into his ears poured the deep, full boom of
church bells. Once more the wind shifted, and he heard nothing but that
vibrating roar.
Then he remembered that it was Sunday—for ordinary people, but not for
him. The elk spoors led straight towards the valley and the church
bells—one might think Rauten was going to church. But on a slope the
track turned abruptly, and there Gaupa smelt the homely, acrid smell of
smoke, the sign of people and houses.
He walked on after the smoke, sniffing his way like a dog on an open
scent. A little later he stood before a low Hallingdal cottage with a
tall chimney. He touched the doorhandle; Bjönn stole in in front of
him, and in a moment was chasing a cat, as red as a fox. But cats made
Bjönn mad. He threw one paw over the animal, pinning her to the floor,
and then bit twice across her back. There was the sound of crunching as
when Bjönn ate bones, and then a cat died in Hallingdal.
They gave him matches and food, and he walked uphill again. He released
Bjönn, who soon returned. Rauten was too far in front of them.
Dusk met Gaupa in a bare valley without summer farms where he could
spend the night. His axe resounded in the silence as he cut down dry
pines. He slept in the shelter of a rock, Bjönn clasped tightly to his
breast.
A few hundred yards from Gaupa’s night lair something dark showed up on
a ridge. Was it a rock? No, the rocks were not black then, they were
white with snow.
That dark thing did not move.
After a while it did move. Two eyes gleamed wet in the moonlight, a
tined antler crossed the harvest moon behind it. Rauten was lying there.
He thought he heard some strange sounds in the evening, but there was
little wind and he could not make sure.
He was waiting for daylight.
The snow was glittering, the crystals of snow were like innumerable
stars which were for ever being lit and extinguished. The mountains
were softly moving clouds, cradling the tired body of Rauten, while a
few isolated mountain spruces, from which the sun had thawed the snow,
were like darkly dressed dwarfs in the hollows.
It was nearly two days and two nights since Rauten left Owl Glen in
Lower Valley.
§ 24
When Gaupa hung up his coffee-kettle over the fire he felt shivery
after his cold bed. The kettle boiled, and he swallowed hastily four or
five cupfuls of scalding-hot coffee. Then he noticed a strange pattern
in the grounds at the bottom of the empty cup. The lines were funny, he
thought, they made quite a picture.
He turned the cup round and round, and there was not much imagination
needed to make those brown lines mean an elk lying on his back.
Then Gaupa smiled to Bjönn.
“We’ll have him before sundown. He lies here.”
A little later the fire under the rock wall was deserted, and while it
was dying slowly the resinous smoke floated like a dark mist over the
neighbouring bog.
Gaupa had not walked far when Bjönn rose on his hind legs and caught
the open scent. He would not come down on all-fours for fear of losing
it, and went on hopping on two legs several steps, and Gaupa swore
prodigiously out of the joy in his heart. He loosed the leash, and let
Bjönn storm into the mountains towards the pale-yellow sky of the dawn,
from which a faint sheen fell on the snow.
The snow was crisp now after the night’s frost, and it crunched a
little under each of Bjönn’s steps. A family of grouse flew up like a
shower from some osier bushes, a cock grouse called “gak-gak,” and soon
after the dog sang out farther east. Rauten had company once more.
Three hours later Gaupa was steaming with sweat. He passed unknown
summer farms where the windows in the sun shone like fire. It was warm,
for summer was still in the air. Winter lay on the ground prematurely
born. The trees were dripping, the snow grew wet and heavy, crunching a
little under Gaupa’s shoes. A young hare sniffed the snow which he had
never seen till the day before, big brown eyes staring with wonder at
the bewitched world.
The chase went on—and it was evening.
§ 25
It was night, the third night since Rauten left Owl Glen.
He was lying in a brook in Ré Valley, on Bog Hill where once he fought
the three-year-old. On all-fours he was lying in the brook, the water
unceasingly licking his stiff limbs, and Rauten enjoyed the refreshing
coolness. Once he bent his head to drink, his flanks hollowing.
Before him on the bank of the brook lay Bjönn. He did not say anything,
having barked enough throughout the day. It was quite dark, the moon
not yet being up and the snow having been thawed on that sun-exposed
slope so that no light was reflected by the snow either. Only the
silver bark of a birch gleamed faintly among the dense spruce woods.
A good stone’s throw farther south on the slope Gaupa sat, his back
against a tree-trunk. His pack lay at his side and his rifle across his
knees. Inside it rested a cartridge containing the Swede’s Bullet.
Gaupa felt exceedingly cold, for he was wet with perspiration when he
sat down, and now he felt as if he were wrapped up in icy-cold sheets.
He beat his arms across each other, carefully so as not to make a
noise, and sat on.
In the dusk he had reached Black Mountain and heard Bjönn baying on Bog
Hill, but darkness came before he reached him, and he could not discern
the sights of “The Tempest” except against the sky.
When he came to the spruce where he was sitting now he heard Bjönn’s
last bark, and understood from it that the elk was not running, for the
barking sounded so feeble.
Rauten and Bjönn were presumably somewhere in that brook, and if he
knew Bjönn he would not leave the elk that night. But when the sun rose
over the eastern ridges and lit up Ré Valley, then Gaupa would steal
forth, as soon as he could make sure where Rauten was standing. The
brook in the hollow murmured unceasingly.
Gaupa listened. No, he could not hear that inexplicable muttering far
away which belonged to the night and the unbroken silence. The brook
deadened it. He felt how the forest about him was asleep, standing,
eyes closed. All the same there _was_ something, that restlessness
which has no origin. He seemed to hear something breathing like a human
being somewhere.
He remembered one incident after the other told of the remarkable
animal who was standing unseen somewhere near him.
There was Anton Rud. Last autumn he was cutting resinous pine-stumps to
distil tar, far up Tolleivsæter way.
One evening he kept on longer than usual, and it was dusk when he
walked slowly down to the hut again.
He stopped to light his pipe, when he heard a cough below, a faint, dry
cough, first once and then twice running. He heard also the noise of
someone walking, and he sat down to wait, for it sounded as if someone
were coming uphill.
But nobody came, nor did he hear that cough any more. He thought it
strange, and called out aloud asking whether there was any human
being.... No answer.
In the morning he went up to the same place to search the soil a
little. He could not understand that cough—it sounded exactly like a
consumptive coughing and clearing his throat. There were no traces of
a human being, but he found elk spoors like Rauten’s, and he stopped
stump-cutting that selfsame day.
Gaupa remembered that story and many others.
In the meanwhile Rauten and Bjönn remained in the same spot in the
hollow, the dog looking steadily at the huge deer before him, his
nozzle rested on his forepaws, and he looked like a long, narrow mound
of grass or peat. Off and on something moved on the mound; Bjönn’s ears
rose and lay down again.
A big bird, an owl, flew noiselessly over the forest, wings caressing
the air.
After a while Gaupa nodded drowsily as he sat by the tree-trunk, but
he felt so cold that he was wide awake again in no time, and then he
heard somewhere a horse’s bell. He turned his head here and there,
and the horse’s bell was to be heard from every direction. But it was
impossible that there should be a horse’s bell at that time of the
year; nobody put bells on a horse in the summer. He happened to take
out his watch, and the horse bell suddenly sounded much louder and
nearer. Then he understood that what he had been listening to was the
tiny tink-tink of his own watch. It was ten o’clock.
A little later something trod softly in the darkness—very softly. He
turned and the tread grew alive, became something tangible which was
Bjönn. The dog came close up to him and laid his head on his master’s
knee; and Gaupa embraced him, whispering fond words into his ear. Bjönn
licked his master’s face and he let him do so. Then he fed him from his
sack, gave him much food, whispering and prattling with the beast all
the time, telling him that Bjönn must be a clever dog and hold Rauten
till either the moon or daylight came, and then “The Tempest” should
sing.
But Bjönn did not stay long with Gaupa; he wagged his tail a little,
and trotted a few steps away from him. Then he seemed to remember
something he had forgotten, went back, sniffed Gaupa’s beard and
pressed his cold, wet nose close to his cheek. Then he disappeared in
the darkness; there was a sound of rustling among the spruce branches,
and then the brook was once more the only living thing Gaupa could hear
or see.
He thought of Bjönn’s strange behaviour, how he came back to nose his
beard. And he remembered the night before he left Lynx Hut, when he
was remelting the Swede’s Bullet, how strangely Bjönn stared at him,
whimpering as if in the full knowledge of something evil.... However,
such things were not worth noticing.
Rauten had not moved the length of a mouse while Bjönn was away.
Then the dog began to walk stiffly in front of the elk, barking once or
twice, and Rauten’s peace was broken. He got on to his forelegs, rose
and stood still. Bjönn became eager, for he knew that Gaupa was close
by, and he could not understand that it was difficult for his master to
shoot in complete darkness.
Gaupa heard the sharp crack of a twig, then another. “There goes
Rauten,” he thought.
A little later he heard the antlers striking a tree-trunk, and the
dog’s bark came nearer, eager and aggressive. “There is the elk
coming,” he thought.
Over him the branches hung like a wide-meshed net, a faint light from
the sky penetrating it. But the under-bush was so black that he saw the
trees only like vague shadows and in there the wizard elk was coming.
Listen! how the antlers rustle among the spruce needles with a dry
swishing sound, as when you sweep the floor of the hut with a broom!
Gaupa did not stir, but clasped his hands round his gun in trembling
excitement. He sat immovable like an animal in its night lair, his eyes
burning as if they would burn a hole in the darkness enveloping him.
Both beasts were close by and below him. Once he thought he saw a large
shadow glide past down there, but he was not sure. He heard the dog
throw himself aside and Rauten’s heavy steps. But he could not, could
not see him.
Slowly Bjönn withdrew a little, following the wizard elk.
Gaupa crawled after them on all-fours, slowly, slowly. He was so close
after them that he surely could have thrown his gun at the elk, if
there had been light enough, and it seemed to him that he was crawling
at the bottom of a black lake with the tree-tops floating on the
surface of the water.
Then Rauten stopped and the dog’s barking grew rhythmic. Gaupa dragged
himself ward on his stomach, and in a glade he caught sight of Bjönn,
a dark bundle which glided here and there over the earth. But the elk,
the elk?
He did not dare to move farther, and remained where he was, “The
Tempest” ready. Over the western ridges the starry sky was sparkling.
Little by little Bjönn calmed down, till finally he remained on the
same spot, and from the direction of his head Gaupa guessed whereabouts
Rauten must be. For a long time he had been looking for something
showing up like antlers against the sky between two tree-trunks, and
he was only waiting to see that something move.... It did move, quite
distinctly, and Gaupa lifted the barrel of his gun towards the sky,
then lowered it towards the antlers, then far enough down to hit the
body—and then the Swede’s bullet left the mouth of “The Tempest.”
The splitting flame from the gun sent a broad beam of light across the
glade where Bjönn stood. And in front of the dog Gaupa saw as if in
a flash of lightning the head of Rauten above some bushes. The head
was lifted high, large eyes staring, and the half ear stood out very
clearly.... Then darkness came again. Not a sound, no heavy thud of an
elk falling, no eager dog’s bark.
Gaupa was half blinded from the sudden change from glaring light to
absolute darkness. He listened for the well-known dry crackle of
fleeing elk’s hoofs, but it did not come.
Then his ears caught the sound of something astir close in front of
him. It could not be Rauten dying, for he would surely have heard him
falling.
He struck a match, and at that moment a cock grouse chattered furiously
somewhere up south—a coldly mocking guffaw like the laughter of a
lunatic. If the grouse chattered in the middle of the night it must
have been roused by the elk, therefore Rauten must be far away already.
But what, then, was that which moved before his feet?
The match went out, there was a draught in the air. He scratched
another, there was a swish along the box, a tiny explosion, and a
little fire was born and burnt uncertainly within the hollow of his
hand. Two spruces stood within the circle of the light, staring with
wonder as if they had just awakened and wanted to know what kind of
tiny sun was dancing on the ground.
Gaupa went forward to some yellow moss, that showed elk spoors. But
in the middle of the glade Bjönn lay on one side. His eyes blinked a
little at the light from the match, but there was in them something
strained which Gaupa did not recognise. He knelt down beside the dog,
stroking him and talking to him, but Bjönn took no notice, and his
flanks laboured so strangely and quickly.
Gaupa lit another match and saw blood on Bjönn’s hair a little behind
the left shoulder. He felt with his hand, which became wet. The dog
started to open his mouth as if to yawn—and he gaped, and he gaped, and
never finished.
“Bjönn!” Gaupa whispered—“my own dog!”
But Bjönn only gaped.
Gaupa understood what had happened. The Swede’s bullet had struck
the elk’s antler and was shattered, one bit of lead ricochetting and
hitting the dog.
“Bjönn! Don’t you hear me, Bjönn?” he whispered once more half
beseechingly.
[Illustration]
Oh no, Bjönn could not hear anything any more now. He began to nod his
head in a strange way, something gurgled in his throat. A large tear
leapt out of the dog’s eye and rolled down over the grey muzzle. The
dog stretched himself. He was tired of the endless chase. He wanted to
rest.
The last thing Bjönn from Lynx Hut did in his life was to stretch
himself.
* * * * *
A man was sitting with a dead dog on his knees. It happened on Bog Hill
in Ré Valley. The murmur of the river sounded steady and calm, like the
very breath of night.
Gaupa thought of the Swede’s Bullet. It concealed strange powers; it
had travelled through a body before, and it knew its way. Why, oh why,
then, did it take away the only friend, the only child he possessed? It
would be small comfort walking down to Lower Valley in the morning.
Gaupa waited for the dawn. Bjönn seemed so strangely heavy on his
knees. He felt how the warmth of life slowly left the soulless body of
the dog, remembered what the two had shared of better things and worse
throughout the years, and the tears fell fast down Gaupa’s unkempt
face.
Daylight came. In his arms he carried Bjönn to a heap of rocks tenderly
as a mother carries her sleeping baby to bed.
He displaced some pieces of rock, and when he laid Bjönn down there
he felt that he was burying some of his joy in life. He sat down, his
shoulders heaving.
[Illustration]
When did Gaupa weep last? He did not remember. It was long ago, long,
long ago.
Day broke over Ré Valley.
§ 26
Time floated over the wilderness.
In summer it is warm, in winter cold. Three days before Christmas the
sun ceases to descend lower in the sky, rises again, and after a long
while he starts work on a fresh spring down on earth.
Through half the year the lakes lie with their eyes closed, for
half a year they mirror the sunset. The rivers stiffen when the
immigrating birds go south. While the bear dreams in his winter lair,
the trees stand bloodless, breaking in the frost. But when the living
ploughshares of the wild geese go northwards once more, then the trees
spread out all their branches, embracing life.
Such is time, when beasts are born, eat, and die. Such was time when
Rauten went towards old age.
His body followed the all-subduing law of nature. At Candlemass time
he lost his antlers, which invariably grew out again, every time with
more tines. When the leaves fell he roared his hoarse mating call at
dusk and at dawn. In the summer nights his huge, dark body would glide
through the forest out to Gipsy Lake where the snow-white waterlilies
were floating.
On some clear, cruel, frosty winter night he would perhaps stand on
guard beside a soft-eyed cow and a calf that was his own flesh and
blood. Then Venus, queen of the starry heavens, would glow large and
bright above Ré Mountains, lending a pale shimmer to the white snow.
The Aurora Borealis would shine bright and strange, then the breath
from the elks’ nostrils would smoke in the night.
When once in a while Rauten lay on Black Mountain looking out across
the forest, all the happenings of which his life was so rich would stir
within him. Probably he did not remember, not live his reminiscences
once more in his mind. We do not know about that. But each remarkable
incident had set its mark in him in the shadowy life of his soul.
They had sharpened his instincts, enriched his experience. There were
incidents at all times of the year, in all changing lights of day and
night, in sunny heat and in frosty weather—some concerning animals,
some human beings.
But he grew solitary and still more solitary as age came on. He sought
places where man but rarely made spots on the earth with his shoes of
animals’ hide, where the steel tooth of the axe but rarely gnawed a
tree, where old times were still dreaming.
For the Ré Valley woods began to be open. Foresters’ huts grew out of
the earth, creating unrest. Old trees died, changed their existence,
and left Ré Valley. Their stumps stayed, time and weather eating them
as ravens eat carrion.
Many a dog had chased Rauten, but their muzzles grew grey and their
eyes blue, and one day the barrel of a gun blew out their lives. And
still Rauten walked across Black Mountains.
* * * * *
But what of Gaupa?
He also aged; he aged rapidly when Bjönn died. For after that time he
lost his love of the woods somehow, and then he seemed to shrink within
himself.
Soon he was no longer a wild cat, he became a tame, domestic cat. No
more his fire shone at the capercailzie’s play in the blue spring
evenings when the song thrush was silent in the tree-tops and flew away
for the night. A sleepy petroleum lamp shone dully in Lynx Hut, where
the air was not light and pure as drifted snow, but stank of leather
and old footwear.
He felt as if something had died within him. His mind was like an
everlasting rainy day, monotonous, without a gleam of sun. No more
tumults, only silence and death, his mind was luke-warm like marsh
water.
Gaupa was not well either. He needed but to drink three or four cups
of coffee one after the other to make his heart unmanageable. It would
not keep time, but beat eagerly and quickly, and then it lagged, nearly
stopped as if lame.... Well, well, that heart had seen hard days, as
well he knew.