THE FIGHT IN THE SNOW
They found shelter that night under thick balsam, and when they lay down
on the soft carpet of needles which the snow had not covered, Gray Wolf
snuggled her warm body close to Kazan and licked his wounds. The day
broke with a velvety fall of snow, so white and thick that they could
not see a dozen leaps ahead of them in the open. It was quite warm, and
so still that the whole world seemed filled with only the flutter and
whisper of the snowflakes. Through this day Kazan and Gray Wolf traveled
side by side. Time and again he turned his head back to the ridge over
which he had come, and Gray Wolf could not understand the strange note
that trembled in his throat.
In the afternoon they returned to what was left of the caribou doe on
the lake. In the edge of the forest Gray Wolf hung back. She did not yet
know the meaning of poison-baits, deadfalls and traps, but the instinct
of numberless generations was in her veins, and it told her there was
danger in visiting a second time a thing that had grown cold in death.
Kazan had seen masters work about carcasses that the wolves had left. He
had seen them conceal traps cleverly, and roll little capsules of
strychnine in the fat of the entrails, and once he had put a foreleg in
a trap, and had experienced its sting and pain and deadly grip. But he
did not have Gray Wolf's fear. He urged her to accompany him to the
white hummocks on the ice, and at last she went with him and sank back
restlessly on her haunches, while he dug out the bones and pieces of
flesh that the snow had kept from freezing. But she would not eat, and
at last Kazan went and sat on his haunches at her side, and with her
looked at what he had dug out from under the snow. He sniffed the air.
He could not smell danger, but Gray Wolf told him that it might be
there.
She told him many other things in the days and nights that followed. The
third night Kazan himself gathered the hunt-pack and led in the chase.
Three times that month, before the moon left the skies, he led the
chase, and each time there was a kill. But as the snows began to grow
softer under his feet he found a greater and greater companionship in
Gray Wolf, and they hunted alone, living on the big white rabbits. In
all the world he had loved but two things, the girl with the shining
hair and the hands that had caressed him--and Gray Wolf.
He did not leave the big plain, and often He took his mate to the top of
the ridge, and he would try to tell her what he had left back there.
With the dark nights the call of the woman became so strong upon him
that he was filled with a longing to go back, and take Gray Wolf with
him.
Something happened very soon after that. They were crossing the open
plain one day when up on the face of the ridge Kazan saw something that
made his heart stand still. A man, with a dog-sledge and team, was
coming down into their world. The wind had not warned them, and suddenly
Kazan saw something glisten in the man's hands. He knew what it was. It
was the thing that spat fire and thunder, and killed.
He gave his warning to Gray Wolf, and they were off like the wind, side
by side. And then came the _sound_--and Kazan's hatred of men burst
forth in a snarl as he leaped. There was a queer humming over their
heads. The sound from behind came again, and this time Gray Wolf gave a
yelp of pain, and rolled over and over in the snow. She was on her feet
again in an instant, and Kazan dropped behind her, and ran there until
they reached the shelter of the timber. Gray Wolf lay down, and began
licking the wound in her shoulder. Kazan faced the ridge. The man was
taking up their trail. He stopped where Gray Wolf had fallen, and
examined the snow. Then he came on.
Kazan urged Gray Wolf to her feet, and they made for the thick swamp
close to the lake. All that day they kept in the face of the wind, and
when Gray Wolf lay down Kazan stole back over their trail, watching and
sniffing the air.
For days after that Gray Wolf ran lame, and when once they came upon the
remains of an old camp, Kazan's teeth were bared in snarling hatred of
the man-scent that had been left behind. Growing in him there was a
desire for vengeance--vengeance for his own hurts, and for Gray Wolf's.
He tried to nose out the man-trail under the cover of fresh snow, and
Gray Wolf circled around him anxiously, and tried to lure him deeper
into the forest. At last he followed her sullenly. There was a savage
redness in his eyes.
Three days later the new moon came. And on the fifth night Kazan struck
a trail. It was fresh--so fresh that he stopped as suddenly as though
struck by a bullet when he ran upon it, and stood with every muscle in
his body quivering, and his hair on end. It was a man-trail. There were
the marks of the sledge, the dogs' feet, and the snow-shoeprints of his
enemy.
Then he threw up his head to the stars, and from his throat there rolled
out over the wide plains the hunt-cry--the wild and savage call for the
pack. Never had he put the savagery in it that was there to-night. Again
and again he sent forth that call, and then there came an answer and
another and still another, until Gray Wolf herself sat back on her
haunches and added her voice to Kazan's, and far out on the plain a
white and haggard-faced man halted his exhausted dogs to listen, while a
voice said faintly from the sledge:
"The wolves, father. Are they coming--after us?"
The man was silent. He was not young. The moon shone in his long white
beard, and added grotesquely to the height of his tall gaunt figure. A
girl had raised her head from a bearskin pillow on the sleigh. Her dark
eyes were filled beautifully with the starlight. She was pale. Her hair
fell in a thick shining braid over her shoulder, and she was hugging
something tightly to her breast.
"They're on the trail of something--probably a deer," said the man,
looking at the breech of his rifle. "Don't worry, Jo. We'll stop at the
next bit of scrub and see if we can't find enough dry stuff for a
fire.--Wee-ah-h-h-h, boys! Koosh--koosh--" and he snapped his whip over
the backs of his team.
From the bundle at the girl's breast there came a small wailing cry. And
far back in the plain there answered it the scattered voice of the pack.
At last Kazan was on the trail of vengeance. He ran slowly at first,
with Gray Wolf close beside him, pausing every three or four hundred
yards to send forth the cry. A gray leaping form joined them from
behind. Another followed. Two came in from the side, and Kazan's
solitary howl gave place to the wild tongue of the pack. Numbers
grew, and with increasing number the pace became swifter.
Four--six--seven--ten--fourteen, by the time the more open and
wind-swept part of the plain was reached.
It was a strong pack, filled with old and fearless hunters. Gray Wolf
was the youngest, and she kept close to Kazan's shoulders. She could see
nothing of his red-shot eyes and dripping jaws, and would not have
understood if she had seen. But she could _feel_ and she was thrilled by
the spirit of that strange and mysterious savagery that had made Kazan
forget all things but hurt and death.
The pack made no sound. There was only the panting of breath and the
soft fall of many feet. They ran swiftly and close. And always Kazan was
a leap ahead, with Gray Wolf nosing his shoulder.
Never had he wanted to kill as he felt the desire in him to kill now.
For the first time he had no fear of man, no fear of the club, of the
whip, or of the thing that blazed forth fire and death. He ran more
swiftly, in order to overtake them and give them battle sooner. All of
the pent-up madness of four years of slavery and abuse at the hands of
men broke loose in thin red streams of fire in his veins, and when at
last he saw a moving blotch far out on the plain ahead of him, the cry
that came out of his throat was one that Gray Wolf did not understand.
Three hundred yards beyond that moving blotch was the thin line of
timber, and Kazan and his followers bore down swiftly. Half-way to the
timber they were almost upon it, and suddenly it stopped and became a
black and motionless shadow on the snow. From out of it there leaped
that lightning tongue of flame that Kazan had always dreaded, and he
heard the hissing song of the death-bee over his head. He did not mind
it now. He yelped sharply, and the wolves raced in until four of them
were neck-and-neck with him.
A second flash--and the death-bee drove from breast to tail of a huge
gray fighter close to Gray Wolf. A third--a fourth--a fifth spurt of
that fire from the black shadow, and Kazan himself felt a sudden swift
passing of a red-hot thing along his shoulder, where the man's last
bullet shaved off the hair and stung his flesh.
Three of the pack had gone down under the fire of the rifle, and half of
the others were swinging to the right and the left. But Kazan drove
straight ahead. Faithfully Gray Wolf followed him.
The sledge-dogs had been freed from their traces, and before he could
reach the man, whom he saw with his rifle held like a club in his hands,
Kazan was met by the fighting mass of them. He fought like a fiend, and
there was the strength and the fierceness of two mates in the mad
gnashing of Gray Wolf's fangs. Two of the wolves rushed in, and Kazan
heard the terrific, back-breaking thud of the rifle. To him it was the
_club_. He wanted to reach it. He wanted to reach the man who held it,
and he freed himself from the fighting mass of the dogs and sprang to
the sledge. For the first time he saw that there was something human on
the sledge, and in an instant he was upon it. He buried his jaws deep.
They sank in something soft and hairy, and he opened them for another
lunge. And then he heard the voice! It was _her voice_! Every muscle in
his body stood still. He became suddenly like flesh turned to lifeless
stone.
_Her voice_! The bear rug was thrown back and what had been hidden under
it he saw clearly now in the light of the moon and the stars. In him
instinct worked more swiftly than human brain could have given birth to
reason. It was not _she_. But the voice was the same, and the white
girlish face so close to his own blood-reddened eyes held in it that
same mystery that he had learned to love. And he saw now that which she
was clutching to her breast, and there came from it a strange thrilling
cry--and he knew that here on the sledge he had found not enmity and
death, but that from which he had been driven away in the other world
beyond the ridge.
In a flash he turned. He snapped at Gray Wolf's flank, and she dropped
away with a startled yelp. It had all happened in a moment, but the man
was almost down. Kazan leaped under his clubbed rifle and drove into the
face of what was left of the pack. His fangs cut like knives. If he had
fought like a demon against the dogs, he fought like ten demons now, and
the man--bleeding and ready to fall--staggered back to the sledge,
marveling at what was happening. For in Gray Wolf there was now the
instinct of matehood, and seeing Kazan tearing and righting the pack she
joined him in the struggle which she could not understand.
When it was over, Kazan and Gray Wolf were alone out on the plain. The
pack had slunk away into the night, and the same moon and stars that had
given to Kazan the first knowledge of his birthright told him now that
no longer would those wild brothers of the plains respond to his call
when he howled into the sky.
He was hurt. And Gray Wolf was hurt, but not so badly as Kazan. He was
torn and bleeding. One of his legs was terribly bitten. After a time he
saw a fire in the edge of the forest. The old call was strong upon him.
He wanted to crawl in to it, and feel the girl's hand on his head, as
he had felt that other hand in the world beyond the ridge. He would have
gone--and would have urged Gray Wolf to go with him--but the man was
there. He whined, and Gray Wolf thrust her warm muzzle against his neck.
Something told them both that they were outcasts, that the plains, and
the moon, and the stars were against them now, and they slunk into the
shelter and the gloom of the forest.
Kazan could not go far. He could still smell the camp when he lay down.
Gray Wolf snuggled close to him. Gently she soothed with her soft tongue
Kazan's bleeding wounds. And Kazan, lifting his head, whined softly to
the stars.