THE TRAGEDY ON SUN ROCK
All that day Kazan guarded the top of the Sun Rock. Fate, and the fear
and brutality of masters, had heretofore kept him from fatherhood, and
he was puzzled. Something told him now that he belonged to the Sun Rock,
and not to the cabin. The call that came to him from over the plain was
not so strong. At dusk Gray Wolf came out from her retreat, and slunk to
his side, whimpering, and nipped gently at his shaggy neck. It was the
old instinct of his fathers that made him respond by caressing Gray
Wolf's face with his tongue. Then Gray Wolf's jaws opened, and she
laughed in short panting breaths, as if she had been hard run. She was
happy, and as they heard a little snuffling sound from between the
rocks, Kazan wagged his tail, and Gray Wolf darted back to her young.
The babyish cry and its effect upon Gray Wolf taught Kazan his first
lesson in fatherhood. Instinct again told him that Gray Wolf could not
go down to the hunt with him now--that she must stay at the top of the
Sun Rock. So when the moon rose he went down alone, and toward dawn
returned with a big white rabbit between his jaws. It was the wild in
him that made him do this, and Gray Wolf ate ravenously. Then he knew
that each night hereafter he must hunt for Gray Wolf--and the little
whimpering creatures hidden between the two rocks.
The next day, and still the next, he did not go to the cabin, though he
heard the voices of both the man and the woman calling him. On the fifth
he went down, and Joan and the baby were so glad that the woman hugged
him, and the baby kicked and laughed and screamed at him, while the man
stood by cautiously, watching their demonstrations with a gleam of
disapprobation in his eyes.
"I'm afraid of him," he told Joan for the hundredth time. "That's the
wolf-gleam in his eyes. He's of a treacherous breed. Sometimes I wish
we'd never brought him home."
"If we hadn't--where would the baby--have gone?" Joan reminded him, a
little catch in her voice.
"I had almost forgotten that," said her husband. "Kazan, you old devil,
I guess I love you, too." He laid his hand caressingly on Kazan's head.
"Wonder how he'll take to life down there?" he asked. "He has always
been used to the forests. It'll seem mighty strange."
"And so--have I--always been used to the forests," whispered Joan. "I
guess that's why I love Kazan--next to you and the baby. Kazan--dear old
Kazan!"
This time Kazan felt and scented more of that mysterious change in the
cabin. Joan and her husband talked incessantly of their plans when they
were together; and when the man was away Joan talked to the baby, and to
him. And each time that he came down to the cabin during the week that
followed, he grew more and more restless, until at last the man noticed
the change in him.
"I believe he knows," he said to Joan one evening. "I believe he knows
we're preparing to leave." Then he added: "The river was rising again
to-day. It will be another week before we can start, perhaps longer."
That same night the moon flooded the top of the Sun Rock with a golden
light, and out into the glow of it came Gray Wolf, with her three little
whelps toddling behind her. There was much about these soft little balls
that tumbled about him and snuggled in his tawny coat that reminded
Kazan of the baby. At times they made the same queer, soft little
sounds, and they staggered about on their four little legs just as
helplessly as baby Joan made her way about on two. He did not fondle
them, as Gray Wolf did, but the touch of them, and their babyish
whimperings, filled him with a kind of pleasure that he had never
experienced before.
The moon was straight above them, and the night was almost as bright as
day, when he went down again to hunt for Gray Wolf. At the foot of the
rock a big white rabbit popped up ahead of him, and he gave chase. For
half a mile he pursued, until the wolf instinct in him rose over the
dog, and he gave up the futile race. A deer he might have overtaken, but
small game the wolf must hunt as the fox hunts it, and he began to slip
through the thickets slowly and as quietly as a shadow. He was a mile
from the Sun Rock when two quick leaps put Gray Wolf's supper between
his jaws. He trotted back slowly, dropping the big seven-pound snow-shoe
hare now and then to rest.
When he came to the narrow trail that led to the top of the Sun Rock he
stopped. In that trail was the warm scent of strange feet. The rabbit
fell from his jaws. Every hair in his body was suddenly electrified into
life. What he scented was not the scent of a rabbit, a marten or a
porcupine. Fang and claw had climbed the path ahead of him. And then,
coming faintly to him from the top of the rock, he heard sounds which
sent him up with a terrible whining cry. When he reached the summit he
saw in the white moonlight a scene that stopped him for a single moment.
Close to the edge of the sheer fall to the rocks, fifty feet below, Gray
Wolf was engaged in a death-struggle with a huge gray lynx. She was
down--and under, and from her there came a sudden sharp terrible cry of
pain.
Kazan flew across the rock. His attack was the swift silent assault of
the wolf, combined with the greater courage, the fury and the strategy
of the husky. Another husky would have died in that first attack. But
the lynx was not a dog or a wolf. It was "Mow-lee, the swift," as the
Sarcees had named it--the quickest creature in the wilderness. Kazan's
inch-long fangs should have sunk deep in its jugular. But in a
fractional part of a second the lynx had thrown itself back like a huge
soft ball, and Kazan's teeth buried themselves in the flesh of its neck
instead of the jugular. And Kazan was not now fighting the fangs of a
wolf in the pack, or of another husky. He was fighting claws--claws that
ripped like twenty razor-edged knives, and which even a jugular hold
could not stop.
Once he had fought a lynx in a trap, and he had not forgotten the lesson
the battle had taught him. He fought to pull the lynx _down_, instead of
forcing it on its back, as he would have done with another dog or a
wolf. He knew that when on its back the fierce cat was most dangerous.
One rip of its powerful hindfeet could disembowel him.
Behind him he heard Gray Wolf sobbing and crying, and he knew that she
was terribly hurt. He was filled with the rage and strength of two dogs,
and his teeth met through the flesh and hide of the cat's throat. But
the big lynx escaped death by half an inch. It would take a fresh grip
to reach the jugular, and suddenly Kazan made the deadly lunge. There
was an instant's freedom for the lynx, and in that moment it flung
itself back, and Kazan gripped at its throat--_on top_.
The cat's claws ripped through his flesh, cutting open his side--a
little too high to kill. Another stroke and they would have cut to his
vitals. But they had struggled close to the edge of the rock wall, and
suddenly, without a snarl or a cry, they rolled over. It was fifty or
sixty feet to the rocks of the ledge below, and even as they pitched
over and over in the fall, Kazan's teeth sank deeper. They struck with
terrific force, Kazan uppermost. The shock sent him half a dozen feet
from his enemy. He was up like a flash, dizzy, snarling, on the
defensive. The lynx lay limp and motionless where it had fallen. Kazan
came nearer, still prepared, and sniffed cautiously. Something told him
that the fight was over. He turned and dragged himself slowly along the
ledge to the trail, and returned to Gray Wolf.
Gray Wolf was no longer in the moonlight. Close to the two rocks lay the
limp and lifeless little bodies of the three pups. The lynx had torn
them to pieces. With a whine of grief Kazan approached the two boulders
and thrust his head between them. Gray Wolf was there, crying to herself
in that terrible sobbing way. He went in, and began to lick her bleeding
shoulders and head. All the rest of that night she whimpered with pain.
With dawn she dragged herself out to the lifeless little bodies on the
rock.
And then Kazan saw the terrible work of the lynx. For Gray Wolf was
blind--not for a day or a night, but blind for all time. A gloom that no
sun could break had become her shroud. And perhaps again it was that
instinct of animal creation, which often is more wonderful than man's
reason, that told Kazan what had happened. For he knew now that she was
helpless--more helpless than the little creatures that had gamboled in
the moonlight a few hours before. He remained close beside her all
that day.
[Illustration: Kazan gripped at its throat]
Vainly that day did Joan call for Kazan. Her voice rose to the Sun Rock,
and Gray Wolf's head snuggled closer to Kazan, and Kazan's ears dropped
back, and he licked her wounds. Late in the afternoon Kazan left Gray
Wolf long enough to run to the bottom of the trail and bring up the
snow-shoe rabbit. Gray Wolf muzzled the fur and flesh, but would not
eat. Still a little later Kazan urged her to follow him to the trail. He
no longer wanted to stay at the top of the Sun Rock, and he no longer
wanted Gray Wolf to stay there. Step by step he drew her down the
winding path away from her dead puppies. She would move only when he was
very near her--so near that she could touch his scarred flank with her
nose.
They came at last to the point in the trail where they had to leap down
a distance of three or four feet from the edge of a rock, and here Kazan
saw how utterly helpless Gray Wolf had become. She whined, and crouched
twenty times before she dared make the spring, and then she jumped
stiff-legged, and fell in a heap at Kazan's feet. After this Kazan did
not have to urge her so hard, for the fall impinged on her the fact that
she was safe only when her muzzle touched her mate's flank. She followed
him obediently when they reached the plain, trotting with her
foreshoulder to his hip.
Kazan was heading for a thicket in the creek bottom half a mile away,
and a dozen times in that short distance Gray Wolf stumbled and fell.
And each time that she fell Kazan learned a little more of the
limitations of blindness. Once he sprang off in pursuit of a rabbit, but
he had not taken twenty leaps when he stopped and looked back. Gray Wolf
had not moved an inch. She stood motionless, sniffing the air--waiting
for him! For a full minute Kazan stood, also waiting. Then he returned
to her. Ever after this he returned to the point where he had left Gray
Wolf, knowing that he would find her there.
All that day they remained in the thicket. In the afternoon he visited
the cabin. Joan and her husband were there, and both saw at once
Kazan's torn side and his lacerated head and shoulders.
"Pretty near a finish fight for him," said the man, after he had
examined him. "It was either a lynx or a bear. Another wolf could not do
that."
For half an hour Joan worked over him, talking to him all the time, and
fondling him with her soft hands. She bathed his wounds in warm water,
and then covered them with a healing salve, and Kazan was filled again
with that old restful desire to remain with her always, and never to go
back into the forests. For an hour she let him lie on the edge of her
dress, with his nose touching her foot, while she worked on baby things.
Then she rose to prepare supper, and Kazan got up--a little wearily--and
went to the door. Gray Wolf and the gloom of the night were calling him,
and he answered that call with a slouch of his shoulders and a drooping
head. Its old thrill was gone. He watched his chance, and went out
through the door. The moon had risen when he rejoined Gray Wolf. She
greeted his return with a low whine of joy, and muzzled him with her
blind face. In her helplessness she looked happier than Kazan in all his
strength.
From now on, during the days that followed, it was a last great fight
between blind and faithful Gray Wolf and the woman. If Joan had known of
what lay in the thicket, if she could once have seen the poor creature
to whom Kazan was now all life--the sun, the stars, the moon, and
food--she would have helped Gray Wolf. But as it was she tried to lure
Kazan more and more to the cabin, and slowly she won.
At last the great day came, eight days after the fight on the Sun Rock.
Kazan had taken Gray Wolf to a wooded point on the river two days
before, and there he had left her the preceding night when he went to
the cabin. This time a stout babiche thong was tied to the collar round
his neck, and he was fastened to a staple in the log wall. Joan and her
husband were up before it was light next day. The sun was just rising
when they all went out, the man carrying the baby, and Joan leading him.
Joan turned and locked the cabin door, and Kazan heard a sob in her
throat as they followed the man down to the river. The big canoe was
packed and waiting. Joan got in first, with the baby. Then, still
holding the babiche thong, she drew Kazan up close to her, so that he
lay with his weight against her.
The sun fell warmly on Kazan's back as they shoved off, and he closed
his eyes, and rested his head on Joan's lap. Her hand fell softly on his
shoulder. He heard again that sound which the man could not hear, the
broken sob in her throat, as the canoe moved slowly down to the wooded
point.
Joan waved her hand back at the cabin, just disappearing behind the
trees.
"Good-by!" she cried sadly. "Good-by--" And then she buried her face
close down to Kazan and the baby, and sobbed.
The man stopped paddling.
"You're not sorry--Joan?" he asked.
They were drifting past the point now, and the scent of Gray Wolf came
to Kazan's nostrils, rousing him, and bringing a low whine from his
throat.
"You're not sorry--we're going?" Joan shook her head.
"No," she replied. "Only I've--always lived here--in the forests--and
they're--home!"
The point with its white finger of sand, was behind them now. And Kazan
was standing rigid, facing it. The man called to him, and Joan lifted
her head. She, too, saw the point, and suddenly the babiche leash
slipped from her fingers, and a strange light leaped into her blue eyes
as she saw what stood at the end of that white tip of sand. It was Gray
Wolf. Her blind eyes were turned toward Kazan. At last Gray Wolf, the
faithful, understood. Scent told her what her eyes could not see. Kazan
and the man-smell were together. And they were going--going--going--
"Look!" whispered Joan.
The man turned. Gray Wolf's forefeet were in the water. And now, as the
canoe drifted farther and farther away, she settled back on her
haunches, raised her head to the sun which she could not see and gave
her last long wailing cry for Kazan.
The canoe lurched. A tawny body shot through the air--and Kazan was
gone.
The man reached forward for his rifle. Joan's hand stopped him. Her
face was white.
"Let him go back to her! Let him go--let him go!" she cried. "It is his
place--with her."
And Kazan reaching the shore, shook the water from his shaggy hair, and
looked for the last time toward the woman. The canoe was drifting slowly
around the first bend. A moment more and it had disappeared. Gray Wolf
had won.