THE DAYS OF FIRE
From the night of the terrible fight with the big gray lynx on the top
of the Sun Rock, Kazan remembered less and less vividly the old days
when he had been a sledge-dog, and the leader of a pack. He would never
quite forget them, and always there would stand out certain memories
from among the rest, like fires cutting the blackness of night. But as
man dates events from his birth, his marriage, his freedom from a
bondage, or some foundation-step in his career, so all things seemed to
Kazan to begin with two tragedies which had followed one fast upon the
other after the birth of Gray Wolf's pups.
The first was the fight on the Sun Rock, when the big gray lynx had
blinded his beautiful wolf mate for all time, and had torn her pups into
pieces. He in turn had killed the lynx. But Gray Wolf was still blind.
Vengeance had not been able to give her sight. She could no longer hunt
with him, as they had hunted with the wild wolf-packs out on the plain,
and in the dark forests. So at thought of that night he always snarled,
and his lips curled back to reveal his inch-long fangs.
The other tragedy was the going of Joan, her baby and her husband.
Something more infallible than reason told Kazan that they would not
come back. Brightest of all the pictures that remained with him was that
of the sunny morning when the woman and the baby he loved, and the man
he endured because of them, had gone away in the canoe, and often he
would go to the point, and gaze longingly down-stream, where he had
leaped from the canoe to return to his blind mate.
So Kazan's life seemed now to be made up chiefly of three things: his
hatred of everything that bore the scent or mark of the lynx, his
grieving for Joan and the baby, and Gray Wolf. It was natural that the
strongest passion in him should be his hatred of the lynx, for not only
Gray Wolf's blindness and the death of the pups, but even the loss of
the woman and the baby he laid to that fatal struggle on the Sun Rock.
From that hour he became the deadliest enemy of the lynx tribe. Wherever
he struck the scent of the big gray cat he was turned into a snarling
demon, and his hatred grew day by day, as he became more completely a
part of the wild.
He found that Gray Wolf was more necessary to him now than she had ever
been since the day she had left the wolf-pack for him. He was
three-quarters dog, and the dog-part of him demanded companionship.
There was only Gray Wolf to give him that now. They were alone.
Civilization was four hundred miles south of them. The nearest Hudson's
Bay post was sixty miles to the west. Often, in the days of the woman
and the baby, Gray Wolf had spent her nights alone out in the forest,
waiting and calling for Kazan. Now it was Kazan who was lonely and
uneasy when he was away from her side.
In her blindness Gray Wolf could no longer hunt with her mate. But
gradually a new code of understanding grew up between them, and through
her blindness they learned many things that they had not known before.
By early summer Gray Wolf could travel with Kazan, if he did not move
too swiftly. She ran at his flank, with her shoulder or muzzle touching
him, and Kazan learned not to leap, but to trot. Very quickly he found
that he must choose the easiest trails for Gray Wolf's feet. When they
came to a space to be bridged by a leap, he would muzzle Gray Wolf and
whine, and she would stand with ears alert--listening. Then Kazan would
take the leap, and she understood the distance she had to cover. She
always over-leaped, which was a good fault.
In another way, and one that was destined to serve them many times in
the future, she became of greater help than ever to Kazan. Scent and
hearing entirely took the place of sight. Each day developed these
senses more and more, and at the same time there developed between them
the dumb language whereby she could impress upon Kazan what she had
discovered by scent or sound. It became a curious habit of Kazan's
always to look at Gray Wolf when they stopped to listen, or to scent the
air.
After the fight on the Sun Rock, Kazan had taken his blind mate to a
thick clump of spruce and balsam in the river-bottom, where they
remained until early summer. Every day for weeks Kazan went to the cabin
where Joan and the baby--and the man--had been. For a long time he went
hopefully, looking each day or night to see some sign of life there. But
the door was never open. The boards and saplings at the windows always
remained. Never a spiral of smoke rose from the clay chimney. Grass and
vines began to grow in the path. And fainter and fainter grew that scent
which Kazan could still find about it--the scent of man, of the woman,
the baby.
One day he found a little baby moccasin under one of the closed windows.
It was old, and worn out, and blackened by snow and rain, but he lay
down beside it, and remained there for a long time, while the baby
Joan--a thousand miles away--was playing with the strange toys of
civilization. Then he returned to Gray Wolf among the spruce and balsam.
The cabin was the one place to which Gray Wolf would not follow him. At
all other times she was at his side. Now that she had become accustomed
to blindness, she even accompanied him on his hunts, until he struck
game, and began the chase. Then she would wait for him. Kazan usually
hunted the big snow-shoe rabbits. But one night he ran down and killed a
young doe. The kill was too heavy to drag to Gray Wolf, so he returned
to where she was waiting for him and guided her to the feast. In many
ways they became more and more inseparable as the summer lengthened,
until at last, through all the wilderness, their footprints were always
two by two and never one by one.
Then came the great fire.
Gray Wolf caught the scent of it when it was still two days to the west.
The sun that night went down in a lurid cloud. The moon, drifting into
the west, became blood red. When it dropped behind the wilderness in
this manner, the Indians called it the Bleeding Moon, and the air was
filled with omens.
All the next day Gray Wolf was nervous, and toward noon Kazan caught in
the air the warning that she had sensed many hours ahead of him.
Steadily the scent grew stronger, and by the middle of the afternoon the
sun was veiled by a film of smoke.
The flight of the wild things from the triangle of forest between the
junctions of the Pipestone and Cree Rivers would have begun then, but
the wind shifted. It was a fatal shift. The fire was raging from the
west and south. Then the wind swept straight eastward, carrying the
smoke with it, and during this breathing spell all the wild creatures in
the triangle between the two rivers waited. This gave the fire time to
sweep completely, across the base of the forest triangle, cutting off
the last trails of escape.
Then the wind shifted again, and the fire swept north. The head of the
triangle became a death-trap. All through the night the southern sky was
filled with a lurid glow, and by morning the heat and smoke and ash were
suffocating.
Panic-striken, Kazan searched vainly for a means of escape. Not for an
instant did he leave Gray Wolf. It would have been easy for him to swim
across either of the two streams, for he was three-quarters dog. But at
the first touch of water on her paws, Gray Wolf drew back, shrinking.
Like all her breed, she would face fire and death before water. Kazan
urged. A dozen times he leaped in, and swam out into the stream. But
Gray Wolf would come no farther than she could wade.
They could hear the distant murmuring roar of the fire now. Ahead of it
came the wild things. Moose, caribou and deer plunged into the water of
the streams and swam to the safety of the opposite side. Out upon a
white finger of sand lumbered a big black bear with two cubs, and even
the cubs took to the water, and swam across easily. Kazan watched them,
and whined to Gray Wolf.
And then out upon that white finger of sand came other things that
dreaded the water as Gray Wolf dreaded it: a big fat porcupine, a sleek
little marten, a fisher-cat that sniffed the air and wailed like a
child. Those things that could not or would not swim outnumbered the
others three to one. Hundreds of little ermine scurried along the shore
like rats, their squeaking little voices sounding incessantly; foxes ran
swiftly along the banks, seeking a tree or a windfall that might bridge
the water for them; the lynx snarled and faced the fire; and Gray
Wolf's own tribe--the wolves--dared take no deeper step than she.
Dripping and panting, and half choked by heat and smoke, Kazan came to
Gray Wolf's side. There was but one refuge left near them, and that was
the sand-bar. It reached out for fifty feet into the stream. Quickly he
led his blind mate toward it. As they came through the low bush to the
river-bed, something stopped them both. To their nostrils had come the
scent of a deadlier enemy than fire. A lynx had taken possession of the
sand-bar, and was crouching at the end of it. Three porcupines had
dragged themselves into the edge of the water, and lay there like balls,
their quills alert and quivering. A fisher-cat was snarling at the lynx.
And the lynx, with ears laid back, watched Kazan and Gray Wolf as they
began the invasion of the sand-bar.
Faithful Gray Wolf was full of fight, and she sprang shoulder to
shoulder with Kazan, her fangs bared. With an angry snap, Kazan drove
her back, and she stood quivering and whining while he advanced.
Light-footed, his pointed ears forward, no menace or threat in his
attitude, he advanced. It was the deadly advance of the husky trained
in battle, skilled in the art of killing. A man from civilization would
have said that the dog was approaching the lynx with friendly
intentions. But the lynx understood. It was the old feud of many
generations--made deadlier now by Kazan's memory of that night at the
top of the Sun Rock.
Instinct told the fisher-cat what was coming, and it crouched low and
flat; the porcupines, scolding like little children at the presence of
enemies and the thickening clouds of smoke, thrust their quills still
more erect. The lynx lay on its belly, like a cat, its hindquarters
twitching, and gathered for the spring. Kazan's feet seemed scarcely to
touch the sand as he circled lightly around it. The lynx pivoted as he
circled, and then it shot in a round snarling ball over the eight feet
of space that separated them.
Kazan did not leap aside. He made no effort to escape the attack, but
met it fairly with the full force of his shoulders, as sledge-dog meets
sledge-dog. He was ten pounds heavier than the lynx, and for a moment
the big loose-jointed cat with its twenty knife-like claws was thrown
on its side. Like a flash Kazan took advantage of the moment, and drove
for the back of the cat's neck.
In that same moment blind Gray Wolf leaped in with a snarling cry, and
fighting under Kazan's belly, she fastened her jaws in one of the cat's
hindlegs. The bone snapped. The lynx, twice outweighed, leaped backward,
dragging both Kazan and Gray Wolf. It fell back down on one of the
porcupines, and a hundred quills drove into its body. Another leap and
it was free--fleeing into the face of the smoke. Kazan did not pursue.
Gray Wolf came to his side and licked his neck, where fresh blood was
crimsoning his tawny hide. The fisher-cat lay as if dead, watching them
with fierce little black eyes. The porcupines continued to chatter, as
if begging for mercy. And then a thick black suffocating pall of smoke
drove low over the sand-bar and with it came air that was furnace-hot.
At the uttermost end of the sand-bar Kazan and Gray Wolf rolled
themselves into balls and thrust their heads under their bodies. The
fire was very near now. The roar of it was like that of a great
cataract, with now and then a louder crash of falling trees. The air
was filled with ash and burning sparks, and twice Kazan drew forth his
head to snap at blazing embers that fell upon and seared him like hot
irons.
Close along the edge of the stream grew thick green bush, and when the
fire reached this, it burned more slowly, and the heat grew less. Still,
it was a long time before Kazan and Gray Wolf could draw forth their
heads and breathe more freely. Then they found that the finger of sand
reaching out into the river had saved them. Everywhere in that triangle
between the two rivers the world had turned black, and was hot
underfoot.
The smoke cleared away. The wind changed again, and swung down cool and
fresh from the west and north. The fisher-cat was the first to move
cautiously back to the forests that had been, but the porcupines were
still rolled into balls when Gray Wolf and Kazan left the sand-bar. They
began to travel up-stream, and before night came, their feet were sore
from hot ash and burning embers.
The moon was strange and foreboding that night, like a spatter of blood
in the sky, and through the long silent hours there was not even the
hoot of an owl to give a sign that life still existed where yesterday
had been a paradise of wild things. Kazan knew that there was nothing to
hunt, and they continued to travel all that night. With dawn they struck
a narrow swamp along the edge of the stream. Here beavers had built a
dam, and they were able to cross over into the green country on the
opposite side. For another day and another night they traveled westward,
and this brought them into the thick country of swamp and timber along
the Waterfound.
And as Kazan and Gray Wolf came from the west, there came from the
Hudson's Bay post to the east a slim dark-faced French half-breed by the
name of Henri Loti, the most famous lynx hunter in all the Hudson's Bay
country. He was prospecting for "signs," and he found them in abundance
along the Waterfound. It was a game paradise, and the snow-shoe rabbit
abounded in thousands. As a consequence, the lynxes were thick, and
Henri built his trapping shack, and then returned to the post to wait
until the first snows fell, when he would come back with his team,
supplies and traps.
And up from the south, at this same time, there was slowly working his
way by canoe and trail a young university zoologist who was gathering
material for a book on _The Reasoning of the Wild_. His name was Paul
Weyman, and he had made arrangements to spend a part of the winter with
Henri Loti, the half-breed. He brought with him plenty of paper, a
camera and the photograph of a girl. His only weapon was a pocket-knife.
And meanwhile Kazan and Gray Wolf found the home they were seeking in a
thick swamp five or six miles from the cabin that Henri Loti had built.