THE TRAIL OF HUNGER
Kazan and Gray Wolf had been a hundred and forty hours without food. To
Gray Wolf this meant acute discomfort, a growing weakness. To Kazan it
was starvation. Six days and six nights of fasting had drawn in their
ribs and put deep hollows in front of their hindquarters. Kazan's eyes
were red, and they narrowed to slits as he looked forth into the day.
Gray Wolf followed him this time when he went out on the hard snow.
Eagerly and hopefully they began the hunt in the bitter cold. They swung
around the edge of the windfall, where there had always been rabbits.
There were no tracks now, and no scent. They continued in a horseshoe
circle through the swamp, and the only scent they caught was that of a
snow-owl perched up in a spruce. They came to the burn and turned back,
hunting the opposite side of the swamp. On this side there was a ridge.
They climbed the ridge, and from the cap of it looked out over a world
that was barren of life. Ceaselessly Gray Wolf sniffed the air, but she
gave no signal to Kazan. On the top of the ridge Kazan stood panting.
His endurance was gone. On their return through the swamp he stumbled
over an obstacle which he tried to clear with a jump. Hungrier and
weaker, they returned to the windfall. The night that followed was
clear, and brilliant with stars. They hunted the swamp again. Nothing
was moving--save one other creature, and that was a fox. Instinct told
them that it was futile to follow him.
It was then that the old thought of the cabin returned to Kazan. Two
things the cabin had always meant to him--warmth and food. And far
beyond the ridge was the cabin, where he and Gray Wolf had howled at the
scent of death. He did not think of man--or of that mystery which he had
howled at. He thought only of the cabin, and the cabin had always meant
food. He set off in a straight line for the ridge, and Gray Wolf
followed. They crossed the ridge and the burn beyond, and entered the
edge of a second swamp. Kazan was hunting listlessly now. His head hung
low. His bushy tail dragged in the snow. He was intent on the
cabin--only the cabin. It was his last hope. But Gray Wolf was still
alert, taking in the wind, and lifting her head whenever Kazan stopped
to snuffle his chilled nose in the snow. At last it came--the scent!
Kazan had moved on, but he stopped when he found that Gray Wolf was not
following. All the strength that was in his starved body revealed itself
in a sudden rigid tenseness as he looked at his mate. Her forefeet were
planted firmly to the east; her slim gray head was reaching out for the
scent; her body trembled.
Then--suddenly--they heard a sound, and with a whining cry Kazan set out
in its direction, with Gray Wolf at his flank. The scent grew stronger
and stronger in Gray Wolf's nostrils, and soon it came to Kazan. It was
not the scent of a rabbit or a partridge. It was big game. They
approached cautiously, keeping full in the wind. The swamp grew
thicker, the spruce more dense, and now--from a hundred yards ahead of
them--there came a crashing of locked and battling horns. Ten seconds
more they climbed over a snowdrift, and Kazan stopped and dropped flat
on his belly. Gray Wolf crouched close at his side, her blind eyes
turned to what she could smell but could not see.
Fifty yards from them a number of moose had gathered for shelter in the
thick spruce. They had eaten clear a space an acre in extent. The trees
were cropped bare as high as they could reach, and the snow was beaten
hard under their feet. There were six animals in the acre, two of them
bulls--and these bulls were fighting, while three cows and a yearling
were huddled in a group watching the mighty duel. Just before the storm
a young bull, sleek, three-quarters grown, and with the small compact
antlers of a four-year-old, had led the three cows and the yearling to
this sheltered spot among the spruce. Until last night he had been
master of the herd. During the night the older bull had invaded his
dominion. The invader was four times as old as the young bull. He was
half again as heavy. His huge palmate horns, knotted and irregular--but
massive--spoke of age. A warrior of a hundred fights, he had not
hesitated to give battle in his effort to rob the younger bull of his
home and family. Three times they had fought since dawn, and the
hard-trodden snow was red with blood. The smell of it came to Kazan's
and Gray Wolf's nostrils. Kazan sniffed hungrily. Queer sounds rolled up
and down in Gray Wolf's throat, and she licked her jaws.
For a moment the two fighters drew a few yards apart, and stood with
lowered heads. The old bull had not yet won victory. The younger bull
represented youth and endurance; in the older bull those things were
pitted against craft, greater weight, maturer strength--and a head and
horns that were like a battering ram. But in that great hulk of the
older bull there was one other thing--age. His huge sides were panting.
His nostrils were as wide as bells. Then, as if some invisible spirit of
the arena had given the signal, the animals came together again. The
crash of their horns could have been heard half a mile away, and under
twelve hundred pounds of flesh and bone the younger hull went plunging
back upon his haunches. Then was when youth displayed itself. In an
instant he was up, and locking horns with his adversary. Twenty times he
had done this, and each attack had seemed filled with increasing
strength. And now, as if realizing that the last moments of the last
fight had come, he twisted the old bull's neck and fought as he had
never fought before. Kazan and Gray Wolf both heard the sharp crack that
followed--as if a dry stick had been stepped upon and broken. It was
February, and the hoofed animals were already beginning to shed their
horns--especially the older bulls, whose palmate growths drop first.
This fact gave victory to the younger bull in the blood-stained arena a
few yards from Gray Wolf and Kazan. From its socket in the old bull's
skull one of his huge antlers broke with that sharp snapping sound, and
in another moment four inches of stiletto-like horn buried itself back
of his foreleg. In an instant all hope and courage left him, and he
swung backward yard by yard, with the younger bull prodding his neck and
shoulders until blood dripped from him in little streams. At the edge
of the clearing he flung himself free and crashed off into the forest.
The younger bull did not pursue. He tossed his head, and stood for a few
moments with heaving sides and dilated nostrils, facing in the direction
his vanquished foe had taken. Then he turned, and trotted back to the
still motionless cows and yearling.
Kazan and Gray Wolf were quivering. Gray Wolf slunk back from the edge
of the clearing, and Kazan followed. No longer were they interested in
the cows and the young bull. From that clearing they had seen meat
driven forth--meat that was beaten in fight, and bleeding. Every
instinct of the wild pack returned to Gray Wolf now--and in Kazan the
mad desire to taste the blood he smelled. Swiftly they turned toward the
blood-stained trail of the old bull, and when they came to it they found
it spattered red. Kazan's jaws dripped as the hot scent drove the blood
like veins of fire through his weakened body. His eyes were reddened by
starvation, and in them there was a light now that they had never known
even in the days of the wolf-pack.
He set off swiftly, almost forgetful of Gray Wolf. But his mate no
longer required his flank for guidance. With her nose close to the trail
she ran--ran as she had run in the long and thrilling hunts before
blindness came. Half a mile from the spruce thicket they came upon the
old bull. He had sought shelter behind a clump of balsam, and he stood
over a growing pool of blood in the snow. He was still breathing hard.
His massive head, grotesque now with its one antler, was drooping.
Flecks of blood dropped from his distended nostrils. Even then, with the
old bull weakened by starvation, exhaustion and loss of blood, a
wolf-pack would have hung back before attacking. Where they would have
hesitated, Kazan leaped in with a snarling cry. For an instant his fangs
sunk into the thick hide of the bull's throat. Then he was flung
back--twenty feet. Hunger gnawing at his vitals robbed him of all
caution, and he sprang to the attack again--full at the bull's
front--while Gray Wolf crept up unseen behind, seeking in her blindness
the vulnerable part which nature had not taught Kazan to find.
This time Kazan was caught fairly on the broad palmate leaf of the
bull's antler, and he was flung back again, half stunned. In that same
moment Gray Wolf's long white teeth cut like knives through one of the
bull's rope-like hamstrings. For thirty seconds she kept the hold, while
the bull plunged wildly in his efforts to trample her underfoot. Kazan
was quick to learn, still quicker to be guided by Gray Wolf, and he
leaped in again, snapping for a hold on the bulging cord just above the
knee. He missed, and as he lunged forward on his shoulders Gray Wolf was
flung off. But she had accomplished her purpose. Beaten in open battle
with one of his kind, and now attacked by a still deadlier foe, the old
bull began to retreat. As he went, one hip sank under him at every step.
The tendon of his left leg was bitten half through.
Without being able to see, Gray Wolf seemed to realize what had
happened. Again she was the pack-wolf--with all the old wolf strategy.
Twice flung back by the old bull's horn, Kazan knew better than to
attack openly again. Gray Wolf trotted after the bull, but he remained
behind for a moment to lick up hungrily mouthfuls of the blood-soaked
snow. Then he followed, and ran close against Gray Wolf's side, fifty
yards behind the bull. There was more blood in the trail now--a thin red
ribbon of it. Fifteen minutes later the bull stopped again, and faced
about, his great head lowered. His eyes were red. There was a droop to
his neck and shoulders that spoke no longer of the unconquerable
fighting spirit that had been a part of him for nearly a score of years.
No longer was he lord of the wilderness about him; no longer was there
defiance in the poise of his splendid head, or the flash of eager fire
in his bloodshot eyes. His breath came with a gasping sound that was
growing more and more distinct. A hunter would have known what it meant.
The stiletto-point of the younger bull's antler had gone home, and the
old bull's lungs were failing him. More than once Gray Wolf had heard
that sound in the early days of her hunting with the pack, and she
understood. Slowly she began to circle about the wounded monarch at a
distance of about twenty yards. Kazan kept at her side.
Once--twice--twenty times they made that slow circle, and with each turn
they made the old bull turned, and his breath grew heavier and his head
drooped lower. Noon came, and was followed by the more intense cold of
the last half of the day. Twenty circles became a hundred--two
hundred--and more. Under Gray Wolf's and Kazan's feet the snow grew hard
in the path they made. Under the old bull's widespread hoofs the snow
was no longer white--but red. A thousand times before this unseen
tragedy of the wilderness had been enacted. It was an epoch of that life
where life itself means the survival of the fittest, where to live means
to kill, and to die means to perpetuate life. At last, in that steady
and deadly circling of Gray Wolf and Kazan, there came a time when the
old bull did not turn--then a second, a third and a fourth time, and
Gray Wolf seemed to know. With Kazan she drew back from the hard-beaten
trail, and they flattened themselves on their bellies under a dwarf
spruce--and waited. For many minutes the bull stood motionless, his
hamstrung quarter sinking lower and lower. And then with a deep
blood-choked gasp he sank down.
For a long time Kazan and Gray Wolf did not move, and when at last they
returned to the beaten trail the bull's heavy head was resting on the
snow. Again they began to circle, and now the circle narrowed foot by
foot, until only ten yards--then nine--then eight--separated them from
their prey. The bull attempted to rise, and failed. Gray Wolf heard the
effort. She heard him sink back and suddenly she leaped in swiftly and
silently from behind. Her sharp fangs buried themselves in the bull's
nostrils, and with the first instinct of the husky, Kazan sprang for a
throat hold. This time he was not flung off. It was Gray Wolf's terrible
hold that gave him time to tear through the half-inch hide, and to bury
his teeth deeper and deeper, until at last they reached the jugular. A
gush of warm blood spurted into his face. But he did not let go. Just as
he had held to the jugular of his first buck on that moonlight night a
long time ago, so he held to the old bull now. It was Gray Wolf who
unclamped his jaws. She drew back, sniffing the air, listening. Then,
slowly, she raised her head, and through the frozen and starving
wilderness there went her wailing triumphant cry--the call to meat.
For them the days of famine had passed.