THE CALL
Followed days of feasting on the frozen flesh of the old bull. In vain
Gray Wolf tried to lure Kazan off into the forests and the swamps. Day
by day the temperature rose. There was hunting now. And Gray Wolf wanted
to be alone--with Kazan. But with Kazan, as with most men, leadership
and power roused new sensations. And he was the leader of the dog-pack,
as he had once been a leader among the wolves. Not only Gray Wolf
followed at his flank now, but the four huskies trailed behind him. Once
more he was experiencing that triumph and strange thrill that he had
almost forgotten and only Gray Wolf, in that eternal night of her
blindness, felt with dread foreboding the danger into which his newly
achieved czarship might lead him.
For three days and three nights they remained in the neighborhood of the
dead moose, ready to defend it against others, and yet each day and
each night growing less vigilant in their guard. Then came the fourth
night, on which they killed a young doe. Kazan led in that chase and for
the first time, in the excitement of having the pack at his back, he
left his blind mate behind. When they came to the kill he was the first
to leap at its soft throat. And not until he had begun to tear at the
doe's flesh did the others dare to eat. He was master. He could send
them back with a snarl. At the gleam of his fangs they crouched
quivering on their bellies in the snow.
Kazan's blood was fomented with brute exultation, and the excitement and
fascination that came in the possession of new power took the place of
Gray Wolf each day a little more. She came in half an hour after the
kill, and there was no longer the lithesome alertness to her slender
legs, or gladness in the tilt of her ears or the poise of her head. She
did not eat much of the doe. Her blind face was turned always in Kazan's
direction. Wherever he moved she followed with her unseeing eyes, as if
expecting each moment his old signal to her--that low throat-note that
had called to her so often when they were alone in the wilderness.
In Kazan, as leader of the pack, there was working a curious change. If
his mates had been wolves it would not have been difficult for Gray Wolf
to have lured him away. But Kazan was among his own kind. He was a dog.
And they were dogs. Fires that had burned down and ceased to warm him
flamed up in him anew. In his life with Gray Wolf one thing had
oppressed him as it could not oppress her, and that thing was
loneliness. Nature had created him of that kind which requires
companionship--not of one but of many. It had given him birth that he
might listen to and obey the commands of the voice of man. He had grown
to hate men, but of the dogs--his kind--he was a part. He had been happy
with Gray Wolf, happier than he had ever been in the companionship of
men and his blood-brothers. But he had been a long time separated from
the life that had once been his and the call of blood made him for a
time forget. And only Gray Wolf, with that wonderful super-instinct
which nature was giving her in place of her lost sight, foresaw the end
to which it was leading him.
Each day the temperature continued to rise until when the sun was
warmest the snow began to thaw a little. This was two weeks after the
fight near the bull. Gradually the pack had swung eastward, until it was
now fifty miles east and twenty miles south of the old home under the
windfall. More than ever Gray Wolf began to long for their old nest
under the fallen trees. Again with those first promises of spring in
sunshine and air, there was coming also for the second time in her life
the promise of approaching motherhood.
But her efforts to draw Kazan back were unavailing, and in spite of her
protest he wandered each day a little farther east and south at the head
of his pack.
Instinct impelled the four huskies to move in that direction. They had
not yet been long enough a part of the wild to forget the necessity of
man and in that direction there was man. In that direction, and not far
from them now, was the Hudson Bay Company's post to which they and their
dead master owed their allegiance. Kazan did not know this, but one day
something happened to bring back visions and desires that widened still
more the gulf between him and Gray Wolf.
They had come to the cap of a ridge when something stopped them. It was
a man's voice crying shrilly that word of long ago that had so often
stirred the blood in Kazan's own veins--"_m'hoosh! m'hoosh!
m'hoosh!"_--and from the ridge they looked down upon the open space of
the plain, where a team of six dogs was trotting ahead of a sledge, with
a man running behind them, urging them on at every other step with that
cry of "_m'hoosh! m'hoosh! m'hoosh!"_
Trembling and undecided, the four huskies and the wolf-dog stood on the
ridge with Gray Wolf cringing behind them. Not until man and dogs and
sledge had disappeared did they move, and then they trotted down to the
trail and sniffed at it whiningly and excitedly. For a mile or two they
followed it, Kazan and his mates going fearlessly in the trail. Gray
Wolf hung back, traveling twenty yards to the right of them, with the
hot man-scent driving the blood feverishly through her brain. Only her
love for Kazan--and the faith she still had in him--kept her that near.
At the edge of a swamp Kazan halted and turned away from the trail. With
the desire that was growing in him there was still that old suspicion
which nothing could quite wipe out--the suspicion that was an
inheritance of his quarter-strain of wolf. Gray Wolf whined joyfully
when he turned into the forest, and drew so close to him that her
shoulder rubbed against Kazan's as they traveled side by side.
The "slush" snows followed fast after this. And the "slush" snows meant
spring--and the emptying of the wilderness of human life. Kazan and his
mates soon began to scent the presence and the movement of this life.
They were now within thirty miles of the post. For a hundred miles on
all sides of them the trappers were moving in with their late winter's
catch of furs. From east and west, south and north, all trails led to
the post. The pack was caught in the mesh of them. For a week not a day
passed that they did not cross a fresh trail, and sometimes two or
three.
Gray Wolf was haunted by constant fear. In her blindness she knew that
they were surrounded by the menace of men. To Kazan what was coming to
pass had more and more ceased to fill him with fear and caution. Three
times that week he heard the shouts of men--and once he heard a white
man's laughter and the barking of dogs as their master tossed them their
daily feed of fish. In the air he caught the pungent scent of camp-fires
and one night, in the far distance, he heard a wild snatch of song,
followed by the yelping and barking of a dog-pack.
Slowly and surely the lure of man drew him nearer to the post--a mile
to-night, two miles to-morrow, but always nearer. And Gray Wolf,
fighting her losing fight to the end, sensed in the danger-filled air
the nearness of that hour when he would respond to the final call and
she would be left alone.
These were days of activity and excitement at the fur company's post,
the days of accounting, of profit and of pleasure;--the days when the
wilderness poured in its treasure of fur, to be sent a little later to
London and Paris and the capitals of Europe. And this year there was
more than the usual interest in the foregathering of the forest people.
The plague had wrought its terrible havoc, and not until the fur-hunters
had come to answer to the spring roll-call would it be known accurately
who had lived and who had died.
The Chippewans and half-breeds from the south began to arrive first,
with their teams of mongrel curs, picked up along the borders of
civilization. Close after them came the hunters from the western barren
lands, bringing with them loads of white fox and caribou skins, and an
army of big-footed, long-legged Mackenzie hounds that pulled like horses
and wailed like whipped puppies when the huskies and Eskimo dogs set
upon them. Packs of fierce Labrador dogs, never vanquished except by
death, came from close to Hudson's Bay. Team after team of little yellow
and gray Eskimo dogs, as quick with their fangs as were their black and
swift-running masters with their hands and feet, met the much larger and
dark-colored Malemutes from the Athabasca. Enemies of all these packs of
fierce huskies trailed in from all sides, fighting, snapping and
snarling, with the lust of killing deep born in them from their wolf
progenitors.
There was no cessation in the battle of the fangs. It began with the
first brute arrivals. It continued from dawn through the day and around
the camp-fires at night. There was never an end to the strife between
the dogs, and between the men and the dogs. The snow was trailed and
stained with blood and the scent of it added greater fierceness to the
wolf-breeds.
Half a dozen battles were fought to the death each day and night. Those
that died were chiefly the south-bred curs--mixtures of mastiff, Great
Dane, and sheep-dog--and the fatally slow Mackenzie hounds. About the
post rose the smoke of a hundred camp-fires, and about these fires
gathered the women and the children of the hunters. When the snow was no
longer fit for sledging, Williams, the factor, noted that there were
many who had not come, and the accounts of these he later scratched out
of his ledgers knowing that they were victims of the plague.
At last came the night of the Big Carnival, For weeks and months women
and children and men had been looking forward to this. In scores of
forest cabins, in smoke-blackened tepees, and even in the frozen homes
of the little Eskimos, anticipation of this wild night of pleasure had
given an added zest to life. It was the Big Circus--the good time given
twice each year by the company to its people.
This year, to offset the memory of plague and death, the factor had put
forth unusual exertions. His hunters had killed four fat caribou. In the
clearing there were great piles of dry logs, and in the center of all
there rose eight ten-foot tree-butts crotched at the top; and from
crotch to crotch there rested a stout sapling stripped of bark, and on
each sapling was spitted the carcass of a caribou, to be roasted whole
by the heat of the fire beneath. The fires were lighted at dusk, and
Williams himself started the first of those wild songs of the
Northland--the song of the caribou, as the flames leaped up into the
dark night.
"Oh, ze cariboo-oo-oo, ze cariboo-oo-oo,
He roas' on high,
Jes' under ze sky.
air-holes beeg white cariboo-oo-oo!"
"Now!" he yelled. "Now--all together!" And carried away by his
enthusiasm, the forest people awakened from their silence of months,
and the song burst forth in a savage frenzy that reached to the skies.
* * * * *
Two miles to the south and west that first thunder of human voice
reached the ears of Kazan and Gray Wolf and the masterless huskies. And
with the voices of men they heard now the excited howlings of dogs. The
huskies faced the direction of the sounds, moving restlessly and
whining. For a few moments Kazan stood as though carven of rock. Then he
turned his head, and his first look was to Gray Wolf. She had slunk back
a dozen feet and lay crouched under the thick cover of a balsam shrub.
Her body, legs and neck were flattened in the snow. She made no sound,
but her lips were drawn back and her teeth shone white.
Kazan trotted back to her, sniffed at her blind face and whined. Gray
Wolf still did not move. He returned to the dogs and his jaws opened and
closed with a snap. Still more clearly came the wild voice of the
carnival, and no longer to be held back by Kazan's leadership, the four
huskies dropped their heads and slunk like shadows in its direction.
Kazan hesitated, urging Gray Wolf. But not a muscle of Gray Wolf's body
moved. She would have followed him in face of fire but not in face of
man. Not a sound escaped her ears. She heard the quick fall of Kazan's
feet as he left her. In another moment she knew that he was gone.
Then--and not until then--did she lift her head, and from her soft
throat there broke a whimpering cry.
It was her last call to Kazan. But stronger than that there was running
through Kazan's excited blood the call of man and of dog. The huskies
were far in advance of him now and for a few moments he raced madly to
overtake them. Then he slowed down until he was trotting, and a hundred
yards farther on he stopped. Less than a mile away he could see where
the flames of the great fires were reddening the sky. He gazed back to
see if Gray Wolf was following and then went on until he struck an open
and hard traveled trail. It was beaten with the footprints of men and
dogs, and over it two of the caribou had been dragged a day or two
before.
At last he came to the thinned out strip of timber that surrounded the
clearing and the flare of the flames was in his eyes. The bedlam of
sound that came to him now was like fire in his brain. He heard the song
and the laughter of men, the shrill cries of women and children, the
barking and snarling and fighting of a hundred dogs. He wanted to rush
out and join them, to become again a part of what he had once been. Yard
by yard he sneaked through the thin timber until he reached the edge of
the clearing. There he stood in the shadow of a spruce and looked out
upon life as he had once lived it, trembling, wistful and yet hesitating
in that final moment.
A hundred yards away was the savage circle of men and dogs and fire. His
nostrils were filled with the rich aroma of the roasting caribou, and as
he crouched down, still with that wolfish caution that Gray Wolf had
taught him, men with long poles brought the huge carcasses crashing down
upon the melting snow about the fires. In one great rush the horde of
wild revelers crowded in with bared knives, and a snarling mass of dogs
closed in behind them. In another moment he had forgotten Gray Wolf, had
forgotten all that man and the wild had taught him, and like a gray
streak was across the open.
The dogs were surging back when he reached them, with half a dozen of
the factor's men lashing them in the faces with long caribou-gut whips.
The sting of a lash fell in a fierce cut over an Eskimo dog's shoulder,
and in snapping at the lash his fangs struck Kazan's rump. With
lightning swiftness Kazan returned the cut, and in an instant the jaws
of the dogs had met. In another instant they were down and Kazan had the
Eskimo dog by the throat.
With shouts the men rushed in. Again and again their whips cut like
knives through the air. Their blows fell on Kazan, who was uppermost,
and as he felt the burning pain of the scourging whips there flooded
through him all at once the fierce memory of the days of old--the days
of the Club and the Lash. He snarled. Slowly he loosened his hold of the
Eskimo dog's throat. And then, out of the mêlée of dogs and men, there
sprang another man--_with a club_! It fell on Kazan's back and the force
of it sent him flat into the snow. It was raised again. Behind the club
there was a face--a brutal, fire-reddened face. It was such a face that
had driven Kazan into the wild, and as the club fell again he evaded the
full weight of its blow and his fangs gleamed like ivory knives. A third
time the club was raised, and this time Kazan met it in mid-air, and his
teeth ripped the length of the man's forearm.
"Good God!" shrieked the man in pain, and Kazan caught the gleam of a
rifle barrel as he sped toward the forest. A shot followed. Something
like a red-hot coal ran the length of Kazan's hip, and deep in the
forest he stopped to lick at the burning furrow where the bullet had
gone just deep enough to take the skin and hair from his flesh.
* * * * *
Gray Wolf was still waiting under the balsam shrub when Kazan returned
to her. Joyously she sprang forth to meet him. Once more the man had
sent back the old Kazan to her. He muzzled her neck and face, and stood
for a few moments with his head resting across her back, listening to
the distant sound.
Then, with ears laid flat, he set out straight into the north and west.
And now Gray Wolf ran shoulder to shoulder with him like the Gray Wolf
of the days before the dog-pack came; for that wonderful thing that lay
beyond the realm of reason told her that once more she was comrade and
mate, and that their trail that night was leading to their old home
under the windfall.