A SHOT ON THE SAND-BAR
July and August of 1911 were months of great fires in the Northland. The
swamp home of Kazan and Gray Wolf, and the green valley between the two
ridges, had escaped the seas of devastating flame; but now, as they set
forth on their wandering adventures again, it was not long before their
padded feet came in contact with the seared and blackened desolation
that had followed so closely after the plague and starvation of the
preceding winter. In his humiliation and defeat, after being driven from
his swamp home by the beavers, Kazan led his blind mate first into the
south. Twenty miles beyond the ridge they struck the fire-killed
forests. Winds from Hudson's Bay had driven the flames in an unbroken
sea into the west, and they had left not a vestige of life or a patch of
green. Blind Gray Wolf could not see the blackened world, but she
_sensed_ it. It recalled to her memory of that other fire, after the
battle on the Sun Rock; and all of her wonderful instincts, sharpened
and developed by her blindness, told her that to the north--and not
south--lay the hunting-grounds they were seeking. The strain of dog that
was in Kazan still pulled him south. It was not because he sought man,
for to man he had now become as deadly an enemy as Gray Wolf herself. It
was simply dog instinct to travel southward; in the face of fire it was
wolf instinct to travel northward. At the end of the third day Gray Wolf
won. They recrossed the little valley between the two ridges, and swung
north and west into the Athabasca country, striking a course that would
ultimately bring them to the headwaters of the McFarlane River.
Late in the preceding autumn a prospector had come up to Fort Smith, on
the Slave River, with a pickle bottle filled with gold dust and nuggets.
He had made the find on the McFarlane. The first mails had taken the
news to the outside world, and by midwinter the earliest members of a
treasure-hunting horde were rushing into the country by snow-shoe and
dog-sledge. Other finds came thick and fast. The McFarlane was rich in
free gold, and miners by the score staked out their claims along it and
began work. Latecomers swung to new fields farther north and east, and
to Fort Smith came rumors of "finds" richer than those of the Yukon. A
score of men at first--then a hundred, five hundred, a thousand--rushed
into the new country. Most of these were from the prairie countries to
the south, and from the placer beds of the Saskatchewan and the Frazer.
From the far North, traveling by way of the Mackenzie and the Liard,
came a smaller number of seasoned prospectors and adventurers from the
Yukon--men who knew what it meant to starve and freeze and die by
inches.
One of these late comers was Sandy McTrigger. There were several reasons
why Sandy had left the Yukon. He was "in bad" with the police who
patrolled the country west of Dawson, and he was "broke." In spite of
these facts he was one of the best prospectors that had ever followed
the shores of the Klondike. He had made discoveries running up to a
million or two, and had promptly lost them through gambling and drink.
He had no conscience, and little fear. Brutality was the chief thing
written in his face. His undershot jaw, his wide eyes, low forehead and
grizzly mop of red hair proclaimed him at once as a man not to be
trusted beyond one's own vision or the reach of a bullet. It was
suspected that he had killed a couple of men, and robbed others, but as
yet the police had failed to get anything "on" him. But along with this
bad side of him, Sandy McTrigger possessed a coolness and a courage
which even his worst enemies could not but admire, and also certain
mental depths which his unpleasant features did not proclaim.
Inside of six months Red Gold City had sprung up on the McFarlane, a
hundred and fifty miles from Fort Smith, and Fort Smith was five hundred
miles from civilization. When Sandy came he looked over the crude
collection of shacks, gambling houses and saloons in the new town, and
made up his mind that the time was not ripe for any of his "inside"
schemes just yet. He gambled a little, and won sufficient to buy himself
grub and half an outfit. A feature of this outfit was an old
muzzle-loading rifle. Sandy, who always carried the latest Savage on
the market, laughed at it. But it was the best his finances would allow
of. He started south--up the McFarlane. Beyond a certain point on the
river prospectors had found no gold. Sandy pushed confidently _beyond_
this point. Not until he was in new country did he begin his search.
Slowly he worked his way up a small tributary whose headwaters were
fifty or sixty miles to the south and east. Here and there he found
fairly good placer gold. He might have panned six or eight dollars'
worth a day. With this much he was disgusted. Week after week he
continued to work his way up-stream, and the farther he went the poorer
his pans became. At last only occasionally did he find colors. After
such disgusting weeks as these Sandy was dangerous--when in the company
of others. Alone he was harmless.
One afternoon he ran his canoe ashore on a white strip of sand. This was
at a bend, where the stream had widened, and gave promise of at least a
few colors. He had bent down close to the edge of the water when
something caught his attention on the wet sand. What he saw were the
footprints of animals. Two had come down to drink. They had stood side
by side. And the footprints were fresh--made not more than an hour or
two before. A gleam of interest shot into Sandy's eyes. He looked behind
him, and up and down the stream.
"Wolves," he grunted. "Wish I could 'a' shot at 'em with that old
minute-gun back there. Gawd--listen to that! And in broad daylight,
too!"
He jumped to his feet, staring off into the bush.
A quarter of a mile away Gray Wolf had caught the dreaded scent of man
in the wind, and was giving voice to her warning. It was a long wailing
howl, and not until its last echoes had died away did Sandy McTrigger
move. Then he returned to the canoe, took out his old gun, put a fresh
cap on the nipple and disappeared quickly over the edge of the bank.
For a week Kazan and Gray Wolf had been wandering about the headwaters
of the McFarlane and this was the first time since the preceding winter
that Gray Wolf had caught the scent of man in the air. When the wind
brought the danger-signal to her she was alone. Two or three minutes
before the scent came to her Kazan had left her side in swift pursuit of
a snow-shoe rabbit, and she lay flat on her belly under a bush, waiting
for him. In these moments when she was alone Gray Wolf was constantly
sniffing the air. Blindness had developed her scent and hearing until
they were next to infallible. First she had heard the rattle of Sandy
McTrigger's paddle against the side of his canoe a quarter of a mile
away. Scent had followed swiftly. Five minutes after her warning howl
Kazan stood at her side, his head flung up, his jaws open and panting.
Sandy had hunted Arctic foxes, and he was using the Eskimo tactics now,
swinging in a half-circle until he should come up in the face of the
wind. Kazan caught a single whiff of the man-tainted air and his spine
grew stiff. But blind Gray Wolf was keener than the little red-eyed fox
of the North. Her pointed nose slowly followed Sandy's progress. She
heard a dry stick crack under his feet three hundred yards away. She
caught the metallic click of his gun-barrel as it struck a birch
sapling. The moment she lost Sandy in the wind she whined and rubbed
herself against Kazan and trotted a few steps to the southwest.
At times such as this Kazan seldom refused to take guidance from her.
They trotted away side by side and by the time Sandy was creeping up
snake-like with the wind in his face, Kazan was peering from the fringe
of river brush down upon the canoe on the white strip of sand. When
Sandy returned, after an hour of futile stalking, two fresh tracks led
straight down to the canoe. He looked at them in amazement and then a
sinister grin wrinkled his ugly face. He chuckled as he went to his kit
and dug out a small rubber bag. From this he drew a tightly corked
bottle, filled with gelatine capsules. In each little capsule were five
grains of strychnine. There were dark hints that once upon a time Sandy
McTrigger had tried one of these capsules by dropping it in a cup of
coffee and giving it to a man, but the police had never proved it. He
was expert in the use of poison. Probably he had killed a thousand foxes
in his time, and he chuckled again as he counted out a dozen of the
capsules and thought how easy it would be to get this inquisitive pair
of wolves. Two or three days before he had killed a caribou, and each of
the capsules he now rolled up in a little ball of deer fat, doing the
work with short sticks in place of his fingers, so that there would be
no man-smell clinging to the death-baits. Before sundown Sandy set out
at right-angles over the plain, planting the baits. Most of them he hung
to low bushes. Others he dropped in worn rabbit and caribou trails. Then
he returned to the creek and cooked his supper.
Then next morning he was up early, and off to the poison baits. The
first bait was untouched. The second was as he had planted it. The third
was gone. A thrill shot through Sandy as he looked about him. Somewhere
within a radius of two or three hundred yards he would find his game.
Then his glance fell to the ground under the bush where he had hung the
poison capsule and an oath broke from his lips. The bait had not been
eaten. The caribou fat lay scattered under the bush and still imbedded
in the largest portion of it was the little white capsule--unbroken. It
was Sandy's first experience with a wild creature whose instincts were
sharpened by blindness, and he was puzzled. He had never known this to
happen before. If a fox or a wolf could be lured to the point of
touching a bait, it followed that the bait was eaten. Sandy went on to
the fourth and the fifth baits. They were untouched. The sixth was torn
to pieces, like the third. In this instance the capsule was broken and
the white powder scattered. Two more poison baits Sandy found pulled
down in this manner. He knew that Kazan and Gray Wolf had done the work,
for he found the marks of their feet in a dozen different places. The
accumulated bad humor of weeks of futile labor found vent in his
disappointment and anger. At last he had found something tangible to
curse. The failure of his poison baits he accepted as a sort of climax
to his general bad luck. Everything was against him, he believed, and he
made up his mind to return to Red Gold City. Early in the afternoon he
launched his canoe and drifted down-stream with the current. He was
content to let the current do all of the work to-day, and he used his
paddle just enough to keep his slender craft head on. He leaned back
comfortably and smoked his pipe, with the old rifle between his knees.
The wind was in his face and he kept a sharp watch for game.
It was late in the afternoon when Kazan and Gray Wolf came out on a
sand-bar five or six miles down-stream. Kazan was lapping up the cool
water when Sandy drifted quietly around a bend a hundred yards above
them. If the wind had been right, or if Sandy had been using his paddle,
Gray Wolf would have detected danger. It was the metallic click-click of
the old-fashioned lock of Sandy's rifle that awakened her to a sense of
peril. Instantly she was thrilled by the nearness of it. Kazan heard the
sound and stopped drinking to face it. In that moment Sandy pressed the
trigger. A belch of smoke, a roar of gunpowder, and Kazan felt a red-hot
stream of fire pass with the swiftness of a lightning-flash through his
brain. He stumbled back, his legs gave way under him, and he crumpled
down in a limp heap. Gray Wolf darted like a streak off into the bush.
Blind, she had not seen Kazan wilt down upon the white sand. Not until
she was a quarter of a mile away from the terrifying thunder of the
white man's rifle did she stop and wait for him.
Sandy McTrigger grounded his canoe on the sand-bar with an exultant
yell.
"Got you, you old devil, didn't I?" he cried. "I'd 'a' got the other,
too, if I'd 'a' had something besides this damned old relic!"
He turned Kazan's head over with the butt of his gun, and the leer of
satisfaction in his face gave place to a sudden look of amazement. For
the first time he saw the collar about Kazan's neck.
"My Gawd, it ain't a wolf," he gasped. "It's a dog, Sandy McTrigger--_a
dog!"_