TRAGEDY IN THE MOUNTAIN DEN
When Warrigal's puppies were born, Finn, their father, had been in
the Tinnaburra for nearly five months, though he had only known the
Mount Desolation range for some nine or ten weeks. During the whole
of that five months of late winter and spring, not one single drop
of rain had fallen in the Tinnaburra, and with the coming of
Warrigal's children there came also the approach of summer. Finn,
for his part, gave no thought to this question of weather, because
he had quite forgotten that there was such a thing as rain. It had
not rained while he was in the city with the Master, after landing
in Australia. The little that fell during the period of his
imprisonment with the Southern Cross Circus had never touched the
caged Giant Wolf, and he had entirely forgotten what falling rain
felt like. He had slept on the earth ever since his escape from the
circus, and he accepted its dryness as a natural and agreeable
fact.
But both Finn and Warrigal were rather annoyed when, just as the
puppies began to open their eyes and become a little troublesome
and curious, the creek at the foot of Mount Desolation disappeared
through its shingly bed and was seen no more. This meant a tramp of
three and a half miles to the nearest drinking-place, a serious
matter for a nursing mother, whose tongue seemed always to be
lolling thirstily from the side of her mouth. Warrigal would make
the journey to the drinking-place as swiftly as she could, and
drink till she could drink no more. Then during the return journey
concern for her children would set the pace for her, and she would
arrive at the den panting and gasping, and more thirsty than when
she left it; for the weather was already hot, the air singularly
dry, and Warrigal herself in no condition for fast travelling, with
her heavy dugs and body, both amply fed and amply drawn upon in her
capacity of nurse-mother. Finn did his part well and thoroughly,
and there was no lack of good fresh meat in the den on the first
spur, but he could not carry water. Warrigal tried to slake her
mother-thirst by means of an extra heavy meat diet, but though she
knew it not, this only aggravated her continual desire for water,
which was Nature's demand for assistance in fitting her to
discharge adequately her duty to her children. And so, during all
this time, Finn's mate found herself obliged to run over hard,
parched ground at least fourteen miles a day, and often twenty-one,
when it would have suited her, and her puppies also, a good deal
better to have confined her exercise to strolls in the
neighbourhood of the den.
One result of this was that Warrigal's children began to eat meat
at an earlier stage of their existence than would have been the
case if water had been plentiful and near at hand for their mother.
There never were more carnivorous little creatures than these
puppies. At first, of course, their mother saw to it that the meat
they consumed was of a ready-masticated and even a half-digested
sort; but in an astonishingly short while they began to rend and
tear raw flesh for themselves, under the mother's watchful eye; and
from that time on Finn was a very busy hunter. It was probably
because of this unceasing demand for fresh meat in the den on the
first spur that the leader of the Mount Desolation pack was the
first member of it to notice that hunting was becoming increasingly
difficult in that region. Finn's quest was necessarily for large
meat; and at about this time he was discovering to his cost that he
had to go farther and farther afield to find it. It was well enough
for the bachelors and spinsters of the pack, the free-lances of
that clan. The district was still rich in its supply of the lesser
marsupials, rats, mice, and the like; not to mention all manner of
grubs, and insects, and creeping things, among which it was easy
for a single dingo to satisfy his appetite. But a giant Wolfhound,
with a very hungry mate and four ravening little pups, all waiting
eagerly upon his hunting, was quite differently situated.
Finn's hunting took him one evening far enough south and by east to
bring him within half a mile of the boundary-rider's encampment in
which he had lived with Jess. Here he happened upon Koala, who was
softly grumbling to himself while waddling from one tree to
another. Koala, of course, began the usual plaint about his poverty
and inoffensiveness. This was mechanical with him, and he must have
known very well that Finn would not hurt him. As a matter of fact,
the Wolfhound lay down beside the native bear, and they had quite a
long confab upon bush affairs, during which Finn referred in some
way to the growing scarcity of game in that district, and Koala
mournfully added that gum-leaves themselves were by no means what
they had been. But, for all his foolishness and helplessness, Koala
had lived a very long time, and actually was very well versed in
bush-lore, though he liked to describe himself as the most forlorn
and helpless of beasts. He knew all about the scarceness of big
game and its causes, just as he knew all about the dryness and want
of sap in his own vegetable food; and now, by means of the methods
of communication of which we know nothing, he managed to convey
some of his knowledge to Finn, so that when they separated, Finn
connected the drying up of the Mount Desolation creek with the
hardness of his recent hunting, and the heat and absence of rain
with both. The ordinary season for rain had passed now, and the
full length of Australian summer was before them; a fact of which
the learned Koala said nothing, probably because he did not know
it, or, possibly, because he did not greatly care, being a total
abstainer from drink himself.
It was at about this time that Warrigal herself returned to the
trails. Finn had in no sense failed her as bread-winner, but, game
being scarce, and her children still too young to do any foraging
for themselves worth talking about, Warrigal felt that she owed it
to her mate to share his burdens with him. The pups had already
reached the stage of grovelling about outside the den, and pursuing
the few live things of the insect type who affected that stony
spot. One of them, indeed, had already learned a lesson that would
last him for the rest of his life, regarding the habits, customs,
and general undesirability of the bull-dog ant as play-mate or
prey.
[Illustration: He slung the wallaby over his shoulder and set out
for the mountain.]
It happened, about a week after his meeting with Koala, that Finn
had a stroke of luck in the matter of stumbling upon a badly
wounded wallaby within a couple of miles of the den. In some way
this unfortunate creature had managed to get its right hind-leg
caught in a dingo-trap, to which a heavy clog of wood was attached.
In the course of time the wallaby would have died very miserably,
and already it had begun to lose flesh. But Finn brought a
mercifully sudden death to the crippled creature, and then
proceeded to tear in sunder the limb which held the trap. Having
accomplished this, he slung the wallaby over his shoulder and set
out for the mountain, meaning to allow the family to feast upon
this early kill, while he took a further look round upon the
trails.
Just as Finn, heavily laden, scaled the rocky ledge immediately
below the one which flanked the entrance of the den, a shrill cry
of mortal anguish fell upon his ears, and thrilled him to the very
marrow. The cry came from the inside of the den above him, and he
knew it for the cry of one of his children in extremity. That gave
Finn the most piercing thrill of paternity he had felt up till this
time. He dropped his kill, and leaped with one mighty bound clear
over two boulders and a bare stretch of track to the ledge outside
the den. And, in the moment of his leap, a figure emerged from the
mouth of the den bearing between its uncovered, yellow tusks the
body of Warrigal's last-born son, limp and bleeding. This figure
which faced Finn now in the moonlight was the most terribly ugly
one that the countryside could have produced. Gaunt beyond
description, ragged, grey, bereft of hair in many places, aged and
desperate, old Tasman, the Zebra-Wolf, had his tusks sunk in warm,
juicy flesh for the first time in three months, and was prepared to
pay for the privilege with the remains of his life if need be.
Skin, bone, glittering eyes, and savage, despairing ferocity; that
was all there was left of Tasman, three months after the death of
his son Lupus. He had lived so long almost entirely upon insects,
grubs, scraps of carrion dropped by birds, and the like. Desperate
hunger, and the smell of young animal life, and of the proceeds of
daily kills, had drawn him to the den on the first spur that night;
and now, now he was face to face with the master of the range, and
the outraged father of Warrigal's pups.
The gaunt old wolf dropped his prey on the instant, realizing
clearly that his life was at stake. In his day he had slain many
dingoes, but that was in the distant past, and this iron-grey
monster which roared at him now was different from the dingoes
Tasman had known. With massive, bony skull held low, and saliva
dripping from his short, powerful jaws, the old wolf sent forth his
most terrible snarl of challenge and defiance; the cry which had
been used in bygone years to paralyse his victims into a condition
which made them easy prey for his tearing claws and lance-like
tusks. But the horrible sound was powerless so far as Finn was
concerned, and the Wolfhound gathered himself together now for the
administration of punishment which should be as swift as it would
be terrible and final. But in that moment he heard a scattering of
loose stones behind him which delayed his spring to allow time for
a flying glance over his right shoulder; and that glance changed
his whole tactics in the matter of the attack upon Tasman. For,
even as Finn glanced, an outstretched furry mass flew across his
range of vision, and landed like a projectile upon the gaunt old
wolf's neck. Warrigal also had returned; she also had dropped her
kill in the trail below the den, and now Tasman had to deal with
the dauntless fury of a bereaved mother. Warrigal was a whirlwind
of rage; a revelation to Finn of the fighting force which had given
her her unquestioned standing in the pack before ever she set eyes
on the Wolfhound.
Tasman had his back against the side of the den's mouth now, and he
flung Warrigal from him, with a slash of his jaws and a twist of
his still powerful neck. But, in the next moment, the under-side of
that scrawny neck was between the mightiest jaws in the Tinnaburra,
and, even as the life blood of old Tasman flowed out between Finn's
white fangs, the body of him was being literally torn in sunder by
the furiously busy teeth and claws of Warrigal. It was little she
cared for the thrusts of his hind-claws in the last muscular
contortions which sent his legs tearing at her neck. She was
possessed of the mother-madness, and so she fought like a wild cat
at bay. Old Tasman was not just killed; he was dispersed,
scattered, dissolved almost into the elements from which he sprang;
he was translated within a few minutes into shapeless carrion.
And then, gasping, bleeding, panting, her jaws streaming, Warrigal
wheeled about with a savage, moaning cry, and shot forward into the
den. One son she had seen dead upon the ledge without. Two
daughters she found dead within, and, while she licked at his
lacerated little body, the lingering life ebbed out finally from
the other male pup, her sole remaining son. But Warrigal licked the
still little form for almost an hour, though it lived for no more
than three or four minutes after she entered the den.
Then Warrigal went outside to where Finn sat, alternately licking
the one deep wound the old wolf had scored in his chest, and
looking out dismally across the Tinnaburra. Warrigal sat down on
her haunches about two yards from Finn, and, having pointed her
muzzle at the moon, where it sailed serenely above them in a
flawless dark blue sky, she began to pour out upon the night the
sound of the long, hoarse dingo howl of mourning. Finn listened for
some minutes without moving. By that time the melancholy of it all
had entered fairly into his soul, and he, too, lifted up his head
and delivered himself of the Irish Wolfhound howl, which carries
farther than the dingo howl, and is more purely mournful than any
other canine cry. Also, it has more volume than any other; there is
something uncanny and supernatural about its piercing melancholy.
So the sire and the dam sat and howled at the stars in their
unclouded courses. And if you were to visit that den to-day, on the
first south-eastern spur of Mount Desolation, you would probably
find the skeletons of three of Finn's and Warrigal's children; for
the Wolfhound and his mate never entered their old home again.
[Illustration]