The Wolf Hunters Part 11

"Why, that's--"

"A sh.e.l.l from Rod's gun!"

For a few moments Rod and Mukoki stared at the young Indian in blank amazement.

"It's a .35 caliber Remington," continued Wabi, "and it's an auto-loading sh.e.l.l. There are only three guns like that in this country. I've got one, Mukoki has another--and you lost the third in your fight with the Woongas!"

The venison had begun to burn, and Mukoki quickly transferred it to the table. Without a word the three sat down to their meal.

"That means the Woongas are on our trail," declared Rod presently.

"That is what I have been trying to reason out all the afternoon,"

replied Wabi. "It certainly is proof that they are, or have been quite recently, on this side of the mountain. But I don't believe they know we are here. The trail I struck was about five miles from camp. It was at least two days old. Three Indians on snow-shoes were traveling north. I followed back on their trail and found after a time that the Indians had come from the north, which leads me to believe that they were simply on a hunting expedition, cut a circle southward, and then returned to their camp. I don't believe they will come farther south. But we must keep our eyes open."

Wabi's description of the manner in which the strange trail turned gave great satisfaction to Mukoki, who nodded affirmatively when the young hunter expressed it as his belief that the Woongas would not come so far as their camp. But the discovery of their presence chilled the buoyant spirits of the hunters. There was, however, a new spice of adventure lurking in this possible peril that was not altogether displeasing, and by the time the meal was at an end something like a plan of campaign had been formed. The hunters would not wait to be attacked and then act in self-defense, possibly at a disadvantage. They would be constantly on the lookout for the Woongas, and if a fresh trail or a camp was found they would begin the man-hunt themselves.

The sun was just beginning to sink behind the distant hills in the southwest when the hunters again left camp. Wolf had received nothing to eat since the previous night, and with increasing hunger the fiery impatience lurking in his eyes and the restlessness of his movements became more noticeable. Mukoki called attention to these symptoms with a gloating satisfaction.

The gloom of early evening was enveloping the wilderness by the time the three wolf hunters reached the swamp in which Rod had slain the buck.

While he carried the guns and packs, Mukoki and Wabigoon dragged the buck between them to the huge flat-top rock. Now for the first time the city youth began to understand the old pathfinder's scheme. Several saplings were cut, and by means of a long rope of babeesh the deer was dragged up the side of the rock until it rested securely upon the flat s.p.a.ce. From the dead buck's neck the babeesh rope was now stretched across the intervening s.p.a.ce between the rock and the clump of cedars in which the hunters were to conceal themselves. In two of these cedars, at a distance of a dozen feet from the ground, were quickly made three platforms of saplings, upon which the ambushed watchers could comfortably seat themselves. By the time complete darkness had fallen the "trap" was finished, with the exception of a detail which Rod followed with great interest.

From inside his clothes, where it had been kept warm by his body, Mukoki produced the flask of blood. A third of this blood he scattered upon the face of the rock and upon the snow at its base. The remainder he distributed, drop by drop, in trails running toward the swamp and plains.

There still remained three hours before the moon would be up, and the hunters now joined Wolf, who had been fastened half-way up the ridge. In the shelter of a big rock a small fire was built, and during their long wait the hunters pa.s.sed the time away by broiling and eating chunks of venison and in going over again the events of the day.

It was nine o'clock before the moon rose above the edge of the wilderness. This great orb of the Northern night seemed to hold a never-ending fascination for Rod. It crept above the forests, a glowing, throbbing ball of red, quivering and palpitating in an effulgence that neither cloud nor mist dimmed in this desolation beyond the sphere of man; and as it rose, almost with visible movement to the eyes, the blood in it faded, until at last it seemed a great blaze of soft light between silver and gold. It was then that the whole world was lighted up under it. It was then that Mukoki, speaking softly, beckoned the others to follow him, and with Wolf at his side went down the ridge.

Making a circuit around the back of the rock, Mukoki paused near a small sapling twenty yards from the dead buck and secured Wolf by his babeesh thong. Hardly had he done so when the animal began to exhibit signs of excitement. He trotted about nervously, sniffing the air, gathering the wind from every direction, and his jaws dropped with a snarling whine.

Then he struck one of the clots of blood in the snow.

"Come," whispered Wabi, pulling at Rod's sleeve, "come--quietly."

They slipped back among the shadows of the spruce and watched Wolf in unbroken silence. The animal now stood rigidly over the blood clot. His head was level with his quivering back, his ears half aslant, his nostrils pointing to a strange thrilling scent that came to him from somewhere out there in the moonlight. Once more the instinct of his breed was flooding the soul of the captive wolf. There was the odor of blood in his widening nostrils. It was not the blood of the camp, of the slaughtered game dragged in by human hands before his eyes. It was the blood of the chase!

A flas.h.i.+ng memory of his captors turned the animal's head for an instant in backward inspection. They were gone. He could neither hear nor see them. He sniffed the sign of human presence, but that sign was always with him, and was not disturbing. The blood held him--and the strange scent, the game scent--that was coming to him more clearly every instant.

He crunched about cautiously in the snow. He found other spots of blood, and to the watchers there came a low long whine that seemed about to end in the wolf song. The blood trails were leading him away toward the game scent, and he tugged viciously at the babeesh that held him captive, gnawing at it vainly, like an angry dog, forgetting what experience had taught him many times before. Each moment added to his excitement He ran about the sapling, gulped mouthfuls of the b.l.o.o.d.y snow, and each time he paused for a moment with his open dripping jaws held toward the dead buck on the rock. The game was very near. Brute sense told him that. Oh, the longing that was in him, the twitching, quivering longing to kill--kill--kill!

He made another effort, tore up the snow in his frantic endeavors to free himself, to break loose, to follow in the wild glad cry of freed savagery in the calling of his people. He failed again, panting, whining in piteous helplessness.

Then he settled upon his haunches at the end of his babeesh thong.

For a moment his head turned to the moonlit sky, his long nose poised at right angles to the bristling hollows between his shoulders.

There came then a low, whining wail, like the beginning of the "death-song" of a husky dog--a wail that grew in length and in strength and in volume until it rose weirdly among the mountains and swept far out over the plains--the hunt call of the wolf on the trail, which calls to him the famished, gray-gaunt outlaws of the wilderness, as the bugler's notes call his fellows on the field of battle.

Three times that blood-thrilling cry went up from the captive wolf's throat, and before those cries had died away the three hunters were perched upon their platforms among the spruce.

There followed now the ominous, waiting silence of an awakened wilderness. Rod could hear his heart throbbing within him. He forgot the intense cold. His nerves tingled. He looked out over the endless plains, white and mysteriously beautiful as they lay bathed in the glow of the moon. And Wabi knew more than he what was happening. All over that wild desolation the call of the wolf had carried its meaning. Down there, where a lake lay silent in its winter sleep, a doe started in trembling and fear; beyond the mountain a huge bull moose lifted his antlered head with battle-glaring eyes; half a mile away a fox paused for an instant in its sleuth-like stalking of a rabbit; and here and there in that world of wild things the gaunt hungry people of Wolf's blood stopped in their trails and turned their heads toward the signal that was coming in wailing echoes to their ears.

And then the silence was broken. From afar--it might have been a mile away--there came an answering cry; and at that cry the wolf at the end of his babeesh thong settled upon his haunches again and sent back the call that comes only when there is blood upon the trail or when near the killing time.

There was not the rustle of a bough, not a word spoken, by the silent watchers in the spruce. Mukoki had slipped back and half lay across his support in shooting att.i.tude. Wabi had braced a foot, and his rifle was half to his shoulder, leveled over a knee. It was Rod's turn with the big revolver, and he had practised aiming through a crotch that gave a rest to his arm.

In a few moments there came again the howl of the distant wolf on the plains, and this time it was joined by another away to the westward. And after that there came two from the plains instead of one, and then a far cry to the north and east. For the first time Rod and Wabi heard the gloating chuckle of Mukoki in his spruce a dozen feet away.

At the increasing responses of his brethren Wolf became more frantic in his efforts. The scent of fresh blood and of wounded game was becoming maddening to the captive. But his frenzy no longer betrayed itself in futile efforts to escape from the babeesh thong. Wolf knew that his cries were a.s.sembling the hunt-pack. Nearer and nearer came the responses of the leaders, and there were now only momentary rests between the deep-throated exhortations which he sent in all directions into the night.

Suddenly, almost from the swamp itself, there came a quick, excited, yelping reply, and Wabi gripped Rod by the arm.

"He has struck the place where you killed the buck," he whispered.

"There'll be quick work now!"

Hardly had he spoken when a series of excited howls broke forth from the swamp, coming nearer and nearer as the hunger-crazed outlaw of the plains followed over the rich-scented trail made by the two Indians as they carried the slaughtered deer. Soon he nosed one of the trails of blood, and a moment later the watchers saw a gaunt shadow form running swiftly over the snow toward Wolf.

For an instant, as the two beasts of prey met, there fell a silence; then both animals joined in the wailing hunt-pack cry, and the wolf that was free came to the edge of the great rock and stood with his fore feet on its side, and his cry changed from that of the chase to the still more thrilling signal that told the gathering pack of game at bay.

Swiftly the wolves closed in. From over the edge of the mountain one came and joined the wolf at the rock without the hunters seeing his approach. From out of the swamp there came a pack of three, and now about the rock there grew a maddened, yelping horde, clambering and scrambling and fighting in their efforts to climb up to the game that was so near and yet beyond their reach. And sixty feet away Wolf crouched, watching the gathering of his clan, helpless, panting from his choking efforts to free himself, and quieting, gradually quieting, until in sullen silence he looked upon the scene, as though he knew the moment was very near when that thrilling spectacle would be changed into a scene of direst tragedy.

And it was Mukoki who had first said that this was the vengeance of Wolf upon his people.

From Mukoki there now came a faint hissing warning, and Wabi threw his rifle to his shoulder. There were at least a score of wolves at the base of the rock. Gradually the old Indian pulled upon the babeesh rope that led to the dead buck--pulled until he was putting a half of his strength into the effort, and could feel the animal slowly slipping from the flat ledge. A moment more and the buck tumbled down in the midst of the waiting pack.

As flies gather upon a lump of sugar the famished animals now crowded and crushed and fought over the deer's body, and as they came thus together there sounded the quick sharp signal to fire from Mukoki.

For five seconds the edge of the spruce was a blaze of death-dealing flashes, and the deafening reports of the two rifles and the big Colt drowned the cries and struggles of the animals. When those five seconds were over fifteen shots had been fired, and five seconds later the vast, beautiful silence of the wilderness night had fallen again. About the rock was the silence of death, broken only faintly by the last gasping throes of the animals that lay dying in the snow.

In the trees there sounded the metallic clink of loading sh.e.l.ls.

Wabi spoke first.

"I believe we did a good job, Mukoki!"

Mukoki's reply was to slip down his tree. The others followed, and hastened across to the rock. Five bodies lay motionless in the snow. A sixth was dragging himself around the side of the rock, and Mukoki attacked it with his belt-ax. Still a seventh had run for a dozen rods, leaving a crimson trail behind, and when Wabi and Rod came up to it the animal was convulsed in its last dying struggles.

"Seven!" exclaimed the Indian youth. "That is one of the best shoots we ever had. A hundred and five dollars in a night isn't bad, is it?"

The two came back to the rock, dragging the wolf with them. Mukoki was standing as rigid as a statue in the moonlight, his face turned into the north. He pointed one arm far out over the plains, and said, without turning his head,

"See!"

Far out in that silent desolation the hunters saw a lurid flash of flame. It climbed up and up, until it filled the night above it with a dull glow--a single unbroken stream of fire that rose far above the swamps and forests of the plains.

"That's a burning jackpine!" said Wabigoon.

"Burning jackpine!" agreed the old warrior. Then he added, "Woonga signal fire!"