[Previous page]...f the fort. They were leaping straight for him and the
Factor. With the bursting open of the door, the noise of their howling
had increased tremendously. This howling now bothered him. His dream
was merging into something else- he knew not what; but through it all,
following him, persisted the howling.
And then he awoke to find the howling real. There was a great
snarling and yelping. The wolves were rushing him. They were all about
him and upon him. The teeth of one had closed upon his arm.
Instinctively he leaped into the fire, and as he leaped, he felt the
sharp slash of teeth that tore through the flesh of his leg. Then
began a fire fight. His stout mittens temporarily protected his hands,
and he scooped live coals into the air in all directions, until the
campfire took on the semblance of a volcano.
But it could not last long. His face was blistering in the heat, his
eyebrows and lashes were singed off, and the heat was becoming
unbearable to his feet. With a flaming brand in each hand, he sprang
to the edge of the fire. The wolves had been driven back. On every
side, wherever the live coals had fallen, the snow was sizzling, and
every little while a retiring wolf, with wild leap and snort and
snarl, announced that one such live coal had been stepped upon.
Flinging his brands at the nearest of his enemies. the man thrust
his smouldering mittens into the snow and stamped about to cool his
feet. His two dogs were missing, and he well knew that they had served
as a course in the protracted meal which had begun days before with
Fatty, the last course of which would likely be himself in the days to
follow.
'You ain't got me yet!' he cried, savagely shaking his fist at the
hungry beasts; and at the sound of his voice the whole circle was
agitated, there was a general snarl, and the she-wolf slid up close to
him across the snow and watched him with hungry wistfulness.
He set to work to carry out a new idea that had come to him. He
extended the fire into a large circle. Inside this circle he crouched,
his sleeping outfit under him as a protection against the melting
snow. When he had thus disappeared within his shelter of flame, the
whole pack came curiously to the rim of the fire to see what had
become of him. Hitherto they had been denied access to the fire, and
they now settled down in a close-drawn circle, like so many dogs,
blinking and yawning and stretching their lean bodies in the
unaccustomed warmth. Then the she-wolf sat down, pointed her nose at a
star, and began to howl. One by one the wolves joined her, till the
whole pack, on haunches, with noses pointed skyward, was howling its
hunger cry.
Dawn came, and daylight. The fire was burning low. The fuel had
run out, and there was need to get more. The man attempted to step out
of his circle of flame, but the wolves surged to meet him. Burning
brands made them spring aside, but they no longer sprang back. In vain
he strove to drive them back. As he gave up and stumbled inside his
circle, a wolf leaped for him, missed, and landed with all four feet
in the coals. It cried out with terror, at the same time snarling, and
scrambled back to cool its paws in the snow.
The man sat down on his blankets in a crouching position. His body
leaned forward from the hips. His shoulders, relaxed and drooping, and
his head on his knees advertised that he had given up the struggle.
Now and again he raised his head to note the dying down of the fire.
The circle of flame and coals was breaking into segments with openings
in between. These openings grew in size, the segments diminished.
'I guess you can come an' get me any time,' he mumbled. 'Anyway, I'm
goin' to sleep.'
Once he wakened, and in an opening in the circle, directly in
front of him, he saw the she-wolf gazing at him. Again he awakened,
a little later, though it seemed hours to him. A mysterious change had
taken place- so mysterious a change that he was shocked wider awake.
Something had happened. He could not understand at first. Then he
discovered it. The wolves were gone. Remained only the trampled snow
to show how closely they had pressed him. Sleep was welling up and
gripping him again, his head was sinking down upon his knees, when
he roused with a sudden start.
There were cries of men, the churn of sleds, the creaking of
harnesses, and the eager whimpering of straining dogs. Four sleds
pulled in from the river bed to the camp among the trees. Half a dozen
men were about the man who crouched in the center of the dying fire.
They were shaking and prodding him into consciousness. He looked at
them like a drunken man and maundered in strange, sleepy speech:
'Red she-wolf... Come in with the dogs at feedin' time... First
she ate the dog-food... Then she ate the dogs... An' after that she
ate Bill...'
'Where's Lord Alfred?' one of the men bellowed in his ear, shaking
him roughly.
He shook his head slowly. 'No, she didn't eat him... He's roostin'
in a tree at the last camp.'
'Dead?' the man shouted.
'An' in a box,' Henry answered. He jerked his shoulder petulantly
away from the grip of his questioner. 'Say, you lemme alone. I'm jes
plumb tuckered out... Good night, everybody.'
His eyes fluttered and went shut. His chin fell forward on his
chest. And even as they eased him down upon the blankets his snores
were rising on the frosty air.
But there was another sound. Far and faint it was, in the remote
distance, the cry of the hungry wolf-pack as it took the trail of
other meat than the man it had just missed.
PART TWO.
CHAPTER ONE.
The Battle of the Fangs.
IT WAS THE SHE-WOLF who had first caught the sound of men's voices
and the whining of the sled-dogs; and it was the she-wolf who was
first to spring away from the cornered man in his circle of dying
flame. The pack had been loath to forego the kill it had hunted
down, and it lingered for several minutes, making sure of the
sounds; and then it, too, sprang away on the trail made by the
she-wolf.
Running at the forefront of the pack was a large gray wolf- one of
its several leaders. It was he who directed the pack's course on the
heels of the she-wolf. It was he who snarled warningly at the
younger members of the pack or slashed at them with his fangs when
they ambitiously tried to pass him. And it was he who increased the
pace when he sighted the she-wolf, now trotting slowly across the
snow.
She dropped in alongside by him, as though it were her appointed
position, and took the pace of the pack. He did not snarl at her,
nor show his teeth, when any leap of hers chanced to put her in
advance of him. On the contrary, he seemed kindly disposed toward her-
too kindly to suit her, for he was prone to run near to her, and
when he ran too near it was she who snarled and showed her teeth.
Nor was she above slashing his shoulder sharply on occasion. At such
times he betrayed no anger. He merely sprang to the side and ran
stiffly ahead for several awkward leaps, in carriage and conduct
resembling an abashed country swain.
This was his one trouble in the running of the pack; but she had
other troubles. On her other side ran a gaunt old wolf, grizzled and
marked with the scars of many battles. He ran always on her right
side. The fact that he had but one eye, and that the left eye, might
account for this. He, also, was addicted to crowding her, to veering
toward her till his scarred muzzle touched her body, or shoulder, or
neck. As with the running mate on the left, she repelled these
attentions with her teeth; but when both bestowed their attentions
at the same time she was roughly jostled, being compelled, with
quick snaps to either side, to drive both lovers away and at the
same time to maintain her forward leap with the pack and see the way
of her feet before her. At such times her running mates flashed
their teeth and growled threateningly across at each other. They might
have fought, but even wooing and its rivalry waited upon the more
pressing hunger-need of the pack.
After each repulse, when the old wolf sheered abruptly away from the
sharp-toothed object of his desire, he shouldered against a young
three-year-old that ran on his blind right side. This young wolf had
attained his full size; and, considering the weak and famished
condition of the pack, he possessed more than the average vigor and
spirit. Nevertheless, he ran with his head even with the shoulder of
his one-eyed elder. When he ventured to run abreast of the older
wolf (which was seldom), a snarl and a snap sent him back even with
the shoulder again. Sometimes, however, he dropped cautiously and
slowly behind and edged in between the old leader and the she-wolf-
This was doubly resented, even triply resented. When she snarled her
displeasure, the old leader would whirl on the three-year-old.
Sometimes she whirled with him. And sometimes the young leader on
the left whirled, too.
At such times, confronted by three sets of savage teeth, the young
wolf stopped precipitately, throwing himself back on his haunches,
with forelegs stiff, mouth menacing, and mane bristling. This
confusion in the front of the moving pack always caused confusion in
the rear. The wolves behind collided with the young wolf and expressed
their displeasure by administering sharp nips on his hind-legs and
flanks. He was laying up trouble for himself, for lack of food and
short tempers went together; but with the boundless faith of youth
he persisted in repeating the maneuver every little while, though it
never succeeded in gaining anything for him but discomfiture.
Had there been food, love-making and fighting would have gone on
apace, and the pack-formation would have been broken up. But the
situation of the pack was desperate. It was lean with long-standing
hunger. It ran below its ordinary speed. At the rear limped the weak
members, the very young and the very old. At the front were the
strongest. Yet all were more like skeletons than full-bodied wolves.
Nevertheless, with the exception of the ones that limped, the
movements of the animals were effortless and tireless. Their stringy
muscles seemed founts of inexhaustible energy. Behind every steel-like
contraction of a muscle lay another steel-like contraction, and
another, apparently without end.
They ran many miles that day. They ran through the night. And the
next day found them still running. They were running over the
surface of a world frozen and dead. No life stirred. They alone
moved through the vast inertness. They alone were alive, and they
sought for other things that were alive in order that they might
devour them and continue to live.
They crossed low divides and ranged a dozen small streams in a
lower-lying country before their quest was rewarded. Then they came
upon moose. It was a big bull they first found. Here was meat and
life, and it was guarded by no mysterious fires nor flying missiles of
flame. Splay hoofs and palmated antlers they knew, and they flung
their customary patience and caution to the wind. It was a brief fight
and fierce. The big bull was beset on every side. He ripped them
open or split their skulls with shrewdly driven blows of his great
hoofs. He crushed them and broke them on his large horns. He stamped
them into the snow under him in the wallowing struggle. But he was
foredoomed, and he went down with the she-wolf tearing savagely at his
throat, and with other teeth fixed everywhere upon him, devouring
him alive, before ever his last struggles ceased or his last damage
had been wrought.
There was food in plenty. The bull weighed over eight hundred
pounds- fully twenty pounds of meat per mouth for the forty-odd wolves
of the pack. But if they could fast prodigiously, they could feed
prodigiously, and soon a few scattered bones were all that remained of
the splendid live brute that had faced the pack a few hours before.
There was now much resting and slee...
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