Part 8 (1/2)

”What's his name?” Ben asked.

”The party is named Neilson.”

Unfortunately the name had no mental a.s.sociations for Ben. It wakened no interest or stirred no memories. He had read the letter the copy of which he carried but once, and evidently the name of the man Ezram had been warned against had made no lasting impression on Ben's mind.

”All right. Maybe I'll look him up.”

Ben turned, then made his way up the long, straggly row of unpainted shacks that marked the village street. A few moments later he was standing in the Morris home, facing the one friend that Hiram Melville had possessed on earth.

Ben stated his case simply. He was the partner of Hiram's brother, he said, and he had been designated to take care of Fenris and such other belongings as Hiram had left. Morris studied his face with the quiet, far-seeing eyes of a woodsman.

”You've got means of identification?” he asked.

Ben realized with something of a shock that he had none at all. The letter he carried was merely a copy without Hiram's signature; besides, he had no desire to reveal its contents. For an instant he was considerably embarra.s.sed. But Morris smiled quietly.

”I guess I won't ask you for any,” he said. ”Hiram didn't leave anything, far as I know, except his old gun and his pet. Lord knows, I'd let anybody take that pet of his that's fool enough to say he's got any claim to him, and you can be sure I ain't going to dispute his claim.”

”Fenris, then, is,--something of a problem?”

”The worst I ever had. His old gun is a good enough weapon, but I'm willing to trust you with it to get rid of Fenris. If you don't turn out to be the right man, I'll dig up for the gun--and feel lucky at that. I won't be able to furnish another Fenris, though, and I guess n.o.body'll be sorry. And if I was you--I'd take him out in a nice quiet place and shoot him.”

He turned, with the intention of securing the gun from an inner room. He did not even reach the door. It was as if both of them were struck motionless, frozen in odd, fixed att.i.tudes, by a shrill scream for help that penetrated like a bullet the thin walls of the house.

Instinctively both of them recognized it, unmistakably, as the piercing cry of a woman in great distress and terror. It rose surprisingly high, hovered a ghastly instant, and then was almost drowned out and obliterated by another sound, such a sound as left Ben only wondering and appalled.

The sound was in the range between a growl and a bay, instantly identifying itself as the utterance of an animal, rather than a human being. And it was savage and ferocious simply beyond power of words to tell. Ben's first thought was of some enormous, vicious dog, and yet his wood's sense told him that the utterance was not that of a dog. Rather it contained that incredible fierceness and savagery that marks the killing cries of the creatures of the wild.

He heard it even as he leaped through the door in answer to the scream for aid. His muscles gathered with that mysterious power that had always sustained him in his moments of crisis. He took the steps in one leap, Morris immediately behind him.

”Fenris is loose,” he heard the man say. ”He'll kill some one----!”

Ben could still hear the savage cries of the animal, seemingly from just behind the adjoining house. A girl's terrified voice still called for help. And deeply appalled by the sounds, Ben wished that the rifle, such a weapon as had been his trust since early boyhood, was ready and loaded in his hands.

He raced about the house; and at once the scene, in every vivid detail, was revealed to him. Pressed back against the wall of a little woodshed that stood behind her house a girl stood at bay,--a dark-eyed girl whose beautiful face was drawn and stark-white with horror. She was screaming for aid, her fascinated gaze held by a gray-black, houndlike creature that crouched, snarling, twenty yards distant.

Evidently the creature was stealing toward her in stealthy advance more like a stalking cat than a frenzied hound. Nor was this creature a hound, in spite of the similarity of outline. Such fearful, lurid surface-lights as all of them saw in its fierce eyes are not characteristic of the soft, brown orbs of the dog, ancient friend to man, but are ever the mark of the wild beast of the forest. The fangs were bared, gleaming in foam, the hair stood erect on the powerful shoulders; and instantly Ben recognized its breed. It was a magnificent specimen of that huge, gaunt runner of the forests, the Northern wolf.

Evidently from the black shades of his fur he was partly of the Siberian breed of wolves that beforetime have migrated down on the North American side of Bering Sea.

A chain was attached to the animal's collar, and this in turn to a stake that had been freshly pulled from the ground. This beast was Fenris,--the woods creature that old Hiram Melville had raised from cubdom.

There could be no doubt as to the reality of the girl's peril. The animal was insane with the hunting madness, and he was plainly stalking her, just as his fierce mother might have stalked a fawn, across the young gra.s.s. Already he was almost near enough to leap, and the girl's young, strong body could be no defense against the hundred and fifty pounds of wire sinew and lightning muscle that const.i.tuted the wolf. The bared fangs need flash but once for such game as this. And yet, after the first, startled glance, Ben Darby felt himself complete master of the situation.

No man could tell him why. No fact of his life would have been harder to explain, no impulse in all his days had had a more inscrutable origin.

The realization seemed to spring from some cool, sequestered knowledge hidden deep in his spirit. He knew, in one breathless instant, that he was the master--and that the girl was safe.

He seemed to know, again, that he had found his ordained sphere. He knew this breed,--this savage, blood-mad, fierce-eyed creature that turned, snarling, at his approach. He had something in common with the breed, knowing their blood-l.u.s.ts and their mighty moods; and dim, dreamlike memory reminded him that he had mastered them in a long war that went down to the roots of time. Fenris was only a fellow wilderness creature, a pack brother of the dark forests, and he had no further cause for fear.

”Fenris!” he ordered sharply. ”Come here!” His voice was commanding and clear above the animal's snarls.