Part 9 (1/2)
In Pierrot's cabin was a white man, on his way to Fort O' God He saw that Pierrot crossed himself, and muttered
”It is the mad pack,” explained Pierrot then ”M'sieu, they have been KESKWAO since the beginning of the new moon In them are the spirits of devils”
He opened the cabin door a little, so that the mad cry of the beasts came to them plainly When he closed it there was in his eyes a look of strange fear
”Now and then wolves go like that--KESKWAO (stark o there were twenty of them, m'sieu, for I saw them with my own eyes, and counted their tracks in the snow Since then they been s by the others of the pack Listen to them ravin'! Can you tell o mad in the heart of winter when there is no heat or rotten meat to turn thearous; in their bodies ride the spirits of devils, and there they will ride until the bodies die For the wolves that go e part of it THEY DIE!”
And then it was, swinging eastward from the cabin of Pierrot, that thesherein trees bore the Double-X blaze of Jacques Le Beau's axe There were fourteen of theht What it is that now and then drives a wolf-pack mad in the dead of winter no ins with a ”bad” wolf; just as a ”bad”
sledge-dog, nipping and biting his felloill spread his distely, quarrelso the wise driver kills--or turns loose
The wolves that bore down upon Le Beau's country were red-eyed and thin Their bodies were covered with gashes, and the mouths of some frothed blood They did not run as wolves run fordroop to their haunches, and their cry was not the deep-throated cry of the hunt-pack but a ravening clamour that seemed to have no leadershi+p or cause Scarcely was the sound of their tongues gone beyond the hearing of Pierrot's ears than one of the thin gray beasts rubbed against the shoulder of another, and the second turned with the swiftness of a snake, like the ”bad” dog of the traces, and struck his fangs deep into the first wolf's flesh Could Pierrot have seen, he would have understood then how the four he had found had come to their end
Swift as the snap of a whip-lash the fight between the tas on The other twelve of the pack stopped They caried theather about a fistic battle; and there they waited, their jaws drooling, their fangs clicking, a low and eager whining s happened One of the fighting wolves went down He was on his back--and the end came
The twelve wolves were upon him as one, and, like those Pierrot had seen, he was torn to pieces, and his flesh devoured After that the thirteen went on deeper into Le Beau's country
Miki heard theain, after that hour's interval of silence Farther and farther he had wandered from the forest He had crossed the ”burn,”
and was in the open plain, with the rough ridges cutting through and the big river at the edge of it It was not so gloohed upon him less heavily than in the deep timber
And across this plain came the voice of the wolves
He did not ainst the vivid starlight at the crest of a rocky knoll, and the top of this knoll was so small that another could not have stood beside hi On all sides of hiht of the stars and ed itself upon hi back his head, until his black-tipped muzzle pointed up to the stars, and the voice rolled out of his throat But it was only half a howl Even then, oppressed by his great loneliness, there gripped hiainst betrayal After that he rerew tense, his muscles hardened, and in his throat there was the lohispering of a snarl instead of a howl He sensed danger He had caught, in the voice of the wolves, the ravening note that had arous, and he crouched down on his belly at the top of the rockylike dark and swiftlyshadows between him and the forest Suddenly they stopped, and for a few moments no sound came from them as they packed themselves closely on the scent of his fresh trail in the snow And then they surged in his direction; this time there was a still fiercer madness in the wild cry that rose from their throats In a dozen seconds they were at the e gray brute who shot up the hillock straight at the prey the others had not yet seen There was a snarl in Miki's throat as he caht Once more the blood ran suddenly hot in his veins, and fear was driven from him as the wind drives smoke from a fire If Neeere only there now, to fend at his back while he fought in front! He stood up on his feet Hepack-brute head to head Their jaws clashed, and the olf found jaws at last that crunched through his own as if they had been whelp's bone, and he rolled and twisted back to the plain in a dying agony But not until another gray form had come to fill his place Into the throat of this second Miki drove his fangs as the wolf ca, sabre-like stroke of the north-dog, and the throat of the as torn open and the blood poured out as if eed to join the first, and in that instant the pack swept up and over Miki, and he was smothered under the mass of their bodies Had two or three attacked him at once he would have died as quickly as the first two of his enemies had come to their end Numbers saved him in the first rush
On the level of the plain he would have been torn into pieces like a bit of cloth, but on the space at the top of the KOPJE, no larger than the top of a table, he was lost for a few seconds under the snarling and rending horde of his enes intended for him sank into other wolf-flesh; the e, and the assault upon Miki turned into a slaughter of the wolves theht of bodies, Miki drove his fangs again and again into flesh A pair of jaws seized hih hi steadily into his vitals Just in time another pair of jaws seized the ho held hiave way In thatdown the steep side of the knoll, and after him cahting devils in Miki's brain gave way all at once to that cunning of the fox which had served hier Scarcely had he reached the plain before he was on his feet, and no sooner had he touched his feet than he was off like the wind in direction of the river He had gained a fifty-yard start before the first of the wolves discovered his flight There were only eight that followed hi at the foot of the hillock Of these Miki had slain two The others had fallen at the fangs of their own brethren
Half a e of these cliffs was a great cairn of rocks in which for one night Miki had sought shelter He had not forgotten the tunnel into the tumbled mass of rock debris, nor how easily it could be defended from within Once in that tunnel he would turn in the door of it and slaughter his enemies one by one, for only one by one could they attack hiray for, the fiercest and swiftest of all the mad wolves of the pack He sped ahead of his slower-footed coht, and Miki had made but half the distance to the cairn when he heard the panting breath of Lightning behind him Even Hela, his father, could not have run htning ran more swiftly Two thirds of the distance to the cliff and the huge wolf's ained a little Then steadily Lightning drew abreast of hirim and merciless shadow of dooht was the cairn But Miki could not run to the right without turning into Lightning's jaws, and he realized now that if he reached the cairn his enemy would be upon him before he could dive into the tunnel and face about To stop and fight would be death, for behind he could hear the other wolves
Ten seconds more and the chasm of the river yawned ahead of the He sensed death now, and in the face of death all his hatred turned upon the one beast that had run at his side In an instant they were doo yards fro's throat when the pack rushed upon them They were swept onward The earth flew out from under their feet, and they were in space Grimly Miki held to the throat of his foe Over and over they twisted inwas under Yet so great was the shock, that, even though the wolf's huge body was under him like a cushi+on, Miki was stunned and dazed Alay still, the life smashed out of him A little beyond him lay the bodies of two other wolves that in their wild rush had swept over the cliff
Miki looked up Between him and the stars he could see the top of the cliff, a vast distance above him One after the other he smelled at the bodies of the three dead wolves Then he li the base of the cliff until he cae rocks Into this he crept and lay down, licking his wounds After all there orse things in the world than Le Beau's trapline Perhaps there were even worse things than reat head out between his fore-paws, and slowly the starlight grew dimmer, and the snow less white, and he slept
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In a twist of Three Jackpine River, buried in the deep of the forest between the Shamattawa country and Hudson Bay, was the cabin in which lived Jacques Le Beau, the trapper There was not another man in all that wilderness as the equal of Le Beau in wickedness--unless it was Durant, who hunted foxes a hundred s A giant in size, with a heavy, sullen face and eyes which seereenish loopholes for the pitiless soul within him--if he had a soul at all--Le Beau was a ”throw-back” of the worst sort In their shacks and teepees the Indians whispered softly that all the devils of his forebears had gathered in hiiven to Le Beau a wife Had she been a witch, an evil-doer and an evil-thinker like hi would not have been such an abortion of what should have been But she was not that Sweet-faced, with so of unusual beauty still in her pale cheeks and starving eyes--tre at his approach and a slave in his presence--she was, like his dogs, the PROPERTY of The Brute And the woht that this one ht at times the new flash of fire into her dark eyes
”Le bon Dieu--I pray to the Blessed Angels--I swear you SHALL live!”
she would cry to it at ti it close to her breast And it was at these times that the fire came into her eyes, and her pale cheeks flushed with a s bit of the flame that had once been her beauty ”Some day--SOME DAY--”