The Wolf-Woman
(Continued from page 310)
water," he said, and that night the logs were lashed together and the rafts moored to shore trees, and the barrier of crosses was strengthened.
Meanwhile, working ceaselessly, Jo had cut the ivory from the feet of the huntress he was carving, and was chiseling her pretty toes with their filbert-shaped nails. He had truly caught the grace of her dancing poise in the slender ankles, and she stood like a fairy molded of mellow gold when the sun touched the far horizon and brief night began in violet-tinted twilight.
Cressey was fascinated by the figure. "Tell Jo that I must have it. "I will pay well, five hundred dollars, even a thousand. I will take her out with me."
Reluctantly Baptiste interpreted his demand and for the first time the old ivory-carver showed emotion. Fire leaped in his eyes as he wrathfully waved Cressey aside and refused to consider even so great a sum of money for his statue of the woman.
Cressey did not argue, but in his heart he determined to obtain the ivory figure, and fell asleep planning a means to that end. He slept lightly, dreaming of the huntress, and muttering in his sleep. His broken talk wakened Johnson, who looked toward Cressey with hatred in his eyes, which changed to cunning.
Johnson cautiously slipped the thong of the crucifix from his neck and it dropped on the floor. Then for a time he lay still except for the convulsive twitching of his body and the rolling of his tortured eyes.
At midnight came the whimpering of the sled-dogs and baying of white hounds from afar. Immediately every man in the cabin was alert. They grabbed guns and plunged outside, waiting that dread visitation. The moon was fuller and gave silver light pricked out by velvet dark blotches of the trees. The glacial river gleamed like pearl. Another day and the party would have escaped, afloat on rafts carried by the swift-running stream, but this one night must be endured.
The huntress was not alone with her dogs, for she stood on the head of the mammoth which thundered into the plain cleared by his voracious feeding, and about them raced the white hounds. The hearts of the men were seized by icy fingers of fear even while they poured volley after volley of shots at the advancing horror and realized as they pulled the triggers that no man-invented mode of death could halt them.
The old ivory-carver, Jo, alone seemed fearless or careless of those terrific ghouls of old, for he came leisurely from the cabin, toddling toward the barrier fence of wooden crosses and peering as if to feast his sight, on the vision he had foregone during those nights he toiled at the ivory figure of the woman.
Cressey stepped to Jo’s side. He had forgotten Johnson in the cabin. There was none to see Johnson spring from the couch and with the desperation of a madman seize the ivory huntress in his arms and rush from the door on shoeless feet that made no sound.
Cressey’s first glimpse of him came when Johnson leaped the barrier of crosses and headed for the river raft.
But the huntress had also seen that plunging human and her cry rang like the long-drawn note of a silver
(Continued on page 430)
