The Cross Pull/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
Flash stood on a divide that overlooked the valley of the Little Bighorn. The Bar T and his past life were a week behind and several hundred miles to the south. The ragged tear across his shoulder had healed and troubled him not at all. He was outlawed by men but did not care. The one thing that most concerned him now was the insistent desire to hear the missing note for which he had always listened among the sounds of the night. This was the mating moon of the wolves but he did not know.
He did know that the craving for that long sought note was a positive ache.
Then it came! From far down in the valley there sounded a call that set his veins on fire. He knew now what it was. The far off cry was that of a she wolf questing for a mate.
His whole body thrilled and tingled to the call. He had never used his voice yet he knew he must reply. He stood erect, his great head stretched forth but no sound came. The note drifted to him again and he threw all the force of his lungs into one convulsive effort to answer it. For miles and miles across the white hills every living creature held its breath and lonely ranchers far down the valley felt the chill tingle of the wolf shiver as the lobo cry reached their ears. Having found his voice he called again and this time it was charged with all the pent up longings of the past year.
It started with a deep bass note, carrying a full, smooth volume, then swept abruptly up into a clear, siren peal that rolled on and on until it was tossed and echoed among the rimrocks of the valley.
The dog lobo and the she wolf from the north circled the edge of the basin until at last they met and stood facing one another across fifty feet of moonlit snow. They approached cautiously. The she wolf was suspicious of his scent; it was wolf scent, no doubt of that, but there was a faint trace of the conglomerate odor that marks the domestic dog. She sniffed at him, then snapped and fled.
Her speed was no match for his and he ran easily at her side. When she whirled and slashed at him he eluded her teeth but did not offer to return the snap. She soon found that he meant no harm to her. He was a massive, splendid figure of the true lobo; a mate to win the savage heart of any lovelorn she wolf. The urge of motherhood was warm within her. At last she stopped and they walked stiffly around, nosing each other until satisfied that all was well. She whined softly and he tried to answer. She seemed to understand the deep rumble which issued from his throat and he leaped about in a frenzy of delight and caressed her with his tongue.
She was a slim northern wolf with a dark strip along her back, blending into a soft silver gray on sides and flanks. Half an hour of courtship and the big lobo and the silver she wolf started for the valley in quest of meat.
Close under the rims they found where a lone steer had left his bed at the lobo call above and started out across the flats. Always before Flash had felt a furtive sense of wrong when on his raids but now with Silver running with him there was no thought save to kill—kill food for her. She whimpered eagerly and as he ran swiftly on the warm trail he was all wolf; the yellow eyes were streaked red with the lust to tear down his prey.
They closed in on the steer and pulled him down. Silver raised her voice and gave the summons to the feast, the victorious cry of the wolf who has killed. Once more Flash tried out his voice and the lobo note rang out with hers. From far up the slope of the mountains to the north, as if an echo of their own call cast back to them, there came an answering cry. Then another. Several blended into one. The cry of the pack. They sounded closer and soon were answering from all along the face of the hills, assuring Flash and Silver that they were coming to the kill.
All up and down the valley, ranchers listened to this devils’ chorus and planned for ruthless, bloody war as soon as the sun should shine. This was no new thing to them. Each winter when the snow fell heavy in the north there was at least one scattering band of wolves that were lured across the mountains, coming down to the easier killing of the open range.
Two gray shadows came sliding through the night and fell ravenously upon the steer; then two more. Presently there were fourteen wolves tearing at the warm meat. They were gaunt with the pinch of famine and not until the last bone was picked did they quit the feast. As they ate they snarled. Flash had come into his own at last. He imitated these sounds of his kinsfolk and added his snarl to theirs.
There were frequent slashes and snaps but no resulting fights. They had come in pairs, and each one, with true wolf constancy, was contented with his own. The season of selection had passed its height. Among them were grizzled veterans who bore the marks of recent conflict gained during the savage courting period that had raged all through the north. A little earlier and Flash would have been compelled to defend his right to mate with the silver she wolf.
Two hours before dawn the pack left off gnawing on the bones of the steer and trotted slowly away. As he traveled with them, the big lobo was four inches taller at the shoulder than the next, looming up by comparison as a giant of his kind. A wolf loses or picks up weight more rapidly than any other animal and as they moved across the snow they were no longer gaunt. Paunches sagged heavily, low to the ground. After famine they had gorged to repletion. Some of them had not touched food for three days when they came to the kill, yet they had appeared springy and tireless. Now, after feeding, instead of feeling new strength they were sluggish and lethargic. Ten miles from the steer they sought a knoll and bedded down, each pair choosing quarters of their own a few yards from the rest.
As Flash slept, his dreams dwelt upon a far off speck on his back track which developed into a horseman on his trail. The horse changed color continuously—first a sorrel and then a tireless buckskin was pressing him. When some nearby wolf clashed his teeth together in his sleep it was a pistol shot to Flash, and he was instantly on his feet, the new found snarl rumbling in his throat.
He nosed Silver into wakefulness and started off. It was agony for her to travel but she would not be left behind by this magnificent new mate of hers. She followed, and daylight found them resting far up the slope of the hills on a ledge that overlooked the valley.
Flash made out little specks which he knew to be horsemen riding at two mile intervals along the base of the slope. Out across the valley as far as his telescopic eyes could reach, the tiny specks were moving swiftly across the white snow. The reports of irregular, rapid fire shooting drifted up to him through the thin, clear air.
No ranchman on the Little Bighorn had need ask what his neighbor would do after listening to the chorus of the pack. At daylight the fastest horses stood saddled in front of every house and a relay string to which any rider was welcome was held in each corral. On every commanding knoll a rider lolled in the saddle, ready to dash down upon any hard pressed wolf which another should bring his way. From the dirt roof of every log cabin a man swept the country with powerful glasses for signs of an approaching race, his horse standing below with a rifle butt showing from the saddle scabbard.
These northern wolves were accustomed to the deep snow under the heavy trees where men traveled slowly on webs. They had not yet learned the lesson of the hard running horses and hard riding men of the open range—and most of them died as they learned.
That night when Flash and Silver made another kill there were but five of the pack who answered the call to feast.
Flash and Silver left them early and started on. The coyote brain warned the lobo of the danger of killing too often in one place. For almost two months they wandered on across several states, seldom killing in the same place twice. They followed down the narrow valley of the Cache La Poudre, bedding down each day far back in the hills.
Silver felt great confidence in the judgment of this mate of hers, yet there were certain habits of his which she could never learn to view complacently. Often at night he went close to the dwellings of men, even sniffing around their corrals and barns. Flash knew that men were nearly powerless in darkness and their eyes very weak at night but Silver only knew that the man scent meant death for wolves and she scrupulously avoided it. Then too, meat was meat to Silver but Flash killed only beef. His greatest pride had been the charge of handling Moran’s horses and now he never would turn his teeth against a horse.
The cross currents were still at work in Flash. In the old days he had longed for the wild; now that he was wild he felt the call to be near man. When with Moran his dreams had been of the phantom shapes of the wolf pack. Now his dreams were all of men. Most often he was back in the Land of Many Rivers with Moran and always in his dreams his former master was associated with the girl—the wonderful creature he had seen but once.
His soft whimpering aroused Silver. The she wolf could not know that her mate was living over again the delicious thrill of feeling a woman’s soft hand upon his head. Silver’s irritable nip always brought him back to the grim present and he was instantly awake, the cold yellow eyes sweeping the country for sign of his most bitter enemy, man.
The last week in February they came to the rough country at the head of Powder River. Silver grew less and less inclined to travel far and panted heavily when she ran. A chinook swept across the hills and this warm wind softened the frozen ground in spots that had blown free of snow. Silver chose a place where the earth was deep and started to excavate.
Flash watched her and when she tired and backed from the hole he took her place, tearing at the dirt with his great forepaws and pushing it out behind. He withdrew, shaking the dirt from his coat, and viewed this start of their home with pride.
Silver was very irritable these days, snapping at his approach. He turned his shoulder to her shrewish slashes and stalked stiffly out of reach. One night he came home to find a new scent in the den. Soft snifflings and squeaks issued from the depths of the hole. As he prepared to enter a savage snarl warned him off.
His curiosity was great and he wished to know more of this miracle but not until the pups were three weeks old did Silver let them come out for a romp on the sunny slope and Flash then saw them for the first time. Every night he had brought meat to the den and this was the result. He was very much excited as he nosed them over and Silver growled a warning not to be too rough when he rolled them around with his huge forepaw.
He was never allowed to occupy the den, which was just as well for in any event he could not have been induced to spend a day inside of it. He had seen Moran dig out the swift-fox den on Peace Creek. Once Harmon, the ranger, had found a hole and dropped into it a stick of something with a spluttering fuse attached. Shortly after they ran away there had sounded a roar as of several guns and Flash had watched Harmon dig out the crushed bodies of a coyote and her pups. So he spent the days alone in the hills and carried food at night.
The snow had melted from the foothills, leaving only the heavy drifts. As soon as the pups could follow, they were led forth at night and taught the arts of hunting and the dangers they must avoid. By the middle of April they could cover thirty miles in one night.