The Voice of the Pack/Book 3/Chapter 2
II
The snow began to fall in earnest at midnight,—great, white flakes that almost in an instant covered the leaves. It was the real beginning of winter, and all living creatures knew it. The wolf pack sang to it from the ridge,—a wild and plaintive song that made Bert Cranston, sleeping in a lean-to on the Umpquaw side of the Divide, swear and mutter in his sleep. But he did n't really waken until Jim Gibbs, one of his gang, returned from his secret mission.
They wasted no words. Bert flung aside the blankets, lighted a candle, and placed it out of the reach of the night wind. It cast queer shadows in the lean-to and found a curious reflection in the steel points of his eyes. His face looked swarthy and deep-lined in its light.
"Well?" he demanded. "What did you find?"
"Nothin'," Jim Gibbs answered gutturally. "If you ask me what I found out, I might have somethin' to answer."
"Then—" and Bert, after the manner of his kind, breathed an oath—"what did you find out?"
His tone, except for an added note of savagery, remained the same. Yet his heart was thumping a great deal louder than he liked to have it. He was n't amused by his associate's play on words. Nor did he like the man's knowing tone and his air of importance. Realizing that the snows were at hand, he had sent Gibbs for a last search of the body, to find and recover the evidence that Hildreth had against him and which had not been revealed either on Hildreth's person or in his cabin. He had become increasingly apprehensive about those letters he had written Hildreth, and certain other documents that had been in his possession. He did n't understand why they had n't turned up. And now the snows had started, and Jim Gibbs had returned empty-handed, but evidently not empty-minded.
"I 've found out that the body's been uncovered—and men are already searchin' for clues. And moreover—I think they 've found them." He paused, weighing the effect of his words. His eyes glittered with cunning. Rat that he was, he was wondering whether the time had arrived to leave the ship. He had no intention of continuing to give his services to a man with a rope-noose closing about him. And Cranston, knowing this fact, hated him as he hated the buzzard that would claim him in the end and tried to hide his apprehension.
"Go on. Blat it out," Cranston ordered. "Or else go away and let me sleep."
It was a bluff; but it worked. If Gibbs had gone without speaking, Cranston would have known no sleep that night. But the man became more fawning.
"I'm tellin' you, fast as I can," he went on, almost whining. "I went to the cabin, just as you said. But I did n't get a chance to search it—"
"Why not?" Cranston thundered. His voice reëchoed among the snow-wet pines.
"I'll tell you why! Because some one else—evidently a cop—was already searchin' it. Both of us know there's nothin' there anyway. We 've gone over it too many times. After a while he went away—but I did n't turn back yet. That would n't be Jim Gibbs. I shadowed him, just as you'd want me to. And he went straight back to the body."
"Yes?" Cranston had hard work curbing his impatience. Again Gibbs' eyes were full of ominous speculations.
"He stopped at the body, and it was plain he'd been there before. He went crawling through the thickets, lookin' for clues. He done what you and me never thought to do—lookin' all the way between the trail and the body. He'd already found the brass shell you told me to get. At least, it was n't there when I looked, after he'd gone. You should 've thought of it before. But he found somethin' else a whole lot more important—a roll of papers that Hildreth had chucked into an old pine stump when he was dyin'. It was your fault, Cranston, for not gettin' them that night. You need n't 've been afraid of any one hearin' the shot and catching you red-handed. This detective stood and read 'em on the trail. And you know—just as well as I do—what they were."
"Damn you, I went back the next morning, as soon as I could see. And the mountain lion had already been there. I went back lots of times since. And that shell ain't nothing—but all the time I supposed I put it in my pocket. You know how it is—a fellow throws his empty shell out by habit."
Gibbs' eyes grew more intent. What was this thing? Cranston's tone, instead of commanding, was almost pleading. But the leader caught himself at once.
"I don't see why I need to explain any of that to you. What I want to know is this: why you did n't shoot and get those papers away from him?"
For an instant their eyes battled. But Gibbs had never the strength of his leader. If he had, it would have been asserted long since. He sucked in his breath, and his gaze fell away. It rested on Cranston's rifle, that in some manner had been pulled up across his knees. And at once he was cowed. He was never so fast with a gun as Cranston.
"Blood on my hands, eh—same as on yours?" he mumbled, looking down. "What do you think I want, a rope around my neck? These hills are big, but the arm of the law has reached up before, and it might again. You might as well know first as last I'm not goin' to do any killin's to cover up your murders."
"That comes of not going myself. You fool—if he gets that evidence down to the courts, you 're broken the same as me."
"But I would n't get more'n a year or so, at most—and that's a heap different from the gallows. I did aim at him—"
"But you just lacked the guts to pull the trigger!"
"I did, and I ain't ashamed of it. But besides—the snows are here now, and he won't be able to even get word down to the valleys in six months. If you want him killed so bad, do it yourself."
This was a thought indeed. On the other hand, another murder might not be necessary. Months would pass before the road would be opened, and in the meantime Cranston could have a thousand chances to steal back the accusing letters. Perhaps they would be guarded closely at first, but by the late winter months they would be an old story, and a single raid on the house might turn the trick. He did n't believe for an instant that the man Gibbs had seen a detective. He had kept too close watch over the roads for that.
"A tall chap, in outing clothes—dark-haired and clean-shaven?"
"Yes?"
"Wears a tan hat?"
"That's the man."
"I know him—and I wish you'd punctured him. Why, you could 've taken those papers away from him and slapped his face, and he would n't have put up his arms. And now he 'll hide 'em somewhere—afraid to carry 'em for fear he meets me. That's Failing—the tenderfoot that's been staying at Lennox's. He's a lunger."
"He did n't look like no lunger to me."
"But no matter about that—it's just as I thought. And I 'll get 'em back—mark my little words."
In the meantime the best thing to do was to move at once to his winter trapping grounds,—a certain neglected region on the lower levels of the North Fork. If at any time within the next few weeks, Dan should attempt to carry word down to the settlements, he would be certain to pass within view of this camp. But he knew that the chance of Dan starting upon any such journey before the snow had melted was not one in a thousand. To be caught in the Divide in the winter means to be snowed in as completely as the Innuits of upper Greenland. No word could pass except by a man on snowshoes. Really there was no urgency about this matter of the evidence.
Yet if the chance did come, if the house should be left unguarded, it might play Cranston to make an immediate search. Dan would have no reason for supposing that Cranston suspected his possession of the letters; he would not be particularly watchful, and would probably pigeonhole them until spring in Lennox's desk.
And the truth was that Cranston had reasoned out the situation almost perfectly. When Dan wakened in the morning, and the snow lay already a foot deep over the wilderness world, he knew that he would have no chance to act upon the Cranston case until the snows melted in the spring. So he pushed all thought of it out of his mind and turned his attention to more pleasant subjects. It was true that he read the documents over twice as he lay in bed. Then he tied them into a neat packet and put them away where they would be quickly available. Then he thrust his head out of the window and let the great snowflakes sift down upon his face. It was winter at last, the season that he loved.
He did n't stir from the house, that first day of the storm. Snowbird and he found plenty of pleasant things to do and talk about before the roaring fire that he built in the grate. He was glad of the great pile of wood that lay outside the door. It meant life itself, in this season. Then Snowbird led him to the windows, and they watched the white drifts pile up over the low underbrush.
When finally the snowstorm ceased, five days later, the whole face of the wilderness was changed. The buckbrush was mostly covered, the fences were out of sight; the forest seemed a clear, clean sweep of white, broken only by an occasional tall thicket and by the great, snow-covered trees.
When the clouds blew away, and the air grew clear, the temperature began to fall. Dan had no way of knowing how low it went. Thermometers were not considered essential at the Lennox home. But when his eyelids congealed with the frost, and his mittens froze to the logs of firewood that he carried through the door, and the pine trees exploded and cracked in the darkness, he was correct in his belief that it was very, very cold.
But he loved the cold, and the silence and austerity that went with it. The wilderness claimed him as never before. The rugged breed that were his ancestors had struggled through such seasons as this and passed a love of them down through the years to him.
When the ice made a crust over the snow, he learned to walk on snowshoes. At first there were pained ankles and endless floundering in the drifts. But between the fall of fresh snow and the thaws that softened the crust, he slowly mastered the art. Snowbird—and Dan never realized the full significance of her name until he saw her flying with incredible grace over the snow—laughed at him at first and ran him races that would usually end in his falling head-first into a ten-foot snowbank. She taught him how to ski and more than once she would stop in the middle of an earnest bit of pedagogy to find that he was n't listening at all. He would seem to be fairly devouring her with his eyes, delighting in the play of soft pinks and reds in her cheeks, and drinking, as a man drinks wine, the amazing change of light and shadow in her eyes.
She seemed to blossom under his gaze. Not one of those short winter days went by without the discovery of some new trait or little vanity to astonish or delight him,—sometimes an unlooked-for tenderness toward the weak, often a sweet, untainted philosophy of life, or perhaps just a lowering of her eyelids in which her eyes would show lustrous through the lashes, or some sweeping, exuberant gesture startlingly graceful.
Lennox wakened one morning with the realization that this was one of the hardest winters of his experience. More snow had fallen in the night and had banked halfway up his windows. The last of the shrubbery—except for the ends of a few tall bushes that would not hold the snow—was covered, and the roofs of some of the lower outbuildings had somewhat the impression of drowning things, striving desperately to keep their heads above water. He began to be very glad of the abundant stores of provisions that overcrowded his pantry—savory hams and bacons, dried venison, sacks of potatoes and evaporated vegetables, and, of course, canned goods past counting. With the high fire roaring in the grate, the season held no ills for them. But sometimes, when the bitter cold came down at twilight, and the moon looked like a thing of ice itself over the snow, he began to wonder how the wild creatures who wintered on the Divide were faring. Of course most of them were gone. Woof, long since, had grunted and mumbled his way into a winter lair. But the wolves remained, strange gray shadows on the snow, and possibly a few of the hardier smaller creatures.
More than once in those long winter nights their talk was chopped off short by the song of the pack on some distant ridge. Sometime, when the world is old, possibly a man will be born that can continue to talk and keep his mind on his words while the wolf pack sings. But he is certainly an unknown quantity to-day. The cry sets in vibration curious memory chords, and for a moment the listener sees in his mind's eye his ancient home in an ancient world,—Darkness and Fear and Eyes shining about the cave. It carries him back, and he knows the wilderness as it really is; and to have such knowledge dries up all inclination to talk, as a sponge dries water. Of course the picture is n't entirely plain. It is more a thing guessed at, a photograph in some dark part of an under-consciousness that has constantly grown more dim as the centuries have passed. Possibly sometime it will fade out altogether; and then a man may continue to discuss the weather while the Song from the ridge shudders in at the windows. But the world will be quite cold by then, and no longer particularly interesting. And possibly even the wolves themselves will then be tamed to play dead and speak pieces,—which means the wilderness itself will be tamed. For as long as the wild lasts, the pack will run through it in the winter. They were here in the beginning, and in spite of constant war and constant hatred on the part of men, they will be here in the end. The reason is just that they are the symbol of the wilderness itself, and the idea of it continuing to exist without them is stranger than that of a nation without a flag.
It was n't quite the same song that Dan had listened to in the first days of fall. It had been triumphant then, and proud with the wilderness pride. Of course it had been sad then, too, but it was more sad now. And it was stranger, too, and crept farther into the souls of its listeners. It was the song of strength that could n't avail against the snow, possibly of cold and the despair and courage of starvation. These three that heard it were inured to the wilderness; but a moment was always needed after its last note had died to regain their gayety.
"They 're getting lean and they 're getting savage," Lennox said one night, stretched on his divan before the fireplace. He was still unable to walk; but the fractures were knitting slowly and the doctor had promised that the summer would find him well. "If we had a dog, I would n't offer much for his life. One of these days we 'll find 'em in a big circle around the house—and then we 'll have to open up with the rifles."
But this picture appalled neither of his two young listeners. No wolf pack can stand against three marksmen, armed with rifles and behind oaken walls.
Christmas came and passed, and January brought clear days and an ineffective sun shining on the snow. These were the best days of all. Every afternoon Dan and Snowbird would go out on their skis or on snowshoes, unarmed except for the pistol that Snowbird carried in the deep pocket of her mackinaw. "But why not?" Dan replied to Lennox's objection. "She could kill five wolves with five shots, or pretty near it, and you know well enough that that would hold 'em off till we got home. They'd stop to eat the five. I have hard enough time keeping up with her as it is, without carrying a rifle." And Lennox was content. In the first place, the wolf pack has to be desperate indeed before it will even threaten human beings; and knowing the coward that the wolf is in the other three seasons, he could n't bring himself to believe that this point was reached. In the second, Dan had told the truth when he said that five deaths, or even fewer, would repel the attack of any wolf pack he had ever seen. There was just one troubling thought. He had heard, long ago, and he had forgotten who had told him, that in the most severe winters the wolves gather in particularly large packs; and a quality in the song that they had heard at night seemed to bear it out. The chorus had been exceptionally loud and strong, and he had been unable to pick out individual voices.
The snow was perfect for skiing. Previously their sport had been many times interrupted either by the fall of fresh snow or a thaw that had softened the snow crust; but now every afternoon was too perfect to remain indoors. They shouted and romped in the silences, and they did not dream but that they had the wilderness all to themselves. The fact that one night Lennox's keen eyes had seen what looked like the glow of a camp fire in the distance did n't affect this belief of theirs at all. It was evidently just the phosphorus glowing in a rotten log from which the winds had blown the snow.
Once or twice they caught glimpses of wild life: once a grouse that had buried in the snow flushed from their path and blew the snow-dust from its wings; and once or twice they saw snowshoe rabbits bounding away on flat feet over the drifts. But just one day they caught sight of a wolf. They were on snowshoes on a particularly brilliant afternoon late in January.
He was a lone male, evidently a straggler from the pack, and he leaped from the top of a tall thicket that had remained above the snow. The man and the girl had entirely different reactions. Dan's first impression was amazement at the animal's condition. It seemed to be in the last stages of starvation: unbelievably gaunt, with rib bones showing plainly even through the furry hide. Ordinarily the heavily furred animals do not show signs of famine; but even an inexperienced eye could not make a mistake in this case. The eyes were red, and they carried Dan back to his first adventure in the Oregon forest—the day he had shot the mad coyote. Snowbird thought of the beast only as an enemy. The wolves killed her father's stock; they were brigands of the worst order; and she shared the hatred of them that is a common trait of all primitive peoples. Her hand whipped back, seized her pistol, and she fired twice at the fleeing figure.
The second shot was a hit: both of them saw the wolf go to its side, then spring up and race on. Shouting, both of them sped after him.
In a few moments he was out of sight among the distant trees, but they found the blood-trail and mushed over the ridge. They expected at any moment to find him lying dead; but the track led them on clear down the next canyon. And now they cared not at all whether they found him: it was simply a tramp in the out-of-doors; and both of them were young with red blood in their veins.
But all at once Dan stopped in his tracks. The girl sped on for six paces before she missed the sound of his snowshoes; then she turned to find him standing, wholly motionless, with eyes fixed upon her.
It startled her, and she did n't know why. A companion abruptly freezing in his path, his muscles inert, and his eyes filling with speculations is always startling. When this occurs, it means simply that a thought so compelling and engrossing that even the half-unconscious physical functions, such as walking, cannot continue, has come into his mind. And it is part of the old creed of self-preservation to dislike greatly to be left out on any such thought as this. If danger is present, the sooner it is identified the better.
"What is it?" she demanded.
He turned to her, curiously intent. "How many shells have you in that pistol?"
She took one breath and answered him. "It holds five, and I shot twice. I have n't any others."
"And I don't suppose it ever occurred to you to carry extra ones in your pocket?"
"Father is always telling me to—and several times I have. But I'd shoot them away at target practice and forget to take any more. There was never any danger—except that night with a cougar. I did intend to—but what does it matter now?"
"We 're a couple of wise ones, going after that wolf with only three shots to our name. Of course by himself he's harmless—but he's likely enough to lead us straight toward the pack. And Snowbird—I did n't like his looks. He's too gaunt, and he's too hungry—and I have n't a bit of doubt he waited in that brush for us to come, intending to attack us—and lost his nerve the last thing. That shows he's desperate. I don't like him, and I would n't like his pack. And a whole pack might not lose its nerve."
"Then you think we'd better turn back?"
"Yes, I do, and not come out any more without a whole pocket of shells. I'm going to carry my rifle, too, just as Lennox has always advised. He's only got a flesh-wound. You saw what you did with two cartridges—got in one flesh-wound. Three of 'em against a pack would n't be a great deal of aid. I don't mean to say you can't shoot, but a jumping, lively wolf is worse than a bird in the air. We 've gone over three miles; and he'd lead us ten miles farther—even if he did n't go to the pack. Let's go back."
"If you say so. But I don't think there's the least bit of danger. We can always climb a tree."
"And have 'em make a beautiful circle under it! They 've got more patience than we have—and we'd have to come down sometime. Your father can't come to our help, you know. It's the sign of the tenderfoot not to think there's any danger—and I'm not going to think that way any more."
They turned back and mushed in silence a long time.
"I suppose you 'll think I'm a coward," Dan asked her humbly.
"Only prudent, Dan," she answered, . Whether she meant it, he did not know. "I'm just beginning to understand that you—living here only a few months—really know and understand all this better than I do." She stretched her arms wide to the wilderness. "I guess it's your instincts."
"And I do understand," he told her earnestly. "I sensed danger back there just as sure as I can see your face. That pack—and it's a big one—is close; and it's terribly hungry. And you know—you can't help but know—that the wolves are not to be trusted in famine times."
"I know it only too well," she said.
Then she paused and asked him about a strange grayness, like snow blown by the wind, on the sky over the ridge.