The Wolver/Chapter 11
XI
The panic terror of Two Toes and his pack was never so bad as that night when they found the lynx. The big cat seemed a subject for their plaguing. All the wolves had taken turns at teasing trapped lynx, not venturing near the captured animals, and nothing ever had happened. Now every path seemed to contain cunningly hidden traps, and Two Toes himself had escaped only by luck. He had caught the whiff of steel in time to jump over it in his rush to get away from the lynx.
Two Toes retreated into the roughest and rockiest place in all that part of the country. It was a place where probably no man had ever penetrated. There the wolves lurked and crouched and ate the buds of switch birches, afraid to venture forth in any direction. When the weather turned warm, and rain began to fall, they retreated under overhanging stones and into crevices.
Hunger was already in their gaunt flanks when the sleet-storm came upon them. Then followed increasing hunger, increasing ravenous pangs, which they could not appease.
When the storm passed by they left their lairs and began to hunt around for something to eat. They found everything sheeted with ice. They could smell nothing but the pure frost. Hardly an odor of any kind survived that crystal precipitation upon trees and stones.
The very animals were incased in it. Many a rabbit was caught under the lengthening drip and splash till it perished in a cage of ice. As for the grouse that buried themselves in the snow, few escaped in the end.
At first the wolves hunted cautiously along. In their hearts were the terrors inspired by the sudden deaths that had overtaken their fellows—death which they had escaped only by luck.
They searched all that first night, and except for tiny morsels of chickadees which had already starved to death, and occasional mice which were lost on the ice and frozen, they found nothing to eat. With the sun's rising they retreated up the hillsides and curled up where they could in the less cold rays, out of the wind.
Two Toes and his pack of seven or eight—they had met lonely and hungry pariahs who joined them that night—were scattered on the south side of a ridge. All of them slept a little during the day, despite their hunger.
The sleepers shivered, as did the wakeful ones. They betrayed their dreams by squealing and whistling under their breath. They struggled and writhed in their beds, as if they were running in full chase. When one of them awakened with a start, and looked around, blinking and licking his chops, his mates knew that he was sorry to wake up before feasting upon the blood that he had rushed upon in his dream!
They were a counterpart of other packs scattered all through that land of stone and green timber. Hunger was upon the wolf clan, which would show it plainer than other creatures, except perhaps the fisher. In days of plenty the pekan is the greediest of them all; in famine he attains a gaunt anger and hatred that makes him eat his own kind. But fisher travel alone!
The wolves, that second night, hunted farther. They did not stop to search around and under the bent-down clumps of brush. They did not take time to stick their noses into little holes and crevices. They ran along at a twisting trot, keeping their noses near the ice-crust.
Two Toes, going through the woods, held his head straight out in front of him. His eyes seemed to bulge out and the rims—the conjunctivæ—around them grew bloodshot. The forces of famine were working in him. He snapped into a dead rabbit that he chanced to find and made away with half of it before his mates seized the rest and tore it from him.
The frozen meat was a mockery. It only raised a longing in the stomach of the wolf for something more satisfying. Toward morning Two Toes uttered a long howl and began to gallop instead of running. Favoring his crippled foot, he swung along almost on three legs; but the other wolves of his pack, harkening to his cry, did not try to go ahead of him. They knew better than that!
They fell in behind him. They no longer looked for frozen bits of meat. They stopped hunting in holes and under canopies and along the rims of overhanging boulders. They loped out of their scattered courses and fell in behind Two Toes, to follow him.
They well knew that cry—indeed they did! It was the rallying-cry of the packs; it was the leader's call to join in the hunt for blood!
From beyond the ridge came the answer of wolves of other clans. They galloped up over the divide and through the passes, and joined the pack of Two Toes at an angle, like one brook joining another. Here one wolf, there two or three, and now a pack of five or six, fell in behind Two Toes and hunted along.
The pack became a wave, long and narrow, pouring through the woods. Its sound grew louder and louder by degrees; but when the sunshine yellowed the sky overhead the yelps and cries shivered and broke off. The wolves could not run and hunt in the bright light of the day. Two Toes, disappointed, turned up a rocky hillside, and all his followers scattered along it, like a flock of great gray crows going to roost.
In their hiding-places they whistled and shivered and whined in the cold. Their drowsy slumbers were more than ever disturbed by dreams. Two or three of them barked so loudly and jubilantly in their sleep that half the pack rushed to the spot, thinking that it was a real feast to which they had been summoned. In their disappointment two or three pairs fell to fighting one another. No sooner had one wolf wounded the shoulder of another, so that the smell of fresh blood smote their nostrils, than all the pack rushed in, tore the maimed victim to pieces where he fell, and bolted him down.
Two or three wolves, feeling themselves weakening, and seeing what had taken place, slunk away from that hillside and sneaked out into the lonely green timber, to hunt alone, and to die in peace, at the worst.
No sooner had the sun gone down than Two Toes left his bed and, with a sharp yelp, loped diagonally down the slope. The other wolves fell in behind him. They recognized in him some superior quality of leadership. Not one of them cared to have those sharp fangs snapping at his heels.
They did not even crowd him too close from behind. He ran two or three jumps ahead of the others, up hill and down ravine, across balsam swamp and over hardwood ridge. The wolves followed with their heads up, yelping and howling at intervals. Some of the pack was always in voice.
Two Toes hardly uttered a sound. He held his head straight ahead of him, a little down, if anything. As he bounded along, his lower jaw snapped up—up—up, and every snap was a click in the night. Perhaps it was that characteristic of silent voice and clicking teeth that made the other wolves let him run in the lead.
They had started as a pack of ten or twelve, but there were sixty ready for the hunt after sunset the following night. Other streamlets of wolves ran into the gathering, grisly flood. When they crossed Twin Falls River on the ice there were a hundred; and out of the east another wave, half as large, poured down toward them and mingled its smoking, yelping blood-lust into the major horde of famine.
It was this pack that French Louie heard washing by in the night, their voices sounding in the distance not unlike those of a great flock of wild geese—not in tone, of course, but in their multitude.
The wolves swept through the timber like a shadow under the trees. In the swamp up the Pukaso they ran into a warm scent. Two Toes swung into the trail, and the pack followed him.
Before they had gone a mile, Two Toes uttered a sharp cry and darted ahead. As the other wolves passed where be had yelped, they all howled frantically, for it was a whiff of blood. A moose had passed that way. He had broken through the ice when he began to run, frightened by the menace of the coming pack. When the moose galloped, the ice cut his forelegs, and soon they dripped red. He had done better to stand still, hoping for the wolves to pass him by unnoticed.
Now that they smelled the blood, the pack stretched out, but none of them drew very near to Two Toes, who ran more swiftly than the best of them. When the nearest wolves overtook him, he had the moose crippled with cut hamstrings, and the wave of famine poured over the unfortunate beast. It washed over him like a breaker over a rock—except that when the water recedes, the rock still remains unmoved. When the wolf wave passed and broke, the moose had disappeared. His bones were scattered over the ice, and by each bone a black shadow snarled and growled contentment.
Gray shades wandered back and forth among the possessors of bones, snapping and snarling. Others burrowed into the snow where the kill had been made, eating up the last pink discoloration.
Off at one side, on a little knoll, Two Toes lay on his stomach, his jaw on his forepaws, looking down at the little hollow where he had led the blood-lust to partial satisfaction. He stared at the army of wolves, breathing deeply. Little wisps of fog drifted past his head, and the moisture froze on his ears in crystals that reflected the sparkle of the stars overhead, so that he seemed to be wearing jewels—as indeed he was, for what has a finer glisten than such crystals in the starlight?
Some of the pack were still hungry, for they had had only nibbles. These were weaklings who had traveled last in the mighty pack, unable to keep near the lead. Their part of the spoil had been the blood-drips in the snow and the shreds of meat scattered around when the stronger wolves tore out the scalding chunks in the first rush.
That day the sky clouded over, and at night it began to snow. The snow fell so fast that the wolves did not wander far, though some of them scattered around for a mile or two. Up Pukaso they found a dead moose, and a dozen or so of them ate their fill of it, too hungry to detect the bitter dose that had been prepared for them. Some of the wolves died on the carcass, with their teeth fastened in the meat. Others wandered to some distance, and had their death struggles alone when the frozen meat thawed and the strychnin worked into the live tissues.
These were not the strong brutes of the pack. They were the young, the very old, the sickly, and the weaklings. They were scarcely missed by the host that started out when the snow, which now lay five or six inches deep on the ice-crust, had stopped falling.
Two Toes and his big pack went hunting again, their appetites whetted, their confidence restored. All of them had withdrawn in terror from the deadly machines placed by that lone trapper who moved out of Otter Cove two or three times every moon, and returned heavy laden with the hides of so many wolves. He had trapped of the fools, the young, the careless; but these wolves who had gathered for the grand hunt, their last resort in time of sheer famine, were the pick of their tribe from Oiseau to below Dog River.
There were shaggy giants in the pack, who would weigh two hundred pounds or more. There were slender princesses who weighed less than fourscore pounds, but whose fleetness and alertness and savagery held them among the best.
There were a dozen former pack-leaders, content to follow the wolf who did not yelp or howl upon the trail, who galloped straight ahead and clicked his teeth at every jump. If one or two of the wolves did venture to dispute the leadership with Two Toes, they dropped back quickly, for one look into those bloodshot eyes, one glimpse of those fine white teeth spread for action, was enough to reveal the fighting spirit which enabled the wolf with the injured paw to hold his place.
On the bare sleet crust the pack left its claw-marks when it passed by. They were impressive reading, if one knew them. In the snow the wolves left a roadway, as it were. They galloped along, in long lines, making separate runways around brush-heaps and through narrows. In the open swamp and hardwood they spread out more widely.
It was harder running in the snow, but the snow was a revealer, and they struck into the tracks of fisher, which they followed and treed. Some fisher refused to run, but faced the hopeless odds and perished in a minute or two. If the fisher inflicted a bad wound on one of the wolves, the other wolves, maddened by famine, devoured their brother—as if in time, should the famine last long enough, the pack would consume itself!
In all, perhaps, five or six wolves went to stay the appetites of their fellows. A moose yearling was pulled down, and a few rabbits, whose tracks were found in the snow, were jumped and quickly lapped up in the grisly wave that roamed the green timber—always hungry, though always picking up a bit of meat here and there.
The pack ran down to Dog River and circled around, returning along the lake shore, sometimes out on the ice, sometimes breaking up over the ice-draped stones of the coast. They found a few dead fish in the frozen spume and among the heaped-up cakes of lake ice.
Always at the head of the wave raced Two Toes, gliding along over the rough places, stretching out in a long lope where the running was good. He knew that only by covering a vast distance could that ravenous mob be fed, and he kept them going.
When they came to something to eat, a little eddy would form, where the food was sucked in, and then the pack straightened out again. They ran over a deer in that way. The black shadow of wolves upon the lake seemed hardly to pause in its sweep across the snow. The head of it crumpled up, swirled while the sides closed in, and then they all seemed to go on again; though as a matter of fact some of those who had bolted a paunchful lagged behind, turned out into the balsams, and curled down to sleep, ungnawed by hunger pains for once.
Thus the pack worked up to Pilot, where the sunlight overtook them, and they retreated from the lake shore into the stony hills, to lie in beds thawed in the loose snow. They had run sixty or seventy miles that night. They had sweated, and they spent some time in biting the balls of snow and ice that had frozen to their shaggy hair and weighted down their tails. They were tired, and all were more or less hungry. Some had had half a normal meal, some only a mouthful.
Two Toes climbed a little height and dropped upon his breast in the snow, rested his jaw on his forepaws, and looked down upon his pack. Upon him rested the responsibilities of leadership, and he was satisfied with what he had done. They were hungry, but they were not starving to death. They had to thank him for many a good morsel. Few wolves could boast of leading such a pack as that grisly gang.
On the following night he left the lake coast and struck inland, seeking moose. Big game must be found to preserve their lives, for morsels would not do. South of the Pukaso, in a little swamp, they found a moose and a yearling. They washed up on them in a writhing, heaving mound, and several were broken by the frantic strokes of the cow's forehoofs; but her fight was in vain. She went down, and the mound of wolves sucked down into itself.
Many of the wolves had a full meal; most of them had something. Those who got only the leavings, and had to quarrel over the marrow, could not go out themselves into the snow and capture game. The weaklings and the sickly were left behind, to live or die as they could. Those that kept up must take what they could hold against their kind, and no more.
The weather had moderated. It was not so bitterly cold. The snow-storm seemed to have taken the sting out of the air. The snow on the crust had cut the ice, and the larger and heavier wolves began to break through the weakening subsurface. The big pack could no longer gallop with the free sweep of a squadron of cavalry. They had to run more and more in lines, the most powerful animals breaking the trails, the others following behind.
Two Toes, not an unusually heavy wolf, but with large paws, maintained his lead. He galloped along, his head always held low, and his teeth snapping at every jump. The other wolves had no desire to run ahead of him. They left him in the lead, but they ran up closer to him, for when he broke the trail they could make better time behind him.
Their next night was a hard one. The crust was so soft that they could hardly run at all, but had to plunge through the snow. They could not cover nearly as many miles as before. They licked up a few rabbits which were making runways of their own, and they found partridges under the snow, catching whiffs of them where they were buried. A nose poked deep, a sniff and a grab, and the next wolf helped to pick the bird and half a dozen helped to eat it, hardly losing a jump.
Dead tired, they ran down to the Twin Falls River, and after daybreak stopped where they happened to be, in a swamp opposite a Stillwater. There they lay, all of them hungry, all chilled and weary. They were too tired to go to the stream for a drink, but ate mouthfuls of snow where they lay.
Before sundown the hungriest of them were up and moving about uneasily. Two Toes rose from his bed and turned toward the east. They were slow in getting started. For a while they ran here and there, every wolf for himself, covering several square miles of territory; but by dark they knew that they must run again. They yelled their hunting cry, and through the timber from all sides they fell in behind Two Toes.
Thus they came to a warm trail that they all knew. It was the track of the Otter Cove man. He was in the deep wilderness. It was night. The best of it was that the trail was warm, fresh, and at intervals it showed the drip of blood—rabbit blood.
Two Toes ran over the trail, and was going to leave it behind, but close behind him were wolves who had overcome their natural fear of a man's track, who had appeased their hunger in other winters by following such a trail. One of these man-eaters gave a new yell when he struck into the fresh track. Turning from behind Two Toes, he led the whole pack in full cry upon it.
Two Toes ran on, with warning yelps and barks, but in vain. No promise that he could make would turn the course of that mob of wolves, frantic with hunger, their fears turned to deadly hate and blood-lust. They raced on, careless, reckless, and Two Toes turned in behind them all, his head held higher, watchfully, no longer the responsible leader, but a follower biding his time.
The wolves now roared and howled, crying their hunting yells as if they were after a fat moose. They had fled and slunk and crouched in terror while the man passed by; they had known his poisons and felt the grip of his steel machines. They knew the voice of his firearms, and had blinked in the glare of his fires. They recollected all these things now, as they rang out their challenge. Lesser packs had pulled men down!
In that charging host were several wolves who pressed eagerly up to the front, for they remembered having been in such a race before, when they had made kills. Their fears were buried now in the mob spirit of numbers.
They had a man ahead of them, and soon they knew, keen trailers that they were, that the man was on the run—that he was not turning back to face them. They had jumped their game!
They split wide to keep from passing under his pack, where he had hung it upon a tree that he might run more swiftly. They split around the pack, but beyond it they returned to the trail, with flankers swinging wide and drawing ahead of the trail leaders, working ahead so that when their prey should turn to right or left he must strike into the wings of the pursuing host.