“We are the last outpost,” said Jelt. “Beyond here is only—Beyond. Miles and miles and miles of ridges, one just like the other, and it isn’t well to be lost up there.”
Then I pointed to what looked like a dark slit between the mountains. “What is that?” I asked.
He turned to me, with a sparkle of interest in his eyes. “Funny you noticed that right off. It’s a place worth seeing, if any place is. We call it the Dark Cañon.”
We walked back to the fire, and he told me about it. It was nothing more or less than a box Cañon, found often in the mountains. A box Cañon is a glen between hills bound about with cliffs, and usually with a narrow opening. It was given over to freakish tendencies in the way of creeks that started up and disappeared, and caves that had no end, and brush-thickets through which no man could push his way. On three sides, he said, it had sheer cliffs, impassable to human feet. Its mouth was a steep and difficult descent, rugged and treacherous; and even the tried mountaineers that have a sixth sense to lead them at the brink of precipices in darkest night, would never attempt it after twilight. “The deer don’t go in there often,” said Jelt. “It doesn’t give them space to run from the cats. But there are plenty of them, and plenty of wolves.”
“I suppose you mean mountain-lions?”
“Yes—cougars we call them. They grow ungodly large down there, too, and come up on the ridges to hunt.”
I know old Jelt. I know his annoying reticence, and I have not the slightest doubt but that he would never have taken the trouble to tell me about the Flying Lion if it had not been for a little incident just before we went to bed. The fire was almost burned out, by then. Jelt and I and his big, rawboned son were smoking a last pipe together. Then we heard it.
It was the kind of noise that a man would not relish hearing alone at night. I don’t know why, either—except that it sounded like nothing under heaven. There is simply nothing with which a man can compare it, and I don’t think a word has ever been coined to name it. For it wasn’t exactly a scream. It wasn’t a howl, like a wolf makes. And the thing sounded just below our window.
It was a long, wild cry that rose and rose to an unbelievable height, and wailed away. It came so suddenly, like a blade thrown out of the darkness, and it was so terribly loud in the perfect stillness that it startled us more than a mere vibration of soundwaves could ever startle three healthy men. It came to a sharp crescendo, then streamed away in a long, shuddering wail; and it wouldn’t fit it exactly to say that it was a sound of someone in terror. It had some of the qualities of a death-scream of a woman, and yet I knew just as soon as I knew anything, that it was not the death-scream of a woman.
“And what in heaven’s name was that?” I asked. I smiled at them, although I knew that it was no smiling matter.
But they did not return my smile, or answer me. They paid no attention to me whatever. All they did was sigh, one with the other. I find it hard to describe the way in which these long sighs affected me. I felt that it would have been a great deal better for them to exclaim in fear, and ask startled questions of each other, than just to stand and sigh. Such sounds were in a moment an expression of utter futility and helplessness. And as I watched them, they soberly turned and unhooked their rifles from the wall. I followed them to the door.
As we opened it, Jelt’s hound pushed through and startled us. It was naturally a magnificent animal, the kind of creature a man likes to imagine is courageous in all circumstances. But it was not magnificent now. It was whimpering and sweating in a way a dog should never do.
The two men walked in front of me, along the hillside on which the house was built, and they seemed to be marching as if in a rank of soldiers. They walked steadily, swiftly; and they spoke no words at all. When they came to a point where the lower valleys were revealed to them, they paused, and I saw them looking here and there, down over the glens.
In just a moment, almost before I could reach them, they had started back to the house. And they sighed again, both of them. I could hear them in the stillness.
“I s’pose it was one of the calves in the South Lot that’ll be gone this time,” said the younger man.
“I suppose so.” And we trooped together into the house.
They hung up their rifles, and they sat down again before the fire. Jelt quietly refilled his pipe.
“I suppose you’re wondering what it’s all about,” he said at last.
“Wondering a great deal. Would you mind telling me?”
“There isn’t much that I can tell you. You know as much about it as we do now, only we’ve heard it eight times, and you’ve heard it just once. If you hadn’t heard it too, I’d say that everyone in this house was stark staring mad. What did it sound like to you?”
“I’ve been trying to think, and I don’t know. Nothing like I ever heard before.”
The mountaineer smoked calmly a long moment before he spoke again. “Did you ever hear a mountain-lion?” he asked at last.
“No. Was that what it was? A mountain-lion?”
He waited endless seconds before he answered. “Young man,” lie said at last, “in my time I’ve heard a hundred mountain-lions. I’ve killed a good score of them, I’ve heard bobcats, and I’ve heard wolves. That thing that screamed out there in the South Lot tonight is not a mountain-lion.
“The sound was something like the scream of a mountain-lion—like the cougar’s cry when he knocks down a deer. It’s high and wild and kind of creepy. And yet it isn’t one, and I can’t tell you why I know it isn’t. It has a quality no man ever heard in a mountain-lion before. I’ve heard it eight times, and the first few limes we went out and hunted up and down the mountains. But we didn’t hear anything or see anything. We still go out and have a look, but it never does any good. The thing is always gone, and with it a calf. Our hound runs out and barks when a cougar or a wolf comes too near; but he comes into the house and whimpers and sweats when this thing makes its kill. I’ve got it figured out that it lives in the Dark Cañon somewhere. But heavens! A troop of goblins could live in the Dark Cañon, and no one would ever see them. But there’s one other strange thing. In fact, it’s the strangest thing of all.”
He turned his head and spoke so low I could hardly hear. “The thing doesn’t leave any tracks,” he said.
He said it perfectly simply. I couldn’t think of an intelligent remark to make in answer. So we sat still, and listened to the wind in the tree-tops.
“I’ve gone out dozens of times, and searched all over the trails for the track of a beast of prey big enough to carry off a calf and not drag its legs. That would mean a cougar, or something bigger. A wolf can kill a calf, but it has to eat it where it falls or drag it to its lair. A bear—the little bears we have here can’t even kill them. But this thing not only fails to make a track, but it doesn’t even drag its meat. I feel like a fool to sit here and tell you something you won’t believe—but it is unfortunately the truth. And a calf weighing one hundred and fifty pounds isn’t an easy thing to carry without dragging.
“Well, that’s all there is to it. Figure it out any way you like. Son and I have a little name for the thing—we call it the Flying Lion. You see why—we don’t see how it can carry away one of my calves and leave no trace unless it flies. I admit that’s a silly lot of stuff to tell a man and expect him to believe, and I don’t expect you to. Only don’t call me a liar, for I’m telling you exactly what I know. It doesn’t make much difference. Like as not we won’t hear the thing again for another year. I think it just kills my calves when it misses its wild kill down in the Cañon.”
We were still again. “Paw!” his son said at last. “Better tell him about that bear with the crooked foot whose track we saw that day. I’ve always kind of figured that had something to do with it.”
“Son, I keep telling you that was nothing.” He turned to me. “The boy found what looked like a track of a young bear a time or two, and he’s always thought it had cards in the deal some way. But it h
asn’t. A bear that size couldn’t kill a lamb; besides, the little black bears eat berries, not meat. There are bears all around. We see their tracks all the time.” He laughed once, grimly. “And no bear on earth would scream like that thing did!” And soon after this, we went to bed.
There was a kind of grim fascination about the Dark Cañon. Often I stood on the rocky ledge at its mouth, and looked down into its fastnesses; but the weeks grew to months before ever I went into it. In the first place, I was not yet enough accustomed to the mountain-trails to trust myself on the precipitate path.
The sunlight seemed never to enter it. Of course, around noon, a few lame beams used to steal down between the dark pines; but as a whole the Dark Cañon was always in shadow. It had been well named.
But there came a day when I felt skilled enough to try the trail. It was worse than I thought. Part of the time I had to go on hands and knees; and part, I had to cling to the stunted shrubbery to hold fast at all. My breath was coming hard, and my nerves were ragged and jumpy by the time I reached the floor of the ravine.
1 had a queer feeling of being out of the world. It was very still down here. The stream that trickled through it made a little noise, and the trees kept up their solemn chant, and I had a dim realization that bees were plying in the thickets, but all these noises combined together and made only silence. I can’t describe my feeling. It was one of those elusive sensations that is some way connected with the realm of dreams. It was as if I had been projected out of my boundaries of time, to a period infinitely remote and strange.
I remembered, more clearly than ever since the night it reached us through the cry of the Flying Lion; and all at once I knew that here was its source and home. No other place in the world would be fitting. It was as much a part of this savage Cañon as laughter is part of a children’s nursery, or prayer part of a church. But I did hope that it would not sound out now. It would not be the sort of thing to quiet a man’s already jumping nerves. I was absolutely unarmed.
Adding to the sense of isolation and loneliness, I remembered all at once that I had neglected to notify my hosts in the ranch-house of my expedition; and they would have no idea to which of the thousand hills I had gone.
Moss grew on the glen floor, and strong, rank ferns made lush carpets along the creek-banks. The trees were tremendous and solemn and dark and still.
I went farther down into the glen, and all the time the walls of the Cañon grew more steep. The creek disappeared, as if a spirit had wished it away. I could hear my own footfall in the moss, and that was all.
It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when I arrived on the valley floor; and all at once I realized that I must turn at once if I were going to mount the ridge before night came. I had seen enough of the Dark Cañon for one day.
It was then that the shadow fell, as always like a purple drapery. It was not darkness yet. That falling curtain was only the harbinger of the darkness that would come in less than an hour. The sky grew curiously green, and the mountains changed color.
But the queerest thing of all was that the falling shadow seemed to be the signal for the wakening of the forest life. The Cañon had seemed dead and still on my descent. Yet I had not gone a dozen steps in return until a crash and tumult in the thicket beside my trail told me of a startled forest-creature. I don’t know what it was. I know that I heard it spring; and then I heard the pit-pat of its feet upon a trail. They stopped, and I stopped. I would have greatly preferred to have them continue.
I hurried on, and a covey of mountain quail sprang up from the shrubbery. The explosion of their starting wings was preternaturally loud. But I did not pause again. 1 hurried on to the fool of the steep ascent.
All the way the start and stir of the wild creatures sounded in the dead forest. Once I thought I caught a glimpse of a tawny body in the shrubbery; but I could not be sure. And once the limbs of a dark pine above my head crashed and rustled strangely; but the shadows were too deep for me to see. Something kept patting the trail behind me.
To this day I cannot be quite certain as to what happened on the steep trail when I had mounted sixty feet. I had reached for the root of a shrub to aid me, and the thing broke in my grasp. I have a dim memory of reeling, staggering, trying to check my fall; and after that was only darkness.
It was night in the Dark Cañon when I wakened. There was a great, white moon somewhere above; but I could not see it, and I only knew it was hanging there from the silver mystery that was on the top of the pines. None of its beams streamed down through the great trees to me; only a dim pallor to which my eyes had not yet grown accustomed. The stars signaled down, a whole sky of them.
I was lying at the very foot of the steep trail. I had fallen fully sixty feet. Of course the descent had not been straight down; yet to a casual glance it was a sheer precipice. And I think that the first impression that I had, on wakening, was the realization that I could not move.
There is no sensation in the world quite so terrible as that of helplessness and futility. Men who are caught in burning buildings have it, and men who are starving in desert wastes. I had it now.
It wasn’t just weakness. A man can overcome weakness by some fortitude within himself. It was not just unconsciousness or pain. I knew that a burning, stabbing pain was all over me, and that I was hovering at the very brink of unconsciousness into which I would presently fall; but I knew too that I had sustained severe and actual injuries. I focused all my thought to determine the extent of them. It was work, such work as I do not care to do again. “My leg is broken—I know that,” I told myself. “There is a cave-in somewhere in my ribs. And my head is bleeding.”
All these things were true. They were not just delusions. And I could not even crawl along the ground.
I did not have many seconds to think of my own broken bones, because all at once I knew that there were other, more poignant things to think about. They were things that stirred, here and there, in the thickets about me.
At first all I heard was the quick pit-pat of soft feet upon a trail. They were running feet, and they stopped short. Then I heard a long body snap the twigs and rustle the branches of the buck-brush just to my right. They were not altogether silent things. It seemed to me that they leaped about, and were curiously excited. Forest creatures as a rule try to be silent. The things in the thickets about me were making no such try. A wolf or a lion is never noisy; but when they wish they can drift like mist through the forest. I heard them step quite freely; and sometimes I heard them sniff and grunt. And the pit-pat of their feet was nearer.
I fell vaguely to wondering why they were so excited. And then I spoke and told myself.
“It is the smell of blood,” I said.
It was perfectly evident that my return to consciousness had startled them a moment. They were only waiting for me to go to sleep again. They knew it would not be long. But they weren’t patient, as are vultures on a desert. I was not even certain that they would wait until unconsciousness came again.
Then the faint light that there was, suddenly caught and reflected in a pair of eyes in the thicket just beside me. It was not just a flash, such as may easily be the gleam of something much less terrible. They were unmistakably eyes; for they stared and stared, unwinking. They were green and very bright. And then I began to see them anywhere I looked.
They were the eyes of the great, gaunt timber-wolves. And the timber-wolf, foresters know, is the most terrible creature in the Cascades. He is not quite so strong as a full-grown cougar. He has not the magnificence and fury in a long charge that marks a wounded brown bear. But he is less educated. He is less schooled in his relations with man—or else, with his dog-like sagacity, he better understands man’s weaknesses. He travels in packs, and this fact makes his strength the greater. And finally, he seems to have no forest law against eating human flesh—the law that is obeyed by most of the larger forest-creatures. It is the wolfs law that whatever is meat, and whatever can be safely attacked without too grea
t loss to the pack, is food.
They had ranged about on all sides of me, and I heard the twigs crack beneath their feet as they drew ever nearer. Their eyes gleamed, ever brighter, and ever they seemed more restless and excited. And then I turned my head to find one just behind me.
I raised my one good arm; and his teeth clicked as he snapped at it. Two of the other wolves ran in as I turned, but I drove them back with a shout. They only retreated a little way. And in some dim, remote corner of my mind it seemed to me I heard an answer to my cry. It was so far away, so dim, that I only perceived it at the outer limits of hearing. If it was anything, it was a long half-scream, half-howl that rose and shuddered away.
The wolves stood near enough for me to see the dim outlines of the forms, and for a moment they all seemed to be standing rigid. They all seemed to be listening. Then they came on again.
“A useless fight!” I told myself. “A lost fight already!”
And I prayed that unconsciousness might come before I felt their fangs.
The wolves were quite close now. I struck at them to the right and left. I caught the gleam of their fangs sometimes; and only my frenzied shouts kept them off at all. But it was sickeningly evident how long mere shouts would frighten them. The smell of blood was an intoxication in the air—and even now they were crouching to spring upon me.
Then above the suppressed noise of the leaping wolves and the echo of my own shouts and the sad moan of the wind, I heard another sound. It was the rapid patter of feet upon the trail—running very swiftly down the Cañon. It burst upon us all at once.
Most four-footed creatures race at a gallop, and their feet sound pit-pat—pit-pat on a trail. Two impacts so close together that it seems as one sound, then a pause of a fraction of a second, and then two more impacts. But this creature that was advancing so rapidly from the farther reaches of the glen came pat—pat—pat—pat; with every impact at an exact interval. Why, in the face of the death that even now was upon me, I perceived this fact, I do not know. The human brain acts queerly in a crisis. Men that have fallen from great heights are known to have observed physical phenomena while in their lightning descent that had escaped their gaze before. I know that even as I struck at the wolves and shouted, I marked the cadence of those approaching feet.
Horrors Unknown Page 4