by Brand, Max
But the she-wolf was almost spent. Her effort to maintain a gallop sent the loose hide and ruff of her mane swaying forward above her shoulders. Her head was down. Her long red tongue almost brushed the rocks. She ran with a telltale swerving as Frosty suddenly checked, with a snarl that told her to run on.
She went on, but only at a dragging trot. And he, looking after her, realized that it was all the speed she could possibly get out of her exhausted body.
Then he turned to face the danger.
He was in a narrow spot in the trail where it was scarcely a stride broad. Two dogs could come at him at once over this footing. Here they came — the two leading greyhounds, running as evenly as though on a double leash — magnificent thoroughbreds, the pick of the dog pack of Joe Thurston. The length of the race had put them where they belonged — in front. Now, very gamely, they bared their teeth and rushed in on the wolf. If they could get a toothhold for even a moment, the big fighters of the Gary breed would close and end Frosty’s business.
And Frosty knew it. That was why he had no thought at all of his fangs at this moment. He simply stood braced until the last instant, and then he dived for the shoulder of the inside dog. His head was the entering point of the wedge that he drove between that greyhound and the rock way. His shoulder was the heel of the wedge that hurled the tall dog to the side with a resistless impetus that knocked both it and its running mate over the edge of the rock.
Their death yells ran needle-thin through the air and dropped at once into vagueness and distance.
Frosty had no time to waste on triumph. One of the Gary breed was at him now. Frosty went right at his head with a blinding slash of his teeth, and then with a shoulder stroke that hurled him backward, head over heels.
He slipped over the edge of the rock, clung by the forelegs, slowly, instinctively crawled back to the ledge.
His second in the pack had gone the way of all flesh by that time. Frosty, fighting for life, had cut that big fellow down by the forelegs and rammed him in turn over the edge of the rock.
And now, at last, that best of fighting backs held back. They had seen their leaders, one by one, hurled to destruction. It must have seemed to them that a four-footed devil was standing there, bristling, green fire shooting from his eyes.
So they gave back, howling, snarling. Only the gallant, foolish greyhounds strove to get at the throat of the enemy, but found their way blocked by the massed formation of the Gary dogs, which were now at the front.
So, for a moment, the great wolf stood his ground, and knew that he was giving his mate safe time to cross the top of the ledge and get down into the ravine beneath. And as that knowledge made him glance aside, he saw a thing that curdled his wolfish blood — for, straight across the ravine, lying at ease on the ground, a man was leveling his rifle at Frosty’s heart.
CHAPTER XV
Saved by Silver
FROSTY knew that danger as well as though he already felt the bullet in his flesh. There were two men yonder across the ravine, and two horses, one of which shone like a statue of polished gold. The man who lay with the rifle at his shoulder was the vital danger for the moment; his companion was erect, his own rifle held at the ready, and now he leaned and jerked the gun of the marksman aside.
That rifle spoke at the same instant, but the bullet finished far away, and Frosty heard the faint thud of it against the rock high up the cliff. He saw the marksman spring to his feet. He heard the thin, distant voices of dispute blowing toward him.
And even the heart of the wolf knew that it was very strange indeed that men should interfere with one another when it came to the making of a kill.
For his own part, there was a hollow thrill of joy in his heart, and he ran on with lightened body and strengthened legs. Behind him the disheartened pack of dogs had begun to snarl and quarrel with one another. The voices of their owners yelled far away; and so Frosty ran over the peak of the trail and sloped down the farther side into the bottom of the ravine, where his mate was already cantering.
Above him, to the right side of the ravine, he saw the two hunters had mounted. A big man with a bare head rode the golden stallion, and on the bare head of the man there were two faintly gleaming spots of silver, just over the temples, and exactly like the sheen of incipient horns that begin to break out from the head of a deer.
The rough edge of the cliff shut out the view of those two riders for a moment, and Frosty was glad to forget them. The newness of his escape from imminent danger was still a bewilderment in his mind. It was as though his throat had been crushed in the grip of a mighty enemy who, unharmed, had suddenly relented.
But there is no relenting in the wilderness. To slay is to do right, and to destroy the enemy is the first duty.
So when Frosty came to the staggering form of his mate, he looked upon her almost as a visionary thing — a thing that a young cub may daydream or see in the sweeping, tossing spray of a waterfall in summer. She was unreal. The reality remained back there on the trail where the dog pack had confronted him, and where the rifle had pointed at his heart.
He ran up the main ravine, twice springing across the little run of water, leaping from stone to stone that jutted above the surface; and his mate, obediently, though on failing legs, followed him. Then he came to the place where the many smaller ravines split away from the throat of the main valley; and at the same time, far away behind him, he heard the full current of the hunting pack enter the valley.
But he could afford to laugh now. It would take those dogs, no matter how keen, some time to pick up the trail which he had entangled in the lower valley for them. And while they were puzzling over that, he and his mate would be scampering to safety in the labyrinth of canyons that cut up the back country.
He turned, therefore, down the first small ravine to his right.
“A little more,” he said to his mate, “and then we rest — we rest!”
She made no answer. She gave no hint that she heard. She ran with slaver falling from her long red tongue. Her eyes seemed swollen; they were closed to mere slits, and showed like unlighted glass. Her coat stood up raggedly, like the coat of a wolf that has been through a frightful winter of famine. Mud and dust covered her. Her heart was breaking, as Frosty very well knew, but where a weaker spirit would have given up and crawled into the first hole, she kept to her work right valiantly. She was the sort of steel of which the right wolfhood should be made, Frosty knew.
He knew, too, that his example and his presence were what finally sustained her during this last effort, and therefore he trotted cheerfully in the front, looking back now and again over his shoulder toward her.
He was looking back in this manner as they rounded a sharp corner of the ravine, and he was surprised to see her stop short.
Was she about to die of weariness, as he had seen a hunted rabbit die?
He glanced ahead, and then he understood!
For there stood the golden stallion with the big rider on his back, and the man was swinging a rope and calling, to his smaller, darker companion:
“We’ll take him alive! Don’t shoot, Alec!”
Alexander Gary, his rifle leveled from his shoulder, exclaimed in answer: “If you get that wolf on a rope, you’ll wish that you’d daubed the rope on the devil, sooner! Lemme put some lead in him. That’s the only way to handle him! Let me shoot, Silver!”
“Keep that rifle to yourself!” thundered Silver. “Don’t shoot!”
His voice rang and roared through the narrows of the canyon as poor Frosty and his mate halted again, he crowding back to her.
His heart was failing him at last. Before him were two men, reeking with the fatal taint of gunpowder and steel; two men, nearer to him than ever men had been before. And the sun was full and strong upon the scene, and what could keep death from Frosty now?
Then he heard, well in the distance, the cry of the dog pack in the outer valley. In a few moments it would drift in and follow this canyon. There were dogs, and behind
the dogs were armed hunters. From that danger there would be no escape, whereas once before these men had pointed a gun at him, and yet he had run to safety.
So, making his choice, Frosty threw his mate one brief, snarling admonition, and started right up the canyon toward the two riders.
The she-wolf lurched after him. She was so far gone that she would have followed the command of Frosty over a precipice blindly. It was all death to her. It had been death almost from the moment that the two pointers began to yell on the trail. It had been death on the run through the hills, death in the hiding of the haystack, death in running through the fencing of the corrals, death in the agony of long labor up the Indian trail, and now it was doubly death and doubly bitter since, for a moment, there had been a little hope of life.
But she ran heavily after her lord and master.
He was like a lord and master now more than ever before. He had erected his mane. He had thrown his head high. His eyes were balls of green fire as he threatened the two men to this side and to that.
Before him he saw the glimmering on the bright steel barrel of Alec Gary’s rifle. The weapon was still at the shoulder of Alec, and he groaned with eagerness as he got, through the sights, a dead bead on the great wolf.
And on the other side of the narrow way, inescapably close, sat the man with the silver gleam in the hair above his temples. He was swinging a rope, opening the noose in it. The thing sang softly in the air. It was thin as a shadow, and it whipped a frail ghost of a shadow over the ground as the rider whirled it.
That was danger, but it was a smaller danger than the rifle. This was that same man, also, who had pulled the rifle away from its line of fire upon the first occasion.
That was why Frosty, compelled to make a choice between dangers, ran much closer to the man with the swinging rope, and as he ran, paid no heed to Jim Silver, but turned all his green-eyed fury, all of his hatred, toward Alec Gary.
And as he came in between the danger of the pair it seemed to Frosty that the hateful steel collar that had been fastened upon him by the will of man now drank up all of the heat of the blazing sun and scalded his neck.
But he was through!
He was through the gap, though the rifle still pointed at him, though the whistle of the swinging rope had been in his very ear.
He was through, and his mate was safely at his heels!
Perhaps they had let him go as a wild cat lets a captured squirrel creep a little way from her terrible claws as she pretends to look the other way, all the while lashing her silken flanks with her tail in an ecstasy of savage exultation, and hate, and rage, and triumph.
Perhaps these men were playing with him and would strike him dead at the moment he thought that he had come to safety.
Alec Gary was groaning: “If you won’t let me shoot, then daub the rope on him. There’s the steel collar on his neck, and the location of the mine’s inside the collar. Jim Silver, are you goin’ to let a million dollars of meanness and wolf run right by you?”
“I can’t put the rope on him!” exclaimed Silver in answer. “He’s too full of nerve. He had plenty of run in him. He could have crawled up the side of one of these rock walls, but he wouldn’t leave his mate. He’s a hero, Alec. I can’t touch him — to-day, I can’t!”
Of course Frosty did not understand these words. But what he did understand was that that deep powerful voice was interceding between him and the danger. He knew that out of the throat of Jim Silver was flowing safety for him and for his mate.
Did he feel gratitude?
Well, that was an emotion about which he knew nothing. There is no gratitude in nature — unless it be perhaps between cubs and mothers or such a rare union as that of Frosty and the she-wolf. All that Frosty knew was that a man’s voice had given him security. Twice, on a single day, his life had been saved by that same man. Frosty could not attribute motives, but he could understand facts. You may be sure that he was very glad that he had run as close as possible to Silver and as far as possible from Gary!
And behind him, Silver was saying: “I’m sorry, Alec. But I couldn’t do it. Not if that collar were worth a million mines. If I’d roped Frosty, we would have had to kill him before we could have quieted him. There was no room to run him and choke him down — not in this narrow ravine. And — man, man, he came right under the noose of my rope. He ran so close to me that it looked as though he were asking me for mercy — trusting me!”
Alec Gary, gray and drawn of face, exhausted by violent emotions, stared at his companion.
“Jim,” he said, “everybody knows that you’re the best fellow in the world. Everybody understands that. But what’s in your head to-day, I can’t tell. I thought you and I were hunting a wolf!”
“We are,” said Jim Silver contritely. “I’ve been a fool. We’re hunting a cattle-killing devil of a lobo. No matter how big and handsome and brave he is, I’ll never be a fool like this again, Alec. Only — something came over me twice to-day. I forgot he was just a wolf. I thought of him just as a brave fellow in danger, in the last ditch.”
CHAPTER XVI
Christian’s Scheme
THURSTON and his pack of dogs, with Truman, the rancher to back him up, and with the patient and intelligent assistance of Barry Christian and Duff Gregor, kept after Frosty steadily.
In seven days they actually ran the great wolf seven times. They ran Frosty high above timber line over snow and ice; they ran him in the tangles of the canyon that split the lower heights of the Blue Waters. But for a week they had no sight of his mate. Frosty came out alone and faced the hunt and ran it breathless.
There were certain things to notice.
The first day had cost a lot of dog flesh from the pack, but it had afforded a chance to do some shooting at Frosty.
The second day there were three chances to open on Frosty with rifles, and it seemed probable that he had been wounded. The third day they had only a few glimpses of him in the distance. The fourth day they ran the pack by scent only, the greyhounds led behind on leashes to save their valuable and arrowy speed for the right moment. And on that day another dog out of the pack was killed — a big and wise pointer. The fifth day again they hunted Frosty without sight of his valuable head. They lost another pointer and one of the Gary dogs that day. They lost three of them on the sixth day, and four on the seventh. The very heart had been cut out of Joe Thurston’s pack. He had to send back for more dogs.
But he locked his jaw and said that he would keep on along those lines if it took him all summer.
Barry laid his long-fingered hand on the shoulder of Thurston and said in his gentlest voice:
“It won’t take you all summer. It won’t take you another week. There may be something left of you, but your dogs will all be gone. Look!”
He sat down cross-legged by the camp fire and took out a notebook and began to sketch in it.
“He got the first dogs on the ledge. Call that luck. He was hanging back for his mate, that day, and he just happened to find a place to make a last stand at the very moment that he needed it.
“The second day the dogs were still working him pretty close, but already he had learned to leave the she-wolf behind him. We had a look at him a few times through the sights of our rifles. The third day we had only a glimpse. And since, the dogs have had his scent now and then, and we’ve had his prints to look at now and then. Not so often, either, because you notice that he prefers to run on hard rock now? The sun burns the scent off rock in a short time, and he knows it. Rock won’t take the print of a wolf’s paw, and he knows that, too. Every day we work him, we’re teaching him how to beat us. The fourth day, he begins to teach us that he knows his lesson. Here, look at this.”
He showed the sketch which his rapid pencil had made — a little thicket of brush on a vast, rocky mountainside.
“One of the pointers runs ahead of the rest, and Frosty waits for him and makes the kill, and then goes ahead. See how the kill was made — one long rip right
across the throat. Knocked the dog flat with a shoulder stroke first, I suppose. Then Frosty doesn’t stay there to exult over the kill. He runs right on and we see no more of him. Neither does the pack.
“The next day, he gets two dogs. He waits for them on the far side of a ford. When the first dog gets across, Frosty pops out of these rocks and slaughters him. While he’s killing that one, another of your fighting strength gets across, and Frosty handles him, too. See how it’s done. Big dogs — scientific fighters, all of ‘em. But Frosty knows how to lay them out. Would you fight a duel with a Frenchman who has been educated all his life to use a sword? That’s what it means when any dog gets up against Frosty. Brains, and strength, and teeth that will bite through steel, it seems.
“The next day, you lose three dogs. At different places along the trail. In a dark lane through a patch of big woods — in the narrows of a ravine — in a huge tangle of brush like a jungle. You see, Frosty is beginning to know this pack as well as he knows these mountains. He knows how fast the pack can run and how long it will take him to get to the next cover. He’s enjoying the game now. The pack is running after him, but Frosty is doing the hunting.
“Then comes to-day. He leads the pack through the tunnel of a long cave. In the dark he turns around, and two of the best dogs never come out. He takes the pack right back to the ford where he had fought them before, and there he slaughters two more. Notice that every day he grows bolder and bolder, turns to fight more and more often. And yet never lets us get within sight of him.”
He finished his sketching and folded his notebook.
Joe Thurston, his coffee cup on his knee, stared at the fire with a small, grim smile, and said nothing.
Truman got up and stretched himself.
“We’re beaten,” he muttered, under his breath.
Thurston’s voice snipped into that sentence sharply.
“You may be beaten. I’m not. Not while the dogs last,” he said.
Big Duff Gregor was usually a silent partner in these conversations, only turning his head now and again to wait for wisdom from Barry Christian. But now he ventured: