Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  However, the rear attack was in better hands — or perhaps I should say feet and teeth. At the precise moment when the husky made his clumsy and half-hearted feint, Alec sprang in like a white flash. I saw the gleam of his big fangs, and I could almost hear the shock of the stroke as his teeth struck the hamstring full and fair, as it seemed to me.

  Then he dropped flat to the ground, and the moose, with the uninjured leg, kicked twice, like lightning, above the head of Alec. After that, the dog jumped back like a good boxer who has made his point and lets the judges note it.

  The stroke had gone home, but it had not cut the cord in two. The big beast still was standing without a sign of failing on any leg, and though he shook his head, he seemed as formidable and unhurt as ever.

  That touch of the spur at least made him restless. While Alec licked his red-stained lips, and the other dogs stood up, trembling with fresh hope and fresh hunger, the quarry wheeled and fled with his long-striding trot. After him went the pack, but not far. For though the stroke of Alec had not quite severed the cord, it must have been hanging together by a mere thread. I could almost swear that I heard a distinct sound of something parting under high tension, and the moose slipped down on his haunches, sliding on the icy crust of the snow and knocking up a shower of it before him.

  That slip was the last of him, and again Alec was the operator — or swordsman. He whipped around under the head of that big fighter and cut his throat for him as well as any butcher could have done. Then back he jumped.

  The moose tried to rise. He floundered and fell again with a dog hanging to either flank, tearing, and Alec’s teeth again slashed his throat. That was almost the finishing stroke.

  My hair stood up on my head. There was something unbelievably horrible about this. It was like seeing three or four kindergarten children pull down a gigantic athlete and pommel him to death! All in a moment the moose was down, and dead, and the pack was eating.

  But then I saw the explanation, and the horror left me. It was brains that had won. Alec, like a general overlooking a battlefield, stood up with his forefeet on the head of the moose and looked over his friends and their feasting with a red laugh of triumph — a silent laugh, of course, but one whose meaning you could not mistake.

  He was the fellow with the brains. He was steel against stone; powder against bow and arrows; science against brute power. The very fact that he restrained his appetite now was the proof that he had a will and a power of forethought.

  I had seen him before a great deal. He had shown me more favor than to any one outside of his master, Massey. But, nevertheless, I never before had guessed what a great animal he was, and why two men were willing to risk their lives to get him. I knew now, fully, as I watched him standing over the head of his kill.

  He had broadened and strengthened in appearance. I had last seen him as half a puppy; but now he was the finished product, and this life in the open, I could guess, and the starvation periods, and the interminable trails, and the hard battles, were the things which had tempered and hardened his fine metal to just the cutting edge.

  I heard Calmont muttering softly to himself. His eyes blazed; his face was working. I suppose he would have given almost anything in the world to possess Alec, just then. Massey, however, to whom the dog meant still more, said not a word to anyone, but continued to work softly, delicately, through the brush.

  We were not the only creatures who were stealing up on the feasting huskies, however. Alec the Great had not yet tasted the first reward of his victory, when out of the brush on the farther side of the hollow streamed five timber wolves.

  You could tell the difference instantly between them and the huskies. They were tall, but slighter. Their tails were more bushy. There was more spring in their stride, and by the flat look in their sides and the movement of the loose robe over their shoulders, it was fairly certain that they were burned out with starvation. A dog, as thin as that, would hardly have been able to walk. It would have lain down to let the cold finish what starvation had almost ended. But a wolf keeps its strength and endurance almost as long as it can stand.

  These five came on with a rush, forming a flying wedge, with the big gray leader in front. Calmont would have unhesitatingly used his gun at once, and I was of the same mind, but again Massey protested.

  “You’ll see something,” he said, “if those dogs have rubbed off the man smell in the woods and the snow.”

  Afterward, I understood what he meant.

  At the first sound behind him, Alec gave the snarl that was the danger signal and, at the sound of it, as he whirled about, the three who followed his orders leaped up beside him and presented a solid front to the foe.

  They looked big enough and strong enough to do the trick, but I knew that they could not. There’s only about one dog in a thousand that can fight a wolf singlehanded. Even a half-bred husky, bigger, stronger in every other way, lacks the jaw power which is the wolf’s distinguishing virtue. The house dog has no chance at all. Back in Arizona, I had seen a single lobo, and not a big one at that, fight three powerful dogs. He killed one of them with a single stroke. And he was slashing the others to bits when I managed to get a lump of lead into his wise and savage brain.

  Alec was a different matter. He was man-trained before he ever began to learn the lessons of the wilderness and, after seeing what he had done to the moose, I should not have been surprised if he could take care of himself with a single wolf of average powers. However, I did not think that his company would last long against that savage assault. It would be soon over, and the wild wolves would sweep on to the moose meat that waited before them.

  That was why I stared at Massey, who was dragging down Calmont’s rifle for the second time.

  Then I saw Alec do a strange thing that took my breath.

  He left the moose; he left his three companions, and walked a few stiff-legged steps straight out to meet the enemy.

  I thought at first that he meant to take the whole first brunt on himself, which would have meant a quick death.

  That was not the meaning of it, however. The finesse of arctic etiquette, at least among wolves, was not yet familiar to me.

  As soon as Alec went out there by himself, the rush of the wolf pack was stayed. Four of them finally stopped short and stood in a loose semicircle, their red tongues hanging out, and their little eyes fiery bright. Their whole charge from the brush had had a queer effect which I am not able to describe. It was as though some of the mist tangles in the trees had taken on solid weight and life, and had come out there with feet and teeth.

  This was a serious matter. I wondered how far those dogs and wolves would have to travel to find another meat mountain like that moose? It was as though a small crew of buccaneers had captured a towering galleon laden with gold and spices, and had been surprised while plundering by a greater crew of pirates.

  Now that the wolves had halted in their charge, I began to see how the thing might work out.

  The leader, after giving a glance to right and left at his rank and file, stalked out by himself toward Alec. They came straight on toward one another until they were no more than six steps apart. There they paused, in different attitudes.

  The wolf dropped his head; his hair bristled along his back; his hanging brush almost touched the ground; and his face had the most wicked expression. Alec, on the other hand, kept his head up, and there was no sign of bristling fur. He was on watch, I would have said; and he needed to be, for that timber wolf went at him in a moment like the jump of an unfastened spring.

  “Watch!” said Massey.

  It was worth watching. Since then, I’ve seen a burly prize fighter rush wildly at a smaller foe and be knocked kicking at the first blow. Alec was not so tall, but he was heavier than his wild brute, and he had man-trained brains. Wolf fighting is leap, stroke, shoulder blow or shoulder parry, and always a play to knock the other off his feet.

  Well, Alec stood up there like a foolish statue while that gray wolf b
olt flew at him across the snow, silent and terrible. At the very moment of impact, Alexander the Great dropped flat to the ground and reached for the other’s throat with his long jaws. They spun over and over, but at the end of the last gyration, the wolf leader lay on his back, and Alec stood over him, slowly and comfortably crushing the life out at his throat!

  XXVII. WILD BLOOD

  NO FIGHT TO the death is a pretty thing to watch. The way Alec set his teeth, like a bulldog, while the gray leader kicked and choked and lolled his red tongue, made me more than a bit sick. However, the other wolves and the rest of the dogs did nothing about it. They had not moved from their places, which made a rough circle, except for an old wolf bitch who ran up while the struggle was going on and trotted around and around the two warriors, sometimes whining, once sitting down on her haunches, and howling at the sky.

  I wondered whether she were the wife or the mother of the big gray wolf. Certainly he seemed to mean something to her, but she did not bare a tooth to help him in this pinch. A mysterious law of the wilderness made her keep hands off religiously during the battle.

  It was over in just a minute. Alec stood back from the dead body of his enemy and, crouched a bit, with his back fur rising, he sent up a howl that filled me full of cold pins and needles. Even Massey groaned faintly as we heard this yell.

  This ghoulish howl of triumph ended before any of the huskies or the wolves stirred; but when it was over the whole gang threw themselves on the moose and made a red riot of that good flesh. Alec went in to get his share now, also, and in less time than one could imagine, those powerful brutes were gorging in the vitals of the big carcass.

  “He’s run amok,” said Massey through his teeth, very softly. But he was so close to me that I heard every word. “He’s gone back to his wild blood! I’ll never get him, now!”

  That was exactly how I felt about it, too. It looked as though big Alec were the purest wolf in the world, and one of the biggest. He had seemed to loom among the huskies, but he looked still bigger compared to the wild beasts. He was in magnificent condition. Even in that dim light, there was a sheen in his long, silky coat, and that is a sure sign of health in a dog.

  Well, I watched Alec in there getting his meal and told myself that there was mighty little similarity between him and the dog I had known. The color and marking were the same, and that was all. The whole air of him was different. This wild, grim Alexander the Great looked up to his name, more than ever, but I was sure that I wanted nothing to do with him, until I had been properly introduced to him all over again by Massey.

  Massey himself had led the way down to the edge of the brush which was closest to the kill and the feasters. Then he turned his head to us and warned us with a gesture to keep back out of sight and to make no noise. The look with which he accompanied that silent warning was something to remember for a long time, it was so frightened, and so tense. A man might look just like that before he asked the lady of his heart to marry him.

  Then out into the open stepped Massey.

  At the sight of him, the old female who had made the fuss about the fight leaped right straight up into the air with a warning yip. Her back had been turned fairly on us, but she was apparently one of those vixens who have eyes wherever they have nerves. This warning of hers whipped the rest of the lot away from the moose. They scattered like dead leaves in a wind, for a short distance, and then they swirled about and faced us.

  Only Alec stood his ground in the grandest style, facing Massey, with his forepaws on the shoulder of the moose, and his muzzle and breast crimsoned. There he waited, wrinkling his lips in rage and hatred as he saw the man step out from the brush. A good picture he made just then — a good picture to scare a tiger with.

  Massey walked out slowly, but not stealthily. He held out one hand and said in a perfectly natural voice — or perhaps there was just a shade of quiver in it— “Hello, Alec, old boy!”

  Alec went up in the air as the old wolf had done before him. You would have thought that there was dynamite in the words of his master. He landed a bit back from the head of the moose while the other huskies and the wolves took this for a signal, and scattered into the shadows and mists of the opposite line of brush.

  “Alec!” called Massey again, walking straight on with his hand extended.

  Alexander the Great spun around and bolted for the brush, with his ears flattened and his tail tucked between his legs.

  Great Scott, how my heart beat! There was the end, I thought, of Alec the Great, the thinking dog, the king of his kind. He would be a king of the woods, now, in exchange for his former position. I don’t suppose that the change could be called a step down, from his own viewpoint.

  “Alec, Alec!” called Massey, in a sort of agony.

  But Alec went out of sight among the brush with a rush of speed.

  Massey ran forward, stumbling, so that it was pretty certain he was more than half blind. Poor Massey! He called again and again.

  But I heard big Calmont gritting his teeth, and I felt, also, that it was a lost cause, when, out of the shadows popped that white beauty in the black mask and stood not twenty steps from Massey.

  ‘Thank God!” I distinctly heard Massey say.

  Then he went toward Alec carefully, hand out in the usual, time-honored gesture. And finally Alec made a defiant response.

  He did not bolt this time. Instead, he dropped to his belly, and looked for all the world as though he were on the verge of charging straight at the man. He had all the aspects of a dog enraged and ready for battle, not for flight.

  He looked more evil than he had when he was at the torn body of the moose, warning the man away.

  However, when he rose it was not to charge.

  He got up slowly, and I saw that the ruff of stiffened mane no longer stood out around his neck and shoulders. He stopped the snarling which had been rumbling in the hollow of his body like a furious and distant thunder. A sort of intimate thunder, one might say. And strung out straight and still, like a setter on a point, he poked his nose out at Massey and seemed to be studying the man.

  It was as though he were half statue and half enchanted.

  “He’s gunna win,” said Calmont thorough his teeth.

  “He’s got him charmed like a snake charms a bird!”

  He was glad to see Massey show such a power over the dog, of course; but just the same, he could not help hating the man for the very strength which he showed. I believe that Calmont, in his heart, was profoundly convinced that Massey possessed the evil eye which masters beast and man.

  In the meantime, Massey stopped advancing, and continued to talk gently and steadily to the dog. Alec lost his frozen pose and came up to his master, one halting step after another, exactly as though he were being pulled on a rope. Calmont began to swear softly under his breath.

  Alec was about a stride away from the outstretched hand of his man, and I looked to see him ours in another instant, but then a very odd trick of fate turned up. In the woods, close at hand, a wolf howled sharp and thin. I don’t know why, but I was instantly convinced that it was the old female wolf.

  At her call, Alec twitched around and was gone in a gleaming streak across the clearing and into the wood toward the voice.

  So the victory was snatched out of the very fingertips of Massey! And that wolf cry out of the mist of the forest was the most uncanny part of a very uncanny night.

  Massey did not wait there any longer. He turned about and called us out, for he said that Alec would not come back again, that night.

  “Or any other night!” said Calmont. “He’s gone for good!”

  Massey did not answer, except with a look that cut as deep as a knife stroke.

  We set about cutting up the moose, slashing away the parts which the wolves and dogs had mangled, and finding, of course, a vast plenty that had not been spoiled. Everything would be good, either for us or for our team! It was a mountain of meat, for sure.

  I was sent back to the camp
to hitch up the team to an empty sled and bring it back, so that the meat could be loaded on board, since there was far more than three back loads in the heap, naturally. So I went off, with the howling of the wolves, as it seemed to me, floating out at me everywhere, from the horizon of the circling hills.

  When I got near the site of our camp, I rubbed my eyes, amazed. For there was no sign of the tent. It had vanished!

  Yet it was certainly our site. For presently I recognized the cutting in the adjacent grove, and then, hurrying on closer, I saw the explanation. The tent was there, but it had been knocked flat to the ground, while the snow all about was trampled and scuffed a lot.

  Just before the tent lay the body of Muley, one of the poorer dogs in the team of Massey. He had had his throat cut for him neatly, after the wolf style, and somehow I could not but suspect that Alec the Great had done the job. It looked his style of things.

  The other five dogs were gone, and I knew where. It was pretty plain to me that Alec was an organizing genius. The way he had mastered both half-wild huskies and all the wild timber wolves was a caution, and I could swear that he had stormed along on our back trail until he found our camp; and then, after corrupting the minds of the dog team with a few insidious whispers about the pleasures of the jolly green woods, he had led them away, except for poor Muley. Muley must have resisted. Perhaps he was the opposition speaker, and got the knife for his brave stand.

  The camp was a frightful wreck. Not only were the dogs gone, but everything had been messed up. Every package that could be slashed open with teeth was spilled. The very tent cloth was badly ripped and chewed. So were sleeping bags.

  I took stock of the extent of the disaster and then listed details of it. Then I turned about and ran as fast as I could back to the place of the moose.