Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  While I was talking to Alec, the real mischief started. The old bitch had worked herself close to me through the snow, wriggling like a seal and unnoticed by me until she rose from the ground at my very feet and tried for my throat. She would have got it, too, except that I jerked down on the axe from my shoulder with an instinctive, not an aimed, blow that went straight home between her eyes. It split her skull. She struck me heavily on the chest, knocking me back against the trees, and then fell dead at my feet, while I, gasping, and shouting louder than ever for help, swung the axe again and prepared to meet the rush.

  It came.

  One of the wolves, a big, strong male, rushed in on me, as though trying to take advantage of any confusion I might be in after repulsing the attack of the bitch. I made a half turn and gave it to him alongside the head.

  It did not kill him. It merely slashed him badly, and made him spring for my throat.

  Then they settled down in their semicircle again, and once more they waited.

  Alec set the example of patience by lying prone on his belly in the snow and commencing to bite out the ice from between his toes. Only the wolf which had been wounded stood stiffly in place, his eyes red and green by turns, like lights on a railroad, except that green was the danger signal, here.

  All that scene is burned into my mind, though I thought at the time that I would never remember anything except the wolfish eyes. Fear and horror came over me in waves. Sometimes I thought that I might faint. The dread of this kept me strung taut. And I remember how a puff of wind opened the snow mist before me and gave me a sight of the whole hollow, and the dark forest beyond, while a hope leaped up for an instant in my breast, and was gone again as the mist closed in once more.

  I saved up my voice, as it were, and shouted from time to time, pitching the notes very high, and then lower, wondering if any sound might come to the cabin where two strong men and rifles were ready to scatter ten times as many wolves as these like nothing at all.

  As I shouted, I remembered that the wolves and dogs would cant their heads a little and listen like connoisseurs of music. If it came to making a noise, I was an amateur compared to these musicians of the wilderness. This comparison struck me at the time and almost made me smile, which shows how oddly we can detach ourselves from ourselves.

  Well, Alec was the one who brought me down.

  The treacherous dog must have been planning it carefully in his almost human brain. He was lying there licking his forelegs one instant and the next moment he was in at me like a flash. I suppose he had gathered his hind legs carefully beneath him for the spring, while he maintained that sham in front to deceive me. And deceive me he did, and most perfectly.

  The first thing I knew that white slash was on me.

  He did not go for the throat. Instead, he used the trick that Massey had taught him with such care in the days of his puppyhood. He simply gave me his shoulder at the knees, and the force of that blow laid me flat with a jolt that almost winded me.

  I jerked my arms across my face and throat, instead of striking out. I heard a deep, moaning growl which I supposed was the joy note from those hungry vandals,

  Well, it makes me blush to relate that I closed my eyes and simply waited that frightful split second for my murder to commence, knowing that something was standing over me, snarling frightfully. Teeth clashed. Something tugged at my clothes.

  And then I opened my cowardly eyes and saw that Alec the Great was standing over me, not trying for my throat, but keeping back the wolf pack with his bared teeth!

  XXX. FOR LIFE AND DEATH

  PEOPLE HAVE TRIED to explain all this to me. They have said that, of course, scent is the keenest sense in a dog or a wolf, and that it was not until he was close on me, this cold, blowing day, that Alec the Great was able to note my scent and record me in his memory as an old friend. Some people have even said that it was all a game on his part. But then, they were not there to see the look in his eyes before he jumped in at me. However, I never have been convinced by any of these attempted explanations. They may all be correct, but I suppose I prefer to keep the thing a miracle.

  When I looked up and saw how the battle was going, you can imagine that I got to my feet in double-quick time. I scooped up the axe which had fallen from my hand into the deep snow, only the end of the haft sticking out above the surface.

  My troubles were not over. The pack had yielded ground for a moment at the strange spectacle of its leader going over to the enemy, but hunger was more eloquent than their respect for the teeth of Alec the Great.

  They came bundling in toward us in a tumult. And Alec?

  Why he fought them off like a master, with my help. I kept my axe swinging as hard and as fast as I could and, as the wolves swerved this way and that from the blade — a tooth which they learned quickly to respect — Alec flashed out at them like a sword from its scabbard, and cutting right and left was back again in the shallow shelter which I made for him.

  That dog moved as quickly as a striking snake. Even the real wild wolves were slow compared with him. And this again, of course, was the result of man-training, plus native ability and brains. He seemed to think out things in a human manner. In parrying those attacks, for instance, he gave almost all of his attention to the big gray wolf which already had been slashed by the axe blade. That fellow was the champion of the old brigade, one might say, and he led the way for the rest, feinting in very cleverly, and always trying to get to me, as though he understood perfectly well that what made the strength of Alec and me was our partnership, and that I was the weaker of the two. Half a dozen times his long fangs were not an inch from my face, for he was always trying for my throat.

  And Alec, making this his chief enemy, finally found a chance to rip that timber wolf right across the belly as he was jumping up and in.

  The wounded beast hit the ground and went off to a little distance before it lay down on the snow.

  Then it got up, leaving a pool of red where it had lain, and went off with small, slow steps. I guessed that it was bleeding to death rapidly and wanted to get into the dark of the forest before its fellows found out its bad condition.

  Well, it had no luck. It was leaving a broad trail behind it, and famine and the bad luck they were having with Alec and me made the rest of the pack swerve away from us and head after their wounded companion.

  When he saw them coming, he quickened his pace into a wretched, short-striding gallop. He got to the shadow of the woods a bit before the others, but I knew that they must have been on him in a swarming crowd, a moment later. Yet there was no sound to tell of it. Hunger shut their throats. Just as they had swarmed silently around me, so they must have swarmed silently around that wounded comrade, tearing him to bits.

  For my part, I cared not a whit what became of them and all the rest of the wolves and huskies in the world, for I was down on my knees in the snow with my arms around Alec the Great hugging him against my breast like a long-lost brother.

  His reaction to this was very odd.

  First, he shuddered and snarled, and I could feel and see his hair bristling along his back. But, after a moment, Alec became a different creature.

  He had had a long contact with the wilderness, of course, and I suppose his long association with Calmont had given humanity a black eye with him for the time being. But as I talked to Alec and caressed him, finally his tail began to wag. He kissed my face and, sitting down in the snow before me, he laughed in my face, with his wise head canted a little to one side, exactly as he used to carry it in the old days, when he was asking what he should do next.

  This delighted me wonderfully, and I began to laugh until the tears stung my face.

  However, I had to get home quickly.

  Half a dozen times, the cutting fangs of those desperadoes had touched my clothes, and with the next grip huge rents and tears appeared. These let in the cold on me, like water through a sieve, and I was shuddering from head to foot.

  So I headed up
the hill, my heart very high, you may be sure, and my head turned to watch Alec.

  Well, he came right up after me until we reached the ridge of the hill, with the cabin in full view on its side. There Alec the Great sat down and would not budge for a long moment.

  He stared at the house, then he turned his head and looked toward the woods and, if ever a strong brain turned two ideas back and forth visibly, it was Alec there on the hill, looking down, as I felt, at all humanity, all civilization, and calmly asking himself if the penalties were worth the pleasures compared with the wild, free life of a king of the woods.

  I called him. I coaxed him.

  Finally, he jumped up as though he had known what to do all the time, but had merely been resting. And with Alec at my heels, I went on to the cabin and thrust open the clumsy door which we had made to seal the entrance.

  It seemed dim inside, and the air was rank with great swirls of pipe smoke, and the reeking fumes of frying bacon. It was very close, and the air was bad, but it was warm. However, no conqueror ever walked into a castle in a conquered city with a greater feeling of pride than I had as I stalked in with Alec at my heels.

  Calmont saw us first, and groaned out an oath which held all his amazement in it. He stood back against the wall, still gasping and muttering, while Alec crouched on the threshold and snarled in reply. Those green eyes of his plainly told what he thought of Calmont and all of Calmont’s kind!

  Massey, when he saw what I had with me, made no remark at all. But he looked at me like a fellow seeing a ghost. It was a moment before Alec spotted him, and then he crawled across the floor, dragging himself almost on his belly, until he was close. Once in range, he fairly leaped at Massey, and in another moment they were wrestling all over the floor of that cabin, and threatening to wreck the place.

  It was just one of their little games but, since they last played it together, Alec had almost doubled his strength. He was a handful, I can tell you!

  At this game I looked on with a wide grin, but Calmont saw nothing jolly about it at all. It meant that the dog was back, and that he was still as much of an outcast as ever. It was again Calmont against the world of Massey, Alec the Great, and me.

  Poor Calmont! Looking back at him as he was then, I can look a little deeper into his nature than I thought I could at that time. That reunion of Massey with the dog was a grand thing to watch, I thought, and I laughed rather drunkenly — with a mug of coffee steaming in one hand, and a chunk of meat in the other — while Calmont turned his back on the dog and the man and paid his attention to me.

  He found some cuts and tied them for me. I wished, then, that there had been twice as many cuts, for Calmont put his great hand on my shoulder and said: “Kid, you’re a good game one! A right good game one!”

  It was the very first kind word that he had ever spoken to me. It was almost the first time that he had so much as taken notice of my existence, and I was puffed up so big that I would have floated at a touch.

  I felt that I was a man, now, and a mighty important man, too, having done myself what the pair of them had been unable to accomplish. It didn’t occur to me that the whole affair had been accident. Boys never think out the discreditable and chance parts of an adventure. In a way I think that the young are apt to live on the impressions which they give older people. I had made a great impression this day, and it brimmed my cup with happiness.

  When things settled down, Massey, sitting on the floor with big Alec laughing silently beside him, asked me for the whole story. I pretended to be reluctant to speak, but I let them drag the yarn out of me, speaking short and carelessly, but all the while almost bursting with my pride; and so I went from the rabbit to the fox, and from the fox to the wolves. And Massey listened and nodded with shining eyes.

  He did not commend me openly. But then he was not the man to do that before a comparative stranger like Calmont. Whatever I did that was worth doing, I knew that Massey took as much joy in it as I did myself. He was that kind of a man, but he spoke his praise in one or two short words, quietly, when I was alone with him. It was one of the qualities that made me love him.

  When I got on to the end of the story, and how Alec had hesitated on the top of the hill, Massey simply said: “Well, he’ll never hesitate again.” Afterward he added: “I make out that you left one wolf dead there on the snow, old son?”

  Yes, I said that the bitch had been stretched dead there.

  “But lad,” said Massey, “that means that you just walked off and left a perfectly good wolf skin behind you?”

  I said that was it. I was not interested in skinning wolves, just then.

  “Trot off there and get it, then,” said Massey. “You’ll want to keep that skin, with the slit in the skull, and all. It’ll give a point to the telling of this story, one day, for your friends and your children, and all such. Trot off and get that, and start in hoping right now that the pack hasn’t returned to dine off that dead body!”

  The idea seemed perfectly clear to me. I jumped up without a word, and without another thought, and tore out of that shack like mad, to get to the place before the wolves came back.

  I got across the hill, and breathed more easily when I saw the body stretched there, dark against the snow, and the wind riffling in the long fur.

  I had my knife out as I got up to the body, but when I turned the wolf on her back and was about to make the first cut I remembered, suddenly, the other half of what was to come.

  Calmont and Massey, and the agreement they had made!

  Then I saw, with blinding clearness that it was simply a trick of that clever Massey to get me out of the way. I was to be shunted to one side and, while I collected my foolish wolf skin, they were back there fighting for life and death — and the ownership of Alec.

  XXXI. ONWARD, AND FAST!

  AS FAST AS I could leg it, I hurried back toward the cabin. The wind had dropped to nothing, but the snow was falling very fast, filling the air with a white, thick dust. There was one comfort — that I heard not a sound from the direction of the cabin, and this I took to be a great and sure sign, because when two such giants met, I could not help feeling that there would be an uproar which could be heard for tens of miles away.

  Quite winded, I reached the upper rim of the hill and saw the dull outlines of the cabin looming before me through the shimmer of the mist of snowfall. All seemed peaceful to me, and I stopped for an instant to draw breath; and all at once I wished that I had not left the wolf, but that I had done my work before I came back to the cabin, carrying the wolf skin for which I had been sent.

  I was embarrassed, ill at ease, and shifting from one foot to the other. As people do in such a state of mind, I shifted my glance to the side, and there I saw in the bottom of the hollow what looked to me like two giants breathing and tossing about a white vapor.

  I looked again, and then all the dream-like quality of this scene vanished, for I knew that it was Calmont and Massey fighting for their lives — and Alec!

  Where was Alexander the Great?

  I saw him then, on a short chain fastened outside the cabin, and at the same time I heard him bark twice or thrice in a mournful, inquiring tone. As if he asked what those two men were doing at the lower end of the hollow.

  It struck me at the time as rather a ghastly thing that the two of them should have decided to fight it out with the dog there to look on. But while I thought of this, I began to run toward the pair of them, not really hoping that I could stop their battle, but because I could not remain at a distance. For it suddenly came home to me that though I loved Massey, I could not look on the death of Calmont with equanimity. I remembered, then, and never was to forget, how he had put his heavy hand on my shoulder and said: “You’re game!”

  Other men in my life have occasionally said pleasant things to me, but not even from Massey did I ever receive such an accolade.

  So I lunged down the hollow with my heart in my mouth.

  I could distinguish them at once, par
tly by the superior size of Calmont and partly by the superior speed of Massey. He was like a cat on his feet, and even the thickness of the snow could not altogether mask his celerity. The snow, too, was kicked up in light, fluffy clouds around the site of the struggle, and yet through this glimmering, white mist I followed every act of the two battlers.

  I saw Calmont run in, like a bull, head down, terrible in his force and weight; and I saw Massey leap aside like a light-footed wolf. Oh, that gave me hope for Massey! Like a wolf in speed, like a wolf in action, and like a wolf, also, in the ability to hurt terribly when the opportunity came.

  It came at that very moment.

  I could not see the strokes that he delivered, but distinctly through the mist I saw Calmont turn and strive to come in again, and saw him checked and wavering before what he met.

  Of course, his plan was clear. He was a great wrestler, equipped for the game by his gigantic muscles, and what he wanted was to close with his old bunkie and, gripping him close, get a strangle hold.

  It seemed to me that I could tell the whole argument — how Massey had held out for knife or gun, and how Calmont had insisted grimly that it should be hand to hand, where his weight and superior strength would tell.

  Well, I knew the fiery disposition of Massey too well to doubt what the outcome of such an argument would be even before I saw the actual result of it. He could not decline a dare. He had to fight, if a fight were offered, no matter what the odds.

  So there they were, meeting each other according to Calmont’s desire. Yet it was not going, apparently, as Calmont would have wished. He was baffled before those educated fists of Massey.

  I saw him rush again, and again I saw him go back from Massey, and knew that blows were propelling him.

  At this I tried to cry out, and either my excitement or my breathlessness stopped my voice before it could issue from my lips.

  Running down at full speed, I was much closer when I saw Massey, in turn, take the aggressive.