Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “Mind you,” she said, “there’s nothing but the most terrible sort of harm would come of it. It’s wrong. It’s a sin to hurt him. He doesn’t know right from wrong, except as a wolf. To kill dogs is good in a wolf’s consciousness. A man conquered him and dragged him back among men. Then he found me and got to love me. Now, Dad, you see how it is. Or don’t you?”

  “You’re talking sentimental rot, Sylvia,” said Baird.

  I thought so, too, but she was entirely serious.

  “Let me try to tell you,” she went on. “It’s a ghostly feeling that I have about it. Right or wrong, we all want to get away from Cobalt. It’s life or death. Well, I have a feeling that King is a sort of talisman for us. Cobalt conquered him in one way. We’ve conquered him in another way. Don’t you see that? If we can keep King what he’s been made, I think somehow that Cobalt will never catch us!”

  XV. THE ICE TRAIL

  NOW HAVING PUT down the words just as she spoke them, I am rather confused. They seem ridiculous but, as she spoke them with a troubled eye and a great deal of conviction, I know that they gave pause to both Baird and me. One can’t help superstitions in the great Northland. The fear of space cuts at one’s soul like a wind of ice. God is in the light and Satan is in the shadow that walks at one’s heels. That’s the way one is likely to feel up there. Baird and I were helpless the moment she told us that she felt the Lightning Warrior was the talisman through which we might beat Cobalt in the end. Besides, we could not help feeling some essential mystery in that big white killer.

  “He might be some good if he could step into the traces of the dog we’ve lost. Do you realize that he’s killed our very best leader?” asked Baird.

  “Then I’ll take him up there and try him in the harness,” replied Sylvia.

  She did it. We started off that morning with me breaking trail, Sylvia behind me, stepping in my tracks and improving the trail, too. Behind her came the Lightning Warrior. He hated the dog harness that was on him with a shuddering hatred. He had even bared his fangs at Sylvia when she put it on him, but he made no violent resistance. Once in the harness, he was worth any two dogs I have ever seen. There was no fatigue in him. His muscles were built up from ranging a hundred miles a day through the snows. His spirit was stronger than spring steel and, when Sylvia got a bit ahead of him now and then, he seemed to pull all the three sleds with his unaided might in order to get to her. I’ve heard of a dog pulling a thousand pounds. If that is possible, then King could have done more, much more. For whatever a dog could do, he could do it just that much better.

  We felt the difference when Sylvia was tired out and could not shuffle a step forward on her snowshoes. Then King had to be taken from the harness and put back with Sylvia on the rear sled, while the second leader took the place of the wolf. What a change in our way of going! It seemed as though half of our motive power had been snatched away. With that white monster out there in front, we were a part of the landscape. When he was gone, we were simply lost in it in the most amazingly sudden way. Our team seemed to limp uncertainly along. The joy was snatched from our progress.

  Later on, when Sylvia was sufficiently rested, we put King again in the lead. I watched the team, and I could see the change. They moved differently. Each straightened out head and tail and pulled as though trying to get its teeth into the animal just ahead. They seemed to know King. They feared him. They acted as though they would have liked to sink their teeth in him while his back was turned.

  It was not my idea alone. Baird noticed it also, when he was behind and I was breaking trail, and he could not help muttering to me that there seemed to be something in what Sylvia said our chances of escape were linked with King.

  “As if,” concluded Baird, “he knows that Cobalt is behind us, and he doesn’t want that human wolf to overtake us.”

  This was going a bit far. I could not reduce the thing to words as exact as these, but I know that from this day we all shared Sylvia’s conviction that our luck was wrapped up in the wolf. He was our charm, and a dangerous charm at that.

  Winter never closed in more rapidly or with a more iron hand. The temperature dropped, day and dark, and the snow seemed always falling. That was because the wind picked up the dry flakes and whirled them. Then came cold so intense that the wind was shut away behind an invisible wall of ice. In my beard and in Baird’s the moisture of our breathing turned to ice. We became like men with faces of stone with our heads always oddly nodding as we trudged along. When at last the wind was still, we found ourselves in a white world. The trees were piled with it, the branches sagging. The brush along the river banks was rimmed with crystal frost until it looked like an imitation in glass.

  We were on the river now. It made the better road. Later on the ice would be smoother perhaps, but still it was an easier, a more graded way, even though we occasionally found the ice blocks scattered in heaps, like the ruins of a primitive fortress. We kept to the graded river way, and at night we pulled up a bank and camped where there was plenty of wood. Our spirits were so relieved in time that we could even talk about Cobalt.

  My idea was that he was a good fellow with wild impulses which were stronger than he could handle. “I’ll tell you what,” I remember saying one evening as we drank the third or fourth cup of tea, “Cobalt is like the fellows in the circus who span four horses with their spread legs and ride them around the race course. All right on a circus race track.

  All right with circus horses on a circus track, but it wouldn’t do for pitching broncos. Not a bit! The rider would get a tumble, and the mustangs would eat him likely, instead of grass. They’d prefer him, probably — some of the mustangs I’ve seen on the range. Cobalt is like that. I mean, he’s straddling emotions which the rest of us don’t feel. You feel kindness and anger and hatred and joy, and all that. So do I. But we’re not like Cobalt. Everything is multiplied in him.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Baird. “He’s simply not a man. He’s a wolf. That’s what he is. When I see a wolf, I think of him. This white loup-garou — I get chills simply looking at him because he reminds me of Cobalt.”

  I turned to Sylvia. She was sipping her tea with a mild, thoughtful look.

  “Tell me your idea, my dear,” I said.

  She seemed a bit startled to be drawn into the conversation. As though she had heard us only dimly, she recollected for a moment, and then she answered: “Well, I don’t know exactly. You can’t put a whole man into just words, I suppose, but I’d say that Cobalt is different because he’s natural. He doesn’t care.”

  “What do you mean by natural?” asked her father. “And doesn’t care?”

  “The way animals are natural. Not even wild Indians are natural the way Cobalt is.”

  “Go on, explain!” we asked her. “Indians are pretty free.”

  We were both interested. She seemed to have the finger of her mind upon some real idea, and our curiosity was aroused.

  “Well,” she said, “Indians have taboos. Things they mustn’t touch, mustn’t do. Then again, there are a lot of ceremonials they submit to. Ceremonial dances, I mean, before they go to war, magic the medicine men preside over. In a way, the Indian’s hands are tied almost as badly as a white man’s, but there’s nothing to tie Cobalt. He doesn’t believe in anything. He’s an absolutely free soul.”

  “It’s true!” cried Baird, thumping his fist on his knee. “He believes in nothing. That’s why he’s strong. He has the strength of the evil one because he is a demon. He’s free, just as Satan is free. That’s your idea, isn’t it, Sylvia? It’s mine, too.”

  “Well,” she said, “did you ever hear of Cobalt cheating, or taking advantage of a weaker man, or failing to do his share on a march? Aren’t there twenty stories of how he’s carried the other fellow’s pack for days at a time?”

  “To show off his strength?” countered Baird, rather weakly I thought.

  “You can’t just call it that,” said Sylvia.

  I agreed with her.<
br />
  “Go on, then,” urged her father. “Tell me more about it. I want all of your idea.”

  “It’s simply that he’s neither good nor bad. He’s not between, either,” she said, frowning as she dug further into her own thought. “He has nothing to do with good or bad. He does what pleases him. Most of us live almost entirely under the thumb of public opinion of one sort or another, but Cobalt doesn’t. He lives inside his own conceptions. He goes for what he wants. He lets the chips fall where they may. Think of murder. It curdles the blood of most people but, if Cobalt found a man really in his way, he’d kill that man just as quickly as King would kill one of the sled dogs.”

  Suddenly she stopped talking and looked across at me. I knew what she was thinking, and my blood curdled because I was most certainly in the way of that terrible fellow.

  Our conversation ended for the evening abruptly at that point. And I had dreams again when I went to sleep.

  The next day we were cheered again by a splendid march. The only depressing thing was the howling of wolves in the woods along the banks. Sometimes we had glimpses of them big, strapping lobos with high shoulders and bellies tucked up with famine, though I don’t know why they should have been so hunger-ridden at this season of the year. However, there they were, following us, winding in and out through the shrubbery.

  Baird was so annoyed by them that he got out the rifle and raised it, but the wolves had vanished before he could get in a shot. Five minutes later they were once more paralleling our course, and we could hear their melancholy howling. Poor Sylvia was in a panic and feared that they would rush our camp. We laughed at her for having such thoughts.

  “How many ordinary wolves would King dispose of in five seconds?” I asked her.

  We found a good camping place at the end of that march and ate an extra lot because the going had been rather rough. On the river ice, the cold was bitter beyond belief. The freezing trees kept popping just like cannon in the distant woods.

  Then we turned in, and the sweet poison of sleep was getting into my brain when all at once I heard wolves yelling, and the next moment there was a hurricane of sound right about our ears. Our tent was knocked flat by heavy, leaping bodies, and we heard snarlings, yellings, and growlings.

  When I managed to get clear of the tent canvas, the mischief was over. Baird, with the rifle, had scattered the wolves with a single shot, but the villains got off after doing their work. Every one of the dogs of our fine team was dead. In that single moment of attack the work was completed, and the only toll the wolves paid was right in front of our tent, where white King stood with a crimson front, disdaining the two limp forms in the snow before him. He had broken their necks for them.

  XVI. THE NEW TEAM

  THE EXTENT OF that disaster was so great that no one of us spoke about it as a misfortune. Only to be mutely aware of it was enough. We merely ate our breakfast in silence and prepared for the day’s march.

  This was our position. We were half way from Circle City to Skagway, our destination. We had four hundred miles of bitter weather, ice, and snow before us, and we were stripped of our freight team which had hauled our food and shelter. Our provisions were laid in with the thought of completing the trip by dog team. The added length of time it would take to trudge it on foot, dragging the sleds by sheer, wretched man power, appalled us.

  Yet, as I said before, none of us spoke about the calamity. We met the disaster by splitting the necessary load of equipment and food into two equal portions. These halves we put upon two of the sleds. The third sled we would abandon. When we had arranged the burdens, we then wondered how we should apportion the tractive power. The Lightning Warrior would have to be used, but he would only work under the hand and the voice of the girl. If he and she worked together at one sled, then it seemed right that Baird and I should take a considerably increased portion upon the sled to which we hitched ourselves.

  We were about to remake the loads when the girl suddenly and firmly protested. She said that she and the wolf, she thought, could outpull us anyway in the course of a day’s march and make trail as well! We smiled at one another, a little grimly because smiles came hard that day, but we agreed to let her try to execute her vain little flourish. Only Baird and I, of course, struck out ahead to make trail.

  It was a melancholy day. Under the dim sky the wind was moaning, and it came at us aslant, like the line of a swooping hawk, a continual sleet, iron- hard when it struck and burning with cold. The dark of the storm clouds blackened still further the twilight of that winter sky. They seemed to brush just above the touch of our fingertips. We rarely looked up. Luckily the wind was not full in our faces and therefore, by putting down our heads and covering our faces as completely as possible, we could keep going. Even so, every moment there would be a numbness of ears or nose or cheek that warned us to rub the spot vigorously in order to prevent frostbite.

  We went for a quarter of a mile, and I suggested that we had better tell the girl that she need not keep on with her share of the contract. We would remove a portion of the weightiest goods to our man-drawn sled. Baird told me that she was a stubborn minx, and that she had better receive a thorough lesson while we were about it. So we actually kept going for a full two miles, and still she was close up behind us.

  We turned to survey this miracle. For the pulling had been hard, the ice gripping at the runners where there was no snow, and where the snow lay it meant difficult tramping to break the trail. However, there she was behind us, swaying a little at the end of the pull rope, so that it was easy to tell that she was giving her strength to the work. I was greatly touched by the sight of her laboring in this fashion. She looked like a child in that man’s costume.

  “Poor girl!” I said to Baird.

  He snapped back at me: “We’ll start out with no pity on this journey, or else we’ll very shortly begin to pity ourselves, and that’s ruin.”

  There was a deal of obvious truth in this, and I did not answer, for now the rear sled came up with us. I expected that poor Sylvia would drop down in her sled dead beat, after she had pulled so far, but to my amazement she turned out with King and circled around us, taking the lead. As she went by she called to us: “Catch me if you can!”

  What a sight that was for us, that lovely face and that good cheer breaking through like a brilliant sunshine upon us. She seemed to me a very human and delightful little saint.

  “Look,” I said, astonished. “The girl’s not even panting.”

  “The wolf, the wolf!” cried Baird hastily. “Look at that beast and the way he pulls. He’s got the tractive power of a horse.”

  He actually seemed to have three feet pressing ice or snow and thrusting back, while the fourth foot, before or behind, shifted quickly forward for a fresh grip. A casual glance at him seemed to show him simply leaning forward. A dog that can pull in this fashion is worth two of even bigger size and power. The steady lugger is what one wants for the wheel or sled dog. It appeared to me a miracle that the Lightning Warrior should have been willing to cast aside his freedom and toil like one who loves slavery. But some dogs love to work for work’s sake, and it seemed that this wild-caught peregrine of the North had the same spirit at least while his mistress was close to him, pulling at the same sled.

  Sylvia took the lead from us, and all through that day’s march she maintained her place with ease. The trail was broken, and the pace set by that child and the Lightning Warrior. The girl had been toughened by the first marches, and she had a dancer’s talent in learning the proper step and cadence for the snowshoe work. It’s hardly truthful, I suppose, to say that she danced along through the day, but that’s the only explanation I can give of her power. Many a girl will dance an athlete off his feet. So it seemed that Sylvia could do with the snowshoes. I don’t imagine that she was pulling a very great part of the weight, but she kept her line taut and was always contributing something to the total traction. So she set the pace for us, and we accomplished a good march, considerin
g the conditions.

  In the end we had our reward. For the wind fell, the air cleared, and in comparative brightness we made our camp in a cluster of good-size trees. I think that Sylvia was less exhausted than her father and I. At least she was able to smile and find some small thing to laugh about, and she taunted us too for not having overtaken her. King, she announced, was worth a whole team of ordinary dogs, and to this we were both inclined to agree.

  One day after another we slogged along on the trail, and it was Sylvia’s good spirits more than food that sustained us. She seemed made of iron actually. She was throwing herself into that competition against two men with all the will in the world. When we camped, her delightful voice scattered the blue demons that attend a camp of melancholy silence.

  A storm caught us on the broad breast of Lake Labarge just as we were making good progress over the ice and promising ourselves that the end of the journey was not far off. The wind came in a hurricane, heavy with snow and sleet, and whipped us in a pelting run to find shelter at the margin of the ice sheet. Behind the first low promontory we crouched, with the force of the wind broken a little and a chance to breathe and rest. Through the brush we looked out at the milky exhalations of the snowstorm, whirling into great forms, dissolving, reforming again.

  It was bitterly cold. Our feet were wet and threatening to freeze if we remained long inactive, and Baird suggested that we work farther back into the woods and make a fire in the first shelter so that we could dry out our things. A low cry from Sylvia stopped him. She was pointing out into the heart of the open storm and, as she pointed, she crouched lower.

  We stared in the direction indicated and, as we stared, we saw a rift in the flying sleet and snow and through the rift four dogs hauling head down in front of a sled, and at the gee pole of the sled strode the driver. How could we recognize a man at a distance and in that dim light? It was a very simple matter. People on snowshoes move most variously. I’ve said that Sylvia seemed to be dancing along on them, there was such grace and rhythm in her step. This fellow strode like a machine of inexhaustible power. No one whoever had seen him on the march could have forgotten that step and that carriage. Besides, his whole silhouette differed. Just as one can tell by outline whether it is a fox, a coyote, or a wolf that is standing on the rim of the distant hill, so we could tell, of all the world of men, this could be no other than Cobalt! What other man, in fact, would have been able to make dogs face such a wind? What other man would have been willing to put his face against such a storm? It was Cobalt, yonder, passing us as if in the dimness of a dream.