by Max Brand
“The deuce it was,” muttered Ranger.
“Yes. It was pretty dark. It was so dark that I could see the burning eyes before I saw the rest of her.”
“But you didn’t back out of that place?” asked Ranger.
“Well, it’s always pretty dark in a cave like that, you know. You have to expect that sort of a thing, unless you’re just going to throw the fun away and simply catch your mountain lion in a trap.” He made a gesture with both hands, palms up.
“I dunno that I’d bother about the game. Well, tell me what happened on this job?”
It was very difficult to keep the lad on the story, for his attitude seemed to be that the yarn was of so little importance that there was nothing that could really interest a listener. At every pretext he was ready to break off and let the story die.
“Oh,” said the boy, “the fact is that I stabbed rather blindly and put the point of the knife into one of her ribs. It broke off the point two inches from the end and nearly jerked the handle out of my hand.”
“How did you get out of the cave, then?” asked Ranger. “There she was, between you and the entrance, I suppose.”
“Yes, there she was, and she was in a fine tantrum. The knife point had gone right into her rib, very deep, and she was screeching and meowing at the top of her lungs. She gave me a concert for a while.”
He chuckled, but Ranger kept him to the appointed task. “And then she jumped you again?”
“Yes, she jumped me again, of course, and she meant business that second time. Of course, that was what I wanted. The angrier I could make her, the easier the job would be . . . but I had that dull, pointless knife in my hand this time. I couldn’t very well jab it deep into her. I could hardly do better than scratch her and irritate her a little.
“So, when she jumped the second time, I had to drop on my knees while she was in the air. It’s an odd thing, Ranger. It seemed to me that I was made of feathers. I mean, I dropped to the rock a lot more slowly than I could have wished. And every chip of a second was pretty necessary just then. Anyway, I got down, and, as she sailed over me, making a futile sideswipe with her right paw as she went, I gave her the edge of the blade . . . what was left of it . . . right down the crease of the belly. That was all.”
“Hold on!” cried Ranger. “You mean that that finished her?”
“Well, practically. I had just sharpened that knife, and it was so keen that its own weight would almost sink it into wood. That knife blade opened up the mountain lion. She made a few more passes at me, but she was half blind with pain and the blood poured out of her so fast that she was on her side, dying in a very short time. I took the hide off her and wrapped the cubs in it and brought the pair of them home.”
Ranger rubbed his knuckles across his chin and blinked. He had a feeling that this could not be a fact, but that he was being made a fool of, and that afterward he would be mocked for the easy game that he had proved. It might be so, but the open eye and the brave, calm face of the boy decided him that there could be no lie in this. All was as it had been related to him, incredible though that might appear.
“You’ve practiced it before, I suppose? You’ve got quite a lot that way?” said Ranger.
“Let me see,” answered the boy. “No, not a lot. Only five.”
“Five in their own caves?”
“No, only three in their own caves. Two of ’em were out in the open. Of course, that’s quite easy . . . when you have so much foot room and plenty of light.”
“And all with knives?”
“Yes. All with knives.”
“What made you get up that way of hunting them?” Ranger asked eagerly.
“Well, I’ll tell you. My father had heard of a man in India who used to kill tigers that same way . . . he had a short scimitar, and he cut the throat of the brute while it was on the wing, as you might say. We haven’t anything to match with tigers around here. A mountain lion was the best I could get to try out the dodge. That’s what it is, of course. Just a dodge. You put home the knife, and at the same time you’re dodging under or outside the paws. You don’t have to bother so much about the teeth. It’s the claws that will do the business if the puma can have its way. Have you never tried the trick yourself?”
Making game of Ranger? On the contrary, the eyes of the lad were as open as the frank, deep blue of the sky overhead.
Chapter Fourteen
The trees opened out before them; through the huge, pale-brown trunks Ranger could see the ranch house. And what a house it was! At the first glance it was a mere tumble of logs. It was hardly more at the second. A pack of cards, allowed to fall fluttering from shoulder height, might have stacked themselves into such shape. It consisted of a central part with a broken back, and at either end there was a shed, feebly propped up on knock-kneed poles. The very chimney, which rose above the cabin, staggered to one side, and the whole place had the air of a structure that the next puff of wind would knock flat.
It was such an absurd house that Ranger, familiar as he was with the shacks and lean-tos of the wilderness, could not help smiling a little when he saw it. Yet, with another look, he found something very pleasant about the cabin, too. For the moss had worked from the ground to the eaves here and there, and, above all, the odd shape of the cabin and its uncertain patterning of logs of all sizes made it fit back among the great trees like an odd shadow. A deep peace lay over this place, and nearby there was the voice-like murmur of a little stream of water, drifting near and far with many conversational pauses.
A very odd and amusing place, but Ranger shook his head. Where were the stacks of straw or hay, the tangles of corrals, the barns, the outbuildings, the smokehouse, and all that might have been expected at a house so far from the rest of the world, so buried in a sea of wilderness that here men had to live as castaways upon an island?
Nothing was as he expected it. He glanced at his companion and guide, half expecting to see him smile in turn.
“Well,” said Ranger, “it’s a funny little old house, ain’t it?”
“Is it?” said the boy. “I’ve never seen any other.”
He threw open the front door and Ranger stepped into an interior as odd as the outside of the place. It was all one room. A ladder in one corner led up to a hole in the ceiling, above which, no doubt, extended an attic. The ceiling sagged deeply under the weight of whatever was piled up there. Or was it merely time and decay that made the ceiling stoop? As for the lower room, it was paved with beaten earth alone, and it had not much more furniture than the teepee of an Indian chief. Hardly so much. There were no bows, arrows, guns, and spears.
A pair of backrests and two rolled Indian willow beds in a corner showed where the Crossons slept. There were a few axes and hatchets of an ancient, battered look in another corner, together with some fishing rods. There was a home-made table, but no sign of a stove or of a fire. It was the most barren, wretched-appearing human habitation that Ranger ever had seen. An Arctic igloo seemed a cheerful memory by comparison, and his eye rested on only one thing with interest: a single short row of books ranged across one end of the table. Books in such a barbarous habitation? They made the nakedness seem yet more naked.
“Father’s not here,” said the boy. “He’s down the creek, fishing, I suppose. I’ll find out.”
“Telephone?” asked Bill Ranger, rather grimly amused as they stepped back into the open. The smile left his face. He almost had stepped against that same black monster of a wolf dog—no, it must be a wolf, in fact—that he had noticed before that day. The beast flashed its teeth an inch from his leg and leaped to the side.
The boy leaned over it with a murmur and a wave of the hand, and the wolf bounded instantly away and out among the trees.
“Is he gonna bring back your father thrown over his shoulder?” asked Ranger.
“He’s going to find Father for me . . . that’s all,” answered Oliver Crosson.
Ranger shrugged his shoulders; he was beginning to feel that
old cramping chill at work between his shoulder blades.
“You told him to, eh?” said Ranger.
The youngster flashed a quick, surprised look at him. “Of course,” he said.
Ranger blinked. He would not and could not believe that a human brain and a human tongue would master the speech of beasts, even if animals truly have speech of their own. Staring thoughtfully down at the ground, he surveyed the blackened stones of the open-air fireplace where it was apparent all of the cooking of the house must be done.
Why should a man with any sort of a human habitation be content with the miseries of an open hearth on which the rain must beat freely and the wind blow, either fanning the fire from the pot or sweeping the smoke stifling thick into the face of the cook? It would not take long to cut through the cabin wall and run up a chimney properly with the stones that so readily might be brought from the bank of the creek.
But the ways of these people who spoke with animals and lived like wild Indians were beyond him. No, even an Indian will burn a fire at the center of the lodge.
He looked up suddenly and stared about him. He had a feeling that he had come to the end of the world, or that he was standing in the center of an unearthly dream. And then, turning a little toward the boy, he saw a gray squirrel sitting upon his shoulder, holding between its almost human paws a bit of bread at which it nibbled busily. Some of the crumbs fell, disregarded, upon the shoulder of the boy.
Ranger shook his head, but the vision persisted.
Why did young Crosson fail to speak? It was not the sullen taciturnity of one ill at ease with a stranger. No, he stood at ease, as indifferent to Ranger as though the trapper were no more than one of the great brown tree trunks that arose about them. Indeed, it seemed to Ranger that human beings had little more significance to this lad than the animate and inanimate objects of Nature that were around him every day of his life.
Presently he heard the soft pad of galloping feet, and the black wolf came in view at a little distance.
“Tell me, partner,” said Ranger in an outburst of curiosity. “Is that an honest dog or a dog-gone’ wolf?”
The youngster turned to him again with the same expression of half-incredulous surprise in his eyes. “That’s an honest wolf,” he said. He added, still looking straight into the face of Ranger: “Why, he’d die for me.”
The big lobo came up to them, and, swinging about, looked over its shoulder at its master and started to trot swiftly away, quickly breaking into the long wolf lope. Young Crosson followed, and Ranger followed the boy.
The black wolf, since it seemed so thoroughly under the thumb of its master, might have been called back to a milder pace, but this rapid gait did not seem to trouble Oliver Crosson in the least. He did not run as most men do, even the best athletes, with a decided forward angle of the body above the hips, or with any sense of strain in the bent position of the head. Instead, he ran as though running were a pace more natural to him than walking.
While Ranger, magnificent Arctic traveler that he was, was slipping and sliding among the pine needles, or dodging among the rocks along the bank of the creek, sweating and straining until his face was hot as a stove, Crosson, at his careless ease, let his noiseless feet take care of themselves, as it seemed, and looked from side to side among the branches of the trees, or actually upward toward their sun-brightened tops and the brilliant sky above. He ran as a deer runs.
It occurred to Ranger that to attempt to chase this lad one would need a horse—and a very good horse, at that, if the way led through broken country. And as for escaping, if he were the hunter, why, that would be a matter that would require a horse still better.
They went like the wind for a good half mile. Then, breaking out of a clump of brush on the edge of the creek, they saw where the waters turned a sharp corner, the stream narrowing to shadowy, swift-flowing ripples, and on the bank of this angle of the stream sat one of the strangest figures Ranger ever had seen in all his days.
A bent back and bony shoulders, a tattered, battered old hat, a white flow of beard down his breast, a book in one hand and a fishing rod in the other, that was the first impression. But as the boy stopped running, and Ranger, panting heavily, stopped in turn and walked slowly on behind him, he could see further details.
This oldster, like young Crosson, was dressed in deerskin, but what a suit! No Indian ever was so beggarly, after the winter famines, as to appear so dressed. A great patch of an alien hide appeared in the center of the shirt back; the elbows were worn to rags, and the skinny elbows stuck out. The trousers fitted hardly more closely than a woman’s pantaloons, and upon the feet were what hardly could be called moccasins. They were, rather, shapeless wrappings of leather rags.
And that was Peter Crosson?
Upon some clean bark beside him, half packed in damp, cool moss, were seven or eight good-size trout, and at that very moment he laid his book aside, face down, and jerked another trout from the stream. The twisting body flashed through the air in a wide semicircle and dropped beside the old man, who calmly killed the take.
Now Ranger and Oliver Crosson were beside him, but he did not look up. He might be deaf, perhaps.
“Father, this is a man named Ranger . . . he’s the trapper up on the hills. He came to see us.”
So said the boy by way of introduction. Then he sat down on the end of a fallen log with the great black wolf beside him and began to run his fingers through the thick mane of the brute, looking up the sparkling waters of the creek as though he had lost all interest in the scene that was to follow.
Peter Crosson calmly baited his hook and dropped it again into the stream, after which he picked up his book, seemed to find his place with a frown of annoyance at the interruption, and finally looked up at Ranger.
It was a memorable face that Ranger saw—long and thin, and brown as a half-withered leaf in the autumn of the year. The beard was brighter than the gleaming water below. And under the great dark arches the eyes looked out upon Ranger with unfathomable meaning. They were dull eyes. Time or thought had dimmed them, and they were lost in the shadows of the brows.
First he stretched out the hand that held the book and pointed. Then he nodded. He looked back to the creek and laid his book on his knees.
“It’s the beginning of the end, Oliver,” he said in a deep, husky voice. “You’ve let the first rifle come into the grove . . . and, now, when will the first bullet strike us?”
Chapter Fifteen
Ranger, at this strange speech, turned a hasty glance toward young Crosson, and he was surprised to see that the youngster seemed to contemplate no answer whatever. It was as though the voice of the older man were no more to him than the sound of the wind in the trees. He continued to stroke the contented wolf, and the latter turned up toward his young master those keen, red-shot eyes, with the wise wrinkles framing them. No sign of emotion or of interest appeared in the face of Oliver Crosson as he heard the speech of the other. It threw the difficulty of the answer entirely upon Ranger.
Oliver Crosson was not even breathing hard. Ranger panted and steamed like one who had just finished a race. And through his panting he exclaimed: “Why, look here, Mister Crosson, I just happened down here to see my next-door neighbors, like you might say! That’s all that I come for.”
The old man did not look at him. “Nobody just happens down here,” he answered. “Fact is . . .” There he paused.
It appeared that something on the edge of the sky, a cloud or the flight of a bird, interested him.
“Oliver?” he said.
“Yes, Father,” said the boy.
“What’s that yonder?”
“Where?”
“There on the rim of the horizon. Pair of eagles?”
“No, hawks,” said the boy, unhesitant.
Ranger stared in the indicated direction. He could see no more than two obscure specks that drifted against the sky.
“No,” said the father. “Eagles, I’d say. Or else, maybe th
ey’re buzzards?”
“Hawks,” said the boy. That reply of one word was not uttered with impertinence, but the curtness of absolute assurance.
“I don’t see how you make that out,” said Ranger. “Might be eagles, hawks, or buzzards.”
“They don’t float like buzzards,” said Crosson. “And they’re climbing too fast for eagles. Eagles are all fat and beef. Those fellows are all muscle and wind.”
In fact, as the trapper looked again, it seemed to him that the two specks were lifting rapidly in the air and drawing nearer them.
“You can see a bird,” said the fisherman. The boy shrugged his shoulders. “But you can’t see trouble,” went on Peter Crosson.
“What sort of trouble is ahead now?” asked Oliver.
“A man and a gun.”
“What harm can he do us?” asked Oliver.
“He could kill both you and me with two touches of his forefinger.”
“Could he?” echoed the boy. He turned the bright blue of his eye upon the trapper. An intolerable brightness was in that eye.
And Ranger was troubled more than before. It was true that he had a rifle in his hands and that he was a fair master of the weapon. Nevertheless, he did not feel that he was endowed with a power that would win in a battle against this uncanny youth who spoke, or seemed to speak, the language of birds and beasts.
“Why, sir,” said Ranger to the older man, “you take me for a gunman, I think.”
“You’re a man, and you’ve got a gun,” said old Crosson.
“He’s just up here to trap,” suggested the boy. But there was no real kindness in the glance that he turned upon the stranger.
“That’s a lie,” said Peter Crosson. “He’s up here for more than that.”
Ranger endured the insult and said not a word for a moment. He waited to hear the idea developed by either of the two, but, after the man with the rod had spoken, he would not enlarge upon his idea. He merely stared at the water, as though he had said enough.
“Well,” said Ranger, “if that’s the kind of neighborly folks you are, I suppose that I’ve found out what I came to know.” He waved his hand to them. “So long,” he said, and turned upon his heel.