The Voice of the Pack Part 8

Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, Whisperfoot would not have made an attack.

A cougar can run swiftly, but a deer is light itself. The big cat would have preferred to linger, a motionless thing in the thickets, hoping some other member of the deer herd to which the doe must have belonged would come into his ambush. But the hunt was late, and Whisperfoot was very, very angry. Too many times this night he had missed his kill.

Besides, the herd was certainly somewhere down wind, and for certain very important reasons a cougar might as well hunt elephants as try to stalk down wind. The breeze carries his scent more surely than a servant carries a visiting card. In desperation, he leaped from the thicket and charged the deer.

In spite of the preponderant odds against him, the charge was almost a success. He went fully half the distance between them before the deer perceived him. Then she leaped. There seemed to be no interlude of time between the instant that she beheld the dim, tawny figure in the air and that in which her long legs pushed out in a spring. But she didn't leap straight ahead. She knew enough of the cougars to know that the great cat would certainly aim for her head and neck in the same way that a duck-hunter leads a fast-flying duck,--hoping to intercept her leap.

Even as her feet left the ground she seemed to whirl in the air, and the deadly talons whipped down in vain. Then, cutting back in front, she raced down wind.

It is usually the most unmitigated folly for a cougar to chase a deer against which he has missed his stroke; and it is also quite fatal to his dignity. And whoever doubts for a minute that the larger creatures have no dignity, and that it is not very dear to them, simply knows nothing about the ways of animals. They cling to it to the death. And nothing is quite so amusing to old Woof, the bear--who, after all, has the best sense of humor in the forest--as the sight of a tawny, majestic mountain lion, rabid and foaming at the mouth, in an effort to chase a deer that he can't possibly catch. But to-night it was too dark for Woof to see. Besides, one disappointment after another had crumbled, as the rains crumble leaves, the last vestige of Whisperfoot's self-control.

Snarling in fury, he bounded after the doe.

She was lost to sight at once in the darkness, but for fully thirty yards he raced in her pursuit. And it is true that deep down in his own well of instincts--those mysterious waters that the events of life can hardly trouble--he really didn't expect to overtake her. If he had stopped to think, it would have been one of the really great surprises of his life to hear the sudden, unmistakable stir and movement of a large, living creature not fifteen feet distant in the thicket.

He didn't stop to think at all. He didn't puzzle on the extreme unlikelihood of a doe halting in her flight from a cougar. It is doubtful whether, in the thickets, he had any perceptions of the creature other than its movements. He was running down wind, so it is certain that he didn't smell it. If he saw it at all, it was just as a shadow, sufficiently large to be that of a deer. It was moving, crawling as Woof sometimes crawled, seemingly to get out of his path. And Whisperfoot leaped straight at it.

It was a perfect shot. He landed high on its shoulders. His head lashed down, and the white teeth closed. All the long life of his race he had known that pungent essence that flowed forth. His senses perceived it, a message shot along his nerves to his brain. And then he opened his mouth in a high, far-carrying squeal of utter, abject terror.

He sprang a full fifteen feet back into the thickets; then crouched. The hair stood still at his shoulders, his claws were bared; he was prepared to fight to the death. He didn't understand. He only knew the worst single terror of his life. It was not a doe that he had attacked in the darkness. It was not Urson, the porcupine, or even Woof. It was that imperial master of all things, man himself. Unknowing, he had attacked Landy Hildreth, lying wounded from Cranston's bullet beside the trail.

Word of the arson ring would never reach the settlements, after all.

And as for Whisperfoot,--the terror that choked his heart with blood began to wear off in a little while. The man lay so still in the thickets. Besides, there was a strange, wild smell in the air.

Whisperfoot's stroke had gone home so true there had not even been a fight. The darkness began to lift around him, and a strange exultation, a rapture unknown before in all his hunting, began to creep into his wild blood. Then, as a shadow steals, he went creeping back to his dead.

V

Dan Failing had been studying nature on the high ridges; and he went home by a back trail that led to old Bald Mountain. Many a man of longer residence in the mountains wouldn't have cared to strike off through the thickets with no guide except his own sense of direction. The ridges are too many, and they look too much alike. It is very easy to walk in a great circle--because one leg tires before the other--with no hope whatever of anything except the spirit ever rising above the barrier of the pines. But Dan always knew exactly where he was. It was part of his inheritance from his frontiersmen ancestors, and it freed his wings in the hills.

The trail was just a narrow serpent in the brush; and it had not been made by gangs of laborers, working with shovels and picks. Possibly half a dozen white men, in all, had ever walked along it. It was just the path of the wild creatures, worn down by hoof and paw and cus.h.i.+on since the young days of the world.

It was covered, like a sheep lane, with little slit triangles in the yellow dirt. Some of them were hardly larger than the print of a man's thumb, and they went all the way up to a great imprint that Dan could scarcely cover with his open hand. All manner of deer, from seasonal fawns with spotted coats and wide, startled eyes to the great bull elk, monarch of the forest, had pa.s.sed that way before him. Once he found the traces of an old kill, where a cougar had dined and from which the buzzards had but newly departed. And once he saw where Woof had left his challenge in the bark of a great pine.

This is a very common thing for Woof to do,--to go about leaving challenges as if he were the most warlike creature in the world. In reality, he never fights until he is driven to it, and then his big, furry arms turn out to be steel compressors of the first order; he is patient and good-natured and ordinarily all he wants to do is sleep in the leaves and grunt and soliloquize and hunt berries. But woe to the man or beast who meets him in a rough-and-tumble fight. Unlike his great cousin the Grizzly, that American Adamzad that not only walks like a man but kills cattle like a butcher, he almost never eats meat. No one ever pays any attention to his challenges either, and likely he never thought any one would. They seemed to be the result of an inherited tendency with him, just as much as to grow drowsy in winter, or to scratch fleas from his furry hide.

He sees a tree that suits his fancy and immediately stands on his hind legs beside it. Then he scratches the bark, just as high up as he can reach. The idea seemed to be that if any other bear should journey along that way, should find that he couldn't reach as high, he would immediately quit the territory. But it doesn't work out in practice.

Nine times out of ten there will be a dozen Woofs in the same neighborhood, no two of equal size, yet they hunt their berries and rob their bee trees in perfect peace. Perhaps the impulse still remains, a dim, remembered instinct, long after it has outlived its usefulness,--just as man, ten thousand years after his arboreal existence, will often throw his arms into the air as if to seize a tree branch when he is badly frightened.

It was a roundabout trail home, but yet it had its advantages. It took him within two miles of s...o...b..rd's lookout station, and at this hour of day he had been particularly fortunate in finding her at a certain spring on the mountain side. It was a rather singular coincidence. Along about four he would usually find himself wandering up that way.

Strangely enough, at the same time, it was true that she had an irresistible impulse to go down and sit in the green ferns beside the same spring. They always seemed to be surprised to see one another. In reality, either of them would have been considerably more surprised had the other failed to put in an appearance. And always they had long talks, as the afternoon drew to twilight.

"But I don't think you ought to wait so late before starting home," the girl would always say. "You're not a human hawk, and it is easier to get lost than you think."

And this solicitude, Dan rightly figured, was a good sign. There was only one objection to it. It resulted in an unmistakable inference that she considered him unable to take care of himself,--and that was the last thing on earth that he wanted her to think. He understood her well enough to know that her standards were the standards of the mountains, valuing strength and self-reliance above all things. He didn't stop to question why, every day, he trod so many weary miles to be with her.

She was as natural as a fawn; and many times she had quite taken away his breath. And once she did it literally. He didn't think that so long as death spared him he would ever be able to forget that experience. It was her birthday, and knowing of it in time he had arranged for the delivery of a certain package, dear to a girlish heart, at her father's house. In the trysting hour he had come trudging over the hills with it, and few experiences in his life had ever yielded such unmitigated pleasure as the sight of her, glowing white and red, as she took off its wrapping paper. It was a jolly old gift, he recollected.--And when she had seen it, she fairly leaped at him. Her warm, round arms around his neck, and the softest, loveliest lips in the world pressed his. But in those days he didn't have the strength that he had now. He felt he could endure the same experience again with no embarra.s.sment whatever. His first impression then, besides abounding, incredible astonishment, was that she had quite knocked out his breath. But let it be said for him that he recovered with notable promptness. His own arms had gone up and closed around,--and the girl had wriggled free.

"But you mustn't do that!" she told him.

"But, good Lord, girl! You did it to me! Is there no justice in women?"

"But I did it to thank you for this lovely gift. For remembering me--for being so good--and considerate. You haven't any cause to thank me."

He had many very serious difficulties in thinking it out. And only one conclusion was obtainable,--that s...o...b..rd kissed as naturally as she did anything else, and the kiss meant exactly what she said it did and no more. But the fact remained that he would have walked a good many miles farther if he thought there was any possibility of a repeat.

But all at once his fantasies were suddenly and rudely dispelled by the intrusion of realities. Even a man in the depths of concentration cannot be inattentive to the wild sounds of the mountains. They have a commanding, a penetrating quality all their own. A mathematician cannot walk over a mountain trail pondering on the fourth dimension when some living creature is consistently cracking brush in the thickets beside him. Human nature is directly opposed to such a thing, and it is too much to expect of any man. He has too many race memories of saber-tooth tigers, springing from their lairs, and likely he has heard too many bear stories in his youth.

Dan had been walking silently himself in the pine needles. As Lennox had wondered at long ago, he knew how by instinct; and instinctively he practiced this attainment as soon as he got out into the wild. The creature was fully one hundred yards distant, yet Dan could hear him with entire plainness. And for a while he couldn't even guess what manner of thing it might be.

A cougar that made so much noise would be immediately expelled from the union. A wolf pack, running by sight, might crack brush as freely; but a wolf pack would also bay to wake the dead. Of course it might be an elk or a steer, and still more likely, a bear. He stood still and listened.

The sound grew nearer.

Soon it became evident that the creature was either walking with two legs, or else was a four-footed animal putting two feet down at the same instant. Dan had learned to wait. He stood perfectly still. And gradually he came to the conclusion that he was listening to the footfall of another man.

But it was rather hard to imagine what a man might be doing on this lonely hill. Of course it might be a deer hunter; but few were the valley sportsmen who had penetrated to this far land. The footfall was much too heavy for s...o...b..rd. The steps were evidently on another trail that intersected his own trail one hundred yards farther up the hill. He had only to stand still, and in an instant the man would come in sight.

He took one step into the thickets, prepared to conceal himself if it became necessary. Then he waited. Soon the man stepped out on the trail.

Even at the distance of one hundred yards, Dan had no difficulty whatever in recognizing him. He could not mistake this tall, dark form, the soiled, slouchy clothes, the rough hair, the intent, dark features.

It was a man about his own age, his own height, but weighing fully twenty pounds more, and the dark, narrow eyes could belong to no one but Bert Cranston. He carried his rifle loosely in his arms.

He stopped at the forks in the trail and looked carefully in all directions. Dan had every reason to think that Cranston would see him at first glance. Only one clump of thicket sheltered him. But because Dan had learned the lesson of standing still, because his olive-drab sporting clothes blended softly with the colored leaves, Cranston did not detect him. He turned and strode on down the trail.

He didn't move quite like a man with innocent purposes. There was something stealthy, something sinister in his stride, and the way he kept such a sharp lookout in all directions. Yet he never glanced to the trail for deer tracks, as he would have done had he been hunting.

Without even waiting to meditate on the matter, Dan started to shadow him.

Before one hundred yards had been traversed, he could better understand the joy the cougar takes in his hunting. It was the same process,--a cautious, silent advance in the trail of prey. He had to walk with the same caution, he had to take advantage of the thickets. He began to feel a curious excitement.

Cranston seemed to be moving more carefully now, examining the brush along the trail. Now and then he glanced up at the tree tops. And all at once he stopped and knelt in the dry shrubbery.

At first all that Dan could see was the glitter of a knife blade.

Cranston seemed to be whittling a piece of dead pine into fine shavings.

Now he was gathering pine needles and small twigs, making a little pile of them. And then, just as Cranston drew his match, Dan saw his purpose.

Cranston was at his old trade,--setting a forest fire.

VI

For two very good reasons, Dan didn't call to Cranston at once. The two reasons were that Cranston had a rifle and that Dan was unarmed. It might be extremely likely that Cranston would choose the most plausible and effective means of preventing an interruption of his crime, and by the same token, prevent word of the crime ever reaching the authorities.

The rifle contained five cartridges, and only one was needed.

But the idea of backing out, unseen, never even occurred to Dan. The fire would have a tremendous headway before he could summon help.

Although it was near the lookout station, every condition pointed to a disastrous fire. The brush was dry as tinder, not so heavy as to choke the wind, but yet tall enough to carry the flame into the tree tops. The stiff breeze up the ridge would certainly carry the flame for miles through the parched Divide before help could come. In the meantime stock and lives and homes would be endangered, besides the irreparable loss of timber. There were many things that Dan might do, but giving up was not one of them.