It was bright morning before they reached the den. The sun had risen and was pouring down upon the Bargloosh all the freshness of his early beams. From the tip of a fir branch, a clear little song slipped into the morning air. It was Killooleet, the white-throated sparrow, trilling his morning tune. He had his nest somewhere near the den, only the wolves never found out where. All they knew him by was his song, and the flicker of his flight as he darted daintily past. The very fanning of his wings seemed to sweeten the air. As for his song—he spilt it out at them in little trickling tunes all through the day, or whenever he happened to wake up in the night. The old wolves didn't mind him much, one way or the other, but Shasta was fond of him, and used to make a gurgle in his throat whenever Killooleet spilt his voice. And now, as he approached the cave, the song of Killooleet seemed a welcome home, and when he looked up into the tree there was Killooleet perched on the fir-tip, with the sunlight shining full on his little wobbling throat!
Gomposh's lair was in the black heart of the cedar swamp. Old though the cedars were, Gomposh had the feeling of being even older. He liked the ancientness of the place; its dankness and darkness, and, above all, its silence—the silence of green decaying things. It was so silent that he could almosthearhimself thinking, and his thoughts seemed to make more noise even than his great padded feet. Under the grey twisted trunks, the ground oozed with moisture, which fed the pits of black water that never went dry even in the summer drought. Whatever life stirred in those black pits, occasionally disturbing their stagnant surfaces with oily ripples, it did not greatly affect Gomposh. He preferred not to bother about them, and to devote his mind instead to the clumps of fat fungus—white, red, pink and orange—which, glowed like dull lamps in the heart of the gloom. The taste of their flabby fatness pleased his palate. It was not exactly an exciting form of food; but it grew on your doorstep, so to speak, and saved a lot of trouble. And when you wanted to vary your diet, there were the skunk cabbages and other damp vegetables.
Another thing that recommended the place to the old bear was its comparative freedom from other animals. Goohooperay, it is true, inhabited the hollow hemlock on the farther side of the swamp, but he seldom came near Gomposh's lair, since his activities took him generally to the open slopes of the Bargloosh where the hunting was fair to medium, and sometimes even good. His voice, of course, was a thing to be regretted, and when, on first getting out of bed, he would perch at the top of his tree and send the loudest parts of himself shrilling lamentably far out into the twilight, Gomposh's little eyes would shine with disapproval, and he would make remarks to himself deep down in his throat. But a voice cannot be cuffed into silence, when it has wings that carry it out of the reach of your paw, and so Gomposh had to content himself with a little wholesome grumbling which, after all, kept him from becoming all fungus and fat, and made him change his feeding-ground from place to place. The only other bird that ever intruded upon his privacy was the nuthatch. But as this little bird, being one of the quietest of all the feathered folk, spent its time mainly in sliding up and down the cedar trunks like a shadow without feet, only now and then giving forth a tiny faint note in long silences, as if it were apologizing to itself for being there at all—Gomposh couldn't find it in his heart to lodge a complaint. He would lie in his lair for hours and hours, listening contentedly to the fat, oozy silence, and observing the solemn gloom in which the colours of the red and orange toadstools seemed loud enough to make a noise, and wish that the nuthatch needn't go on apologizing.
The lair was in a deep hollow, between the humpy roots of a large old cedar. It was dry enough, except when the rains were very heavy, as it was tunnelled out on the edge of one of the Hardwood knolls which rose up from the swamp here and there, like the last remaining hill-tops of a drowned world. To make this hole still more rainproof, and at the same time warmer, Gomposh had covered the cedar roots with boughs which he had contrived cunningly into a roof! Oh, he was a wise, wary old person, was Gomposh! and the experience of unnumbered winters had taught him that when the blizzards come swirling over the Bargloosh from the northeast, it is a grand and comforting thing to have a good roof over you, thatched thick and warm with snow. So to this deep cave in the roots of the cedar when the wind moaned in the draughty tops of the spruce woods and the frost bit with invisible teeth, Gomposh, bulging with berries and fat, would retire for the winter, and sleep, and sleep, and sleep!
Toadstools and various sorts of berries made up the principal part of his diet; but as berries did not grow in the swamp, and after a time he had eaten all the best toadstools in the neighbourhood of his den, he occasionally found it pleasant to leave the swamp and ascend to the blueberry barrens high up on the slopes of the Bargloosh.
One morning, not many days after Shasta's return to his wolf kin, Gomposh got up with the berry feeling in him very bad. It was a little early for blueberries, but there were other things he might find—perhaps an Indian pear with its sweet though tasteless fruit, ripened early in some sunny spot. And anyhow there were always confiding beetles under stones, and whole families of insects that live in rotten logs.
He left his lair, picking his way carefully between the humpy roots that made the ground lift itself into such strange shapes, and setting his great padded feet on the thick moss as delicately as a fox, so that, in case some mouse or water-rat should be out of its hole, he might catch it unawares with one of the lightning movements of his immense paw. At the edge of the swamp he pushed his way stealthily through a thicket of Indian willows and then paused to sniff the air with that old sensitive nose of his which brought him tidings of the trails as to what was abroad, with a fine certainty that could not err. But, sniff as he would, nothing came to his questing nostrils except the smell that was as old as the centuries—the raw, keen sweetness of the wet spruce and fir forests, mixed with the homely scent of the cedar swamp. Yet in spite of this, he did not move without the utmost caution, and, for all his apparent clumsiness, his vast furry bulk seemed to drift in among the spruces with the quietness of smoke.
Far away on the other side of the lake, a great bull moose was making his way angrily through the woods, looking for the cow he had heard calling to him at dawn, and thrashing the bushes with his mighty antlers as a challenge to any one who should be rash enough to dispute his title of Lord of the Wilderness. But as he was travelling up-wind, and was, moreover, too far away for the sound of his temper to carry, Gomposh's unerring nose did not receive the warning as he ascended the Bargloosh with the berry want in his inside.
He was half-way up the mountain, when, all at once, he stopped, and swung his nose into the wind. Something was abroad now—something with a warmer, thicker scent than the sharp tang of the spruces. What was it? There was a smell of wolf in it, and yet again something which was not wolf. It was a mixture of scents so finely jumbled together that only a nose like Gomposh's could have disentangled them. In spite of his immense knowledge of the thousand ways in which the wilderness kindreds spill themselves upon the air, the old bear was puzzled. So, in order to give his mind perfect leisure to attend to his nose, Gomposh sank back on his haunches, and then sat bolt upright with his paws hanging idly in the air.
The scent came more and more plainly. And as it grew, Gomposh's brain worked faster and faster. The smell was half strange and half familiar. Where had he smelt it before? And then, suddenly, heknew.
Shasta, stealing through the spruces as noiselessly as any of the wild brotherhood, thought he had done an extremely clever thing. He fully believed he had caught an old black bear unawares, sitting up on the trail and sniffing at nothing, with his paws dangling foolishly before him. It was not until the boy was close upon him that Gomposh quickly turned his head, and pretended to be surprised. Shasta, recognizing his old friend, came slowly forward with shining eyes.
At first Gomposh did not speak, but that was not surprising. Gomposh was not one to rush into speech when you could express so much by saying nothing. To be able to express a good deal, and yet not to put it into the shape of words—to say things with your whole body and mind without making noises with your mouth and throat—is a wonderful faculty. Few people know anything about it; because half the business of people's lives is carried on in the mouth, and they are not happy or wise enough to be quiet; but the beasts use it continually; because they are very happy and very wise.
So Gomposh looked at Shasta, and Shasta looked at Gomposh, and for a long time neither of them made a sound. But the mind that was in Gomposh's big body, and the body that was outside Gomposh's big mind, went on quietly making all sorts of observations which Shasta easily understood. So he knew, just as well as if Gomposh had said it, that the bear was telling him he had been on his travels; also that things were different in him; that he was another sort of person, because many things had happened to him in the meantime. Exactly what those things were, Gomposh did not know; but he knew what the effect was which they had produced in Shasta. He knew that the part of Shasta that was not wolf had mingled with that part of the world which also is not wolf, and that therefore he was a little less wolfish than before.
At first Shasta felt a little uncomfortable at the way Gomposh looked him calmly through and through. It was as if Gomposh said: "We are a long way off, little Brother. We have travelled far apart. But I catch you with the mind."
And Shasta couldn't help feeling as if he had done something of which he was ashamed. He had left the wild kindred—the wolf-father, the wolf-mother, all that swift, stealthy, fierce wolf-world that had its going among the trees. He had gone out to search for another kindred, almost as swift, stealthy and fierce as the wolves themselves, yet of a strange, unnamable cunning, and of a smell stranger still. And yet with all this strangeness, the new kindred had fastened itself upon him with a hold which Shasta could not shake off, as of something which his half-wolf nature could neither resist nor deny. And the more Gomposh looked at him out of his little piercing eyes, the more keenly he felt that the old bear was realizing this hold upon him of the new kindred, far off beyond the trees.
When at last Gomposh spoke—that is, when he allowed the wisdom that was in him to ooze out in bear language—what he remarked amounted to this:
"You have found the new kindred. You have learnt the new knowledge. You are less wolf than you were."
Shasta did not like being told that he had grown less a wolf. It was just as if Gomposh had accused him of having lost something which was not to be recovered.
"I am just the same as I was," he replied stoutly; but he knew it was not true.
"The moons have gone by, and the moons have gone by," Gomposh said. "The runways have been filled with folk. But you have not come along them. You have not watched them. You have missed everything that has gone by."
Shasta made it clear that one could not be everywhere at the same time, and that, anyhow, he had not missed the moons.
"No one misses the moons," Gomposh remarked gravely, "except those of us who go to sleep. It is a pleasant sleep in the winter when we go sleeping through the moons."
"Nitka and Shoomoo do not sleep," Shasta said boastfully. "We do not sleep the winter sleep—we of the wolves!"
"And so you do not find the world beautifully new when you wake up in the spring," Gomposh said.
That was a fresh idea to Shasta. He knew what a wonderful thing it was to find the world new every day, but it must seem terribly new indeed to you after the winter sleep. The thought of hunger came to his rescue.
"You must be very hungry," he said triumphantly.
"It is better to be very hungry once and get it over," Gomposh said composedly, "than to go on being hungry all the winter when they tell me food is scarce."
Another fresh thought for Shasta! If Gomposh kept on putting new ideas into him at this rate, he felt as if something unpleasant must happen in his head. If he had been rather more of a boy, and rather less of a wolf, he might have been inclined to argue with Gomposh, just for the sake of arguing. As it was, he was wise enough to realize that Gomposh knew more than he did; and that however new or uncomfortable the things were that Gomposh said, they were most likely true. So he said nothing more for some time, but kept turning over in his head the fresh ideas about newness and hunger, and the being less a wolf.
"You will not stay among us," Gomposh said after a long pause. "You will go back to the new kindred, and the new smell."
Shasta felt frightened at that—so frightened as to be indignant. He was afraid lest the old bear might be saying what was true. And the memory of the hide thong that had cut into his flesh and of the horrible captivity when he had been forced to stay in one small space, whether he liked it or not, made him feel more and more strongly that he would not go back whatever happened.
As Gomposh did not seem inclined to talk any more, Shasta thought he would continue his walk. It was good to be out on the trails again, passing where the wild feet passed that had never known what it was to be held prisoners in one place. And as he went, all his senses were on the watch to see and hear and smell everything that was going on. Softly he went, without the slightest sound, putting his hands and feet so delicately to the ground that not a leaf rustled, not a twig snapped.
But wary though he was, other things were even warier. Gleaming eyes he did not see watched him out of sight. Keen noses winded him—noses of creatures that kept their bodies a secret almost from themselves! And so when Shasta suddenly found himself face to face with a big bull moose he nearly jumped out of himself with astonishment.
It was not the first time that he had seen moose. In the early summer, down in the alder thicket at the edge of the lake, Shasta, watching motionless between the leaves, had seen a big cow and her lanky calf come down into the lake. The cow began to busy herself by pulling water-lily roots, and the calf nosed along the bank in an inquisitive manner as if it still found the world a most bewildering place. They did not seem animals to be frightened at; and even the big cow looked a harmless sort of being whose mind, what there was of it, was in her mouth and ears. But the huge bull now in front of Shasta was a very different sort of beast. From the ground to the ridge of the immense fore shoulders, he measured a good six feet. That great humped ridge covered with thick black hair seemed to mound itself over some enormous strength which lay solid and compact ready to hurl itself forth at an instant's notice in one terrifying blow which would smash any object that dared to challenge it. But what impressed Shasta more than anything else was the great spread of polished antlers on each side of his head. Antlers like those he had never seen. It was like wearing a forest on your forehead: it made you uncomfortable to look at: it was like being an animal and a tree at the same time.
The moose was equally surprised at Shasta. With all the creatures of the forest—lynxes, catamounts, raccoons, wolves, deer, foxes, bears and chipmunks—he was familiar. But this smooth, hornless, round-headed thing was Like none of them. It had a shape and a character extraordinarily different; and the big moose was not pleased. There was another thing that he did not like, and that was Shasta's smell. Not that this was so unfamiliar as his shape. Indeed, something like it the moose had often smelt before. Moreover, it was a smell that always made him angry. It was that of the wolves. And yet, mingled with it in a curious and bewildering way, there was another odour, not so pungent as the wolf scent, but hardly less objectionable to the moose, and that was the smell of man. What this might mean, the moose did not know. Along all the lonely trails of his wild and adventurous life, he had never yet come within sight or scent of the creature that went always upon its hind legs, with cunning in its hornless head, and death that it shot out with its hands.
With his great over-hanging muzzle lifted up, and his nostrils quivering, he looked at Shasta viciously out of his little gleaming eyes.
It was the wolf in Shasta that made the creature angry. From the endless generations behind him—grandfathers and grandfathers' grandfathers that reached back beyond the flood—there had come down to him, through the uncounted ages, this hatred, born of fear, of the wolves. It was not that he feared any single wolf. Few wolves in all that immense North Land would have dared to attack him singly, or dispute his lordship of the world. But when the snows lay heavy on the hemlocks, and the nights were keen with a bitter air from the white heart of the Pole, those long shadow-like shapes that came floating over the barrens in packs, with the hunting note in their throats, were not things to be treated contemptuously by even the lordliest moose, at home in his winter "Yard."
Shasta, on his side, felt no enmity towards the moose. He was not wolf enough to have the moose-hatred—handed down, pack after pack, since the beginning of the world—running in his blood. What he inherited from his grandfathers' grandfathers were Indian instincts, though, in his utter ignorance of his nature, he did not know them for what they were. So he just stared at the moose with a great astonishment, and wondered what would be the right thing to do.
In spite of himself, he felt a little uneasy. Something—he didn't know what—warned him that the moose did not like him, and therefore was not going to be his friend. Left to himself, Shasta was willing to be friends—if they would let him—with all the forest folk. And as he never frightened them, or attempted to do them any hurt, most of the creatures came to regard him as a harmless sort of person. Those that did not, respected him too much to molest him because of his strange man-smell, which was so dangerously mixed with that of wolf. But now, here was a beast which, he felt sure, was so far from being his friend that it would take only some very little thing to turn him into a dangerous enemy. A movement, a look, a puff of air to make scent stronger—and some terrible thing might happen: you could never tell.
Now Shasta knew several ways of making himself a bigger person, as it were, and so more to be respected. One was to keep as still as a stone, and to put all of himself into his eyes, staring and staring till it seemed as if they must suddenly become mouths and bite; which made the creatures so uneasy that very few could stand it for long, and would politely melt away among the trees. Another was to make some sudden, violent movement, and to give the hunting cry of the wolves with his full throat. That struck fear into most animals; and they would flee in panic, never stopping till they had put long lengths of trail between them and the little naked Terror that had the wolf-cry in its throat. But now, though Shasta put everything that was in him into his eyes, the big bull bore the stare in an unflinching manner, and stared back defiantly. He did more. He began to paw the ground impatiently with one of his hoofs, as if to show that he was tired of this duel with the eyes, and wanted to try some more complete trial of strength. If Shasta had looked particularly at the pawing hoof, he would have noticed how deeply cleft it was, and what sharp cutting edges it had. A terrible instrument that, when it descended like a sledge-hammer with all the weight of the huge seven-hundred-pound body behind it to give it driving force! But Shasta was too much occupied in attending to the expression in the animal's eyes, and in fearful admiration of the huge spreading antlers that made so grand an ornament to the mighty head.
And then, because the Spirit of the wild things did not tell him what to do, or because, if it did, his attention was too much taken up to give heed to its warning, he did the wrong thing instead of the right one. With a sudden spring in the air, he loosed the wolf-cry from his throat.
If anything was needed to make the moose furious this action of Shasta's was sufficient, At the boy's unexpected movement and cry he bounded to one side. Then he stood snorting and stamping the ground viciously. But he did not turn tail. Instead, he began to thrash the underwood furiously with his antlers.
Shasta was no coward. Yet what could he do, naked and utterly defenceless against this enormous animal, armed with those dreadful antlers and those pitiless hatchets on his feet? He looked quickly round, measuring the distance between himself and the nearest tree. To dart to it and climb into safety would be done in less time than it would take to tell it. But quick though he was, he knew, by experience, that some of the wild things were even quicker. What the moose could do in the way of quickness he had just seen. The whole of that great body was a mass of sinews and muscles that could hurl it this way or that like a flash of lightning before you had time to blink. And the moose, like the wolves and the bears, could make up his mind in less than a thousandth part of a minute, and be somewhere else almost before he had started, and finish a thing completely almost before it was begun!
If only Nitka or Shoomoo, or one of the wolf-brothers, could know the danger he was in, and come to the rescue! Big though he might be, it would be a bold moose who would lightly tackle Shoomoo, or any of his terrible brood, when once their blood was roused. But though Shasta looked wildly on every side, hoping that the call he had given might have attracted attention, not a dead leaf rustled in response under swiftly padding feet!
He turned his gaze again upon his enemy—for enemy he had now undoubtedly become—to catch the first sign of what he might be about to do. The moose was still thrashing the thicket as if to lash himself into increasing fury, and glaring at Shasta passionately out of his shining eyes. Because he did not know what was best to be done, Shasta threw back his head, and once again sent out the long ringing wolf-cry that was a summons to the pack. But as luck would have it, not one of all the wolf kindred was within ear-shot, and the Bargloosh was as empty of wolves as the sky of clouds.
At the second cry, the moose stopped thrashing the bushes, and stood still. But along his neck and shoulders the coarse black hair rose threateningly. A red light burned dangerously in his eyes. Suddenly, without warning, he sprang. Quick as a wolf, Shasta leaped aside. If he had been the fraction of a second later he would have been trampled to death. The murderous hoof of the moose missed its mark by a quarter of an inch. Snorting with rage, he raised himself on his hind legs to strike again.
And then the wonderful thing happened. Even as the moose rose, a huge black form hurled itself through the air, descending upon him like a thunderbolt. Before he could deliver the blow intended for Shasta, even before he could change his position in order to protect himself, a huge paw, armed with claws like curved daggers, had ripped his shoulder half-way to the bone.
So great was the force of the blow, with the whole weight of Gomposh's body behind it, that the moose was hurled to the ground. He had hardly touched it, however, before he was on his feet, quivering with pain and fury. Seeing that his assailant was one of the hated bears, his fury redoubled. In spite of his wounds, now streaming with blood, he rushed savagely at the bear, striking again with his hoofs. But Gomposh, though now old, was no novice at boxing. He simply gathered his great hind quarters under him and sat well back upon them, with his forepaws lifted. Each time the moose struck, Gomposh parried the blow with a lightning sweep of his gigantic paw; and each time the paw swept, the moose bled afresh. Only once did he do Gomposh any injury, and that was when, with a sudden charge of his left-hand antler, he caught the bear in the ribs. But he paid dearly for the action. Gomposh, though nearly losing his balance, brought his right paw down with such sledge-hammer force on his opponent's shoulder, that the moose staggered, and almost fell. The blow was so tremendous that the great bull did not care to receive another. With a harsh bellow of rage and anguish he turned, plunged into the underwood, and disappeared.
WITH A HARSH BELLOW OF RAGE AND ANGUISH HE PLUNGED INTO THE UNDERWOODWITH A HARSH BELLOW OF RAGE AND ANGUISHHE PLUNGED INTO THE UNDERWOOD
The whole forest seemed to quake as he went.
While all this was happening, Shasta, crouched behind his tree, had watched with intense excitement the progress of the fight. Now that Gomposh had proved himself conqueror, and that the moose had disappeared, he came out from his refuge.
He wanted to thank Gomposh, to make him feel how glad he was that he had beaten the moose. But for some reason peculiar to himself, Gomposh evidently did not want to be thanked. And when Shasta went up to lay his hand on his thick black coat, he rumbled something rude in his chest and moved sulkily away. As he went he turned once to look back at the boy, and then, like the moose, disappeared among the trees.
Left alone on the spot where the great battle had been fought, and where he had come so near losing his life, Shasta looked about him carefully. The ground was torn up and trampled, the grass and leaves blotched with dark stains. A faint smell of newly-spilt blood filled the air. And all round crowded the trees, dark, solemn, full of unnamable things.
As Shasta watched, a feeling of dread came over him. He could not have explained the feeling. All he knew was that it was a bad place where bad things could happen, and where even Gomposh had not cared to remain. Without lingering another moment, he fled away on noiseless naked feet.
And down in the cedar swamp, among the skunk cabbage and the bad black pools, old Gomposh sat in his lair and licked his wound. It did not heal for several days; but the big slavery tongue kept busily at work, and Nature, the old unfailing nurse, attended to her job. A good deal of grumbling accompanied the licking, and acted like a tongue on Gomposh's mind. So it was not long before he went about as usual, and the nuthatches perceived that Gomposh was so very much Gomposh again that the toadstools were being punished for having grown so fat!
The days and weeks went by. By the time the dark blue flower of the camass had faded, and the yellow wild parsley had begun to look tired, Shasta began to feel again the same strange restlessness creeping over him which he had felt before. And whenever he turned his face towards the southeast, the remembrance of the Indian village would sit down thickly upon him, and he would stop to think. When he remembered the raw-hide lariat and the husky dogs, he hated the camp; but when he remembered with his nose-memory, the pleasant odour of the burning cottonwood and of the dried sweet-grass came to him and made a stirring in his heart. Moreover, the Indian smell was there—the smell that does not come from cottonwood nor sweet-grass, or parfleches filled with buffalo meat, but clings about even the Indian names and is an odour of the old, forgotten times.
And as he went along the trails, somehow or other everything was different. The birds were there just the same. The blue jays were full of jabbering talk. The crows followed each other from tree to tree, always crying to those ahead to go farther on, and fasten their food-bags to another bough. And the woodpecker hammered hollowly at the hidden heart of the woods. As with the birds, so with the beasts. Nitka and Shoomoo went and came on the hunting trails, and the wolf-brothers howled in the night. Gomposh slapped the dead logs for grubs, and was a silly old bear when nobody was watching. But when he met any one he would sit down heavily at once and look dreadfully wise. And the weasels went on their wicked ways, killing and killing, not because of hunger, but the blood-lust to kill. And the red squirrels and the grey squirrels ran along the tree-tops for miles, without ever coming to ground; and the fussy little chipmunks fussed.
Yet in spite of all this, Shasta felt that something had changed, and that nothing could ever be quite the same again. And although the wolves brought him just as much meat as before, so that he never went hungry, he kept longing for the taste of the buffalo tongue which the Indian woman had thrown to him out of the smoking pot. The wolves never brought him anything so good as that. It made his mouth water whenever he thought of that delicious thing.
So he wandered up and down, up and down, more and more restless, and difficult to satisfy. It was not that he was unhappy. Sometimes, even, he was wildly happy, running and leaping in the sun, or swinging on a fir branch, and talking wolf-talk to himself. At such times the sunlight and the sweet mountain air seemed to have got into his blood, and the blue sky did not seem blue enough or the moss green enough, or the Bargloosh big enough, to be equal to his joy. It was the life that was in him which could not contain itself in his body, and kept overflowing the high brim of his heart!
Yet the creatures and their ways did not wholly satisfy him. That was the mischief of it. There were other creatures and other ways. He had seen those other creatures and he could not forget. He did not know that they were his own people, and that the drawing which he felt towards them was blood, and not cooked buffalo tongue. When his thoughts ran that way, it was the remembrance of thesmelland thetasteof the new life that was strongest. Even the memory of the lariat and the huskies could not overcome that. And as Meeko, the red squirrel, was always running along the green roof of the world, chickering and making mischief, and egging folks on to fight, so along the roof of Shasta's mind the new restlessness ran, and chickered, and would not let him be.
The morning came at last when he bowed his head and obeyed. He stood a long time at the mouth of the cave, looking over the familiar world of forest and mountain, and the distant shining peaks. Far away to the south he saw a speck against the blue. It moved slowly as he watched. Something told him that it was Kennebec, sitting in the wind. Kennebec had been very quiet of late. Now that there were no eaglets to feed, there was not so much need to go cub and lamb snatching on the mountain slopes. Besides which, he avoided the Bargloosh. It was there that the creature lived who had dared to scale his rocks. Henceforth the Bargloosh became for Kennebec a place of danger, and he gave it a wide berth.
Now, as Shasta gazed over the wide spaces below him, and up at the rocks above, he looked at them wistfully, as if he were saying good-bye. He didn't know anything about good-bye really, because the animals never consciously say farewell. They separate from each other because their feet take them, but it is mercifully hidden from them that sometimes they will not return. Something in him begged him to stay: to remain where he was and not mix himself up with the new, unexplained life that was busy among the foothills where there were lariats and husky dogs, and where the creatures walked on their hind legs. Here he knew the world and the ways of all its folk. From the shadowy inside of the cave to the glare of the sunlight on the shimmering peaks, he was familiar with it all; it was built about his heart in a bigness that was home. But now, for some unexplained and mysterious reason he was leaving it and going to this other utterly different thing which had bound him and bitten him and had given new smells to his nose and a new taste to his tongue. And he knew perfectly well that neither Nitka nor Shoomoo, nor any of the wolf-brothers would wish him to go; just as clearly as if they all sat on their haunches in a row in front of him and implored him to remain. They were all away now, and he was alone at the den's mouth. But if they should come back before he started, he knew that he could not keep the thing a secret from their sharp understandings. They would lick him, and rub noses, and look at him out of their wild wonderful eyes, and say, "Weknow, Little Person!" and then the thing would be impossible, and he would not be able to go.
In a moment he had run swiftly down the slope and was lost among the trees.
The sun was setting when he reached the end of the canyon towards the Indian camp. He did not go by way of the wolf-rocks this time. It was there that Looking-All-Ways had seized him, and he did not want to be caught like that again. So he had climbed down the steep sides of the gorge which the Indians call Big Wolf Canyon, and crept out among the high clumps of bunch-grass beside the stream. He could not see the village from here. It was hidden by a swell of the ground; but though he could not see it, he caught the sounds and the smells of it as they drifted down-wind. Presently he plucked up his courage and climbed to the top of the rising ground. Here the village was full in view. Soft blue trails of smoke were rising from the tops of the lodges, for the squaws were preparing the evening meal. The camp looked very peaceful, and not at all a thing to fill you with dread. Nevertheless, Shasta eyed it suspiciously, as a thing full of unexpected dangers which yelped and had sharp teeth.
Slowly he crept forward, crawling from tuft to tuft of grass, and taking advantage of every bit of rising ground, so that he might approach as close as possible without being seen. The things he was particularly on his guard against were the huskies; but as luck would have it there was not a single dog on this side of the camp, so that he crept right up to the outer circle of lodges without any mishap. It was not till he had reached the inner circle of lodges and was crouching at the back of one of them that he was discovered.
The one who made the discovery was no less a person than Running-Laughing, the ten-year-old daughter of the chief. She was carrying a buffalo bag to fetch water from the stream, and passed so close behind the tepee that she almost trod on Shasta before she saw him. She stood still in amazement, looking down at the strange thing at her feet. Shasta gazed at her in equal astonishment, but also with fear. By reason of his position on the ground Running-Laughing looked taller to him than she really was. He marvelled at her appearance, and the things she seemed to have stuck on to her skin. It is true she only wore a soft-tanned buckskin dress, trimmed with porcupine quills and deer-bones, and had small white shells in her ears; but to Shasta's unaccustomed eyes it was a wonderful and very dreadful gear. As for him, he was just as he was and was neatly dressed in his own skin, which was a reddish-brown under the fine hair. For some time they looked at each other without a sound or a movement. Then Running-Laughing behaved like her name, and told her father, Big Eagle, what she had found.
Big Eagle was preparing for a religious service in the lodge of the Yellow Buffalo. When he heard that the wolf-child was again in the camp, he sent for Looking-All-Ways to tell him that his captive had returned.
Looking-All-Ways went at once with Running-Laughing to where Shasta crouched beside the tepee. When he came there, he did not attempt to touch Shasta, but he carried the raw-hide lariat with him in case of need. He did something even wiser. He sent Running-Laughing to find Shoshawnee, the medicine-man, and tell him to come. So Running-Laughing fetched Shoshawnee, and when he came he began to "make medicine" with his voice.
Now, to "make medicine" with your voice is not an easy thing to do, and is only to be done by those who know forest-lore, and prairie-lore, and the secrets of the beasts. And Shoshawnee could do this, because he was crammed full of lore, and his head was bulging with buffalo wisdom and a knowledge of the beasts. As regards the beasts, he did not, of course, know as much as Shasta did, but he knew quite enough to make him wiser than the other Indians, and directly he began to talk, Shastaknewthat he knew!
It was a wonderful and strange "medicine" which Shoshawnee made; and if you understood the Indian tongue you would have heard many beautiful and far-away things. For in the Indian medicine-talk there are many and many words which come a long way from the North and a long way from the South, and very far indeed from the East and West. From the North they fall, as the feathers drop from the wings of wild geese, when they come honk-honking in the deep nights. From the South they are of the buffalo where they wallow by the great lake whose waters never rest. From the East they are of the coyotes, and from the West of the wolves. And many other sounds there are, too, and words which make you think of the wind along the scarped edges of rocks, and of the rumble of avalanches as they fall thunderously, and of the whisper of the junipers when the air creeps. All the great wilderness seemed to give itself in echoes along Shoshawnee's tongue.
As Shasta listened, a peculiar feeling came upon him. The sound of Shoshawnee's speaking affected him as nothing had done before. It seemed to rub him gently all over with a soothing touch. Deep within him something answered to it, and was pleased. His fear and distrust of the Indians melted away under the influence of the voice. The look of the wild animal in his eyes began to soften into something that was almost human. Shoshawnee saw the effect which the medicine was producing, and went on.
Gradually he began to move away from the tepee. As he did so, he walked backwards, keeping his eyes always fixed upon Shasta, and holding him with his gaze. Shasta looked straight into Shoshawnee's eyes. The eyes were like the voice. They drew him, whether he wanted them to or no. Slowly, step by step, he left the tepee and began to follow the medicine-man in his slow backward walk. Where he was going and why he was doing this he had no idea. Only the voice called him, and the eyes drew. He must follow those eyes and that voice wherever they chose to go.
By degrees Shoshawnee moved into the centre of the camp, Shasta following him a few feet away. Not many paces off, the lodge of the Yellow Buffalo was pitched. Inside sat Big Eagle and his braves, collected for the sacred ceremony. The ceremony had not yet begun, because they were waiting for the medicine-man to sing the opening words, without which the "medicine" of the buffaloes would not be complete.
At last Shoshawnee entered the lodge, still walking backwards. In a moment or two Shasta followed. He saw the braves sitting on the ground with Big Eagle in the centre. For the moment they were not saying or doing anything. There seemed to be a great number, for the tepee was full. Just in front of Big Eagle there burnt a small fire. After Shoshawnee and Shasta had entered and Shoshawnee had sat down, Big Eagle took an ember from the fire with a forked stick. He then put some dried sweet-grass on it, to burn. Soon the smoke of the burning grass filled the lodge with a pleasant smell. Shasta sniffed this new smell up his nose with delight. He watched the grey threads of smoke with wonder. He thought they must be the wings of the ember which it waved in the air. Presently Big Eagle put his hands in the smoke and rubbed them over his body. Shasta looked on in astonishment. To him, hands were forepaws. He had never seen fore-paws do so much, or do it in so odd a way.
When Big Eagle had rubbed himself all over with sweet smoke, he took another ember and with it lit a large pipe. The pipe was of polished stone, and red in colour.
Then Shasta saw what to him was the most surprising thing of all. When Big Eagle had put the red thing to his mouth, a wing came out and waved itself in the air! The pipe went from mouth to mouth, as the braves passed it round the lodge, and from every mouth, as it went, grey wings sprouted, and went wandering through the air.
After the smoking was over, the ceremony began. Shasta heard Shoshawnee make many strange noises, and let his voice run up and down as if he wanted to howl. It made Shasta want to howl also, but he remembered that he was not among the wolves now, and so he kept the feeling down.
When Shoshawnee had finished, the other braves went on. They seemed to want to howl badly too! Shasta could not understand how they could make so many odd noises in their throats, and yet never throw their heads back for the long sobbing note. On each side of Big Eagle were the squaws Lillooeet and Sarvis, his two wives. They had rattles in their hands, and they beat them on a buffalo hide stretched upon the floor. The beating was in time to the chanting, and Shasta watched in wonderment the rise and fall of the rattles, which, every time they touched the hide, gave out a sharp noise.
Presently, at a signal from Big Eagle, the rattling ceased. Shoshawnee rose. He advanced three paces towards Shasta. Then he stretched out his hand and laid it on his head. When Shasta felt the hand of Shoshawnee upon his head the tingling feeling ran in his blood and made his flesh creep. Then Shoshawnee spoke. What he said Shasta could not understand, yet it seemed to him that, as he had once been admitted to the wolf-pack as of its blood, now he was being received into the Indian pack as one of themselves. And he was right in his guess, for this is what Shoshawnee said:
"This is Shasta, the wolf-child. I have tamed him, because I understand the wolf-medicine. But heisthe wolf-medicine! Because of that, he is stronger than I."
There was a pause here, while the whole company gathered together in the tepee gazed at Shasta with awe. Presently Shoshawnee went on:
"Many moons ago, the Assiniboines, as you know, attacked us when we were moving to the Sakuska river to pitch our summer camp. A squaw was killed, and her papoose carried off. The brave who did this was not an Assiniboine. He was Red Fox, who stole the Eagle medicine, and is a traitor to our tribe. Red Fox went to the Assiniboines with lies upon his tongue. But the papoose which Red Fox carried off was the grandson of Fighting Bull, our old chief, who died soon afterwards. And his name was Shasta, which is one of our oldest names. Nothing was afterwards seen of the papoose in the lodges of the Assiniboines. Why? I will tell you. Because its father had been his deadly enemy, Red Fox gave it to the wolves!"
Shoshawnee suddenly ceased speaking; but his eyes glowed, and the echo of his voice seemed to run in the ears of the braves, as if his thought, which was fierce and strong, made itself a voice out of the silence.
So that was how it came to pass that Shasta was received by the Indians into their tribe, and was called by his own name, which he had never known. The moons went by, and by degrees he left off his wolf-ways and took on Indian ways instead. He learnt to walk upright, to eat cooked food and to talk the Indian tongue. To learn the last took him a long time. At first he could only make wolf noises, and would growl when he was angry, bark when he was excited, and howl when it was necessary to say things to the moon. But he had Shoshawnee for teacher, and Shoshawnee's patience had no end. At first he was shy of the Indian hoys, because they teased him when they had opportunity, and their elders' backs were turned; but by degrees his shyness wore away, and he began to take part in their racing and riding. Soon he could ride and run races with the best of them. Also, when it came to wrestling, they soon found that he was more than their match; for his life among the wolves had given an extraordinary strength to his muscles and suppleness to his body.
It was in a fight with Musha-Wunk that this quality of Shasta's body first made itself known. Musha-Wunk was a bully, and one of the leaders of those who enjoyed teasing Shasta whenever they had a chance. So one day Musha-Wunk and his companions came upon Shasta when he was sitting by himself amongst the bunch-grass of the creek.
At first, when Musha-Wunk began to tease and probe him with a stick, Shasta pretended not to mind, and got up and walked away.
Even when Musha-Wunk followed and stabbed him again, he took it all in good part, and caught hold of the stick with a laugh. But Musha-Wunk snatched the stick away with a vicious pull and struck Shasta with it across the face.
What followed came so quickly that those who watched held their breath in astonishment. The leap of a wolf is so swift that it must be seen to be believed. When Shasta leaped on the bully, the other boys saw something that seemed to hurl itself through the air, strike savagely, and bound away. Musha-Wunk, taken utterly by surprise, went down under the blow. He was on his feet in an instant, but almost before he was up, Shasta had hurled himself on him again. This time Musha-Wunk seized him before he could leap away, and both boys rolled over together. Musha-Wunk was the heavier of the two. He had bigger bones and a more powerful body. If he could have held Shasta down, he would certainly have had the best of it. But to hold Shasta down was like sitting on a small volcano. There was a violent eruption of arms and legs, and Musha-Wunk was lifted into the air! While he was still struggling to his feet, Shasta was on him again.
It was the wolf in Shasta which urged him to these lightning attacks and counter-attacks which made the eyes blink. Once the wild-beast spirit in him was fully roused, nothing could stand against it. The wolf-blood raced in his veins; the wolf-light flashed in his eyes. There broke out of his throat fierce sounds which certainly were not human. As he fought, he seemed to himself to be a wolf again, with the uncontrollable wolf-fury raging in his heart. Yet it was not merely wild rage that was in him. At the back of his mind, he knew that he was fighting for his freedom, for his self-respect. Once he allowed himself to be beaten by Musha-Wunk, he knew that the other boys would have no mercy upon him.
The time for gentleness and forbearance was gone by. The fight was none of his making. Musha-Wunk had forced it upon him, because he was a bully, and because he had judged Shasta to be a coward. The other boys stood round in a silent ring, watching the fight with glittering eyes. Their very silence showed how deeply they were moved; though, Indian-like, they gave no vent to their feeling by any outward sign. They were like a circle of animals, watching, with a fierce animal joy, a combat waged to the death. And presently a terror, as of death itself, came to Musha-Wunk, the bully, as he fought. He had thought that to conquer Shasta would be a very easy thing. He wanted to give him a good thrashing, see the blood flow, and leave the wolf-boy half dead at the finish. But now he knew, when too late, that he had roused something which it was not in his power to subdue. By his own folly and cruelty, he had drawn upon himself a vengeance which was not of men, but of the wolves. He ceased to take the offensive. All he wanted now was to defend himself as best he could against Shasta's lightning attacks. It was when he tried to hold Shasta that the marvellous elasticity of the wolf-boy's body showed itself. No matter how Musha-Wunk bent it this way and that, straining every muscle till the veins stood out on his throat, Shasta's firm flesh and wonderful sinews resisted every effort to break him into submission. He twirled himself into the most astonishing positions, upsetting Musha-Wunk every time the bully seemed for a moment to have gained the upper hand.
The fight finished as suddenly as it had begun. Musha-Wunk had received so severe a punishing that at last he could bear it no longer. It was not his body alone that suffered. In his mind the terror was growing. It was a horrible feeling that what he fought was a boy outwardly only, and was in reality more than half a wolf! The sudden leap, the break away, the deadly leap again—this was how the wolves fought. It was not to be met in any familiar human way. Taking advantage of a moment when Shasta seemed to pause, Musha-Wunk turned and fled towards the camp.
The other Indian boys looked on in astonishment at this ending to the fight. They would hardly believe their eyes that the big and masterful Musha-Wunk should be defeated so utterly by the little wolf-boy that at last he should flee in terror. They gazed at Shasta, the victor, in awe, keeping a respectful distance for fear lest the wolf in him might turn suddenly upon them. It did not need Shasta's quick eyes to perceive this fear upon them; his mind caught it as it oozed, in spite of themselves, into the air. Swift, as always, to act when his mind had once clearly seen a thing, he made a quick step forward, crouching as if to spring. To the alarmed Indian boys it seemed as if his whole body quivered with rage. In its crouching position it seemed to take on itself mysteriously the actual outlines of a wolf. Certainly the eyes between the long and shaggy locks of hair shot out a light that was not human, but of that deep brute world, old and savage, in the thick lair of the trees.
It was enough. Without waiting an instant longer, the whole band broke asunder and took to their heels in flight.
Shasta watched their departure with a joyful triumph. Now at last he had proved that the wolf-spirit in him was not to be broken, and that those who provoked or insulted it did so at their own peril. It was the upright, free spirit of the wild. And as such it was a good spirit, and belonged to the early freshness of the world. In Shasta, it would not attack or injure things as long as they left him alone. But once his freedom or peace were threatened, then he would resist with all the strength in his power.
When the last flying form had disappeared behind the rising ground, Shasta turned towards the trees. The excitement that was in him danced and bubbled in his blood. He was tired and sore in his body, but his heart was high—high as the tops of the spruces and the pines. He felt that he must go and tell his heart to the trees.
He went far into the forest, and then sat down. The trees were all about him—close on every side. It was as if they were crowding up to him to hear what he had to say. The big silence of them did not make him lonely or afraid. They were solemn and yet companionable, and full of wise "medicine"—which he understood, but could not put into speech.
The Indian camp was very far away now. Musha-Wunk and the others were little things that did not matter. It was the trees that mattered now—the trees and the wolves.
Only his fine ear could have detected that soft footfall coming down the trail! And when he turned his eyes, it did not surprise him that he looked straight into those of a big grey wolf.
What Shasta said to the wolf and what the wolf said to Shasta cannot be set down in words. Though it was neither Nitka nor Shoomoo, it was a wolf-brother of three seasons back, and the two recognized each other in some mysterious way. And so Shasta was able to learn all he wanted to know about the den upon the Bargloosh, and how his foster-parents fared. It was over nine months now since he had seen them, but, according to the wolf-brother, nothing was amiss. Upon the Bargloosh everything went much as it had gone in the old days when Shasta was a little naked man-cub, and had no notion of wearing clothes. The wolf-brother did not approve of the clothing Shasta wore, though it was only a little tanned buckskin tunic falling to the knee. For that was one of Shasta's peculiarities, that though he suffered the upper part of his body to be clad, he would not allow them to interfere with the freedom of his legs. Moccasins he would only wear in winter, when the frost bit hard, or in the summer when he had a fit upon him to decorate his feet. Running-Laughing had made him the summer moccasins, and had embroidered them most cunningly with elk-teeth and porcupine quills. Shasta walked stiffly, with a sense of grandeur, when he wore the summer moccasins, looking down at his feet as if they belonged to some great medicine-man or important chief.
The wolf-brother sniffed at the tunic disapprovingly. The Indian smell of it upset him, and made his hackles rise. So Shasta, to please him, took it off, and let him see that it was only a loose skin that did not matter, and could easily be thrown away. After that things went more smoothly, and they talked companionably together in the shadow of the trees. And when the evening light began to be golden about the tops of the spruces, and the forest to stir, and shake off the drowsy weight of the afternoon, the wolf-brother departed as suddenly and softly as he had come, and Shasta, having watched him go regretfully, turned homewards to the camp.
It was the old medicine-man, Shoshawnee, and he was making medicine to himself on the high lookout butte that commanded the prairies to the south. The sunset was beginning to be crimson in the west. It struck full in Shoshawnee's face, turning it blood-red. But Shoshawnee had no thought for the colour of his face. He had another thought inside him—a thought of such tremendous importance that there was no room for anything besides. And this was that a danger lay there ambushed in the south. No one else but Shoshawnee knew of the danger; but that was because he had a medicine which never told him lies, and which whispered things to him before they had arrived. And already it had whispered to him that danger was near, and he had heard the huskies give the ghost-bark when they saw the wind go by.
When he had finished the medicine-song he sat silent, gazing on the prairies. They looked very peaceful, lying abroad there under the sinking sun. Shoshawnee's eyes, travelling over the immense levels, saw nothing that served to increase the unquiet of his mind. Far to the south there stretched, from the Saska River westwards, a dusky band that was like a shadow cast by the sunset. Shoshawnee knew that it was a herd of buffalo—one of those vast herds which in those old Indian days roamed over the wilderness for a thousand miles; coming always from the lake of mystery in the south; going no man knew whither; which no man had ever counted, or would count till the Palefaces came from the East, and the Red man's day was done. Shoshawnee watched the buffaloes keenly. So long as they continued their tranquil feeding, he knew that, whatever danger was afoot, it had not yet approached the outskirts of the herd. For the buffalo are very wary and are always ready to stampede. Yet, although his eyes were fixed intently out there so many miles away, his ears were alert for anything that might happen close about. So, although he did not turn his head, he heard the faint whisper of the dried bent-grass as Shasta in his summer moccasins came lightly up the hill.
When he reached Shoshawnee, Shasta did not speak. It is the Palefaces who rush at each other with their tongues. The Red man is never in a hurry with his speech. Why should you hasten your words when the prairies are so broad beside you, and there are no clocks to tick off for you the timeless drift of the summer air? It is only in the cities that men have learnt to waste the hours by counting them; and on the high buttes facing the sunset there is no time.
So the sun had dipped below the prairie before at last Shoshawnee spoke.
"The buffalo go west," he said slowly, as if the thing was of the utmost importance.
Shasta did not put a question actually into words, but he looked it. Shoshawnee understood.
"There is much pasture to the west. The buffalo eat the prairie to the setting sun."
"Do they eat the edge of the sunset also?" Shasta asked.
Shoshawnee shook his head.
"The edge of the sunset is the end of the world," he said. "At the end of all things there is no more grass."
Shasta was silent at that. It was so unbelievable. The thought stunned him. No more grass!
"Butbeyondthe sunset," Shoshawnee went on, "when you come to the Happy Hunting-grounds, the grass is always green. And there the blue flower of the camass never fades, and the sarvis berries never decay."
"The Happy Hunting-grounds!" Shasta murmured in his low, husky voice. "Where?"
Shoshawnee lifted his hand.
"Up there, presently," he said, "you will see the Wolf-trail. It is along the Wolf-trail that you travel to reach them. The Wolf-trail is worn across the heavens by the moccasins of the dead."
"Is the hunting better there than it is here?" Shasta asked. "Is there more game?"
"It is notbetterhunting," Shoshawnee said, correcting him. "It is happier. The dead are full of happiness as they follow along the trail."
After that there was a long silence, as Shasta kept looking at the sky to watch for the beginning of the Wolf-trail, when the stars should appear. But before that happened Shoshawnee spoke again. This time he spoke quickly, using many words. He spoke so rapidly, and the words followed each other so fast, that at first Shasta could not understand. All he gathered was that danger was in the air, some great danger which as yet you could not see, but which was approaching, always drawing steadily nearer out there on the prairies, and which might arrive before you knew. Then, as Shoshawnee went on, the danger took a shape. It was the shape of Indians on the warpath—Assiniboines that came with deadly cunning and purpose, travelling like wolves along the prairie hollows.
Shasta sent his eyes far across the darkening plains, where all things were becoming shadowy and remote, and where even the great herd of buffalo beyond the Saska was no longer visible. How far away the Assiniboines might be he could not guess. Nor could Shoshawnee tell him, when he asked. All Shoshawnee knew was that they were coming, and that when he had finished his medicine-making he would go and warn the tribe. Of one thing only was he certain, and that was, that however near they might be they would not attack at night. The Assiniboines were fierce and cruel but they dreaded the darkness, because they declared that the ghosts of their enemies and many evil spirits were abroad. Their favourite hour of attack was just at daybreak when the first glimmer of dawn was mingling with the mist.
When the last light of sunset had faded from the sky, and the prairies were wholly dark, Shasta and Shoshawnee returned to the camp.
Shasta lay awake long that night, listening and wondering. The words of the old medicine-man kept walking in his head. Sometimes it was of the buffaloes he thought, with their pasture that lay out into the sunset and was a-shimmer with the long lights of the west; and sometimes of that mysterious danger that crept nearer and nearer, and gave no sign of its approach. And then the butterfly, the sleep-bringer, flitted across his eyelids and he slept.
It was the western lark-sparrow that woke him in the morning, singing loud and clear upon the lodge-pole over his head. And when he saw the sunlight clear through the painted wall of the tepee, and heard the cheerful morning stir of the camp, it seemed impossible that danger should be afoot in that tremendous peace. Yet, as the day wore on and evening drew near, he felt the same foreboding at his heart as when Shoshawnee had spoken to him of danger when they sat on the lookout bluff.
As for Shoshawnee, he sat there all day, without food or drink, gazing steadily across the prairies and chanting the old medicine chants of the tribe. When evening fell Shoshawnee returned. He had already warned the tribe of what he feared, and Big Eagle had given orders that all was to be in readiness in case of an attack. Scouts had been sent out, but had returned at sundown, saying that no signs of hostile Indians had been seen.
When Shasta went to bed that night the buffalo robe held no sleep for him; and wherever the butterfly flitted, it did not enter his tepee. All night long he lay awake, restless and uneasy. Often and often he left his couch and looked out. The camp was very still and the stars in their high places glittered bright in a cloudless sky. Now and then the small grey owl hooted dismally from the alder thickets beside the creek, or a coyote would bark fitfully somewhere far off in the night. Shasta had not yet grown used to the prairie. It was so vast, so unenclosed! The forest with its crowding trees, and the immense gloom of a hundred miles of shade, was the thing that made him feel at home. But now the camp of his people was pitched far out on the prairie, and the forest only existed in his dreams. As for Nitka and Shoomoo and the wolf-brothers, they seemed even farther off, and to move in some old life lost among the trees. Three times already since his first coming to the camp, it had been moved. The ends of the new lodge-poles, cut in spring among the foot-hills and dragged by the ponies for enormous distances, now showed signs of wear. The camp at present lay in a wide hollow surrounded by swelling ridges, and hidden from sight until you were close upon it. The lookout bluff upon which Shoshawnee had kept his watch lay a good half-mile to the south, and commanded an immense sweep of prairie on every hand.
The last time Shasta had crept out of the tepee he had looked towards the bluff. It humped itself, a black mass against the stars, like a huge bull-buffalo couched in sleep. When he crept noiselessly back, it seemed to follow him, and when at last sleep overtook him, it was humped among his dreams.
Suddenly he was wide awake, his heart throbbing. Something—he did not know what—had called to him, and roused him from his rest. The tepee was still dark, but a faint glimmer—so faint as to be scarcely seen—showed that daybreak was at hand. Shasta sat up, his eyes straining in the dimness, and his ears listening as only wild animals listen when they are startled.
For a little while he heard nothing but the stillness, which itself was so deep that it seemed as if it were a sort of sound. Then, clear and strikingly distinct, he heard repeated the sound which had broken his sleep.
It was a wolf-howl, long-drawn and wailing, and it was answered directly afterwards by another, and yet another. The cries were some distance off—how far Shasta could not tell. The third came from some spot on the prairie beyond the lookout bluff.
Every pulse in Shasta's body beat in answer to the cries. A wild excitement swept through him. His mind seemed, for the moment, to throw off its Indian teaching and swing back into the wild. Yet, wolf-like though the cries were—so alike that only the wolves themselves would have detected the difference—Shasta's perfect sense of hearing told him that these wailing notes came from no wolf-throats, but from those of Indians who imitated with marvellous closeness the familiar cry. Shoshawnee was right. The danger was at hand. It was within speaking distance: it sang a death-note in the dawn.
Shasta lost no time. He ran swiftly to Big Eagle's tepee. Without waiting for any ceremony, he snatched aside the flap and stepped inside. Rousing the chief he told him what he had heard. Immediately Big Eagle sprang from his buffalo robes, and, seizing his arms, rushed out into the centre of the camp, uttering the gathering cry. Instantly the whole camp was aroused. The braves came running out of the tepees, their bows in their hands and their long quivers slung over their backs. In less than five minutes the sleeping village was turned into an armed camp, with every man it contained prepared for the fight. In the midst of the excitement Shasta disappeared. When Big Eagle commanded the presence of the "medicine" wolf-boy, no one could say what had become of him. Some were inclined to think that he had played a trick upon them, and that there was no danger at all. But Shoshawnee, the old medicine-man, waved his arms excitedly, and declared over and over again that Shasta had been warned by the spirits, and that the Assiniboines were now close at hand.
When Shasta had given the warning and knew that the tribe was fully roused, he crept out of camp. He went so secretly that no one saw him go. Why he went he could hardly have told himself in the shape of a thought. If the cries had not been wolf-cries, it is probable he would not have gone. He was certain that they were not the genuine wolf-calls, yet they came so very close to them that an uneasy feeling inside him made him want to find out what sort of throat could make so exact an imitation.
The direction of his going was towards the lookout butte, from beyond which the last cry had come. If danger was gathering in the prairie hollows it would be from the summit of the butte that you could tell the nature of it, and whether it was widespread or closely drawn. As he approached the butte, his eyes and ears were open at their widest. Things were indistinct and shadowy in the faint glimmer of the dawn. Yet shadowy though they were, Shasta's piercing eyes stabbed them through and through. Every bush, every clump of grass, every rise or fall of the ground—nothing escaped this piercing gaze. He saw the buck-rabbit leap into the thicket. He saw the coyote drift, like a trail of grey smoke, over the ridge. And while his eyes and cars were busy, he did not forget his nose. With the true wolf-instinct he travelled up-wind. Whatever scents were abroad in the keen air, he would catch them surely, and sift them in his cunning nose. In the early freshness of the dawn, the smell of the ground was sweet with dew. There was not so much a breeze as a soft moving of the air. Along it the whole vast body of the prairie seemed to breathe to the tip of Shasta's nose. By this time the broad sweet prairie smell was familiar to him. By contrast with it the old smells of the forest seemed to be sharp and thin, like arrow-heads piercing the brain. But, as Shasta knew, this broader prairie smell was made up of a countless multitude of tiny odours that mixed themselves so confusedly that only the stronger ones could be disentangled from the rest.
For some time he did not get any smell which told him of danger, and he had reached the foot of the butte before he met anything suspicious. Suddenly he stopped. As far as you could see or hear, except that the light was a little stronger, everything was exactly as it had been. And yet, to Shasta's quick sense, something had happened, and he knew that he was warned. It was not that he saw or heard anything first. It was his nose which had caught something that was not a prairie smell. It was not of a thing that was there now. The thing had gone by, but the scent of its passing clung still to the grass-blades, and Shasta seemed to see the Indian body which had left that faint message of itself in smell. Then he found the trail—the dim thing that only wild eyes would see as it lay in the morning twilight.
At first he wondered what to do, whether to follow the track or to go up the butte. He knew that whatever he did must be done at once, or he might be too late. He went swiftly up the butte.
When he reached the top he lay at full length, gazing intently over the prairies. In the pale light of the creeping dawn, they looked wider than ever. They seemed to stretch away and away endlessly, as if the world did not cease at the horizon, but stooped down under the sky. Shasta's eyes swept that huge greyness with a lightning glance. The hollows lay roughly from northeast to southwest. It was only here and there that it was possible to see their bottoms or what might be concealed along the borders of the streams.
For some minutes Shasta saw nothing suspicious. Then, about two hundred yards to the west, he saw a creeping shape move across the top of a ridge and disappear. It was followed by another and then another. They slid very quickly over the open summit of the ridge. At the very first glance he knew they were not wolves.
He watched a great number pass over in that peculiar sliding way. When there was a pause, and no more seemed to be coming, Shasta turned to leave the butte. What he saw as he did so made his heart leap.
There, not twenty yards away from the foot of the butte, stood an Indian, with his bow in his hand, ready to shoot.
At once Shasta realized that it was a stranger, one of the hostile tribe about to attack the camp. While his mind worked swiftly, deciding what to do, his body never moved a muscle. There he was, crouched upon the butte, as motionless as if he had been suddenly turned to stone.
If he attempted to escape the Indian by running east or west, he knew by the way the brave held his bow that a terrible winged shaft would come singing through the air. The Indians had evidently seen him on the butte, and one of them had been told off to watch that he did not return to camp to carry a warning before the attack was made. By creeping to the top of the butte in order to reconnoitre the outer prairies, Shasta saw that he had exposed himself to a hidden danger behind. He saw himself cut off from the camp, utterly alone. He had already given warning, it is true. But his people might not know that the enemy were so close upon them, nor how many were gathering for the attack. And whatever happened, he would be utterly powerless to help them in the fight with their relentless foes. A feeling of desperation, of anger, swept over him. It was like the anger which had wrapped its flames about him when he had turned on Musha-Wunk, the bully.
Suddenly, in a flash, he turned and darted over the brow of the hill. Instantly the Indian shot, but Shasta had been too quick for him, and the arrow buried itself in the hillside. Shasta was hidden now by the hill, and the Indian could not tell which way he had gone. The boy went down the hill at a tremendous pace in a series of flying bounds. When he reached the bottom he turned sharp to the left. There was broken ground here, and a number of thickets. Threading his way cautiously through these, Shasta worked eastwards, meaning to approach the camp from the far northeastern side. He had not gone very far when he heard a series of war-whoops, followed by savage yells, and he knew that the battle had begun. He regretted now that he had not brought his bow and arrows with him. His only weapon was the flint tomahawk in his belt.
There was much more light now. He could see everything clearly. But the camp was not in sight, because it was hidden in its hollow to the west. The sounds of the fight came to him plainly in the clear morning air.
There was a knoll in front of him. He ran towards it, stooping low as in his wolf days. He had only just reached it, and had thrown himself flat on his stomach, when all at once he heard the running of many feet. The sound was coming in his direction. He lay where he was, absolutely still. All at once he was surrounded by Indians. Something struck him sharply at the back of his head, and he remembered nothing more.
When he came to himself, he found himself lying across the back of an Indian pony, with a horrible aching in his head. The pony was at the gallop. He felt that he was held in his place by the rider. He could not see the rider. He saw nothing but a blur of grass that seemed as if it billowed under him in flowing waves. The blood in his head made a singing like grasshoppers. There was a tightness there as if it were going to burst. He tried to think, but thoughts would not come. He could not tell why he was on the pony's back. Only the sharp smell of its sweating flanks entered his brain as one smells things in a dream. Then the seas of grass billowed away into nothingness, and it was a blackness where lightnings flashed.
That was all he remembered of that long ride over the prairies, as he was carried by the Assiniboines back to their hunting grounds in the far northwest. It was not till many moons afterwards that he learnt that, owing to his warning, their attack had only partially succeeded, and that his tribe had beaten them off after a fierce encounter in which both sides had lost heavily.
When the Assiniboines reached their camp, Shasta was thrown into a tepee and left to come to himself as best he might. It was not long before he was forced to realize what had happened, and knew that he was a prisoner in the hands of the enemies of his tribe. What he did not know was that they had carried him off to kill him at their great sun-dance as a religious offering. Quite unknown to himself, his fame as a medicine-man had travelled far and wide over the prairies, and had even reached the mountains in the west. This was the wolf-medicine which had made his tribe so powerful since his coming to them. Once he could be killed, the medicine power would be destroyed also, but, as their own medicine-men assured them, it could be destroyed only by fire.