The White Wolf E-Book

Max Brand

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

If you like classic animal stories you will like this one for sure. Tucker Crosden bred his dogs to be champions. Yet even by frontiersman’s brutal standards, bull terrier White Wolf was special. Tucker had great plans for the dog until it gave in to the blood-hungry laws of nature. He never thought that his prize animal would run at the head of a wolf pack one day and to be a leader among wolves in the San Jacinto Mountains or that a trick of fate would throw them together in a battle to the death. And White Wolf must choose between laws of nature – or those of man. Max Brand’s action-filled stories of adventure and heroism in the American West continue to entertain readers throughout the world.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER I

IN an upper box-cañon of the Winnemago River, Gannaway saw the big man first. Gannaway himself was big, and hard-muscled from wandering across the ridges of the Rockies whether in summer suns or through combing winter hurricanes. By the very face of Adam Gannaway, one knew that he could make himself at home in the heart of a blizzard one day and in the desert the next. And his work as meteorologist kept him busy year in and year out, wandering and never pausing. That deep and quiet soul of his, ever removed from the ways of other men, was more at ease up here and in the wilderness of the mountains, he could spread his elbows at the board; in all other places he was a self-conscious, clumsy fellow.

He was a great hunter, too, this Adam Gannaway, though he was fonder of hunting with a camera than with a rifle; but the result was that he knew the ways of the wild beasts as hardly any other in the length and the breadth of the mountains. But for all these qualifications, when he saw Tucker Crosden for the first time, he felt like some effete city dweller brought suddenly before the face and frown of nature.

Adam Gannaway was big. He was well above six feet, and he had a sturdy spread of shoulders, but when Crosden strode closer to him, Gannaway felt himself shrinking into the dimensions of a boy again.

And Gannaway had had his share of this world’s troubles and its joys, but when he looked up into the face of the other, half brutal and half melancholy, it seemed to Gannaway that compared with the soul of the stranger his own was filled with nothing but remembered stuff–dead print!

Tucker Crosden walked with a staff which was heavily shod with steel, and such was its length that it reminded Gannaway of the rough-hewn spear of some early hero; such was its girth that despite the sinewy strength of his own arms, Gannaway would not have cared to carry it with him through a single march. Yet it dangled like a peeled willow wand in the fingers of the giant. The little burro which scampered along before him, the big man whacked with this staff, from time to time, and every blow raised a welt along the ribs of the suffering little beast; and compared with the bulk of its master it seemed rather like a dog than a beast of burden.

However, it was loaded with a heavy pack, and so completely spent by the long struggle up the steep cañons of the Winnemago that when they reached Gannaway the giant let it stop to rest on wide-braced legs.

Human society in the San Jacinto Mountains was rarer than sweet music and more deeply hungered for, but Gannaway had a shrewd conviction that had the burro been fresh the big man would have pressed on with never a word. As it was, he glanced twice at the scientist before he rumbled an indistinguishable word of greeting and then:

“Have you got the makings, stranger?”

Gannaway handed over a package of brown papers and a little Bull Durham in the bottom of a sack. Then he wondered at fingers so heavy and so thick employed in the nuances of rolling a cigarette. Crosden did not waste time in thanks. When his smoke was lighted, he went to the farther side of the burro’s pack and took from an open hamper a big female bull-terrier. She was heavy with young and it was patent when Crosden put her on the ground that her hour was fast approaching, yet even so Gannaway wondered that such a man had burdened his single pack animal with the weight of a dog.

The giant followed her to the edge of the Winnemago and watched her drink, scowling thoughtfully down at her. Then, because there was a sharp pitch up the bank which she had to climb, he lifted her carefully under his arm and brought her to the top. She thanked him with a wag of the tail and lift of the ears. Then she went slowly off through the grass.

But Gannaway felt a wonder that deepened every minute. After all, what he had seen was not much more than any humane man would have done for a dog in the terrier’s condition, but it seemed as absurd to attribute humanity to the giant as to attribute mercy to a mountain lion or charity to a grizzly. Moreover, it seemed to the observer that the care which the big fellow lavished upon the dog was not the spontaneous result of emotion, but rather the effect of carefully considered plans. As if, for instance, he had been offered a very great reward for bringing the bitch safely across the mountains.

“She’s a fine specimen,” said Gannaway.

The brute glanced sourly across at him.

“Is she?” said he, offensively, and continued to watch the maneuverings of the terrier with a gloomy eye.

Now Gannaway was no expert in bull-terriers, but he knew all animals well enough, and he knew not only dog standards in general, but something of the special type which the bull-terrier breeder has in his eye. Now Gannaway scanned the bitch again, carefully. He saw her from the front and the rear, the side and the back, and he found nothing against her. Here were legs splendidly straight and huge in bone, a great chest, a pair of shoulders to glad the eye with their cleanness and their fine muscles, a neck neither too long nor too short, and not covered with loose skin. There was her tail, too, set on low, thick at the butt, tapering beautifully–looking as straight as a string, with a spring set in the base of it. But perhaps the head was at fault. No, for it was a glorious head, with little triangular black eyes and a “fill up” clear to the eyes, like the back of a man’s hand.

“By heavens,” said Gannaway; “if that bitch hasn’t championship stuff in her, I’m a fool.”

“You ain’t the only fool in the world,” said the other.

He waited, glowering, expecting the other to take up the insult, but when Gannaway remained calm, the giant consented to add:

“But she’s a champion, right enough.”

Gannaway was much intrigued. Good bull-terriers do not grow on every bush, in these degenerate days, and one does not expect a champion to approach her hour to litter among the bleak heights of the San Jacinto mountains and expose several hundred dollars’ worth of blind puppyhood to the tender mercies of a winter gale.

“Where did she win? And what’s her name?” he asked.

The giant, turned his back: “It’s time to move, Nell. Come here, Nell!”

She came obediently, trotting with a heavy step, and stood before him waiting for further orders so that the heart of Gannaway was warmed in spite of the insolence of the big man. However, at this moment the other finished his cigarette and he half turned to ask: “Got another makings?”

“No,” said Gannaway, “that’s the last.”

“All right,” said the giant. “I’ll take pipe tobacco, then.”

“I’m out of that, too. Not a crumb of it left.”

The big fellow stared, incredulous, but there was a world of honesty in the steady blue eyes of Gannaway, and Crosden burst out with an enormous oath.

“But” he growled, “you ain’t been giving away your last smoke?”

“I can get on. I’ve gone without it before,” said Gannaway.

The giant looked helplessly about him, as though he strove to find an explanation in the wind and sun and hard rocks around him, but discovered no way of interpreting such generosity as this. Then another thought struggled into his eyes, a conclusion against which he fought hard but which persisted in spite of him.

“Why, hell, man,” he exclaimed suddenly, “you must be white!”

And he glared at Gannaway mutely, like another Balboa, “silent on a peak in Darien.” As though, indeed, this discovery of decency in a fellow man were a mystery which could not be comprehended, breaking down all preconceptions.

“Have you got a pipe?” he asked at last.

“Yes.”

“Then–fill her up!”

He dragged out a well-filled pouch and offered it; but still while Gannaway gladly and obediently filled his black pipe, the stranger surveyed him with wonder from head to foot, writing down in his mind the distinguishing features of this new species.

“She’s Barnsbury Lofty Lady II,” he broke out at last, “and she got her championship right back there in New York, like the rest of my breed. I don’t bother with none of the little country shows. The big stuff, or nothing.”

“An expensive business, that–shipping the dogs so far,” suggested Gannaway with respect.

“Oh–ay, it costs money, but I get enough for my dogs out of the traps. I sell enough furs to keep the dogs pretty good. The family don’t like it. But–damn the family!”

Gannaway overlooked the latter half of these remarks, and he answered: “She’s a good-looking bitch. By the way, my name is Gannaway.”

“Gannaway,” said the trapper, “I dunno what your business is but it ain’t dogs. Well, she’s good looking enough for most. They wrote her up when she went East. They give her cups, and they shook hands with me, and they offered me big money for her. Three thousand dollars, says a pinch-faced little son of a fool to me. Three thousand for her? No–nor thirty thousand–nor three hundred thousand–nor three million. Money ain’t gunna touch her.”

It was not madness, but the divine enthusiasm which makes good horses or dogs on the one hand–good statues and poems on the other. Gannaway understood and nodded in sympathy. His heart too, was set upon a distant star.

“No, it ain’t what she is,” went on the giant more to himself than to Gannaway. “It ain’t what she is, but it’s the hope that’s locked up in her. She’s got the stuff in her; and maybe it’ll come out. She’s got the stuff in her!”

“And what is that?” asked Gannaway gently.

The giant looked at him in irritation, askance, but then his thought took hold on him and made him raise his head until his long, thick hair fell back and showed a smile of singular and pure beauty on his face.

“The King!” whispered he. “She’s got the blood of The King in her, and maybe that blood’ll come out–in this here very litter. I dunno. Nobody can tell–only God!”

CHAPTER II

THEIR way did not lie in the same direction, but Gannaway was glad to turn from the true course which should have led him across the valley of the Winnemago and across Mount Spencer and Mount Lomas in the southern distance; he travelled, instead, up the valley of the river until in the evening they reached the lower Winnemago hills and camped there among the pines. Beyond that range, over the broad side of Spencer Mountain, the stranger intended to hold his way until he reached the valley of the Seven Sisters. In the morning, therefore, they must part, but in the meantime, Gannaway determined to learn, if craft and patience could help him, the riddle which would solve the mystery of why a sane man chose to peril the life of a three thousand dollar dog among the cold winds of the upper mountains–and endanger all the lives of her cubs also, as a matter of course!

But it was not easy to draw information from Crosden. He responded to apparent curiosity as an Indian does–with silence. And what was chiefly clear to Gannaway was that the dog- breeder was a pure type of brute with one consuming passion–the desire to produce a perfect bull-terrier. But it was not until their supper had been cooked and eaten and their second pipes thereafter were fuming that the tongue of Crosden was loosened by chance.

“Whatever else they may say about her, she has a perfect head,” said Gannaway, and took the head of Nelly in his hand.

Only one phrase of his speech seemed to come to the ear of the giant.

“A perfect head?” echoed Crosden softly. “Once there was a perfect dog. You hear me, Gannaway? You, being a white man, you might understand. There is crooks and sneaks and damned little else, and who would want to talk about a real dog to such as them? Them folks back East–worms! They ain’t men! But you, Gannaway–you’re white and you would understand, maybe. Suppose–should I tell you the story–why, here it goes, and why not? It’ll do me good, or send me crazy–talking!”

He brushed the long hair back from his face, half melancholy and half brute, and with his walking staff gripped in his hand, he brooded for a time upon the fire until a flare of its light seemed to gather again in his own eyes from long staring.

Suddenly he raised his glance to Gannaway, and the latter shrank a little and had to steady himself.

“I’ll tell you, back in the beginning there wasn’t nobody much except Newton and me. The others had dogs, and they showed ‘em, and they got their championships and they did their talking, but nobody knew the secret of putting a head on a bull-terrier. Nobody but me–and then Newton, he stole my idea. He seemed to understand, too. The bitches are what count. You can have the best stud dogs in the world and get nothing. But when you take a bitch that has got an eye in her head–and enough weight to–but here, you ain’t a dog-breeder.

“Well, let that go. I knew, and Newton knew. I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew. Sometimes we wouldn’t get much. Just red ribbons or yellow, or such, but I would go and look at Newton’s dogs, and he would come and look at mine. And each of us knew that the other fellow was coming pretty close to the real thing–a dog that would be a dog.

“We got our championships, too. We got them pretty thick and fast, after a while. But still he kept waiting and watching me, and I kept waiting and watching him. And finally one time when I got to Madison Square Garden I seen Newton go by with a guilty look in his eye and I reached out and grabbed him. He’s a little gent. He curled up inside my hand and put up an arm like I was going to hit him.

“‘Keep off of me!’ says he. ‘Who’s been talking to you?’

“All at once, I guessed that he had it. I guessed that he had beat me out–and I come near to killing him–mighty near!”

He raised the steel-shod staff and struck with it a heavy rock–and the rock splintered like crumbled chalk.

“‘You take me back and lemme see it!’ said I. ‘It ain’t on your bench yet.’”

“Because I had seen the dogs that he had on the bench. So he took me back and he opened a crate in a corner of the room and he snapped his fingers and out jumped–the perfect dog!

“I mean, when I seen her in the first flash, and her whiteness, and the sick sort of a feeling that I had in the bottom of my stomach, I figgered that Newton had turned the trick and he had beat me.

“I said: ‘Newt, you’ve done it! This here is the dog!’

“Well, he looked up sidewise at me and he shook his head, God bless him! I loved him for doing that. And he said: ‘I used to think that she might come to it when she was a pup. Her promise was perfect. But when you haul off and take another look at her, partner, you see what’s wrong. And it’s in the head and neck–but it ain’t nothing that the standard’ll tell!”

“‘Ah, damn the standard!’ says I. For we’ve all seen the dog that lived up to the standard pretty near perfect but that would get beat by some ordinary cur, because the cur would have the fire in him. And I looked at the bitch and I seen that Newton was right. She was a mite off in the head and the neck. Just a mite wrong below the eyes.

“‘What is her name?’ says I.

“‘The only name she’s got,’ says he, ‘is The Queen.’

“‘Newton Queen?’ says I.

“‘No, just Queen,’ says he.

“Well, she deserved that name. She was only a ten month puppy, but she got best of the breed over a hundred bull terriers, and she went on and got best terrier in the show, too. And she would of gone higher–clean on up to the top. But when will they give best of all breeds to a bull-terrier? Not, by God, till a dog comes along wearing a crown–

“But that comes later!”

Tucker Crosden rose and began to stride back and forth, fighting hard to control himself.

“Newton, he comes to me after the show and he says: ‘Crosden, damned if I ain’t shot my bolt. There is something that tells me that I ain’t gunna never get no higher with my dogs than what I’ve done already. The Queen, she’s my best bet, unless I go outside and get new blood.’

“I guessed what he meant, but I shut up tight and I only said: ‘Where could you improve her?’

“‘I dunno,’ says he. ‘But what about taking one of your dogs for breeding to her, old timer?’

“‘I hand fifteen years of work to you, and you pay me a twenty-five dollar stud fee and then you hog the glory?’

“He hated to do it, but he had to. He admitted that he would give me half of the litter and then I had to say that I didn’t have any dog that was really anything to get excited about. But he says that the dog didn’t matter–it was his pedigree that counted. So we picked out the best of my lot–Champion Barnsbury Moonstone, that had got his championship the year before and he bred The Queen to him. And a couple of months later, I was over to Newton’s place in Colorado and I sat by and seen the litter born. The first went to Newton, of course, and the second to me. And five was born, and they was nothing to shout about, not none of them. And then there was a whole hour, and finally the last of the litter come, and belonged to me!”

Tucker Crosden lifted up his great staff and shook it at the stars and laughed.

“He was little, and he was weak, and there wasn’t much to him. And Newton, he give him one look and then he said: ‘Look here, old partner! I hate to see you let down this here way with two no-account bitches and one ratty little dog when you come so far to see the litter arrive. Here–you take this here first- born dog, and I’ll keep the little rat–or drown him–one of the two!”

“I just looked at Newton and I laughed. ‘You damn sneak,’ says I, ‘d’you think that I ain’t been born with two eyes? No, old son. You can have the other five, but I’ll stay by this here one!’

“And I done it. And when he was three months old he had the stand of a dog that was carved out of marble. And when he was seven months old it come time for the big show and Newton wrote to ask about the pup. I just sat down and I wrote out on a piece of paper: The King! and I sent it back to him, and the next train brought Newton over. He come to my house. He says: ‘Well, lemme have a look. Lemme see the The King.’ And he laughed squeaky and small and high.

“I says very careless: ‘Oh, you mean the pup? Why, he’s around somewhere.’ I give a whistle–and there come The King walking through the doorway and standing against the dark, and he half-closed his eyes and looked us over.

“‘My God!’ says Newton. ‘Oh, my God!’

“Yes, he was that close to perfect that you could hardly of drawed a line between him and perfection. Newton and me, we took a special trip to New York for the show. We was in the cab together and the dog was in my arms when the crash come–going around a curve–we hit something–”

Gannaway drew his hand across his forehead, but without taking his eyes from the tortured face of his companion. After a pause, the big man went on: “I buried him and I come back and I tied up my dogs in a line and I shot ’em down, every one! I come into my house and I called my wife and my girl and I told ’em to go out and bury the mess. And they done it. But pretty soon Molly, which is my girl, she come in and she said: ‘Daddy, there is one living.’

“‘I’ll fix it,’ says I, and I started out. It was a little two month old bitch. And Molly, she drops down and grabs it up, all blood where the bullet had cut it.

“‘Oh, Daddy,’ says she, ‘God don’t mean you to kill it!’”

“I says to myself that maybe she was right. I got sort of superstitious, and I figgered that maybe there would be luck in that bitch. So, when the time come around, I bred her to Newton’s dog–Champion Silverside. Then I got to thinking, and it seemed to me that what my dogs always needed was a more rougher life–out in the wilds, y’understand, like other animals. So I thought that I’d take Nelly up here into the mountains with me, and raise her litter during a spell while I was trapping. And that’s why you see her along with me, now!”

“Perhaps there’ll be another King?” murmured Gannaway.

“Nobody but God knows!” said the giant. “And he ain’t telling!”

CHAPTER III

LA SOMBRA was in a dreamy mood. She was not more alert, say, than a hungry dog, or a hunting cat, for though the snow lay banked beneath the trees and down the mountain side the white wind-riffles were frozen stiff, the sun of this April day was bright and warm and seeped through her rough outer coat, through the dense winter fur beneath and so to her skin. She was of a mind to close her eyes and sleep in that new and delightful heat, but nature had so adjusted the nerves of the mother wolf that in spite of herself she could not close more than one eye at a time. Now, with the one half-opened eye, she saw her husband on the mountain shoulder beneath twice stand stiffly erect with his nose pointed into the western wind, and twice sink upon his crouched fours with the long fur of his back rising and roughed into a great lion mane over his shoulders.

La Sombra opened both eyes and shivered a little, not with fear but because she felt that a period was about to be put to her sun-bath. Not with fear, for she was wedded to the king of his tribe, the great Black Wolf himself, equipped with a hundred and forty pounds of sinew, bone, and wire-haired muscle. No mountain lion would dare to trouble the pair of them, and as for the leisurely monarchs of the mountains, the grizzly bears, not one of them had risen from his winter sleep at this season of the year. So she opened both her eyes and shivered, and wondered what the danger could be; for the Black Wolf was not a creature of imagination.

Then, rumbling from the deeps of his throat, he spoke one dreadful word: “Man!”

La Sombra sprang to his side as the lariat leaps from the hand of the cowpuncher. With her nose raised into the same line of the wind, with her eyes closed, she took the scent, and at once the same thrill of horror rushed upon her. It was still faint and far, that odor, but she sped up the slope, making herself small like the squirrel which darts across the open in dread of the hawk that hangs in the sky above. Now she pressed through the narrow entrance of the cave and bounded to the nest. One by one she touched the soft, warm bodies with her nose, but so lightly that there was not a stir in answer. Then she hurried back to the mouth of the cave and crouched at her lookout.

Her eye travelled through the cleft of the first box-cañon beneath her, then a dizzy drop to the foothills, and so across the vague green blur of the cultivated lands of the valley, then on to the grey desert beyond. The green strip of the cultivated lands was what had always meant “man” to her. In this upper part of the world, what business had the strange demon that walks upon two legs–that plants steel teeth in the earth for the foot of the unwary–that slays afar with a great noise, only, and a keen-bitten stench?

Yet the Black Wolf, like a venturesome madman, remained at his post upon the shoulder of the mountain.

“Come back!” whined La Sombra.

He came with his head yet turned over his shoulder, bristling and speaking to himself.

“You will not leave me!” whimpered the mother. “Make yourself smaller–you will be seen!”

“Peace, little fool,” said the Black Wolf. “There is another scent in the wind. Do you not taste it? It means great trouble, for the blind Devil has other eyes with him. Dogs, La Sombra!”

At that, she forgot her fear for herself and stood boldly up into the breeze. High and low, from side to side with her eyes closed tight she read the message in the air. Then she dropped down again, and the ruffled hair dropped on her back, also.

“You were always half blind in these matters of far scents,” said she complacently. “There is only one dog, after all.”

“Only one?” grinned the Black Wolf, lolling out his tongue. “In that case I shall go speak to the fool before it comes too close. Perhaps I shall not have to hunt far today!”

“Do not go!” pleaded La Sombra. “Where there is Man there is danger. Have I not seen my mother die before me?”

But he was already gone down the black trail. Presently he would circle around the edge of Spencer Mountain and slink through the pines towards the trail which came up with the western wind. La Sombra shuddered again and stole back into the cave. They wakened this time at her coming and she lay down to give them food–lay in the velvet, blackness of the cave, nosing and licking them fondly–a double fondness now that danger was driving towards them up the wind. Who could tell what this day would bring?

But when the litter had eaten their fill and curled for sleep against the warmth of her breast and her belly, she disentangled herself with a swift and gentle dexterity and went again to the mouth of the cave. The worst was true! The thick smell of woodsmoke rolled up from the hollow at the side of the mountain and rank through the smoke was the odor of man and the things of man. Twice she started to crawl to the edge of the rise from which she could look down on the place; and twice her spirit failed her and she slunk back to the cave.

With the dusk the Black Wolf came to the mouth of the cave and spoke; she went to him instantly and sniffed the rabbit which he had dropped–then the feet of her husband.

“Phaugh!” snorted the mother. “Your feet, your whole body stink with it–Man!”

“He is making a smoke and a fire in the hollow,” said he. “You may smell it as plain as day. I lay as close as from here to the three pines on the edge of the hill; I lay and watched until the red heads of the flame got so big that I felt fear in my belly. So I killed and ate, and killed again and brought to you.”

She left the meat untouched.

“The dog?” said she.

“It is a white thing,” said he, “so utterly covered with the man-stench that it has hardly an odor to call its own. There is no heart in it. It sneaks at the heels of the man with its head down and its tail down. It makes no sound. Twice it came on the scent of me, as I could tell by the bristling of its hair; but it made no sound and went on at the heels of the man. Even for a dog, it is a shameful, spiritless thing. We will have no trouble with it. Ah, the little ones are awake and speaking.”

“Let the little ones be,” snarled La Sombra. “If I trust you and your teeth nearer to them than the mouth of the cave, I am not La Sombra, but a coyote that eats carrion. Be off! The stink of man on you chokes me! Be off, and keep watch!”

So she picked up the rabbit and went back to her young. But it was a wretched night for La Sombra, and brought her no rest. Dim and far on the horizon of her mind, she heard the human voice speak again and again in the hollow; and every sound of it made her cower to the cold ground with a weight of dread on her heart.

In the chill of the dawn the Black Wolf came with a fat rabbit in his teeth. But even with her appetite working in her, she would not eat until she had heard the news.

“The dog has whelped and is surrounded by naked little white things like herself. The Devil who owns the dog leans over her and feeds her, and she licks his naked hand. Fah! How my gorge rose at the sight of it!”

“They will grow big–those little ones!” moaned La Sombra. “And then what will come of me and my children.”

“Do you fear that?” said the Black Wolf. “I tell you that if the Devil will only turn his back, I shall lay them all dead!”

But ten days of agony followed for La Sombra, and every day from the mouth of her cave she read the stronger news of “dog” mingling with the old horror of “man.” Each day the Black Wolf when he brought food to La Sombra brought her news, also, of how the Devil stayed close by his fire, or at the most made only small excursions into the forest to set little traps in which he caught rabbits and birds. It was not until the tenth day, therefore, that the Black Wolf found the thing which he wanted. The trapper left his fire and placed on his shoulder the thing of iron which speaks and kills and went far off. But not until the last noise of his steps had died away through the forest did the marauder stand up and slink to the edge of the camp. In a spot where the sun broke through the trees and fell upon her, and where there was warmth from the fire also, the bull-terrier lay in a nest of softest inner bark with her brood around her, gambolling on rickety legs. So dulled were her senses with warmth and content that the danger was almost upon her before she whirled to her feet and faced the dark monster.

He was thrice her weight, or nearly so, and clad in bristling fur, he seemed a giant of dread indeed. She had time for that one glimpse only before he was upon her. The blow of his shoulder spun her on her back but the slash of his teeth missed the throat and only opened her side as a sharp knife slides through naked meat.

She twisted, bleeding, to her feet. It was not too late even now, perhaps, to call back the Devil her master with a howl of fear, but it was not in her nature to call for help. She bared her teeth in silence and met the second charge; and as he struck her, her grip was on a foreleg.

Five times in his glorious young life the Black Wolf had been chased by the pack, and five times he had slain the leaders and escaped; but their manner of battle was his own manner. They bit, and reached for a new hold, and bit again, working towards the throat; and at that game his mighty jaws were ever the master. But this was strange and new. A painful vise was clamped upon his leg with teeth that worked deeper through fur and skin and flesh to the bone. An exquisite agony held him and ground deeper still while the bull-terrier twisted and jerked and strove to snap the bone. She was a white, snarling demon–no, a red demon now, for the chisel edges of his fangs had ripped her to bits, but still she clung with a greater power to her hold and the muttering voice in the deep of her throat was like a chant in the ears of the Black Wolf–”Death! Death!”

In his writhings he swept her across and across the clearing. They struck the tent. It went down with a crash. She was whirled against a tree with a thump that took half the life from all of her except those locked jaws. Then, in the sheer ecstasy of pain and fear, he snapped at a puppy, striving to scamper out of the way and the soft young life went out between his teeth.

That instant her grip relaxed and he leaped away, limping, but free, and saw her stagger to the small dead thing and lick its body. Then the Black Wolf charged again, and this time he found the throat.

CHAPTER IV

HAD they been creatures of the wilderness, the litter would have been deftly hidden here and there in every nook and crevice long before the mother was dead; but they had behind them only long, dull generations in which Man stood between them and the problems of existence. So they scampered and tumbled here and there, yelping faintly with their terror. Only the first- born, the eldest and the strongest and the biggest of them all, had wit enough to flee straight away. Terror inspired in him what instinct could not.

La Sombra lay on the ledge above. She had heard enough to bring her to the battle-ground and now she watched her mate at work and lolled her long red tongue and laughed with a quivering belly of delight. She did not see the tottering puppy that struggled up the crusted snow of the mountain side. The sun had gone out; a fine drift of new snow was falling; perhaps the greyness of the air kept her keen eyes from spying the tiny creature that fled straight to the sanctum and crouched at the door of the cave, and then passed inside.

It was the warmth that led the puppy; and the farther he went the greater the warmth became until he reached a huddle of softly-furred bodies. Among these he snuggled, lay for a time quivering and shaking with dread, and then closed his eyes and slept!

Faster and thicker fell the snow and drew a soft, early twilight upon the day; then the Black Wolf strode back to his home and his mate was at his side as he limped along. Twice he paused, and twice she licked his double wound with a solicitous tongue. So they came to the mouth of the cave at the same time that a great man’s voice began to thunder and rage in the hollow. They shrank instinctively.

“But,” said the Black Wolf, “what can follow a trail through the new snow? Least of all Man, for the Devil is blind and has no nose! They are dead–they are all dead–but it is a day’s work which I shall never forget!”

He sniffed the deep wounds in his leg and hobbled on.

“All dead?” cried La Sombra from the mouth of the cave. “All dead? I tell you that one has come into our home! The trail is as rank as the smell of a new kill!”