The Way of the Wild | Page 7

he
gave back more than he got. In the lucid terms of the vernacular, he
"was a hard un, if you like."
Nothing and nobody saw the wolverine leave that lair that was not his.
He must have chosen one blinding squall of snow for the purpose, and
was half a mile away, still on the track of the reindeer, before he
showed himself--shuffling along as usual, a ragged, hard-bitten ruffian.
And three hours later he came up with his prey.
Gulo knew it, but nobody else could have done. There were just the
straight trees ahead, and all around the eternal white, frozen silence,
and the snow falling softly over everything; but Gulo was as certain
that there was the herd close ahead as he was that he was ravenous.
And thereafter Gulo got to work, the peculiar work, a special devilish
genius for which appears to be given to the wolverine.
He ceased to exist. At least, nothing of him was seen, not a tail, not an
eye-gleam. Yet during the next two hours he learnt everything, private
and public, there was to be learnt. Also, he had been over the
surroundings almost to a yard. Nothing could have escaped him. No
detail of risk and danger, of the chance of being seen even, had been
overlooked; for he was a master at his craft, the greatest master in the
wild, perhaps. The wolf? My dear sirs, the wolf was an innocent
suckling cub beside Gulo, look you, and his brain and his cunning were
not the brain and the cunning of a beast at all, but of a devil.
When, after a very long time, he reappeared upon his original track, it
was as a dark blotch, indistinguishable from a dozen other dark blots of

moon-shadow, creeping forward belly-flat in the snow. This
belly-creep, hugging always every available inch of cover, he kept up
till he came to a big clearing, and--there were the reindeer. At least,
there was one reindeer, a doe, standing with her back towards him--a
quite young doe. The rest were half-hidden in the snow, which they had
trampled into a maze of paths in and out about the clearing, which was,
in fact, what is called their "yard."
A minute of tense silence followed after Gulo had got as close as he
could without being seen. Then he rushed.
The reindeer swung half-round, gave one snort, and a great bound. But
Gulo had covered half the intervening space before she knew, and
when she bounded it was with him hanging on to her.
Followed instantly a wild upspringing of snorting beasts, and a mad,
senseless stampede of floundering deer all round and about the
clearing--a fearful mix-up, somewhere in the midst of which,
half-hidden by flying, finely powdered snow, Gulo did his prey
horribly to death.
There was something ghastly about this murder, for the deer was so big,
and Gulo comparatively small. The fearful work of his jaws and his
immense strength seemed wrong somehow, and out of all proportion to
his size. This remarkable power of his jaws had that sinister
disproportion only paralleled by the power of the jaws of a hyena;
indeed, his teeth very much resembled a hyena's teeth.
With the deer rushing all around him, Gulo fed, ravenously and
horribly, but not for long. A new light smoldered in his eyes now as he
lifted his carmine snout, and one saw that, for the moment, the beast
was mad, crazed with the lust of killing, seeing red, and blinded by
blood.
Then the massacre began. It was not a hunt, because each deer, thinking
only of itself, feared to break from the trodden mazy path of the "yard,"
and risk the slow, helpless, plunging progress necessary in the deep
snow. Wherefore panic took them all over again, and they dashed, often

colliding, generally hindering each other, hither and thither, up and
down the paths of the "yard" with the hopeless, helpless, senseless,
blind abandon of sheep. The result was a shambles.
This part we skip. Probably--nay, certainly--Nature knows best, and is
quite well aware what she is up to, and it is perhaps not meant that we
should put her in the limelight in her grisly moods. Suffice it to say that
Gulo seemed to stop at length, simply because even he could not "see
red" forever, and with exhaustion returned sense, and with sense--in his
case--in-born caution. He removed, leaving a certain number of
reindeer bleeding upon the ground. Some of them were dead.
In an hour dawn would be conspiring to show him up before the world,
and he was not a beast sweet to look upon at that moment--indeed, at
any moment, but less so now.
Now, it is surprising how far a wolverine can