The Way of the Wild | Page 8

shift his clumsy-looking
body over snow in an hour, especially if he has reasons. This one had
good reasons, and he was no fool. He knew quite well the kind of little
hell he had made for himself behind there, and he did not stay to let the
snow cover him. He traveled as if he were a machine and knew no
fatigue; and the end of that journey was a hole in a hollow among
rocks.
Dawn was throwing a wan light upon all things when he thrust his short,
sharp muzzle inside that hole, to be met by a positively hair-raising
volley of rasping, vicious growls.
He promptly ripped out a string of ferocious, dry, harsh growls in
return, and for half-a-minute the air became full of growls, horrible and
blood-curdling, each answering each.
Then he lurched in over the threshold, and coolly dodged a thick paw,
with tearing white claws, that whipped at him with a round-arm stroke
out of the pitch-darkness. The stroke was repeated, scraping, but in
nowise hurting his matted coat, as he rose on his hindlegs and threw
himself upon the striker.

Followed a hectic thirty seconds of simply diabolical noises, while the
two rolled upon the ground, grappling fiendishly in the darkness. Then
they parted, got up, growled one final roll of fury at each other, fang to
fang, and, curling up, went to sleep. But it was nothing, only the quite
usual greeting between Gulo and his wife. They were a sweet couple.
There appeared to be no movement, or any least sign of awakening, on
the part of either of the couple between that moment and sometime in
the afternoon, when, so far as one could see, Gulo suddenly rolled
straight from deep sleep out on to the snow, and away without a sound,
at his indescribable shamble and at top speed.
Mrs. Gulo executed precisely the same amazing maneuver, and at
exactly the same moment, as far as could be seen, on the other side, and
shuffled off into the forest. They gave no explanation for so doing.
They said never a word--nothing. One moment they were curled up,
asleep; the next they had gone, scampered, apparently into the land of
the spirits, and were no more. Nor did there seem to be any reason for
this extraordinary conduct except--except---- Well, it is true that a
willow-grouse, white as the snowy branch he sat upon, did start
clucking somewhere in the dim tree regiments, a snipe did come
whistling sadly over the tree-tops, and a raven, jet against the white, did
flap up, barking sharply, above the pointed pine-tops; but that was
nothing--to us. To the wolverines it was everything, a whole wireless
message in the universal code of the wild, and they had read it _in their
sleep_. Through their slumbers it had spelt into their brains, and
instantly snapped into action that wonderful, faultless machinery that
moved them to speed as if automatically.
Then the chase began, grim, steady, relentless, dogged--the chase of
death, the battle of endurance.
A pause followed after the vanishing of the hated wolverines. A crow
lifted on rounded vans, marking their departure, and it was seen. A
blackcock launched from a high tree with a whir and a bluster like an
aeroplane, showing their course, and it was noted. An eagle climbed
heavily and ponderously over the low curtain of the snow mist,
pointing their way, and it was followed. All the wild, all the world,

seemed to be against the wolverines. The brigands were afoot by day.
The scouts were marking their trail.
Then a lynx, moving with great bounds on his huge swathed paws, shot
past between the iron-hard tree-boles; a fox followed, scudding like the
wind on the frozen crest; a hare, white as a waste wraith, flashed by,
swift as a racing white cloud-shadow; a goshawk screamed, and drew a
straight streaking line across a glade. And then came the men, side by
side, deadly dumb, with set faces, the pale sun glinting coldly cruel
upon the snaky, lean barrels of their slung rifles, moving with steady,
fleet, giant strides on their immense spidery ski that were eleven feet
long, which whispered ghostily among the silent aisles of Nature's
cathedral of a thousand columns. The Brothers were on the death-trail
of Gulo at last; the terrible, dreaded Brothers, who could overtake a
full-grown wolf in under thirty minutes on ski, and whose single bullet
spelt certain death. Now for it; now for the fight. Now for the great test
of the "star" wild outlaw against the "star" human hunters--at last. The
reindeer were to be avenged.
Then Time took the bit of silence between his teeth and seconds
became hours, and minutes generations.
No sound made the wolverines as they