The Wolf Hunters | Page 2

Yet to those long slender
ears of the bull moose, slanting beyond the heavy plates of his horns,
there came a sound. The animal lifted his head still higher to the sky,
sniffed to the east, to the west, and back to the shadows of the
tamaracks. But it was the north that held him.
From beyond that barrier of spruce there soon came a sound that man
might have heard--neither the beginning nor the end of a wail, but
something like it. Minute by minute it came more clearly, now growing
in volume, now almost dying away, but every instant approaching--the
distant hunting call of the wolf-pack! What the hangman's noose is to
the murderer, what the leveled rifles are to the condemned spy, that
hunt-cry of the wolves is to the wounded animal of the forests.
Instinct taught this to the old bull. His head dropped, his huge antlers
leveled themselves with his shoulders, and he set off at a slow trot
toward the east. He was taking chances in thus crossing the open, but to
him the spruce forest was home, and there he might find refuge. In his
brute brain he reasoned that he could get there before the wolves broke
cover. And then--
Again he stopped, so suddenly that his forward legs doubled under him
and he pitched into the snow. This time, from the direction of the
wolf-pack, there came the ringing report of a rifle! It might have been a
mile or two miles away, but distance did not lessen the fear it brought
to the dying king of the North. That day he had heard the same sound,
and it had brought mysterious and weakening pain in his vitals. With a
supreme effort he brought himself to his feet, once more sniffed into
the north, the east, and the west, then turned and buried himself in the
black and frozen wilderness of tamarack.
Stillness fell again with the sound of the rifle-shot. It might have lasted
five minutes or ten, when a long, solitary howl floated from across the
lake. It ended in the sharp, quick yelp of a wolf on the trail, and an

instant later was taken up by others, until the pack was once more in
full cry. Almost simultaneously a figure darted out upon the ice from
the edge of the forest. A dozen paces and it paused and turned back
toward the black wall of spruce.
"Are you coming, Wabi?"
A voice answered from the woods. "Yes. Hurry up--run!"
Thus urged, the other turned his face once more across the lake. He was
a youth of not more than eighteen. In his right hand he carried a club.
His left arm, as if badly injured, was done up in a sling improvised
from a lumberman's heavy scarf. His face was scratched and bleeding,
and his whole appearance showed that he was nearing complete
exhaustion. For a few moments he ran through the snow, then halted to
a staggering walk. His breath came in painful gasps. The club slipped
from his nerveless fingers, and conscious of the deathly weakness that
was overcoming him he did not attempt to regain it. Foot by foot he
struggled on, until suddenly his knees gave way under him and he sank
down into the snow.
From the edge of the spruce forest a young Indian now ran out upon the
surface of the lake. His breath was coming quickly, but with excitement
rather than fatigue. Behind him, less than half a mile away, he could
hear the rapidly approaching cry of the hunt-pack, and for an instant he
bent his lithe form close to the snow, measuring with the acuteness of
his race the distance of the pursuers. Then he looked for his white
companion, and failed to see the motionless blot that marked where the
other had fallen. A look of alarm shot into his eyes, and resting his rifle
between his knees he placed his hands, trumpet fashion, to his mouth
and gave a signal call which, on a still night like this, carried for a mile.
"Wa-hoo-o-o-o-o-o! Wa-hoo-o-o-o-o-o!"
At that cry the exhausted boy in the snow staggered to his feet, and
with an answering shout which came but faintly to the ears of the
Indian, resumed his flight across the lake. Two or three minutes later
Wabi came up beside him.

"Can you make it, Rod?" he cried.
The other made an effort to answer, but his reply was hardly more than
a gasp. Before Wabi could reach out to support him he had lost his little
remaining strength and fallen for a second time into the snow.
"I'm afraid--I--can't do it--Wabi," he whispered. "I'm--bushed--"
The young Indian dropped his rifle and knelt beside the wounded boy,
supporting his head