Books: Nomads Of The North
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James Oliver Curwood >> Nomads Of The North
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On the third day it was sixty degrees below zero in the country
between the Shamattawa and Jackson's Knee. Not until the fourth
day did living things begin to move. Moose and caribou heaved
themselves up out of the thick covering of snow that had been
their protection; smaller animals dug their way out of the heart
of deep drifts and mounds; a half of the rabbits and birds were
dead. But the most terrible toll was of men. Many of those who
were caught out succeeded in keeping the life within their bodies,
and dragged themselves back to teepee and shack. But there were
also many who did not return--five hundred who died between Hudson
Bay and the Athabasca in those three terrible days of the KUSKETA
PIPPOON.
In the beginning of the Big Storm Miki found himself in the
"burnt" country of Jackson's Knee, and instinct sent him quickly
into deeper timber. Here he crawled into a windfall of tangled
trunks and tree-tops, and during the three days he did not move.
Buried in the heart of the storm, there came upon him an
overwhelming desire to return to Neewa's den, and to snuggle up to
him once more, even though Neewa lay as if dead. The strange
comradeship that had grown up between the two--their wanderings
together all through the summer, the joys and hardships of the
days and months in which they had fought and feasted like
brothers--were memories as vivid in his brain as if it had all
happened yesterday. And in the dark wind-fall, buried deeper and
deeper under the snow, he dreamed.
He dreamed of Challoner, who had been his master in the days of
his joyous puppyhood; he dreamed of the time when Neewa, the
motherless cub, was brought into camp, and of the happenings that
had come to them afterward; the loss of his master, of their
strange and thrilling adventures in the wilderness, and last of
all of Neewa's denning-up. He could not understand that. Awake,
and listening to the storm, he wondered why it was that Neewa no
longer hunted with him, but had curled himself up into a round
ball, and slept a sleep from which he could not rouse him. Through
the long hours of the three days and nights of storm it was
loneliness more than hunger that ate at his vitals. When on the
morning of the fourth day he came out from under the windfall his
ribs were showing and there was a reddish film over his eyes.
First of all he looked south and east, and whined.
Through twenty miles of snow he travelled back that day to the
ridge where he had left Neewa. On this fourth day the sun shone
like a dazzling fire. It was so bright that the glare of the snow
pricked his eyes, and the reddish film grew redder. There was only
a cold glow in the west when he came to the end of his journey.
Dusk had already begun to settle over the roofs of the forests
when he reached the ridge where Neewa had found the cavern. It was
no longer a ridge. The wind had piled the snow up over it in
grotesque and monstrous shapes. Rocks and bushes were obliterated.
Where the mouth of the cavern should have been was a drift ten
feet deep. Cold and hungry, thinned by his days and nights of
fasting, and with his last hope of comradeship shattered by the
pitiless mountains of snow, Miki turned back over his trail. There
was nothing left for him now but the old windfall, and his heart
was no longer the heart of the joyous comrade and brother of
Neewa, the bear. His feet were sore and bleeding, but still he
went on. The stars came out; the night was ghostly white in their
pale fire; and it was cold--terribly cold. The trees began to
snap. Now and then there came a report like a pistol-shot as the
frost snapped at the heart of timber. It was thirty degrees below
zero. And it was growing colder. With the windfall as his only
inspiration Miki drove himself on. Never had he tested his
strength or his endurance as he strained them now. Older dogs
would have fallen in the trail or have sought shelter or rest. But
Miki was the true son of Hela, his giant Mackenzie hound father,
and he would have continued until he triumphed--or died.
But a strange thing happened. He had travelled twenty miles to the
ridge, and fifteen of the twenty miles back, when a shelf of snow
gave way under his feet and he was pitched suddenly downward. When
he gathered his dazed wits and stood up on his half frozen legs he
found himself in a curious place. He had rolled completely into a
wigwam-shaped shelter of spruce boughs and sticks, and strong in
his nostrils was the SMELL OF MEAT. He found the meat not more
than a foot from the end of his nose. It was a chunk of frozen
caribou flesh transfixed on a stick, and without questioning the
manner of its presence he gnawed at it ravenously. Only Jacques Le
Beau, who lived eight or ten miles to the east, could have
explained the situation. Miki had rolled into one of his trap-
houses, and it was the bait he was eating.
There was not much of it, but it fired Miki's blood with new life.
There was smell in his nostrils now, and he began clawing in the
snow. After a little his teeth struck something hard and cold. It
was steel--a fisher trap. He dragged it up from under a foot of
snow, and with it came a huge rabbit. The snow had so protected
the rabbit that, although several days dead, it was not frozen
stiff. Not until the last bone of it was gone did Miki's feast
end. He even devoured the head. Then he went on to the windfall,
and in his warm nest slept until another day.
That day Jacques Le Beau--whom the Indians called "Muchet-ta-aao"
(the One with an Evil Heart)--went over his trapline and rebuilt
his snow-smothered "houses" and re-set his traps.
It was in the afternoon that Miki, who was hunting, struck his
trail in a swamp several miles from the windfall. No longer was
his soul stirred by the wild yearning for a master. He sniffed,
suspiciously, of Le Beau's snowshoe tracks and the crest along his
spine trembled as he caught the wind, and listened. He followed
cautiously, and a hundred yards farther on came to one of Le
Beau's KEKEKS or trap-shelters. Here too, there was meat--fixed on
a peg. Miki reached in. From under his fore-paw came a vicious
snap and the steel jaws of a trap flung sticks and snow into his
face. He snarled, and for a few moments he waited, with his eyes
on the trap. Then he stretched himself until he reached the meat,
without advancing his feet. Thus he had discovered the hidden
menace of the steel jaws, and instinct told him how to evade them.
For another third of a mile he followed Le Beau's tracks. He
sensed the presence of a new and thrilling danger, and yet he did
not turn off the trail. An impulse which he was powerless to
resist drew him on. He came to a second trap, and this time he
robbed the bait-peg without springing the thing which he knew was
concealed close under it. His long fangs clicked as he went on. He
was eager for a glimpse of the man-beast. But he did not hurry. A
third, a fourth, and a fifth trap he robbed of their meat.
Then, as the day ended, he swung westward and covered quickly the
five miles between the swamp and his windfall.
Half an hour later Le Beau came back over the line. He saw the
first empty KEKEK, and the tracks in the snow.
"TONNERRE!--a wolf!" he exclaimed. "And in broad day!"
Then a slow look of amazement crept into his face, and he fell
upon his knees in the snow and examined the tracks.
"NON!" he gasped. "It is a dog! A devil of a wild dog--robbing my
traps!"
He rose to his feet, cursing. From the pocket of his coat he drew
a small tin box, and from this box he took a round ball of fat. In
the heart of the fat was a strychnine capsule. It was a poison-
bait, to be set for wolves and foxes.
Le Beau chuckled exultantly as he stuck the deadly lure on the end
of the bait-peg.
"OW, a wild dog," he growled. "I will teach him. To-morrow he will
be dead."
On each of the five ravished bait-pegs he placed a strychnine
capsule rolled in its inviting little ball of fat.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next morning Miki set out again for the trapline of Jacques Le
Beau. It was not the thought of food easily secured that tempted
him. There would have been a greater thrill in killing for
himself. It was the trail, with its smell of the man-beast, that
drew him like a magnet. Where that smell was very strong he wanted
to lie down, and wait. Yet with his desire there was also fear,
and a steadily growing caution. He did not tamper with the first
KEKEK, nor with the second. At the third Le Beau had fumbled in
the placing of his bait, and for that reason the little ball of
fat was strong with the scent of his hands. A fox would have
turned away from it quickly. Miki, however, drew it from the peg
and dropped it in the snow between his forefeet. Then he looked
about him, and listened for a full minute. After that he licked
the ball of fat with his tongue. The scent of Le Beau's hands kept
him from swallowing it as he had swallowed the caribou meat. A
little suspiciously he crushed it slowly between his jaws. The fat
was sweet. He was about to gulp it down when he detected another
and less pleasant taste, and what remained in his mouth he spat
out upon the snow. But the acrid bite of the poison remained upon
his tongue and in his throat. It crept deeper--and he caught up a
mouthful of snow and swallowed it to put out the burning sensation
that was crawling nearer to his vitals.
Had he devoured the ball of fat as he had eaten the other baits he
would have been dead within a quarter of an hour, and Le Beau
would not have gone far to find his body. As it was, he was
beginning to turn sick at the end of the fifteen minutes. A
premonition of the evil that was upon him drew him off the trail
and in the direction of the windfall. He had gone only a short
distance when suddenly his legs gave way under him, and he fell.
He began to shiver. Every muscle in his body trembled. His teeth
clicked. His eyes grew wide, and it was impossible for him to
move. And then, like a hand throttling him, there came a strange
stiffness in the back of his neck, and his breath hissed chokingly
out of his throat. The stiffness passed like a wave of fire
through his body. Where his muscles had trembled and shivered a
moment before they now became rigid and lifeless. The throttling
grip of the poison at the base of his brain drew his head back
until his muzzle was pointed straight up to the sky. Still he made
no cry. For a space every nerve in his body was at the point of
death.
Then came the change. As though a string had snapped, the horrible
grip left the back of his neck; the stiffness shot out of his body
in a flood of shivering cold, and in another moment he was
twisting and tearing up the snow in mad convulsions. The spasm
lasted for perhaps a minute. When it was over Miki was panting.
Streams of saliva dripped from his jaws into the snow. But he was
alive. Death had missed him by a hair, and after a little he
staggered to his feet and continued on his way to the windfall.
Thereafter Jacques Le Beau might place a million poison capsules
in his way and he would not touch them. Never again would he steal
the meat from a bait-peg.
Two days later Le Beau saw where Miki had fought his fight with
death in the snow and his heart was black with rage and
disappointment. He began to follow the footprints of the dog. It
was noon when he came to the windfall and saw the beaten path
where Miki entered it. On his knees he peered into the cavernous
depths--and saw nothing. But Miki, lying watchfully, saw the man,
and he was like the black, bearded monster who had almost killed
him with a club a long time ago. And in his heart, too, there was
disappointment, for away back in his memory of things there was
always the thought of Challoner--the master he had lost; and it
was never Challoner whom he found when he came upon the man smell.
Le Beau heard his growl, and the man's blood leapt excitedly as he
rose to his feet. He could not go in after the wild dog, and he
could not lure him out. But there was another way. He would drive
him out with fire!
Deep back in his fortress, Miki heard the crunch of Le Beau's feet
in the snow. A few minutes later he saw the man-beast again
peering into his lair.
"BETE, BETE," he called half tauntingly, and again Miki growled.
Jacques was satisfied. The windfall was not more than thirty or
forty feet in diameter, and about it the forest was open and clear
of undergrowth. It would be impossible for the wild dog to get
away from his rifle.
A second time he went around the piled-up mass of fallen timber.
On three sides it was completely smothered under the deep snow.
Only where Miki's trail entered was it open.
Getting the wind behind him Le Beau made his ISKOO of birch-bark
and dry wood at the far end of the windfall. The seasoned logs and
tree-tops caught the fire like tinder, and within a few minutes
the flames began to crackle and roar in a manner that made Miki
wonder what was happening. For a space the smoke did not reach
him. Le Beau, watching, with his rifle in his bare hands, did not
for an instant let his eyes leave the spot where the wild dog must
come out.
Suddenly a pungent whiff of smoke filled Miki's nostrils, and a
thin white cloud crept in a ghostly veil between him and the
opening. A crawling, snake-like rope of it began to pour between
two logs within a yard of him, and with it the strange roaring
grew nearer and more menacing. Then, for the first time, he saw
lightning flashes of yellow flame through the tangled debris as
the fire ate into the heart of a mass of pitch-filled spruce. In
another ten seconds the flames leapt twenty feet into the air, and
Jacques Le Beau stood with his rifle half to his shoulder, ready
to kill.
Appalled by the danger that was upon him, Miki did not forget Le
Beau. With an instinct sharpened to fox-like keenness his mind
leapt instantly to the truth of the matter. It was the man-beast
who had set this new enemy upon him; and out there, just beyond
the opening, the man-beast was waiting. So, like the fox, he did
what Le Beau least expected. He crawled back swiftly through the
tangled tops until he came to the wall of snow that shut the
windfall in, and through this he burrowed his way almost as
quickly as the fox himself would have done it. With his jaws he
tore through the half-inch outer crust, and a moment later stood
in the open, with the fire between him and Le Beau.
The windfall was a blazing furnace, and suddenly Le Beau ran back
a dozen steps so that he could see on the farther side. A hundred
yards away he saw Miki making for the deeper forest.
It was a clear shot. At that distance Le Beau would have staked
his life that it was impossible for him to miss. He did not hurry.
One shot, and it would be over. He raised his rifle, and in that
instant a wisp of smoke came like the lash of a whip with the wind
and caught him fairly in the eyes, and his bullet passed three
inches over Miki's head. The whining snarl of it was a new thing
to Miki. But he recognized the thunder of the gun--and he knew
what a gun could do. To Le Beau, still firing at him through the
merciful cloud of smoke, he was like a gray streak flashing to the
thick timber. Three times more Le Beau fired. From the edge of a
dense clump of spruce Miki flung back a defiant howl. He
disappeared as Le Beau's last shot shovelled up the snow at his
heels.
The narrowness of his escape from the man-beast did not frighten
Miki out of the Jackson's Knee country. If anything, it held him
more closely to it. It gave him something to think about besides
Neewa and his aloneness. As the fox returns to peer stealthily
upon the deadfall that has almost caught him, so the trapline was
possessed now of a new thrill for Miki. Heretofore the man-smell
had held for him only a vague significance; now it marked the
presence of a real and concrete danger. And he welcomed it. His
wits were sharpened. The fascination of the trapline was deadlier
than before.
From the burned windfall he made a wide detour to a point where Le
Beau's snowshoe trail entered the edge of the swamp; and here,
hidden in a thick clump of bushes, he watched him as he travelled
homeward half an hour later.
From that day he hung like a grim, gray ghost to the trapline.
Silent-footed, cautious, always on the alert for the danger which
threatened him, he haunted Jacques Le Beau's thoughts and
footsteps with the elusive persistence of a were-wolf--a loup-
garou of the Black Forest. Twice in the next week Le Beau caught a
flash of him. Three times he heard him howl. And twice he followed
his trail until, in despair and exhaustion, he turned back. Never
was Miki caught unaware. He ate no more baits in the trap-houses.
Even when Le Beau lured him with the whole carcass of a rabbit he
would not touch it, nor would he touch a rabbit frozen dead in a
snare. From Le Beau's traps he took only the living things,
chiefly birds and squirrels and the big web-footed snowshoe
rabbits. And because a mink jumped at him once, and tore open his
nose, he destroyed a number of minks so utterly that their pelts
were spoiled. He found himself another windfall, but instinct
taught him now never to go to it directly, but to approach it, and
leave it, in a roundabout way.
Day and night Le Beau, the man-brute, plotted against him. He set
many poison-baits. He killed a doe, and scattered strychnine in
its entrails. He built deadfalls, and baited them with meat soaked
in boiling fat. He made himself a "blind" of spruce and cedar
boughs, and sat for long hours, watching with his rifle. And still
Miki was the victor.
One day Miki found a huge fisher-cat in one of the traps. He had
not forgotten the battle of long ago with Oochak, the other
fisher-cat, or the whipping he had received. But there was no
thought of vengeance in his heart on the early evening he became
acquainted with Oochak the Second. Usually he was in his windfall
at dusk, but this afternoon a great and devouring loneliness had
held him on the trail. The spirit of Kuskayetum--the hand of the
mating-god--was pressing heavily upon him; the consuming desire of
flesh and blood for the companionship of other flesh and blood. It
burned in his veins like a fever. It took away from him all
thought of hunger or of the hunt. In his soul was a vast, unfilled
yearning.
It was then that he came upon Oochak. Perhaps it was the same
Oochak of months ago. If so, he had grown even as Miki had grown.
He was splendid, with his long silken fur and his sleek body, and
he was not struggling, but sat awaiting his fate without
excitement. To Miki he looked warm and soft and comfortable. It
made him think of Neewa, and the hundred and one nights they had
slept together. His desire leapt out to Oochak. He whined softly
as he advanced. He would make friends. Even with Oochak, his old
enemy, he would lie down in peace and happiness, so great was the
gnawing emptiness in his heart.
Oochak made no response, nor did he move, but sat furred up like a
huge soft ball, watching Miki as he crept nearer on his belly.
Something of the old puppishness came back into the dog. He
wriggled and thumped his tail, and as he whined again he seemed to
say.
"Let's forget the old trouble, Oochak. Let's be friends. I've got
a fine windfall--and I'll kill you a rabbit."
And still Oochak did not move or make a sound. At last Miki could
almost reach out with his forepaws and touch him. He dragged
himself still nearer, and his tail thumped harder.
"And I'll get you out of the trap," he may have been saying. "It's
the man-beast's trap--and I hate him."
And then, so suddenly that Miki had no chance to guard himself,
Oochak sprang the length of the trap-chain and was at him. With
teeth and razor-edged claws he tore deep gashes in Miki's nose.
Even then the blood of battle rose slowly in him, and he might
have retreated had not Oochak's teeth got a hold in his shoulder.
With a roar he tried to shake himself free, but Oochak held on.
Then his jaws snapped at the back of the fisher-cat's neck. When
he was done Oochak was dead.
He slunk away, but in him there was no more the thrill of the
victor. He had killed, but in killing he had found no joy. Upon
him--the four-footed beast--had fallen at last the oppression of
the thing that drives men mad. He stood in the heart of a vast
world, and for him that world was empty. He was an outcast. His
heart crying out for comradeship, he found that all things feared
him or hated him. He was a pariah; a wanderer without a friend or
a home. He did not reason these things but the gloom of them
settled upon him like black night.
He did not return to his windfall. In a little open he sat on his
haunches, listening to the night sounds, and watching the stars as
they came out. There was an early moon, and as it came up over the
forest, a great throbbing red disc that seemed filled with life,
he howled mournfully in the face of it. He wandered out into a big
burn a little later, and there the night was like day, so clear
that his shadow followed him and all other things about him cast
shadows, And then, all at once, he caught in the night wind a
sound which he had heard many times before.
It came from far away, and it was like a whisper at first, an echo
of strange voices riding on the wind, A hundred times he had heard
that cry of the wolves. Since Maheegun, the she-wolf, had gashed
his shoulder so fiercely away back in the days of his puppyhood
he had evaded the path of that cry. He had learned, in a way, to
hate it. But he could not wipe out entirely the thrill that came
with that call of the blood. And to-night it rode over all his
fear and hatred. Out there was COMPANY. Whence the cry came the
wild brethren were running two by two, and three by three, and
there was COMRADESHIP. His body quivered. An answering cry rose in
his throat, dying away in a whine, and for an hour after that he
heard no more of the wolf-cry in the wind. The pack had swung to
the west--so far away that their voices were lost. And it passed--
with the moon straight over them--close to the shack of Pierrot,
the halfbreed.
In Pierrot's cabin was a white man, on his way to Fort O' God. He
saw that Pierrot crossed himself, and muttered.
"It is the mad pack," explained Pierrot then. "M'sieu, they have
been KESKWAO since the beginning of the new moon. In them are the
spirits of devils."
He opened the cabin door a little, so that the mad cry of the
beasts came to them plainly. When he closed it there was in his
eyes a look of strange fear.
"Now and then wolves go like that--KESKWAO (stark mad)--in the
dead of winter," he shuddered. "Three days ago there were twenty
of them, m'sieu, for I saw them with my own eyes, and counted
their tracks in the snow. Since then they been murdered and torn
into strings by the others of the pack. Listen to them ravin'! Can
you tell me why, m'sieu? Can you tell me why wolves sometimes go
mad in the heart of winter when there is no heat or rotten meat to
turn them sick? NON? But I can tell you. They are the loups-
garous; in their bodies ride the spirits of devils, and there they
will ride until the bodies die. For the wolves that go mad in the
deep snows always die, m'sieu. That is the strange part of it.
THEY DIE!"
And then it was, swinging eastward from the cabin of Pierrot, that
the mad wolves of Jackson's Knee came into the country of the big
swamp wherein trees bore the Double-X blaze of Jacques Le Beau's
axe. There were fourteen of them running in the moonlight. What it
is that now and then drives a wolf-pack mad in the dead of winter
no man yet has wholly learned. Possibly it begins with a "bad"
wolf; just as a "bad" sledge-dog, nipping and biting his fellows,
will spread his distemper among them until the team becomes an
ugly, quarrelsome horde. Such a dog the wise driver kills--or
turns loose.
The wolves that bore down upon Le Beau's country were red-eyed and
thin. Their bodies were covered with gashes, and the mouths of
some frothed blood. They did not run as wolves run for meat. They
were a sinister and suspicious lot, with a sneaking droop to their
haunches, and their cry was not the deep-throated cry of the hunt-
pack but a ravening clamour that seemed to have no leadership or
cause. Scarcely was the sound of their tongues gone beyond the
hearing of Pierrot's ears than one of the thin gray beasts rubbed
against the shoulder of another, and the second turned with the
swiftness of a snake, like the "bad" dog of the traces, and struck
his fangs deep into the first wolf's flesh. Could Pierrot have
seen, he would have understood then how the four he had found had
come to their end.
Swift as the snap of a whip-lash the fight between the two was on.
The other twelve of the pack stopped. They came back, circling in
cautiously and grimly silent about their fighting comrades. They
ranged themselves in a ring, as men gather about a fistic battle;
and there they waited, their jaws drooling, their fangs clicking,
a low and eager whining smothered in their throats. And then the
thing happened. One of the fighting wolves went down. He was on
his back--and the end came. The twelve wolves were upon him as
one, and, like those Pierrot had seen, he was torn to pieces, and
his flesh devoured. After that the thirteen went on deeper into Le
Beau's country.
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