Читать книгу Silvertip's Chase - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 4

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Bill Gary did nothing but trap wolves. He cared little about other pelts, even the precious fur bearers. What he knew about was wolves, and what he wanted was wolves and nothing else.

He looked as though he had been born to his work, because he greatly resembled a wolf in his own person. He had a great, shaggy head and heavy shoulders. He had a slouching gait, a bright and dangerous eye, and the manners of an eater of raw meat.

There was nothing good to be said about Bill Gary, except that he knew how to catch wolves. Otherwise he was a huge, snarling, sullen, dangerous boor. He never went down to a town except to collect his bounties, lay in a supply of bacon, flour, a few other necessaries, and perhaps a new trap or two. He never stayed in a town longer than one whisky drunk and a few fights.

After some of those fights the other fellow was crippled for life. Bill Gary fought foul, because that was his nature. He never saw any point in giving the other fellow a chance, any more than Frosty would have dreamed of giving a tender young beef a chance for its life when he was hungry. Bill Gary fought because he loved to give pain, just as Frosty fought because he wanted fresh meat.

Bill Gary had traveled a thousand miles to come to the range of Frosty. The fame of the great wolf had traveled far and wide during the last year, but when it came to the ears of Bill Gary that such a small fortune could be collected for the scalp of a single wolf, when he heard moreover that this wolf could be known by the mere spread of its foot, and that it had its name from its pale-gray, misty color, he could hardly wait to pack his traps on a mule and start south. So he got to the Blue Waters, heard as much as he needed to know about the range of the monster, and went out to catch him.

Bill Gary arrived in October. This was March—a white, cold, windy March in the upper mountains—and still Gary had not so much as laid an eye on the great wolf. He had caught several others, but he had not so much as glimpsed the cattle eater.

Nearly any other man would have given up the task long before and attributed his lack of success to the work of the devil. But Bill Gary was as stubborn as steel, and therefore he remained at his work.

On this day, with a burden of No. 4½ Newhouse traps—the only traps ever specially designed for the catching of timber wolves—Bill Gary trudged through the Blue Waters above the timber line.

He bore with him, also, a strong ax, with a head wide and heavy enough to serve for the driving of stakes, and he had with him a big chunk of fresh venison to serve as a bait.

So weighted down, it was a hard pull for Bill Gary up the snowy slopes, but he minded no labor when he was working at his favorite occupation. He came now to the crest of a ridge where the wind had scoured the snow away; there, on a rock ledge, he sat down to rest himself while his eye ran over the picture of the great, gaunt mountains, blue-white against the gray of the sky. Below extended the forest of pines, dark as night, and the plains and foothills beyond were lost in the winter mist. Out of a canyon near by he heard the calling voices of a torrent so strong that even the winter had been unable to silence it.

None of these things had an important meaning to Bill Gary. He simply wished that the spring would hurry along, because spring is the best season, as every one knows, for the trapping of wolves. Now, when the ache had disappeared from behind his knees, he stood up and stretched himself. He saw a knob of rock jutting from the ledge, and he struck it an idle blow with the back of his ax, breaking it off short. Then he strode on.

But after he had gone a step or two, he began to think of something that his eyes had seen, but which had had no meaning to his mind at the moment.

He turned, went back, and at this instant the cloud opened, and a flare of sunshine fell right on the ledge of rock.

There was little superstition in Bill Gary, but it seemed to him that a bright, glorious hand had reached down from the sky to point to and gild his good fortune.

For there was no doubt of the thing that glittered from the broken face of the ledge. It was a dark stone on the outside, but within the skin of weathering it was gray with a crystal glittering. There was another brightness that matched and overmatched the sun that fell on it—a veining of yellow, of shining yellow!

Bill Gary looked suddenly and wildly around him. If there had been another man in sight, it would have gone ill with the stranger. But there was no one near. Who would enter this white wilderness at this season of the year?

Suddenly it seemed to Gary that this was his reward from whatever mysterious powers may be. It was his repayment for the long years of service which he had spent in wiping from the face of the earth as many as possible of the four-footed meat eaters. Here was the exchange which fate gave him—gold!

Perhaps it was only a point, a spot?

He took ten steps down the ledge and struck with the back of the ax again. A weighty fragment broke away—and again the glorious yellow glittered up at him!

He suddenly saw himself in a great, roaring city, and the great city was his. The roar of it was as the voice of his power. He saw an army of faces, and they belonged to him. He would be rich. He would be as rich as Midas!

He began to laugh, for he was thinking of his nephew, that poor, hard-working cow-puncher, Alec Gary, who drudged from year to year trying to save up enough money to marry the girl of his choice. Well, what would Alec think when his savage uncle descended from the mountains with both hands filled with gold?

After laughing at Alec, after taunting him, Bill Gary decided that he might even give a little charity to his nephew, because, after all, Alec was not a bad sort of a lad. He kept his mouth shut, he never criticized, and he knew how to work. And, after all, his name was Gary. Bill Gary, the black sheep, might now become the head of the family, the man to whom the whole tribe looked up for advice, and for help. Well, some of the advice that he had in mind to give them would work under the skin and sting them to the bone, if he knew his own mind!

He took out a pencil and a notebook. He was a methodical fellow, and he was old enough as a hunter to understand that one may forget one’s place in the wilderness. So he wrote down a description in the notebook, after he had unwrapped it from the piece of oiled silk which protected it from moisture.

Thunder Mountain on the right; Chimney Peak on the left. I face Mount Wigwam. A ledge of black rock outcropping.

That was enough for him. He could always locate the place from that description.

But how deep did the vein run? Was it only a surface slamming, or did it go down deep?

Well, he had a double jack and a drill down in his cabin, and the shack was only a mile away. He would soon make out the truth—at least he would cut a little deeper into it.

So he put down the load of fresh meat and traps and the ax. It would be a joke on him, he thought, if a wolf happened by and ate that bait before a trap was set! Then he strode off down the slope toward the cabin.

“Cabin” was too much of a name for it. Some unknown man had built it, perhaps the year before. It was a crazy little shack that leaned against a rock, but it had the advantage of running water near by, and, of course, plenty of wood for fuel. It was good enough for Bill Gary, who used to be fond of saying that his own hide was tent enough to shelter him from winter.

As he came through the trees his two dogs jumped up. They had been lying on either side of the entrance to the shack, and now they sprang up and stared at him with their wistful, red-stained eyes. Neither of them made a sound. They had been trained to hunt silently, fight silently, die silently, if need be.

Perhaps they had no desire to give tongue when they saw their master, for they had no love for him. To him they were simply tools. To them he was simply a resistless and cruel force which must be obeyed. Of their own kind, they were magnificent. He had bred them for his own purposes in hunting wolves. He had bred them big, on a basis of greyhound and Scottish deerhound for speed and general conformation. He had dashed in some mastiff to give ferocity, and some St. Bernard and Great Dane for size. For fifteen years he had been creating these monsters, and now he had a pair, either one of which was capable of giving a wolf a hard tussle single-handed.

Shock weighed a hundred and eighty pounds. Tiger was a good deal bigger. When he stood up on his hind legs his head was almost a foot above that of his master. They were as ugly as nightmares, but they had the qualities for which the master had bred them—wind, speed, and a tenacious love of battle at all times.

They had Red Cross collars around their necks. Big Bill Gary grinned as he considered that name for them. He had bought them because they were made of rustless, hinged plates of steel, so broad that they would be useful—and had indeed proved useful—in parrying the slash of a wolf when it cuts for the throat. But originally they had been Red Cross collars for use on big trained dogs that could go among the wounded, perhaps, and carry first-aid kits. Each collar had, also, a little flat compartment under one of the steel plates. It closed with a strong snap, and was almost air-tight. That was for messages that the injured could write when they used the dog to send out a call for help. That was why Bill Gary grinned—when he thought that those collars had been made for purposes of mercy, and he had put them on his killers.

He had a pair of pack harnesses for the dogs, too. He put one of them on Shock and loaded the heavy double jack onto it. He put a pair of drills and some fuse and blasting powder on Tiger. He decided that he ought to saddle the dogs more often and take them out to carry burdens. It hardened them. It made them a little slower, but it hardened them for the struggle of a fight.

Now he was prepared to go back to that ledge above him and tackle the problem of what it contained. So he strode away again, with the two great dogs following him. They went actively up the steepness of the slope, arching their backs high, sticking out their long tongues as they panted. One shifty red eye was always fixed upon him. He saw that and liked it. He always liked it. He would rather have either beast or man fear than love him.

When he got up to the ridge, he scowled back at the line of tracks which extended behind him. He was a fool to have come so straight. He should have wandered off to the side and buried his sign as he went. However, the sky was turning gray, and snowflakes were falling.

He forgot the trail and went to his work. In his powerful hand the heavy, twelve-pound double jack plied as easily as a single jack in the grasp of an ordinary man. It drove the bit chunking rapidly into the rock. He drilled a hole not too deep, slanting it up under a big and massive projection of the ledge. Then he put in a shot of powder, buried the fuse, and lighted it. From the near distance he waited, sitting down cross-legged, and heard the hollow boom of the report. He thought at first that the explosion had simply “bootlegged.” Now he returned to find that it had in reality neatly cracked off the outthrust of the rock. A two-hundred-pound mass lay on the ground, and right across the heart of it lay the precious golden streakings.

He looked up sharply, savage as a beast from a meal of raw meat. The wind, in a strong gust, blew a flurry of snow into his face. He was glad of the cold beat of the wind. He was glad to take the force of the blast, because it assured him that no other men were likely to be near.

He thought of covering up the ledge. But no, there was no use of that. A falling of trees to cover the places where he had broken the stone would simply call the attention of any traveler. And if he heaped snow over the exposure, the wind would scour it away.

Well, other men could thank their lucky stars that they did not come to bother him just now!

He licked his chapped lips as he stared at the veining of the gold. It was all his. He felt the running of the gold in the vein as he felt the running of the blood in his body. He felt able to chew the gold out of the rock. Then, as he looked about him, he took note of the venison which still had not been used.

He had found a gold mine, to be sure, but that did not by any means eradicate his sense of the months which he had spent in the pursuit of the great Frosty. It merely freed his hands to devote his full artistry to the task of catching the famous wolf. He determined, before he started on the long trek to town to file on his claim, that he would first of all take a last chance to catch Frosty.

So he turned his back on the ledge and went on up the slope.