Читать книгу The Lonesome Trail - John G. Neihardt - Страница 4

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Through the quiet night, crystalline with the pervading spirit of the frost, under prairie skies of mystic purple pierced with the glass-like glinting of the stars, fled Antoine.

Huge and hollow-sounding with the clatter of the pinto’s hoofs hung the night above and about—lonesome, empty, bitter as the soul of him who fled.

A weary age of flight since sunset; and now the midnight saw the thin-limbed, long-haired pony slowly losing his nerve, tottering, rasping in the throat. With pitiless spike-spurred heels the rider hurled the beast into the empty night.

“Gwan! you blasted cayuse! you overgrown wolf-dog! you pot-bellied shonga! Keep up that tune; I’m goin’ somewheres. What’d I steal you fer? Pleasure? He, he, he, ho, ho, ho! I reckon; pleasure for the half-breed! Gwan!”

Suddenly rounding a bank of sand, the pinto sighted the broad, ice-bound river, an elysian stream of glinting silver under the stars. Sniffing and crouching upon its haunches at the sudden glow that dwindled a gleaming thread into the further dusk, the jaded beast received a series of vicious jabs from the spike-spurred heels. It groaned and lunged forward again, taking with uncertain feet the glaring path ahead, and awakening dull, snarling thunder in the under regions of the ice. Slipping, struggling, doing its brute best to overcome fatigue and the uncertainty of its path, the pinto covered the ice.

“Doin’ a war dance, eh?” growled the man with bitter mirth, and gouging the foaming bloody flanks of the animal. “Gwan! Set up that tune; I want fast music, ’cause I’m goin’ somewheres—don’t know where—somewheres out there in the shadders! Come here, will you? Take that and that and that! Now will you kick the scen’ry back’ards? By the——!”

The brutal cries of the man were cut short as he shot far over the pommel, lunging headlong over the pinto’s head, and striking with head and shoulders upon the glare ice. When he stopped sliding he lay very still for a few moments. Then he groaned, sat up, and found that the bluffs and the river and the stars and the universe in general were whirling giddily, with himself for the dizzy centre.

With uncertain arms he reached out, endeavouring to check the sickening motion of things with the sheer force of his powerful hands. He was thrown down like a weakling wrestling with a giant. He lay still, cursing in a whisper, trying to steady the universe, until the motion passed, leaving in his nerves the sickening sensation incident to the sudden ending of a rapid flight.

With great care Antoine raised himself upon his elbows and gazed about with an imbecile leer. Then he began to remember; remembered that he was hunted; that he was an outcast, a man of no race; remembered dimly, and with a malignant grin, a portion of a long series of crimes; remembered that the last was horse-stealing and that some of the others concerned blood. And as he remembered, he felt with horrible distinctness the lariat tightening about his neck—the lariat that the men of Cabanne’s trading post were bringing on fleet horses, nearer, nearer, nearer through the silent night.

Antoine shuddered and got to his feet, looming huge against the star-sprent surface of the ice, as he turned a face of bestial malevolence down trail and listened for the beat of hoofs. There was only the dim, hollow murmur that dwells at the heart of silence.

“Got a long start,” he observed, with the chuckle of a man whom desperation has made careless. “Hel-lo!”

A pale, semicircular glow, like the flare of a burning straw stack a half day’s journey over the hills, had grown up at the horizon of the east; and as the man stared, still in a maze from his recent fall, the moon heaved a tarnished silver arc above the mystic rim of sky, flooding with new light the river and the bluffs. The man stood illumined—a big brute of a man, heavy-limbed, massive-shouldered, with the slouching stoop and the alert air of an habitual skulker. He moved uneasily, as though he had suddenly become visible to some lurking foe. He glanced nervously about him, fumbled at the butt of a six-shooter at his belt, then catching sight of the blotch of huddled dusk that was the fallen pinto, the meaning of the situation flashed upon him.

“That cussed cayuse! Gone and done hisself like as not! Damn me! the whole creation’s agin me!”

He made for the pony, snarling viciously as though its exhausted, lacerated self were the visible body of the inimical universe. He grasped the reins and jerked them violently. The brute only groaned and let its weary head fall heavily upon the ice.

“Get up!”

Antoine began kicking the pony in the ribs, bringing forth great hollow bellowings of pain.

“O, you won’t get up, eh? Agin me too, eh? Take that, and that and that! I wished you was everybody in the whole world and hell to oncet, I’d make you beller now I got you down! Take that!”

The man with a roar of anger fell upon the pony, snarling, striking, kicking, but the pony only groaned. Its limbs could no longer support its body. When Antoine had exhausted his rage, he got up, gave the pony a parting kick on the nose, and started off at a dogtrot across the glinting ice towards the bluffs beyond.

Ever and anon he stopped and whirled about with hand at ear. He heard only the sullen murmur of the silence, broken occasionally by the whine and pop of the ice and the plaintive, bitter wail of the coyotes somewhere in the hills, like the heartbroken cry of the lonesome prairie, yearning for the summer.

“O, I wouldn’t howl if I was you,” muttered the man to the coyotes; “I wished I was a coyote or a grey wolf, knowin’ what I do. I’d be a man-killer and a cattle-killer, I would. And then I’d have people of my own. Wouldn’t be no cur of a half-breed runnin’ from his kind. O, I wouldn’t howl if I was you!”

He proceeded at a swinging trot across the half mile of ice and halted under the bluffs. He listened intently. A far sound had grown up in the hollow night—vague, but unmistakable. It was the clatter of hoofs far away, but clear in faintness, for the cold snap had made the prairie one vast sounding-board. A light snow had fallen the night before, and the trail of the refugee was traced in the moonlight, distinct as a wagon track.

Antoine felt the pitiless pinch of the approaching lariat as he listened. Then his accustomed bitter weariness of life came upon the pariah.

“What’s the use of me runnin’? What am I runnin’ to? Nothin’—only more of the same thing I’m runnin’ from; lonesomeness and hunger and the like of that. Gettin’ awake stiff and cold and half starved and cussin’ the daylight ’cause it’s agin me like everything else, and gives me away. Sneakin’ around in the brush till dark, eatin’ when I can like a damned wolf, then goin’ to sleep hopin’ it’ll never get day. But it always does. It’s all night somewheres, I guess, spite of what the missionaries says. That’s fer me—night always! No comin’ day, no gettin’ up, somewhere to hide snug in always!”

He walked on with head dropped forward upon his breast, skirting the base of the bluffs, now seemingly oblivious of the sound of hoofs that grew momently more distinct.

As he walked, he was dimly conscious of passing the dark mouth of a hole running back into the clay of a bluff. He proceeded until he found himself again at the edge of the river, staring down into a broad, black fissure in the ice, caused, doubtless, by the dash of the current crossing from the other side.

A terrible, dark, but alluring thought seized him. Here was the place—the doorway to that place where it was always night! Why not go in? There would be no more running away, no more hiding, no more hatred of men, no more lonesomeness! Here was the place at last.

He stepped forward and stooped to gaze down into the door of night. The rushing waters made a dismal, moaning sound.

He stared transfixed. Yes, he would go!

Suddenly a shudder ran through his limbs. He gave a quick exclamation of terror! He leaped back and raised his face to the skies.

How kind and soft and gentle and good to look upon was the sky! He gazed about—it was so fair a world! How good it was to breathe! He longed to throw his great, brute arms about creation and clutch it to him, and hold it, hold it, hold it! He wished to live.

The hoofs!

The distant muffled confusion of sound had grown into sharp, distinct, staccato notes. The pursuers were now less than a mile away. Soon they would reach the river.

With the quick instinct of the hunted beast, Antoine knew the means of safety. His footprints led to the ice-fissure. He decided that none should lead away. He could not be pursued under ice. Stooping so that he could look between his legs, he began retracing his steps, walking backward, placing his feet with infinite care where they had fallen before. Thus he came again to the hole in the clay bluff, and disappeared. His trail had passed within a foot of the hole, which was overhung by a jutting point of sandstone. No snow had fallen at the entrance; he left no trail as he entered.

Stopping upon his hands and knees, he listened and could hear distinctly the sharp crack of hoofs upon the ice and the pop and thunder of the frozen surface.

“Here’s some luck,” muttered Antoine. He crawled on into the nether darkness of the hole that grew more spacious as he proceeded. As he crawled, the sound of pursuing hoofs grew dimmer. Antoine half forgot them. His keen sense had caught the peculiar musty odour of animal life. He felt a stuffy warmth in his nostrils as he breathed.

Suddenly out of the dark ahead grew up two points of phosphorescent light. Antoine fell back upon his haunches with a little growl of surprise in his throat. Years of wild lonesome life had made him more beast than man.

The lights slowly came closer, growing more brilliant. Then there was a harsh, rasping growl and a sound of sniffing. Antoine waited until the expanding pupils of his eyes could grasp the situation with more distinctness. “Can’t run,” he mused. “Lariat behind, somethin’ growlin’ in front. It’s one more fight. Here goes fer my damnedest. Rather die mad and fightin’ than jump into cold water or stick my head through a rawhide necktie!”

He crawled on carefully. The lights approached with a strange swaying motion. Then of a sudden came a whine, a sharp, savage yelp, and Antoine felt his cheek ripped open with a stroke of gnashing teeth!

He felt for an instant the hot breath of the beast, the trickle of hot blood on his cheek; and then all that was human in him passed. He growled and hurled the sinewy body of his unseen foe from him with a blow of his bear-like paw. He was a big man, and in his blood the primitive beast had grown large through long years of lonesome hiding from his kind.

The dark hole echoed a muffled howl of anger, and in an instant man and beast rolled together in the darkness. It was a primitive struggle; the snapping of jaws, the rasping of hoarse throats that laboured with angry breath, snarlings of hate, yelps of pain, growls, whines.

At last the man knew that it was a grey wolf he fought. He reached for its throat, but felt his hand caught in a hot, wet, powerful trap of teeth. He grasped the under jaw with a grip that made his antagonist howl with pain. Then with his other hand he felt about in the darkness, groping for the throat.

He found it, seized it with a vice-like clutch, shut his teeth together, and threw all of the power of his massive frame into the struggle.

Slowly, slowly, the struggles of the wolf became weaker. The lean, hairy form fell limply, and the man laughed with a strange, sobbing, guttural mirth—for he was master.

Then again he felt the trickle of blood upon his cheek, the ache of his bitten hand. His anger returned with double fury. He kicked the limp body as he lay beside it, never releasing his grip.

Suddenly he forgot to kick. There were sounds! He heard the thump thump of hoofs passing his place of refuge. Then they ceased. There were sounds of voices coming dimly; then after a while the hoofs passed again, and there was a voice that said “saved hangin’ anyway.”

The hoof beats grew dimmer, and Antoine knew by their hollow sound that his pursuers had begun to cross the ice on the back trail. He again gave his attention to the wolf. It lay very still. A feeling of supreme comfort came over Antoine. It was sweet to be a master. He laid his head upon the wolf’s motionless body. He was very weary, he had conquered, and he would sleep upon his prey.

He awoke feeling a warm, rasping something upon his wounded cheek. A faint light came in at the entrance of the place. It was morning. In his sleep Antoine had moved his head close to the muzzle of the wolf. Now, utterly conquered, bruised, unable to arise, the brute was feebly licking the blood from the man’s wound.

Antoine’s sense of mastery after his sound sleep made him kind for once. He was safe and something had caressed him, altho’ it was only a soundly-beaten wolf.

“You pore devil!” said Antoine with a sudden softness in his voice; “I done you up, didn’t I? You hain’t so bad, I guess; but if I hadn’t done you, I’d got done myself. Hurt much, you pore devil, eh?”

He stroked the side of the animal, whereupon it cried out with pain.

“Pretty sore, eh? Well as long as I’m bigger’n you, I’ll be good to you, I will. I ain’t so bad, am I? You treat me square and you won’t never get no bad deals from the half-breed; mind that. Hel-lo! you’re a Miss Wolf, ain’t you? Well, for the present, I’m a Mister Wolf, and I’m a good un! Let me hunt you up a name; somethin’ soft like a woman, ’cause you did touch me kind of tender like. Susette!—that’s it—Susette. You’re Susette now. I hain’t got no people, so I’m a wolf from now on, and my name’s Antoine. Susette and Antoine—sounds pretty good, don’t it? Say, I know as much about bein’ a wolf as you do. Can’t teach me nothin’ about sneakin’ and hidin’ and fightin’! Say, old girl, hain’t I a tol’able good fighter now? O, I know I am, and when you need it again, you’re goin’ to get it good and hard, Susette; mind that. Hain’t got nothin’ to eat about the house, have you, old girl? Then, bein’ head of the family with a sick woman about, I’m goin’ huntin’. Don’t you let no other wolf come skulkin’ around! You know me! I’ll wear his skin when I come back, if you don’t mind!”

And he went out.

Before noon he returned bringing three jack rabbits, having shot them with his six-shooter. “Well, Susette,” said he, “got any appetite?”

He passed his hand over the wolf’s snout caressingly. The wolf flinched in fear, but the man continued his caresses until she licked his hand.

“Now we’re friends and we can live together peaceable, can’t we? Took a big family row, though. Families needs stirrin’ up now and then, I reckon.”

He skinned a rabbit and cut off morsels of meat.

“Here, Susette, I’m goin’ to fill your hide first, ’cause you’ve been so good since the row that I’m half beginnin’ to love you a little. There, that’s it—eat. Does me good to see you eat, pore, sick Susette!”

The wolf took the morsels from his hand and a look almost tame came into her eyes. When she had eaten a rabbit, Antoine had a meal of raw flesh. Then he sat down beside her and stroked her nose and neck and flanks. There was an air of home about the place. He was safe and sheltered, had a full stomach, and there was a fellow creature near him that showed kindness, altho’ it had been won with a beating. But this man had long been accustomed to possessing by violence, and he was satisfied.

“Susette,” he said in a soft voice; “don’t get mean again when you get well. I want to live quiet and like somethin’ that likes me oncet. If you’ll be good, I’ll get you rabbits and antelope and birds, and you won’t need to hunt no more nor go about with your belly flappin’ together. And I know how to make fire—somethin’ you don’t know, wise as you be; and I’ll keep you warm and pet you.

“Is it a bargain? All you need to do is just be good, keepin’ your teeth out’n my cheek. I’ve been lonesome always. I hain’t got no people. Do you know who your dad was, Susette? Neither do I. Some French trader was mine, I guess. We’re in the same boat there. My mother was an Omaha. O Susette, I know what it means to set a stranger in my mother’s lodge. ‘Wagah peazzha!’ [no good white man], that’s what the Omahas called me ever since I was a little feller. And the white men said ‘damn Injun.’ And where am I? O, hangin’ onto the edge of things, gettin’ ornry and nasty and bad! I’ve stole horses and killed people and cussed fer days, Susette. And I want to rest; I want to love somethin’. Cabanne’s men down at the post would laugh to hear me sayin’ that. But I do. I want to love somethin’. Tried to oncet; her name was Susette, jest like your’n. She was a trader’s daughter—a pretty French girl. That was before I got bad. I talked sweet to her like I’m a talkin’ to you, and she kind of liked it. But the old man Lecroix—that was her dad—he showed me the trail and he says: ‘Go that way and go fast, you damn Injun!’

“I went, Susette, but I made him pay, I did. I seen him on his back a-grinnin’ straight up at the stars; and since then I hain’t cared much. I killed several after that, and I called ’em all Lecroix!

“Be a good girl, Susette, and I’ll stick to you. I’m a good fighter, you know, and I’m a good grub-hunter, too. I learned all that easy.”

He continued caressing the wolf, and she licked his hand when he stroked her muzzle.

Days passed; the winter deepened; the heavy snows came. Antoine nursed his bruised companion back to health. Through the bitter nights he kept a fire burning at the entrance of the hole. The depth of the snow made it improbable that any should learn his whereabouts; and by that time the news must have spread from post to post that Antoine, the outlaw half-breed, had drowned himself in the ice-fissure.

The man had used all his ammunition, and his six-shooter had thus become useless. With the skill of an Indian he wrought a bow and arrows. He made snowshoes and continued to hunt, keeping the wolf in meat until she grew strong and fat with the unaccustomed luxurious life.

Also she became very tame. During her weakness the man had subdued her, and through the long nights she lay nestled within the man’s great arms and slept.

When the snow became crusted, Antoine and Susette went hunting together, she trotting at his heels like a dog. To her he had come to be only an unusually large wolf—a masterful male, a good fighter, strong to kill, a taker of his own.

One evening in late December, when the low moon threw a shaft of cold silver into the mouth of the lair, Antoine lay huddled in his furs, listening to the long, dirge-like calls of the wolves wandering inward from the vast pitiless night. Susette also listened, sitting upon her haunches beside the man with her ears pricked forward. When the far away cries of her kinspeople arose into a compelling major sound, dying away into the merest shadow of a pitiful minor, she switched her tail uneasily, shuffled about nervously, sniffing and whining.

Then she began pacing with an eager swing up and down the place to the opening and back to the man, sending forth the cry of kinship whenever she reached the moonlit entrance.

“Night’s cold, Susette,” said Antoine; “tain’t no time fer huntin’. Hain’t I give you enough to eat? Come here and snuggle up and let’s sleep.”

He caught the wolf and with main force held her down beside him. She snarled savagely and snapped her jaws together, struggling out of his arms and going to the opening where she cried out into the frozen stillness. The answer of her kind floated back in doleful chorus.

“Don’t go!” begged the man. “Susette, my pretty Susette! I’ll be so lonesome.”

As the chorus died, the wolf gave a loud yelp and rushed out into the night. A terrible rage seized Antoine. He leaped from his furs and ran out after the wolf. She fled with a rapid, swinging trot over the scintillating snow toward the concourse of her people. The man fled after, slipping, falling, getting up, running, running, and ever the wolf widened the glittering stretch of snow between them. To Antoine, the ever-widening space of glinting coldness vaguely symbolised the barrier that seemed growing between him and his last companion.

“Susette, O, Susette!” he cried at last, breathless and exhausted. His cry was dirge-like, even as the wolves’; thin and sharp and ice-like—the voice of the old world-ache.

She had disappeared in the dusk of a ravine. Antoine, huddled in the snows with his face upon his knees, sobbed in the winter stillness. At last, with slow and faltering step, he returned to his lair; and for the first time in months he felt the throat-pang of the alien.

He threw himself down upon the floor of the cave and cursed the world. Then he cursed Susette.

“It’s some other wolf!” he hissed. “Some other grey dog that she’s gone to see. O, damn him! damn his grey hide! I’ll kill her when she comes back!”

He took out his knife and began whetting it viciously upon his boot.

“I’ll cut her into strips and eat ’em! Wasn’t I good to her? O, I’ll cut her into strips!”

He whetted his knife for an hour, cursing the while through his set teeth. At last his anger grew into a foolish madness. He hurled himself upon the bunch of furs beside him and imagined that they were Susette. He set his teeth into the furs, he crushed them with his hands, he tore at them with his nails. Then in the impotence of his anger, he fell upon his face and sobbed himself to sleep.

Strange visions passed before him. Again he killed Lecroix, and saw the dead face grinning at the stars. Again he sat in his mother’s lodge and wept because he was a stranger. Again he was fleeing, fleeing, fleeing from a leather noose that hung above him like a black cloud, and circled and lowered and raised and lowered until it swooped down upon him and closed about his neck.

With a yell of fright he awoke from his nightmare. His head throbbed, his mouth was parched. At last day came in sneakingly through the opening—a dull, melancholy light; and with it came Susette, sniffing, with the bristles of her neck erect.

“Susette! Susette!” cried the man joyfully.

He no longer thought of killing her. He seized her in his arms; he kissed her frost-whitened muzzle; he caressed her; he called her a woman. She received his caresses with disdain. Whereat the man redoubled his acts of fondness. He fed her and petted her as she ate; whereat the bristles on her neck fell. She nosed him half fondly.

And Antoine, man-like, was glad again. He contented himself with touching the frayed hem of the garment of Happiness.

He ate none that day. He said to himself, “I won’t hunt till it’s all gone; she can have it all.” He was afraid to leave Susette. He was afraid to take her with him again into the land of her own people. Antoine was jealous.

All day he was kind to her with the pitiful kindness of a doting lover for his unfaithful mistress.

That night she consented to lie within his arms, and Antoine cried softly as he whispered into her ear: “Susette, I hain’t a goin’ to be jealous no more. You’ve been a bad girl, Susette. Don’t do it again. I won’t be mean less’n you let him come skulkin’ round here, damn his grey hide! But O, Susette”—his voice was like a spoken pang—“I wisht—I wisht I was that other wolf!”

The next morning Antoine did not get up. He felt sore and exhausted. By evening his heart was beating like a hammer. His head ached and swam; his burning eyes saw strange, uncertain visions.

“Susette,” he called, “I hain’t quite right; come here and let me touch you again.”

Night was falling and Susette sat sullenly apart, listening for the call of her people. She did not go to him. All night the man tossed and raved. After a lingering age of delirious wanderings, dizzy flights from huge pitiless pursuers, he became conscious of the daylight. He raised his head feebly and looked about the den. Susette was gone. A fury of jealousy again seized Antoine. She had gone to that other wolf—he felt certain of that. He tried to arise, but the fever had weakened him so that he lay impotently, torn alternately with anger and longing.

Suddenly a frost-whitened snout was thrust in at the opening. It was Susette. The man was too weak to cry out his joy, but his eyes filled with a soft light.

Susette entered sniffing strangely, whining and switching her tail as she came. At her heels followed another grey wolf—a male, larger-boned, lanker, with a more powerful snout. He whined and moved his tail nervously at sight of the man.

Antoine lay staring impotently upon the intruder. “So that’s him,” thought the man; “I wisht I could get up.”

A delirious anger shook him; he struggled to arise, but could not. “O God,” he moaned; it was an unusual thing for this man to say the word so; “O God, please le’ me get up and fight!”

A harsh growl stopped him. The grey intruder approached him with a rapid, sinuous movement of the tail. His jaws grinned hideously with long sharp teeth displayed. The rage of hunger was in his eyes fixed steadily upon the sick man.

Antoine stared steadily into the glaring eyes of his wolfish rival, already crouching for the spring.

On a sudden, a strange exhilaration came over the man. He seemed drinking in the essence of life from the pitiless stare of his adversary. His great limbs, seeming devitalised but a moment before, now tingled to their extremities with a sudden surging of the wine of life. His eyes, which the fever had burned into the dulness of ashes, flamed suddenly again with the eager lust of fight.

He raised himself upon his haunches, beast-like, and with the lifting of a sneering lip that disclosed his grinding teeth, he gave a cry that was both a snarl and a sob. In that moment, these many centuries of artificial life were as a vanished dream. From the long-slumbering dust of the prehistoric cave-man came a giant spirit to steel the sinews of its far removed and weaker kin.

Antoine met the impetuous spring of the wolf with the downward blow of a fist, and sprang whining upon his momentarily worsted foe. Never before had he fought in all his bitter pariah life as now he fought for the possession of his last companion.

His antagonist was larger than Susette, the survivor of many moonlit battles to the death in the frozen, foodless wilderness of hills.

Antoine struggled not as a man; he was now merely the good, glorious, fighting beast—masterful, primitive, the keeper of his own. Lacerated with the snapping of powerful jaws, bleeding from his face and hands, the man felt that he was winning. With a whining cry, less than half human, he succeeded in fixing his left hand upon the hairy throat, crushed the wolf down upon its back, and with prodigious strength, began pressing the fingers of his right hand in between the protruding lower ribs. He would tear them out! He would thrust his hand in among the vitals of his foe!

All the while Susette, whining and switching her tail, watched with glowing eyes the struggle of the males, and waited for the proof of the master.

At this juncture she arose with a nervous, threatening swaying of the head, approached the two cautiously, then hurled herself into the encounter. She leaped with a savage yelp upon him who had long been her master.

The man’s grip relaxed. He fell back and threw out his arms in which once more the weakness of the fever came.

“Susette!” he gasped; “I was good to you; I——”

His voice was choked into a wheeze. Susette had gripped him by the throat, and the two were upon him.

She had gone back to the ways of her kind—and the man was an alien.