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I. — FROSTY

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FROSTY was perfect. He had the hazel eyes of a fighter, eyes that became whirling pools of fire when a kill was at hand. He was heavily muscled where strength was needed, and yet there was not an extra ounce for him to carry when it meant traveling fast and far. One looked at him as one always looks at a fighter, seeing first shoulders, jaw, and eyes. And there was nothing that should be changed.

Frosty was perfect, because he could kill anything that was able to catch him. He was perfect because he could keep himself warm in winter and cool in summer by natural alterations. He was perfect because he knew how to feed himself. He was perfect because he was in the first young prime of his life, and the world had not yet scarred and hurt him; neither had this universe ceased being a great mystery to him.

Frosty was a timber wolf, or buffalo wolf, or lobo, or any one of a dozen other terms. But he was dignified with a name that had appeared in the public print more than once. That was because he had discovered, when he was still a gaunt, leggy yearling, that veal is easy to kill and delicious to the taste. He began killing young cattle when he was scarcely a year old, and then he kept on killing them.

Frosty was not confined to one diet, as a matter of fact. He knew only one thing—that the majority of meats produced by man's care are tenderer than the meats produced by a wild life. Therefore Frosty spent a great deal of his time within sight and sound and scent of man.

If it happened that the tender-throat calves were too well protected inside the herd, Frosty knew all about the ways of approaching chicken houses. He could rear from the floor and take a rooster off its perch without giving the poor fowl a chance to flap its wings once before it was dead. He knew how to get into a barn and hunt out the chickens there. Once he had actually got up on the haymow and picked off some pigeons on their nests among the upper rafters.

But there were other things to be found within sight and sound of man. There were rabbits—not the long, stringy jacks such as he was accustomed to snap up on the desert or in the mountains by dint of work of the brain, never by speed of foot—but fat, thick-fleshed rabbits even one of which made quite a meal! There were tiny little items such as caged squirrels, whose wire cages could be bashed open by the stroke of a heavy forepaw. And near the house of man one could find goats staked out on a convenient rope—if it were in a town—and stupid yearling calves standing in corrals.

He knew where at least half a dozen farmers' wives had their creameries in which broad pans of milk were standing, and where eggs accumulated in deep dishes. He knew how to clip the end off an egg and swallow the contents without the shell as expertly as any fox with delicate muzzle. He knew how to nose or paw open a door and lap up the milk in the pans. He knew how to visit coolers of a summer night, coolers of burlap with water dripping over them from pans at the top. Cold meats, butter, and various delicacies were contained in those coolers—and sometimes summer may be a hungry season.

Frosty knew the taste of fresh pork, and he loved it. Pigs were easy to kill. It was a question of running very low and catching the porker with the shoulder so that the fat beast fell on its back. Then one knife slash of the long fangs and the throat was open and the life was streaming out.

It was just a neat little trick, because pigs were not easy to kill for some predatory animals. Their weight was too close to the ground, and their teeth were too sharp, their jaws too powerful. But it was true that most affairs in this life could be made smooth by the use of tricks.

There was plenty of sheer brawn in Frosty. He was the biggest timber wolf that had ever terrorized the cattlemen of the Blue Water Mountains. He had, in fact, a spread of foot that was so huge that those who were not initiated could hardly believe that it was the tread of a wolf at all. A hundred-and-ten-pound wolf is a big fellow; but Frosty weighed a hundred and fifty—not hog-fat, but in the height of good running condition. But for all of his bulk, he knew that brains are better than toothwork.

He had had a wise mother to teach him things in the beginning. And he had a mind that was able to improve on what he learned from others. He knew that squirrels bury nuts, because he had seen them dig up part of the treasure. And a wolf may enjoy nuts in a hungry hour. He knew most expertly that rabbits may be worn out to a frazzle without much effort on the part of the hunter, because a startled rabbit will run a mile like a winging arrow, gradually turning as it runs, unless pressed too hard. A wise wolf stays in the center of the circle and keeps starting the jack until it is exhausted.

Once from a distance he had watched an old Southern hound kill a wild cat after walking around and around it until the nervous cat was brain tired and nervously limp. He had tried the same method with perfect success.

He had seen a pack of four wolves pull down a bull after hamstringing it. Well, what the pack could do, one wolf might manage. No bull on the range can turn fast enough to keep away an active wolf, and, once behind the big fellow, it is not hard to cut the huge tendon that runs down the back of the leg. One hamstring gone and the other will soon follow. Then the bull must fall, and the wolf may dine.

He knew a great many other things.

There was man, for instance.

Man is the great enemy that must not be faced. One may treat a mountain lion, or even the terrible, sage grizzly bear, almost with contempt—if one has four fast feet and good terrain to use them over. But man is different. He is accompanied by the scent of iron and powder, always. He makes a noise from a distance and hurls through the air an invisible tooth that Frosty had seen bite a huge elk to death at a single stroke. Frosty had seen a monstrous grizzly bear smitten to the ground, not by a single noise, but by several. He had seen the hair of the bear fly where one of the invisible teeth grazed its back.

Moreover, Frosty had had those same teeth go by him in the air. Once he had heard the hum of one in the air and heard the sound of the tooth going through a sapling close to him. Afterward he came back and sniffed the hole through the tree. It was clean cut. It bored straight through. Not the greatest bear that ever lived could bite like that; not the great god of bears could do such damage!

Man, also has many devices. He puts on the ground raw meat, fresh and delicious, but with a peculiar scent adhering. Wolves that eat this meat die. Frosty's own mother had died in this manner. Man also puts, here and there through the brush, entrancing scents, and if a wolf comes close to them, a steel mouth bites upward from the ground and then closes on the wolf's leg.

Frosty had been fighting with a big, mature he-wolf one day, and the steel teeth had struck upward from the ground and caught his enemy.

Afterward Frosty learned never to trust strange scents.

The very truth is that Frosty loved to learn almost as much as he loved to eat.

But his appetite was also very good, and he liked frequent meals. Your average wolf will gorge at a kill. But Frosty learned better after he had been twice hunted by Major Tweedale's pack of wolfhounds. Major Herbert Tweedale had the best pack of hounds in the Blue Water Mountains, and it was his boast that they never failed to get their prey.

He had made that boast before he encountered Frosty. The major learned something then; the hound pack—except for two which Frosty killed—learned something, also; and Frosty learned most of all. He learned that a filled belly may bring an early death.

Frosty dined temperately, but always on the choicest morsels. Or perhaps he learned to appreciate a lean figure, because he was never so starved that he was tempted to swell himself with food. Famine never came anywhere near Frosty. He liked warm food. He liked it fresh. He never returned to a dead carcass.

And that was why the ranchers had placed upon his famous head a bounty of no less than two thousand dollars!

Yes, more than the bounty on the head of many a murderer! But who can blame them when it is remembered that Frosty, day after day, all through the year, descended from the heights above timber line, killed fresh beef, ate sparingly thereof, and retired again?

Guns could not harm him now, because he had learned that guns do not bite at night any more than birds sing.

Poison could not harm him, because he would not eat cold meat.

Traps could not catch him, because the scent of steel seemed to rise before him out of the ground like a red danger signal.

For all of that, Frosty was to be caught in a trap on this winter day when the wind was blowing white streamers of snow powder off the tops of the Blue Waters. He was to be caught by the cleverest trapper that ever worked in that district. And yet, strangely enough, though Bill Gary was particularly hunting Frosty for the great bounty, it was only by accident and second chance that the famous wolf was snared.

Because of that accident, Bill Gary died without ever collecting the bounty he wanted, and Jim Silver rode into the strangest of all his adventures.