Читать книгу Silvertip's Chase - Max Brand - Страница 5

Table of Contents

NO man's common sense continues when he has to deal with the thing he loves. If Bill Gary had consulted his common sense, he would have gone straightway to file his claim, but instead of using his matter-of-fact brain, he remembered that he loved wolf trapping. That was what caused trouble for Frosty. That was why the great Barry Christian was hurled into danger, and why Jim Silver rode strange trails for a long time. Also, that was how Bill Gary came to die.

He left his dogs well behind him when he found what he wanted, which was an open place in the woods, higher up the slope. There was even a little knoll in the middle of the opening, which made the thing perfect, and the snow was not lying on the ground; there was only a sheathing of dead, brown pine needles.

The big, fresh, crimson chunk of venison he hung eight feet from the ground on the branch of a tree at the edge of the clearing.

He did not put the trap on the ground under the tree, because a careful timber wolf that knows anything about the arts of the trapper is fairly sure to suspect just such a device. And a wolf which will make a hundred-yard detour around a blaze on a tree has such hair-trigger sensitiveness of nose and eye that it is fairly sure to find the human hand wherever it has appeared, once it is roused to the search.

Gary cut three six-foot stakes, each with a strong crotch at one end. He took three Newhouse traps. Each had a long chain attached to it, and at the end of each chain there was a ring. He passed the rings over the ends of the stakes and drove them into the ground on or near the little knoll in the center of the clearing. In the end, each chain was securely anchored in this fashion, and the stake was driven down until the head of it as well as the crotch was out of sight.

The three traps were then placed on the knoll and covered over with fresh pine needles. Those needles were not taken from the spot. They were brought from a distance, and they were handled with pieces of bark, so that the scent which exudes from the hands of a man might taint the air as little as possible. All to the eye and to the scent must be as undisturbed as possible in appearance.

When he had finished setting the traps, Bill Gary moved off to a distance, called his dogs, and strode off up the mountainside to visit a similar set of traps which he had arranged two days before. He was well out of sight before the tragedy which he had planned actually began.

A big lop-eared wolf running across the mountain suddenly dropped to his haunches and pointed his nose into the wind. For down that wind came the eloquent tale of red meat. Lop-ear was a good hunter, an expert hunter. But he was not in a class with the great Frosty. Therefore his belly, at certain seasons, cleaved close to his backbone, and this was one of the seasons. Hunting had been bad. It had been terribly bad, and the call of the red meat was frightfully strong in him.

So he went up the wind to find the treasure. He did not run in a straight line, but shifting here and there, his nose high and then low. For there were some odd features about the scent of that meat. The odor was fresh as that of a yearling deer, and yet the odor was not hot. At any rate, the delicious scent was not retreating. He took his time about the stalking, therefore, and it was some minutes later before he ventured to thrust his nose out from the edge of the clearing.

He dropped to his belly at once, his hair bristling with fear. For man had been there. There was unmistakable evidence in the heavy air close to the ground, that man had been there not very long before. But, for that matter, man was everywhere in the woods, and in a great many portions of the white district above the timber line, even. Here, where he was close to the upper verge of the trees, the wolf was not so accustomed to meeting the dreadful scent. That was why he remained still for a long time before he ventured forward.

He could not only smell the prize, but he could see it, now. It hung red as a jewel in the branch of a tree.

Could he reach it? It seemed just on the verge of his jumping powers! He retreated, took a strong run, and then checked himself shortly on skidded legs that trembled with fear. For he had remembered that the ground he was to land on might not be secure. Therefore he checked himself and began to sniff carefully. His eyes became dim as the intensity of his search increased. What good are eyes for near hunting, compared to the powerful concentration of a wolf's power of smell?

He found the ground clear. It was not clean, to be sure, for the horrible smell of man was on it, but it was clear of all actual danger, as far as Lop-ear could make out.

So he ran back to the proper distance, ran forward, and hurled himself high into the air.

His teeth clicked only a few inches beneath the prize.

He went back again. His eyes were red-stained with passionate desire now, and his mouth was drooling. Again, again, he drove himself as high as he could into the air.

Then, standing back for another try, he measured the leap and told himself that he could never manage the thing. His brain was strong enough to give him that clear assurance, and therefore he retreated after the manner of his kind to the first high place in the clearing, and sat down and lifted his voice in mourning. If he had found a vast bull moose or an elk bogged in the snow and had been afraid of tackling the monster himself, he would have sat down in the same fashion and sent up the same wild, long-drawn, unearthly howl. Every wolf within miles, hearing it, would know that it meant just one thing: "Red meat to be had! Red meat to be had!" And they would come. They could hardly resist coming.

He sat down and howled, and his cry reached the ears of a far greater and wiser wolf in the distance—Frosty, that sleek and untroubled robber of farmyards on the one hand and the wilderness on the other.

In what a complicated way Fate was working against Frosty, using in part the skill of the trapper and in part the wiles of Frosty's own kind! Hardly had Frosty heard that first long wail when the voice of Lop-ear snapped off into silence; for as he shifted back in giving his yell a greater volume, he had done what Bill Gary expected, and put his foot into a trap that shut its strong teeth of steel into the flesh and tendons of the leg and bit down toward the bone.

But Frosty could not tell that. All he knew was that there had been one wolf cry of such a volume that it announced the presence of a he-wolf of almost, if not quite, his own proportions. If that were the case, the fellow had to be thrashed or killed.

Frosty turned with joy on the trail of a fight and ran with winged feet down the wind to get at the stranger. It was his duty, and it was his pride, to keep his own run as clear of other wolves as he could. If he had resided constantly among the mountains, he would have kept the marches of his domain as free from other wolves as the parlor table of a good housewife is free from dust. But Frosty made so many and such long excursions in the dangerous lowlands, where the habitations of man were thick, that he did not keep his kingdom properly policed. He was all the keener, therefore, to get at the stranger.

As for fighting, he knew all about it. There was hardly a night, during his travels from village to village and from ranch to ranch, when he did not run into whole packs of dogs. Some of them would run at the mere scent of a wolf. But others were his full equal in size and had been bred to the work. Therefore Frosty was kept efficient in the cunning fence of tooth and shoulder with which a wolf lays his peers low.

He knew how to shift his big weight like a shadow, feinting here and there. He knew how to strive for a hamstring as well as for the throat, which was the limit of fighting sense of many wolves. He knew, even—and dogs had taught him this—that a leg hold, maintained half a second with due wrenchings, would probably break the bone. He knew that when the other fellow has been overturned by a charge there is always the belly as a larger and easier target. A wound there may be as fatal, though not so quickly.

One might consider Frosty, in fact, not so much as a mere sneak thief, as he could be held a bold pirate that cruised through dangerous waters and constantly defied the attacks of whole fleets of armed ships of war. And this was certainly true: that more than almost any other of his kind, he had the sort of pride that makes a warrior stand and fight instead of running away, even from overwhelming odds.

There was one occasion when he had driven a whole pack of five wolves from the freshly killed carcass of an elk; not that he needed the meat, but because he wanted to see what a mixture of bluff, courage, and fighting skill could accomplish.

This was the Frosty that you must have in mind as he hurried down the wind to find the meaning of that voice which had dared to give tongue in the midst of his realm. Imagine him as a great form of misty gray, swiftly running, with his head high, since there was no scent for him to follow.

He was almost on top of the clearing before the scent of man struck him like the pealing sound of a rifle. The scent doubled him up and turned him around. He skirted rapidly, furtively, around the clearing, and on the farther side of it he found the trail of the big wolf which had come there before him. Moreover, the wind carried to him two smells of blood. One was venison; one was that of a wounded wolf.

It was very intriguing. It was just the sort of a scent that one might expect to come across where a wolf had succeeded in pulling down a deer and had been wounded in the struggle.

On his belly, Frosty pulled himself through the brush and came out on the verge of the open, and there he had sight of a figure which made him bristle the hair of his mane and rise slowly to his feet, with glaring eyes.

For there on the knoll in the middle of the clearing lay a huge wolf. Yes, a monster almost of his own proportions. The head of the stranger was turned toward him. His snarling lips unmasked fangs of terrible proportions.

What amazed Frosty was that the stranger did not deign to rise to meet him. It was as though the big fellow preferred to keep his gaze fixed on the bit of red meat that dangled in the branches of the pine tree to the right. Poor fool, could he not tell that that meat must have been placed there by the hand of man?

Observe the cruel workings of fate against Frosty! If the trapped wolf had risen an instant sooner, if there had been the slightest sight or jangling sound of the steel chain, if there had been the least suspicion of a trap, Frosty would have given that place a berth miles wide. But as it was, he was merely overwhelmed with rage at what he considered the contemptuous indifference of the stranger.

Left to his own cunning, Frosty would have detected every trap that even Bill Gary could have placed for him. Already for six months he had been avoiding them. But now, half blinded by rage, he hurled himself straight at the enemy. He reached the knoll. And as he reached it, as the stranger rose, too late Frosty saw the glitter of the deadly chain and the trap that was attached to a foreleg of Lop-ear. For in that very instant, as he tried to put on the brakes, Frosty jammed his left hind foot right into a Newhouse trap!