Читать книгу Silvertip's Chase - Max Brand - Страница 6

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THE charge of Frosty had brought him well within the leaping distance of Lop-ear. That big fellow was a fighter on his own account, with plenty of wolf experience behind him. He went right in, low and hard, and got a tooth parry for his pains.

A tooth parry is executed by a wolf that knows its business and trusts the strength of its teeth. It is a slashing stroke, not at the body, but at the striking mouth of an enemy. Lop-ear, with slashed lips, shrank back from that strange shock, and as he shrank, Frosty jumped in and gave him the shoulder thrust. The full weight of his big body was behind that blow, and Lop-ear immediately dropped over on his back.

He never rose again. It was as though a sword had opened his throat with a slashing blow. The grip of Frosty finished the battle there and then.

But the instant Lop-ear was dead, the limp body became of no importance. Those other teeth of steel which were fastened in the hind leg of Frosty were what mattered. He sat down and studied what had happened.

The grip did not grow less. Once a bulldog had clamped down on his leg and kept working in its teeth to break the bone. That was the way this skeleton jaw of death, this grisly and cold monster, locked its grip on the leg of Frosty.

Suddenly he pointed his nose at the sky, and a howl worked up in his throat, a yell of despair. That sound was never uttered. He had learned during long process of time that noise makes no matter better in the wilderness. It can bring trouble, but never help.

Therefore Frosty swallowed the yell of pain, the appeal for sympathy. Instead, he turned his head once more and considered the only possible way of escape. He got up and tentatively pulled until the chain was tight. There was no give to it. He went over and studied the way the chain disappeared into a narrow hole in the ground. Buried in that hole was wood. That was as far as the intelligence of Frosty could solve the mystery. The iron came like a snake out of the ground, and the bodiless jaws were attached to the chain.

Yet there was another resource.

He could not free himself with a sound body, but he could escape by maiming himself. He could gnaw off the foot that was imprisoned in the grasp of the trap. Already the leg was numb below the point where the steel teeth were fastened upon him.

He was about to grind his powerful teeth through the bones of his own leg when there was another interruption.

Up the hillside, far away, Bill Gary had heard the mournful wail of Lop-ear some time ago. His dogs had heard it, also, and had been anxious to run toward the sound. But Gary, as he turned and countermarched, kept them at hand. It was only when he was comparatively close to the clearing that he allowed the big, savage brutes to cut loose and run ahead toward the silence of the traps.

And now Frosty saw them lurching through the brush and out into the open. He stood up. Pain from his wound hunched his back. Hatred and loathing of these enemies made his hair bristle. They were huge. Either of them might make a formidable antagonist, even if his feet were free for maneuvering in the battle. The two together would probably tear the life out of him, and he knew it.

Frosty despised his fate. There had been nobler ways of dying, as when the great grizzly almost cornered him one day, or as when the dog pack in the village had actually tumbled him off his feet. But now, against only two dogs, to be found pinned down to the ground, helpless.

He stood there rigid, glaring. The horrible scent of man blew to him from the reeking bodies of the dogs. They were man-made engines of battle, and he hated them with the religious hatred of the wilderness.

They knew their work, this pair. Tiger circled immediately around to the rear and charged. Shock came in from the front.

For that frontal attack Frosty apparently braced himself, acting as though he intended to abandon his hind quarters to the second enemy until he had disposed of the first attacker. But that was not at all what he had in his cunning mind.

Truly and strongly, Shock rushed in to carry his charge home as Tiger flashed in from the rear, but from the corner of his eye Frosty gauged the proper instant. Then he wheeled and struck.

Tiger tried to dodge. In trying to dodge, he naturally lifted his head a little. That was why Frosty found the most perfect target that a wolf could ask for, and flashed both his fangs in the soft under throat of Tiger.

Shock, overcharging his target that had shifted so suddenly, made a flying snap that laid open the haunch of Frosty. Then, as Shock turned, he saw his companion standing back, coughing blood, and standing on legs that were already beginning to tremble at the hocks and knees.

A wiser dog than Shock might have realized that, for all his size and strength, he was not capable of meeting this master of fight. But Shock was not wise, really. His eyes were red, and in his brain there was no knowledge except that of battle. He had been bred to fly at the enemy. He was hurled by the will of his absent master, like a javelin at the mark. So he plunged straight in at Frosty.

For Frosty it was child's play now. He stood erect and huge till the instant of the contact. Then he dropped flat to the ground and slashed upward. Shock stumbled away with a great sword cut across his belly. That wound alone would have finished him in time, but the valiant brute swung around blindly, hungering for one good grip of his jaws on the enemy.

He might as well have gripped at a ghost. Frosty sidestepped, then bowled Shock over and put his grip on the throat.

When he stood back, Shock lay still, and there was a vague comfort in the heart of the wolf.

He knew, if ever an animal could have known, that battle was his destiny, and then death in the wild. Now he had fought, and the dead lay around him. No matter what happened then, even with this single day behind him, he had not lived in vain.

It was then that he heard the heavy, clumsy beat of the foot of man, for big Bill Gary was approaching swiftly. By the footfall alone, Frosty would have known that it was man. He did not need the scent of powder and steel that was blowing down the wind to him. He knew now that he had no time even to sever his leg below the trap and go halting away. In all the world of his cunning devices there was only one poor expedient left, and that was to drop and lie like a stone.

He had seen other animals play possum, but none ever played it better than Frosty as he lay with glassy eyes partly open, his mouth wide, his tongue lolling out on the pine needles. His very breathing was so controlled that only the most considerate eye could have detected the rise and fall of his ribs beneath their deep coating of fur.

That was the picture that Bill Gary saw as he came rushing out into the clearing. He saw Shock dead, Tiger kicking himself around in the last struggle for breath, a big wolf also dead, with one leg caught in a trap, and above all—a sight that made all else as nothing in his mind—here was, at last, the great marauder, Frosty, stretched on the ground with open mouth and tongue lolling!

They had killed Frosty, and he had taken toll of his slayers. Well, it was a pity to lose Shock and Tiger, but, after all, one has to pay for great results. People would remember him for this. They would say, in days to come: "Bill Gary, that rich man—that fellow that found the great gold mine—the same one that caught Frosty, the famous wolf."

That was the way people would have to talk about him. Because it is possible to overlook a man who has done only one thing—the accomplishment may be put down to luck or to chance—but when a man has done two outstanding things, his peers must stand back and take off their hats.

The battle was plainly over. So the trapper put his rifle against a tree and came forward with only the ax in his hand. He came on slowly, with the loss of his two fine dogs a diminishing fact in his mind, every instant, and glory in the taking of Frosty outruling all other things in the world. It grew in his passionate mind into a thing equal with the finding of the gold mine. If he had had to take his choice between the two accomplishments at that instant, perhaps he would have preferred the trapping of the great wolf.

He was a monster. Bill Gary had sometimes felt that the size of the footprint could not really have indicated the actual bulk of the marauder. He called Frosty, in his own mind, "Big-foot." And yet here was the actuality spread magnificently over the ground. There was no other wolf in the world like this, he was sure. Two thousand dollars? It no longer seemed an absurdly high reward for the catching of the monster. It was almost worth two thousand dollars to have one look at that king of the wilderness and see what a wolf could really be like!

Those were the thoughts of big Bill Gary as he strolled up closer and closer to the spot where the wolf lay, with the wind ruffling his fur. He came within three steps, within two, within one.

And then the heap of fur twitched into life. Bill Gary had a chance to heave up the ax, but he was far too late to spring back. The slash of the knife-sharp fangs caught him across the inside of his right thigh and cut through the tough cloth of his trousers, and into the deep, soft flesh—cutting and tearing.

The wrenching force of that stroke dropped big Bill Gary to his knees. The agony of the torn flesh half blinded his eyes. It was a smoke of pain filled with red sparks that flared up across his mind, and through it he saw Frosty.

He struck at the leaping form. The blow of the ax glanced, and the teeth of the wolf reached at his throat. He struck with all the force of his left hand. The blow fell; the teeth ripped all the tendons inside his wrist with a knife stroke.

He had only one hand, now, for the swaying of the ax, and Frosty, with blood-dripping mouth, was rushing in at him again.

He had the ax by the narrow neck as he struck to parry that rush. The wolf swerved from the blow and came in again, and with a half swing of his arm, Bill Gary smashed the back of the ax home right on the broad top of Frosty's head.

The lobo dropped, either stunned or brained. But, impelled by the force of his leap, he struck against the legs of Gary. The breath went out of Frosty's body with an audible grunt. The impact knocked Gary backward, and as he strove to get to his feet, his wounded right leg gave way under him, and he fell on his side.

A mist of whirling darkness poured over his brain, and he fainted.