Читать книгу The Lightning Warrior - Max Brand - Страница 8

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Beasts of prey, if they are wise, eat with the nose upwind, so that the invisible telegraph of the senses will inform them of dangers approaching. Their trouble in so doing is that crafty enemies may then stalk upwind to approach them. Their rear guard must be simply an occasional glance behind them. Beyond this it is their sharp hearing and, beyond all else, the aura of nervous apprehension that puts out tentacles to a distance around the beasts of prey and the preyed upon.

Cobalt knew the manners of the wild well enough. He was amazed to see the Lightning Warrior reverse the procedure. He actually turned his back upwind, letting his nostrils gather their priceless tidings at a distinct disadvantage. It seemed that he despised the approach of any open foe. It was only the crafty approach from the rear that he wished to guard against.

The cunning of this procedure was instantly evident to Cobalt. If he came out of his covert and went down the wind, the Lightning Warrior was reasonably sure to smell him. If he came from the front, the beast was even more sure to see him. There was only one course which seemed at all feasible to him and that was to come out of covert, as he had done, and stalk toward the lobo. The slightest turn of the white brute's head would betray him, of course, but Cobalt could not overlook any opportunity, however small. He issued from the cover which had shielded him and went up on the quarter of the lobo.

How I wish that I could have been there to see that dead lynx stretched out on the snow, still warm and quivering as the wolf devoured the body half living and drank the blood, and the man coming from the dark of the trees, looking like a hunting animal, also, his eyes burning with the same red light. He went with his teeth set and, through them, he breathed out a prayer at every step until he found himself within throwing distance. He could not believe it. He doubted his luck with a passion of hope. Of what was to come, even should he settle the noose on the head of the monster, he did not even think, but on he went, a step, another, bringing himself closer to surety in the cast, gripping and re-gripping the strands of his rope, wondering if the cold would have stuck the noose and kept it from running. Then he saw the white killer stiffen suddenly, though its muzzle was still fastened in the kill.

The time had come. Like a flung stone that heavy rope shot straight from his hand. The Lightning Warrior, while the flying danger was still in the air, was already under way. He would have escaped at the first bound, his leap was so sudden and directed so far to the side, but the snow failed to hold under him. It had been moistened by the blood of the lynx at this spot. It was his own murdering ways that tripped him up, and so the lower rim of the noose struck him on the beautiful white fur of his shoulder and the upper rim of the noose flicked forward over his head.

The second bound followed before the man could pull up the rope; but luck was against the Lightning Warrior. His second jump merely served to whip the noose tight so that it bound his throat with a throttling force. Still in mid-air the lunge of his powerful body thrust him against the stiffened rope which held him like a rod, the hands of Cobalt holding that rod like iron. I wonder what Cobalt felt at that moment when for the first time he achieved, not his quest, but an actual contact with the prey for which he had been questing so long?

He shouted, still through his teeth, and the sound of his shout was like the whining snarl of the lobo as he tumbled in the snow, snapping at the elusive thinness of the rope. Cobalt gave the lariat a little play, enough to allow him to throw loops in rapid succession as he ran in, attempting to entangle the legs of the brute. But the Lightning Warrior was up in another moment and, instead of fleeing, he followed better tactics and drove straight at the throat of the man. Cobalt met it as he would have met a charge from another man under those circumstances with a hard-driven fist. All that he had to aim at was a narrow frame around a vast expanse of red where the teeth glistened. He felt them already sinking into the throat at which they were aimed. Then he struck, a little to the side of the gaping mouth, a little beneath the glimmer of the evil eyes. By the grace of his cool brain and his accurate eye, his fist found lodgment at the base of the animal's jaw.

Even a bull must have gone down when that sledge-hammer stroke fairly met the mark. The bull would have gone down stunned. The Lightning Warrior was flung backward, head over heels, by the irresistible shock. He tumbled in the snow with his four legs, for the moment, thrusting upward.

Cobalt noosed two of those legs in a flying loop of the rope and, by a happy chance, one of them was a foreleg and one a hind leg. Then the Lightning Warrior went mad. The two legs which remained untethered were on opposite sides of the body and, therefore, the lobo was able at intervals to maintain his balance. He began to roll and leap in the snow. He came like an otter, wallowing on his stomach like a galloping seal, dashing himself toward Cobalt, but the strain of the noose began to choke him. In the wildness of the wolf's fury Cobalt heard clearly the snapping of a bone. An instant later the Lightning Warrior had partially brained himself against a tree trunk.

He lay still. A bit of wind got through the trees and fluttered the downy white fur, deep and rich, while Cobalt came up slowly and stared down at his quarry. He saw the fluff of snow near the nostrils of the brute stirring. By that he guessed that the animal still lived. He saw a foreleg crooked in the snow. By that he guessed that this was the broken bone. He leaned over and laid his hand on the shoulder of the wolf. Under the deep blanket of the fur he could feel the muscle, hard as iron and still tensed like strung cords.

Then Cobalt laughed silently. It is a horrible thing to think of that silent laughter under the dark of those trees. But he laughed, for in staring down at the Lightning Warrior, he had conceived another thought. He started to carry out the plan at once. In a sense, I suppose, that a more grotesque or brutal plan was never formed. Nevertheless, he went ahead with it. He muzzled the beast with a length of the rope. Then he made splints out of straight twigs and bound them firmly around the leg, first padding the joints with moss as he well knew how to do. The wolf roused up and made one more effort to get at Cobalt with his teeth, but found that it was hopeless. So he lay with a certain patience. He raised his great, wise head and looked the man in the face with an unflinching and deathless hatred and, the man, looking up from the splinting of the broken leg, answered that look with a sneer.

When he was ready, he lifted the bulk of the wolf in his arms. He could have carried a greater burden, but he was amazed by the bulk of this thing, for he knew the limits inside of which a wolf is supposed to range. Then the fact that the long-hunted prize was actually in his arms started him laughing again. As he laughed, he felt the wolf shuddering with hate against his breast, and Cobalt laughed still louder, until the icy corridors of that forest rang with his mirth.

He got the wolf to his camp by the river, and there he nursed him back to soundness. He nursed him with the devotion of a priest to a convert or a parent to a child. But in all the devotion of Cobalt there was no affection. He remembered the dead dogs of his team. They were half-wild beasts, but they were his. He had chosen them, trained them. They were his pride, and every one of them had come to his hand willingly, without fear.

When he saw the red eyes of the Lightning Warrior fixed steadily upon him with the fire never dying down in them, he would sit for long minutes, concentrating his will upon the brute, until at last the animal's eyes could endure no longer against that human will, and the lobo would look away. From day to day the contest was waged with the same bitterness, until in the end the Lightning Warrior knew that he was totally defeated.