Gunpowder Treason and Plot Part 8

"I will pay for the two lambs," said the hunter, "and I will watch by night and see that your fold is not robbed again."

"You shall neither pay for the lambs nor watch," said the young lord; "but it is time this nonsense about wolves was ended. You shall go out and rid me of this thief, Volkitch."

"I?" said the horrified hunter. "Would you have me slay my own foster-mother or a relative?"

"Nonsense," said the other. "Your foster-mother, as you call her, and her children and grandchildren have died out long before this. You have shown your devotion to her pious memory long enough. Go out and shoot this beast, as I command you, or--or--well--yes, I will go and rid the world of the infernal thief myself."

Volkitch looked wolfish and wicked, but he kept his temper.

"I will not go, your mercifulness," he said; "and if you will believe my honest word, it were better that you did not slay this wolf either. A worse thing may happen to Dubina than the loss of two lambs."

"I have said that I will slay the thief if I come across it," the barin insisted. "Now go to your work. Stay; come back here at twelve o'clock with your gun. I have a fancy to track a hare or two with you this afternoon."

Volkitch sighed, crossed himself before the ikon, and left the room.

On hearing the wolfman's tale, which that worthy quickly made known at the village drinking-shop, every moujik present was horrified with the sacrilegious words of the lord. To them it seemed no less than sacrilege to speak of slaying wolves, so accustomed were they to the idea that the wolf was a sacred and privileged creature at Dubina. As for the wise woman, she did not hesitate to declare that a great calamity would befall the community if such a thing were to happen as the violent death of a wolf at the hands of an inhabitant of the place. The hunter himself did not say much--he was never a great talker; but he looked moody and wolfish, as was his way when crossed. Nevertheless, he went obediently to the mansion at noon, as commanded, in order to accompany his master into the forest for the purpose of ringing and driving a hare or two for the shooting of the lord of the manor.

Volkitch was as capable in the matter of ringing and driving a hare as any man that ever wore snowshoes. Within a few minutes a track was found and singled out from among the mazes of old footprints which covered the snowy surface of the land (Volkitch could tell at a glance how many days or hours each track had been made), the barin was placed in position, and the driving commenced. But before he had proceeded many yards the young hunter's practised eye detected the track of another and a larger animal--a wolf. There was evidence that two of these animals had supped beneath a thicket on the left, for there were the remains of the feast strewing the ground--bones and the unfinished portion of the carca.s.s of a lamb. Tracks led away from these remains in the direction of the place in which the manor-lord had taken his stand: probably Volkitch had disturbed the wolves in the midst of their mid-day siesta. Filled with apprehension for the consequences of this unfortunate circ.u.mstance, the hunter rushed at full speed towards the right, in order to drive the wolf out of dangerous quarters. The next moment came a shot, followed by a second, and then by a cry of "Volkitch! help!"

The wolfman was not without love for his master, and though angry with him at this moment, he was not so angry that he would stand still while the young lord stood in deadly peril of his life.

"I come!" shouted the wolfman.

He came quickly as the wind travels, but he was only just in time. The young lord had missed a wolf with his first barrel, and firing again had slightly wounded the savage beast, which instantly turned upon him, and with a rush and a spring bore him to the ground.

It was at this moment that Volkitch appeared, when the second wolf, which had been about to dash in to the a.s.sistance of its companion, saw him and made off.

For an instant only the wolfman hesitated, then with a shout of rage he sprang upon the savage beast that stood snarling and showing its teeth over the prostrate count.

"You fool!" cried the wolfman. "Would you attack one of my own? I would have protected you; now you shall die!" He plunged his knife, with the words, into the heart of the great brute, which glared at him for an instant with glazing eye, then fell forward, expiring. The count arose to thank and praise his hunter, but the wolfman took no notice.

"You shall have your freedom, Volkitch, from this day," said his master; "for you have well earned it." But Volkitch neither smiled nor thanked him.

For a minute or two the wolfman leaned up against a tree close by, weeping bitterly; then he turned and fled through the forest.

When the young lord realized, a few days after this, that the wolfman had finally fled, he inaugurated a great hue and cry after him, for he was concerned about his hunter, whom he really liked and valued. The peasants of the villages upon the estate were all pressed to take part in the search, which lasted for many days; but, though rewards were offered for his discovery, and though threats of punishment in case of his non-capture were freely scattered, the moujiks entirely failed to find any traces of him.

There had been a fresh fall of snow, which had obliterated, they explained, all tracks. It was impossible to find him; so the chase was, eventually, abandoned. The young lord rightly conjectured that the peasants knew more about the matter than they chose to reveal, and punished certain selected individuals whom he suspected to be more guilty than the rest; but his severity did not result in the discovery of the missing hunter.

Meanwhile, the wolfman was not very far away. After his disappearance he was, at first, invisible, but after a while he began to make occasional visits to his old home, though only for an hour or two at a time, to see his mother, and to obtain ammunition and tea. He inhabited an abandoned woodman's hut in the forest, and was rarely seen by man. It was a curious and significant circ.u.mstance that after his departure the number of wolves that prowled about the neighbourhood increased quickly; neither did the village any longer enjoy that immunity from their depredations which it had known in former days.

Then something happened which changed the whole tenor of the wolfman's thoughts and opinions in the matter of his foster-relations.

His mother, to whom he was entirely devoted, now an elderly woman, was wandering through the forest one evening filling her basket with broken firewood, when she was suddenly attacked by three wolves. Having a small hatchet in her hand she bravely kept the brutes off, killing one and wounding another, but being herself badly bitten by the third before she reached home, more dead than alive with the shock of her adventure and the terror of it.

When the wolfman heard this, and saw his mother suffering, the scales fell from his eyes. The sacred animal, from occupying the premier position in his strange affections, next to that of his own mother, had suddenly fallen to the lowest. From that day and until he had cleared the surrounding forests of the enemy, there was terrible warfare between Volkitch and the wolves. They had become abominable in his eyes, and he in theirs; he chased them when there were but two or three of them, and when they were a.s.sembled in a pack they chased him.

Once he was seen by a terrified peasant to cross the road, pursued by a score of howling brutes. The wolfman led by half a dozen paces or so, and stabbed at his foes, when one presumed to come within reach, with the dagger he held in one hand, or struck at it with the pistol he carried in the other. "The wolfman uttered fierce yells as he ran,"

said the peasant, "and laughed in a terrible manner. For certain," he ended, "he was caught and killed."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_The wolfman uttered fierce yells as he ran._"

Page 129.]

Yet a week after that evening the wolfman appeared at the manor-house and announced, to the delight of the lord, that he had come to be his hunter once again, as of old.

The count laughed, and shook his hand, and spoke kindly to him.

"You are welcome, Volkitch; and for your service to me of last year both your mother and yourself are free peasants, and shall till your own soil." After a while he added, "But what of the wolves, Volkitch? Will you hunt them also now? For there have been many of late, so that they become a terror in the place. Only last week the peasants say that--"

The wolfman laughed strangely, and his eyes glistened.

"A week ago is a week ago," he said; "but to-day is to-day. The wolves that lived are dead. Volkitch slew them. I am their enemy. Find me a wolf and I will kill it."

IN HONOUR BOUND.

"Hullo! What's up?" cried Elbridge Harland as he woke out of a deep sleep with a sense of being choked, while he struggled to free himself from the grasp of strong hands suddenly laid upon him. No answer came but deep guttural grunts; his struggles were futile, his head was pressed hard into his blankets, and his hands were tightly held behind him and tied there. The thongs seemed to cut into his wrists, and then his captors rose and relieved him of their weight. With difficulty he turned his face round, only to see the copper-hued forms of Indians all about him, and their bead-like black eyes watching him.

"What is it?" he gasped, recovering his breath. "Tom, where are you? Are you alive?" He was calling to his companion, Tom Winthrop, another young Harvard man with whom he had been spending the last three weeks in camp on the outskirts of Estes Park in the Rocky Mountains.

"I'm here," came the reply in a half-smothered voice. "I'm tied up fast.

How are you? What's happened?"

"I don't know, but I'm tied up fast too," answered Elbridge, by a violent effort turning over and raising himself to a sitting posture in spite of his bound hands.

The sight that met his eyes was alarming enough. A dozen armed red-skins were in possession of their camp; they had seized the two young men's guns, and were eagerly ransacking the rest of their belongings in search of plunder. A bunch of Indian ponies stood a little way off. Tom Winthrop was lying bound upon the ground close by.

"I never dreamed of this," said Elbridge with a groan. "The Longmont people said"--Longmont was the little town where they had fitted themselves out for their mountain trip--"that no hostile Indians ever came up into these mountains, and that the Utes were always friendly, didn't they?"

"Yes," said Tom, turning stiffly towards his comrade; "I wonder who these wretches can be. Hi there, amigo," he continued to an Indian that stood guard over them with a pistol; "say, you Ute? you Ute?"

The redskin nodded; apparently he understood the question.

"Ute, Colorow; Colorow, Ute," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, grunting out a string of unintelligible Indian words as well.

"Colorow!" broke in Elbridge. "Of course. Don't you remember, Tom, that old fellow in the store at Longmont who was talking about the different Indians, and said that he wouldn't trust some of the Utes very far?

Don't you remember he said there was a chief called Colorow who would bear watching; that his band of Utes was ripe for mischief?"

"What do you imagine they'll do to us?" asked his friend. "They've robbed our camp, but they haven't tried to kill us. Do you think they mean to torture us, and that that's why they don't kill us at once?"

The tortures inflicted by Indians on their captives were before his mind. These young men from Harvard were new to the west, and had only come out for a summer holiday; but the cruelty of savage Indians was a familiar idea to them, and they shuddered at the thoughts of it.

"Let's ask them what they want of us," said Elbridge; "it may be that we've been trespa.s.sing on what they consider sacred territory, or something of that sort. We might perhaps be able to satisfy them somehow if we could make them understand."