The Voice of the Pack Part 7

The man's steps were quite distinct by now. Cranston heard him fighting his way through the brush thickets, and once a flock of grouse, frightened from their perches by the approaching figure, flew down the trail in front. Cranston pressed back the hammer of his rifle. The click sounded loud in the silence. He had grown tense and still, and the leaves no longer rustled.

His eyes were intent on a little clearing, possibly one hundred yards up the trail. The trail itself went straight through it. And in an instant more, Hildreth pushed through the buckbrush and stood revealed in the moonlight.

If there is one quality that means success in the mountains it is constant, unceasing self-control. Cranston thought that he had it. He had known the hard schools of the hills; and he thought no circ.u.mstance could break the rigid discipline in which his mind and nerves held his muscles. But perhaps he had waited too long for Hildreth to come; and the strain had told on him. He had sworn to take no false steps; that every motion he made should be cool and sure. He didn't want to attract Hildreth's attention by any sudden movement. All must be cautious and stealthy. But in spite of all these good resolutions, Cranston's gun simply leaped to his shoulder in one convulsive motion at the first glimpse of his enemy as he emerged into the moonlight.

The end of the barrel struck a branch of the shrubbery as it went up. It was only a soft sound; but in the utter silence it traveled far. But a noise in the brush might not have been enough in itself to alarm Hildreth. A deer springing up in the trail, or even a lesser creature, might make as p.r.o.nounced a sound. It was true that even unaccompanied by any other suspicious circ.u.mstances, the man would have become instantly alert and watchful; but it was extremely doubtful that his muscular reaction would have been the same. But the gun barrel caught the moonlight as it leaped, and Hildreth saw its glint in the darkness.

It was only a flash. But yet there is no other object in the material world that glints exactly like a gun barrel in the light. It has a look all its own. It is even more distinctive in the sunlight, and now and again men have owed their lives to a momentary glitter across a half-mile of forest. Of course the ordinary, peaceful, G.o.d-fearing man, walking down a trail at night, likely would not have given the gleam more than an instant's thought, a momentary breathlessness in which the throat closes and the muscles set; and it is more than probable that the sleeping senses would not have interpreted it at all. But Hildreth was looking for trouble. He had dreaded this long walk to the settlements more than any experience of his life. He didn't know why the letter he had written, asking for an armed escort down to the courts, had not brought results. But it was wholly possible that Cranston would have answered this question for him. This same letter had fallen into a certain soiled, deadly pair of hands which was the last place in the world that Hildreth would have chosen, and it had been all the evidence that was needed, at the meeting of the ring the night before, to adjudge Hildreth a merciless and immediate end. Hildreth would have preferred to wait in the hills and possibly to write another letter, but a chill that kept growing at his finger tips forbade it. And all these things combined to stretch his nerves almost to the breaking point as he stole along the moonlit trail under the pines.

A moment before the rush and whir of the grouse flock had dried the roof of his mouth with terror. The tall trees appalled him, the shadows fell upon his spirit. And when he heard this final sound, when he saw the glint that might so easily have been a gun-barrel, his nerves and muscles reacted at once. Not even a fraction of a second intervened. His gun flashed up, just as a small-game shooter hurls his weapon when a mallard glints above the decoys, and a little, angry cylinder of flame darted, as a snake's head darts, from the muzzle.

Hildreth didn't take aim. There wasn't time. The report roared in the darkness; the bullet sang harmlessly and thudded into the earth; and both of them were the last things in the world that Cranston had expected. And they were not a moment too soon. Even at that instant, his finger was closing down upon the trigger, Hildreth standing clear and revealed through the sights. The nervous response that few men in the world would be self-disciplined enough to prevent occurred at the same instant that he pressed the trigger. His own fire answered, so near to the other that both of them sounded as one report.

Most hunters can usually tell, even if they cannot see their game fall, whether they have hit or missed. This was one of the few times in his life that Cranston could not have told. He knew that as his finger pressed he had held as accurate a "bead" as at any time in his life. He did not know still another circ.u.mstance,--that in the moonlight he had overestimated the distance to the clearing, and instead of one hundreds yards it was scarcely fifty. He had held rather high. And he looked up, unknowing whether he had succeeded or whether he was face to face with the prospect of a duel to the death in the darkness.

And all he saw was Hildreth, rocking back and forth in the moonlight,--a strange picture that he was never entirely to forget. It was a motion that no man could pretend. And he knew he had not missed.

He waited till he saw the form of his enemy rock down, face half-buried in the pine needles. It never even occurred to him to approach to see if he had made a clean kill. He had held on the breast and he had a world of confidence in his great, shocking, big-game rifle. Besides, the rifle fire might attract some hunter in the hills; and there would be time in the morning to return to the body and make certain little investigations that he had in mind. And running back down the trail, he missed the sight of Hildreth dragging his wounded body, like an injured hare, into the shelter of the thickets.

III

Whisperfoot, that great coward, came out of his brush-covert when the moon rose. It was not his usual rising time. Ordinarily he found his best hunting in the eerie light of the twilight hour; but for certain reasons, his knowledge of which would be extremely difficult to explain, he let this time go by in slumber. The general verdict of mankind has decreed that animals cannot reason. Therefore it is somewhat awkward to explain how Whisperfoot knew that he needn't be in a hurry, that the moon would soon be up, and the deer would be feeding in their light. But know all these things he did, act upon them he also did, and it all came to the same in the end. Whether or not he could reason didn't affect the fact that a certain chipmunk, standing at the threshold of his house to glimpse the moonlit forest, saw him come slipping like a cloud of brown smoke from his lair a full hour after the little creature had every right to think that he had gone to his hunting,--and straightway tumbled back into his house with a near attack of heart failure.

But the truth was that the chipmunk was presuming upon his own desirability as food. His fear really wasn't justified. It would not be altogether true to say that Whisperfoot never ate chipmunks. Sometimes in winter, and sometimes in the dawns after an unsuccessful hunt, he ate things a great deal smaller and many times more disagreeable than chipmunks. But the great cat is always very proud when he first leaves his lair. He won't look at anything smaller than a horned buck. He is a great deal like a human hunter who will pa.s.s up a lone teal on the way out and slay a pair of his own live-duck decoys on the way back.

Whisperfoot had slept almost since dawn. It is a significant quality in the felines that they simply cannot keep in condition without hours and hours of sleep. It is true that they are highly nervous creatures, sensualists of the worst, and living intensely from twilight to dawn; and they burn up more nervous energy in a night than Urson, the porcupine, does in a year. In this matter of sleeping, they are in a direct contrast to the wolves, who seemingly never sleep at all, unless it is with one eye open, and in still greater contrast to the king of all beasts, the elephant, who is said to slumber less per night than that great electrical wizard whom all men know and praise.

The great cat came out yawning, as graceful a thing as treads upon the earth. He was almost nine feet long from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail, and he weighed as much as many a full-grown man. And he fairly rippled when he walked, seemingly without effort, almost without resting his cus.h.i.+ons on the ground. He stood and yawned insolently, for all the forest world to see. He rather hoped that the chipmunk, staring with beady eyes from his doorway, did see him. He would just as soon that Woof's little son, the bear cub, should see him too. But he wasn't so particular about Woof himself, or the wolf pack whose song had just wakened him. And above all things, he wanted to keep out of the sight of men.

For when all things are said and done, there were few bigger cowards in the whole wilderness world than Whisperfoot. A good many people think that Graycoat the coyote could take lessons from him in this respect.

But others, knowing how a hunter is brought in occasionally with almost all human resemblance gone from him because a cougar charged in his death agony, think this is unfair to the larger animal. And it is true that a full-grown cougar will sometimes attack horned cattle, something that no American animal cares to do unless he wants a good fight on his paws and of which the very thought would throw Graycoat into a spasm; and there have been even stranger stories, if one could quite believe them. A certain measure of respect must be extended to any animal that will hunt the great bull elk, for to miss the stroke and get caught beneath the churning, las.h.i.+ng, slas.h.i.+ng, razor-edged front hoofs is simply death, painful and without delay. But the difficulty lies in the fact that these things are not done in the ordinary, rational blood of hunting. What an animal does in its death agony, or to protect its young, what great game it follows in the starving times of winter, can be put to neither its debit nor its credit. A coyote will charge when mad. A racc.o.o.n will put up a wicked fight when cornered. A hen will peck at the hand that robs her nest. When hunting was fairly good, Whisperfoot avoided the elk and steer almost as punctiliously as he avoided men, which is saying very much indeed; and any kind of terrier could usually drive him straight up a tree.

But he did like to pretend to be very great and terrible among the smaller forest creatures. And he was Fear itself to the deer. A human hunter who would kill two deer a week for fifty-two weeks would be called a much uglier name than poacher; but yet this had been Whisperfoot's record, on and off, ever since his second year. Many a great buck wore the scar of the full stroke,--after which Whisperfoot had lost his hold. Many a fawn had crouched panting with terror in the thickets at just a tawny light on the gnarled limb of a pine. Many a doe would grow great-eyed and terrified at just his strange, pungent smell on the wind.

He yawned again, and his fangs looked white and abnormally large in the moonlight. His great, green eyes were still clouded and languorous from sleep. Then he began to steal up the ridge toward his hunting grounds.

Dry as the thickets were, still he seemed to traverse them with almost absolute silence. It was a curious thing that he walked straight in the face of the soft wind that came down from the snow fields, and yet there wasn't a weatherc.o.c.k to be seen anywhere. And neither had the chipmunk seen him wet a paw and hold it up, after the approved fas.h.i.+on of holding up a finger. He had a better way of knowing,--a chill at the end of his whiskers.

In fact, the other forest creatures did not see him at all. He took very great precautions that they shouldn't. Whisperfoot was not a long-distance runner, and his whole success depended on a surprise attack, either by stalking or from ambush. In this he is different from his fellow cowards, the wolves. Whisperfoot catches his meat fresh, before terror has time to steal out of the heart and poison it; and thus, he tells his cubs, he is a higher creature than the wolves. He kept to the deepest shadow, sometimes the long, strange profile of a pine, sometimes just the thickets of buckbrush.

And by now, he no longer cared to yawn. He was wide awake. The sleep had gone out of his eyes and left them swimming in a curious, blue-green fire. And the hunting madness was getting to him: that wild, exultant fever that comes fresh to all the hunting creatures as soon as the night comes down.

The little, breathless night sounds in the brush around him seemed to madden him. They made a song to him, a strange, wild melody that even such frontiersmen as Dan and Lennox could not experience. A thousand smells brushed down to him on the wind, more potent than any wine or l.u.s.t. He began to tremble all over with rapture and excitement. But unlike Cranston's trembling, no wilderness ear was keen enough to hear the leaves rustling beneath him.

His excitement did not affect his hunting skill at all. In fact, he couldn't succeed without it. A human hunter, with the same excitement and fever, would have been rendered impotent long since. His aim would be shattered, he would make false steps to frighten the game, and not even Urson, the porcupine, would really have cause to fear him. The reason is rather simple. Man has lived a civilized existence for so long that many of the traits that make him a successful hunter have to be laboriously re-learned. As soon as he becomes excited, he forgets his training. The hunting cunning of a cougar, however, is inborn, and like a great pianist, he can usually do better when he is warmed up to his work.

Men would cross many seas for a few minutes of such wild, nerve-tingling rapture as Whisperfoot knew as he crept into his hunting grounds. Ever he went more cautiously, his tawny body lowering. And just as he reached the ridge top he heard his first game.

It was just a rustle in the thickets at one side. Whisperfoot stopped dead still, then slowly lowered his body. The only motion left was the sinuous whipping of his tail. But he couldn't identify his game yet. He peered with fiery eyes into the darkness. He was almost in leaping range already.

But at once he knew that the creature that grunted and stirred in the brush was not a deer. A deer would have detected his presence long since, as the animal was at one side of him, instead of in front, and would have caught his scent. Then, the wind blowing straighter, he recognized the creature. It was just old Urson, the porcupine.

For very good reasons, Whisperfoot never attacked Urson except in moments of utmost need. It was extremely doubtful that he spared him for the same reason that he was spared by the wisest of the mountaineers,--that he was game to be taken when starving and when no other could be procured. It was rather that he was very awkward to kill and considerably worse to eat.

It is better to dine on nightshade, says a forest law, than to eat a porcupine; for the former innocent-looking little berry is almost as fast a death as a rifle bullet, and the flesh of the latter animal will torture with a hundred red-hot fires in the vitals before its eater is driven to its eternal lair. But it isn't that the porcupine's flesh is poison. It is just that an incautious bite on its armored body will fill the throat and mouth with spines, needle points that work ever deeper until they result in death. And so it is quite a tribute to Whisperfoot's intelligence that he had killed and devoured no less than a dozen porcupines and still lived to tell the tale.

He simply knew how to handle them. He knew an upward scoop with the end of his claws that would tip the creature over; and then he would pounce on the unprotected abdomen. But it was considerable trouble, and he had to be careful of the spines all the time he was eating,--a particular annoyance to one who habitually and savagely bolts his food. So he made a careful detour about Urson and continued on his way. He heard the latter squealing and rattling his quills behind him.

IV

Shortly after nine o'clock, Whisperfoot encountered his first herd of deer. But they caught his scent and scattered before he could get up to them. He met Woof, grunting through the underbrush, and again he punctiliously, but with wretched spirit, left the trail. A fight with Woof the bear was one of the most unpleasant experiences that could be imagined. He had a pair of strong arms of which one embrace of a cougar's body meant death in one long shriek of pain. Of course they didn't fight often. They had entirely opposite interests. The bear was a berry-eater and a honey-grubber, and the cougar cared too much for his own life and beauty to tackle Woof in a hunting way.

A fawn leaped from the thicket in front of him, startled by his sound in the thicket. The truth was, Whisperfoot had made a wholly unjustified misstep on a dry twig, just at the crucial moment. Perhaps it was the fault of Woof, whose presence had driven Whisperfoot from the trail, and perhaps because old age and stiffness was coming upon him. But neither of these facts appeased his anger. He could scarcely suppress a snarl of fury and disappointment.

He continued along the ridge, still stealing, still alert, but his anger increasing with every moment. The fact that he had to leave the trail again to permit still another animal to pa.s.s, and a particularly insignificant one too, didn't make him feel any better. This animal had a number of curious stripes along his back, and usually did nothing more desperate than steal eggs and eat bird fledglings. Whisperfoot could have crushed him with one bite, but this was one thing that the great cat, as long as he lived, would never try to do. He got out of the way politely when Stripe-back was still a quarter of a mile away; which was quite a compliment to the little animal's ability to introduce himself.

Stripe-back was familiarly known as a skunk.

Shortly after ten, the mountain lion had a remarkably fine chance at a buck. The direction of the wind, the trees, the thickets and the light were all in his favor. It was old Blacktail, wallowing in the salt lick; and Whisperfoot's heart bounded when he detected him. No human hunter could have laid his plans with greater care. He had to cut up the side of the ridge, mindful of the wind. Then there was a long dense thicket in which he might approach within fifty feet of the lick, still with the wind in his face. Just beside the lick was another deep thicket, from which he could make his leap.

Blacktail was wholly unsuspecting. No creature in the Oregon woods was more beautiful than he. He had a n.o.ble spread of antlers, limbs that were wings, and a body that was grace itself. He was a timid creature, but he did not even dream of the tawny Danger that this instant was creeping through the thickets upon him.

Whisperfoot drew near, with infinite caution. He made a perfect stalk clear to the end of the buckbrush. Thirty feet more--thirty feet of particularly difficult stalking--and he would be in leaping range. If he could only cross this last distance in silence, the game was his.

His body lowered. The tail lashed back and forth, and now it had begun to have a slight vertical motion that frontiersmen have learned to watch for. He placed every paw with consummate grace, and few sets of human nerves have sufficient control over leg muscles to move with such astounding, exacting patience. He scarcely seemed to move at all.

The distance slowly shortened. He was almost to the last thicket, from which he might spring. His wild blood was leaping in his veins.

But when scarcely ten feet remained to stalk, a sudden sound p.r.i.c.ked through the darkness. It came from afar, but it was no less terrible. It was really two sounds, so close together that they sounded as one.

Neither Blacktail nor Whisperfoot had any delusions about them. They recognized them at once, in strange ways under the skin that no man may describe, as the far-off reports of a rifle. Just to-day Blacktail had seen his doe fall bleeding when this same sound, only louder, spoke from a covert from which Bert Cranston had poached her,--and he left the lick in one bound.

Terrified though he was by the rifle shot, still Whisperfoot sprang. But the distance was too far. His outstretched paw hummed down four feet behind Blacktail's flank. Then forgetting everything but his anger and disappointment, the great cougar opened his mouth and howled.

Howling, the forest people know, never helped one living thing. Of course this means such howls as Whisperfoot uttered now, not that deliberate long singsong by which certain of the beasts of prey will sometimes throw a herd of game into a panic and cause them to run into an ambush. All Whisperfoot's howl of anger achieved was to frighten all the deer out of his territory and render it extremely unlikely that he would have another chance at them that night. Even Dan and Lennox, too far distant to hear the shots, heard the howl very plainly, and both of them rejoiced that he had missed.

The long night was almost done when Whisperfoot even got sight of further game. Once a flock of grouse exploded with a roar of wings from a thicket; but they had been wakened by the first whisper of dawn in the wind, and he really had no chance at them. Soon after this, the moon set.

The larger creatures of the forest are almost as helpless in absolute darkness as human beings. It is very well to talk of seeing in the dark, but from the nature of things, even vertical pupils may only respond to light. No owl or bat can see in absolute darkness. Although the stars still burned, and possibly a fine filament of light had spread out from the East, the descending moon left the forest much too dark for Whisperfoot to hunt with any advantage. It became increasingly likely that he would have to retire to his lair without any meal whatever.

But still he remained, hoping against hope. After a futile fifteen minutes of watching a trail, he heard a doe feeding on a hillside. Its footfall was not so heavy as the st.u.r.dy tramp of a buck, and besides, the bucks would be higher on the ridges this time of morning. He began a cautious advance toward it.

For the first fifty yards the hunt was in his favor. He came up wind, and the brush made a perfect cover. But the doe unfortunately was standing a full twenty yards farther, in an open glade. For a long moment the tawny creature stood motionless, hoping that the prey would wander toward him. But even in this darkness, he could tell that she was making a half-circle that would miss him by forty yards, a course that would eventually take her down wind in almost the direction that Whisperfoot had come.