Dusty Star Part 14

What his own running looked like, Dusty Star did not know. But he knew what the forest looked like. It ceased to stand still. The trees raced to meet him, in a hurry to be past! And as they came, he seemed to cast them behind him, tree by breathless tree; hemlock and fir, sycamore and maple--it was as if he flung the whole rushing forest in the teeth of the pursuit!

After the first terrified glances to measure the distance, he did not dare to look behind. All his sight was needed for the ground immediately ahead. To fall--even to stumble--might cost him his life. Yet he knew that, so far, he was keeping ahead. The knowledge gave him courage. If only his strength would hold out! The pace was killing. He knew he could not keep it up for very much longer. Even now he fancied he was running less quickly. He was beginning to realize that he got his breath with more and more effort. And to lose his breath was the beginning of the end. For a considerable distance, his greater speed would enable him to out-distance all pursuit; but in a long race, it is endurance which counts; and while his pursuers were full-grown men, he was, after all, only yet a boy. Yet with breath going, and courage failing, Dusty Star fled on.

If there is a Good Spirit which carries its mysterious warning to the children of the wilderness when danger threatens, it would seem sometimes as if there were an evil one which lures them to their doom.

Else why should Dusty Star swerve suddenly to the right along a new trail, and in doing so turn to look behind? The next moment, he had caught his foot against a projecting root, and was down.

He was on his feet in an instant; but the fall had lessened his breathing power, and when he started to run again, it was plain that he was losing ground.

With savage whoops of triumph, his pursuers came bounding on.

With a feeling of wild despair. Dusty Star gathered himself together for a final effort. As he made it, he cried aloud. It was a strange sort of bark, half-human, half-wolf. If any wolf-ear happened to catch it, the hearer would recognize it as a call for help. But although Dusty Star threw all his voice into that last despairing cry, it seemed to be m.u.f.fled by the forest till it died in the throat of its glooms.

The Indians were very close upon him now. Only the humming of the blood in his ears deadened the soft padding sound of their moccasins as they ran.

But now, at the very last, there swims into Dusty Star's sight a confused vision. It comes at a tremendous pace. Its running is that of a wolf at full speed, the body low along the ground. The strong, deeply-padded feet spurn the ground from under them with bounds that are like blows. The eyes burn like green fires. There is a wild glare in them, of rage goaded to madness. All the fury of the forest is in that grey running with the eyes that burn.

Dusty Star, dazed with exhaustion did not immediately realize what the creature was, until it leaped upon him, and he fell.

The Indians saw a huge grey wolf which seemed to be pulling their prey down before they could reach it. They gave tongue to a savage yell, and bore down upon the wolf.

However terrifying an Indian war-whoop is to human ears, it produced a contrary effect on the animal mounting guard over Dusty Star. Before the foremost red-skin was within half-a-dozen yards of the spot, the crouching, snarling Fury unbent like mighty springs of its hind quarters. Like a battering-ram, all the 150-lb weight of Kiopo's body drove against the Indian's chest. He went down with a cry. The Indian immediately behind him, realizing the danger when too late, sprang aside. But Kiopo was too quick for him. There was a leap, a flash of fangs, and he shared the fate of the leader.

What followed took place almost more quickly than it can be described.

The Indians, finding themselves attacked by so dangerous an enemy, separated at once, but not before another of their number had gone down before the terrific onslaught of the wolf. One or two hurled their tomahawks, but Kiopo's movements were so bafflingly swift that it was like trying to wound the wind.

All round Dusty Star's body, the Madness that was Kiopo swept a magic circle which no Indian dared to cross. Those who had rashly attempted to do so payed dearly for their rashness. The wolf's fangs were splashed with blood. His eyeb.a.l.l.s glittered with that ominous green light, which seemed the very glare of madness.

It was indeed a question whether Kiopo was not really partly mad. His pa.s.sionate attachment to Dusty Star, his grief in losing him, his fury against his captors, his joy at recovering him and fear of losing him again--all united to turn him into this wolfish Terror against which nothing could stand. The Indians grew more and more alarmed. The manner in which Kiopo kept them at bay while avoiding any injury which they tried to inflict, impressed their superst.i.tious minds with the belief that this was no ordinary wolf. And if, as they began to believe, he were a "medicine-wolf," an animal gifted with supernatural powers, then it was only inviting death to provoke him. It was plain to them now that this boy they were trying to kill was under the protection of the beasts. And the medicine of the beasts was very strong. The Great Spirit ran with the beasts. There were times when it was better not to hunt, lest you should hunt the Great Spirit and be destroyed.

It was this feeling of uncertainty, and growing awe, which weakened their attack and made them waver. And Kiopo, realizing that his enemies were giving way, became more daring. Not content with continuing to keep them at bay, he pa.s.sed suddenly from defence to attack. Nothing could withstand the fury of his onset. The great body hurled itself on all sides; the deadly fangs never missed their mark; the wolf launched himself terrifically, like a thunderbolt with teeth!

In utter panic, the Indians broke and fled. Those who were fortunate enough to escape the raging madness at their heels, scattered far into the woods, and sought refuge at last by climbing into the trees.

It was not till the last Indian had disappeared, that Kiopo, glutted with vengeance, returned to the spot where he had left Dusty Star. The boy had risen to his feet, and was looking round fearfully lest one or other of his enemies might take advantage of Kiopo's absence to return to the attack; but when he saw the wolf come bounding back through the trees, he knew that he was safe. He was overcome with joy at Kiopo's reappearance. As for Kiopo himself, he was utterly at a loss how to express his wild delight; but though he gave vent to it in strange wolfish ways, Dusty Star understood. And when they each had expressed their happiness after their own fashion, they turned their faces westward, and took the homeward trail.

It was sunset when they reached the valley. As the familiar landmarks rose to view, Dusty Star felt a great joy surge up in his heart. Once more back out of the world! Once more to be hidden out of sight and mind in the vast shadowy silences that were older than the beasts; older even than the ancient footways of the cariboo, which, as everybody knows, began before geography, because the Cariboo have gone on walking since the beginning of the world.

After this wonderful re-union the two settled down again to the old life in the valley, and the moons went quickly by. Summer pa.s.sed into Fall, Fall into Winter, and Dusty Star for the first time learned the real meaning of cold. If it had not been for Kiopo and Kiopo's constant activities, he must surely have perished. But Kiopo was food and warmth and protection rolled into one. It was a great hunting which Kiopo had in the nights when even the moon seemed to break her way through a frozen sky, and the trees cracked in the black frost. But though the hunting was great, the game was often small; and as the season advanced, the wild kin took the trails with less and less flesh upon its bones.

With the last geese and the first snow, Dusty Star piled fresh branches round the tepee, so that it swelled visibly to double its outer size.

And for reasons of warmth, the doorway became nothing but a hole in and out of which he, like Kiopo, went on all fours. When the snow came and buried them, Kiopo dug themselves out. And in the blizzard that lasted three days and nights, Kiopo's body was a central-heating arrangement that kept the Little Brother from freezing to death.

In the snow darkness, and snow silence, Dusty Star listened to the m.u.f.fled roar of a giant wind that wrenched the forest till it seemed as if not a tree would be left to stand. And he wondered How Baltook and Boola did, and wished he could have persuaded Goshmeelee to take up her winter quarters with them in the snowed-up tepee. But Goshmeelee was extremely occupied--that is, she was extremely busy with being fast asleep, and she wasn't going to wake up for anybody till it was time to be Spring.

And so the winter pa.s.sed, and Dusty Star followed Kiopo's example in learning to be lean. Very lean and scraggy they both were when the snow melted and the geese took a thought to go North. But the scragginess did not injure their health, and as the gra.s.s grew, and the hunting improved, the meat began to come once more upon their bones.

And so the moon of roses came once more, followed by the Thunder Moon, and the Moon-when-the-leaves-turn-yellow; and there was not a sign of a Yellow Dog, or of any other enemy to trouble their peace. And Winter came again; as before. And when the spring came for the second time, it seemed almost as if Carboona had always been their home. And nothing seemed to change except that Baltook and Boola got a new litter of cubs each year, and that after Goshmeelee had licked one or two babies into cleanliness one season, it was the same tongue, but a new Baby, the next! As for Mr. Goshmeelee, he was so very shy and retiring that it was only once in a blue moon that you ever saw him at all. And as Goshmeelee didn't bother to mention him, Dusty Star didn't like to press her with questions, and pretended he wasn't there.

But the one real change was just the one about which Dusty Star knew the least and did not fuss himself about at all. For the winter and the summer, and the heat and the cold, and the meat coming on his bones, and going off again, and the great life he lived with Kiopo beyond Human ken, were slowly but surely working upon him.

_He was growing up!_

CHAPTER XX

THE TERROR OF THE CARBOONA

In the inmost heart of the Carboona, among a wilderness of boulders, old pine stumps, and dense thickets of juniper and thorn there was a spot to which all wise Carboona dwellers gave a wide berth. Apart from its bareness and lack of pasture, the place bore an ill name. Its evil reputation came from very ancient times. It was shunned equally by catamount, fox, bear, wolf and moose. And the lesser creatures, which haunted the neighbouring thickets, kept well within their shelter and rarely ventured out. Even the Cariboo, with the travelling restlessness strong within them, turned aside after much uneasy pawing of the ground, and suspicious blasts of breath, and fetched a semi-circle to the north or south. Yet not one of these suspicious folk could have given any plain reason for their avoidance of the spot. It was enough for them that the wisdom of the ages informed them it was bad.

But now, in addition to the vague influence of the place, its evil reputation had been strengthened by an added terror which was by no means vague: it was known as the lair of a new resident--the Great Lone Wolf.

Where the Lone Wolf had come from, n.o.body could tell. One Fall, when the air was full of the honking of the geese, he had arrived mysteriously with the first cold, and seemed to bring the winter with him. And from that day, the soundless word went throughout Carboona's inmost recesses: "Beware of the Terror of the eastern thickets. Beware of the Lone Wolf."

And those who were foolish enough to disregard the warning, escaped a hard winter by falling to prey to the wolf.

One morning, Lone Wolf slept later than was his habit. During his sleep he did not dream; yet warm scents, drifting in the shimmering tide of the heat, lapped against his nose in ripples so fine that they did not disturb his brain.

When at length he awoke, he yawned. The yawn was like a huge gash in his lower face. After the yawn, he rose, and shook himself. Then he sat down on his haunches and looked abroad into the world. He had slept well, and was not aware of being hungry; so there was no need to bother himself about hunting. For all that, he was not contented. He wanted something, but he didn't know what. He felt he might find it, if he went for a walk. So he walked. When he came to the angle of a certain stone, he stopped dead, sniffed, set his hair bristling between his shoulders, and growled in the very black places of his throat.

He had found a rival's mark!

The sudden change in Lone Wolf was remarkable. From being an apparently lazy hump of dark grey wolfishness with an air of nothing to do, he turned into an alert, cunning Ferocity whose every nerve and faculty were tightened up for the performance of something very particular indeed. As he moved over the sun-scorched surface of the rocky ground, his body carried low on the great springs of his legs, he seemed to gather all the ancient floating evil of the locality to himself and give it a wolf's shape.

If the Carboona peoples had known that the Terror was once more upon the prowl, a thrill of fear would have shot along the mountain, like an electric current. But at this drowsy hour of the day, most of them were resting from their hunting of the previous night and early morning, and were sleeping in their lairs. Boola and her family were curled up in the cool chamber at the end of the hole. Baltook was taking a light nap in a shady spot he knew of among a cl.u.s.ter of shumacks a quarter of a mile from the den. Goshmeelee sat in huge contentment in the edges of the swamp--sitting up commodiously on the well-cushioned and very wide sitting-down part of her, and rocking herself slowly to and fro with a pleasant sense of the damp and slimy cosiness to be had in the swampy parts of the world. While the squirrels, chipmunks, and blue jays, and all other small watchers and warners of danger coming, or to come, perched on shady look-out points, and blinked their eyes a little in the drowsy warmth.

As soon as Lone Wolf left the open mountain side and entered the out-lying edges of the spruce woods, he was fully aware that he was being watched by many pairs of eyes. And he had not gone very far before he had annoying proof of this in the defiant chatter of a chipmunk which was taking noon-tide observation on a hollow log. Above all things, Lone Wolf wanted to go secretly. As he pa.s.sed the log, he shot a murderous look at its occupier out of his cruel grey-green eyes; but he knew better than to waste his energy by making a leap at that alert bundle of fur-covered springs, and so went softly on his way, while the chipmunk sent its angry warning out to all forest-folks within earshot that murder was on the trail.

He had reached a spot about a mile from the camp when he came to an abrupt stand. There not fifty paces away, he saw a big wolf, with another creature beside it which was certainly not a wolf. Both were travelling quickly eastward. He remained motionless till they had disappeared and then took up the fresh trail. Its mingled beast and human smell disturbed him. He had met Red men before, and detested them.

He still carried the mark and the memory of an Indian tomahawk which had slashed him in the neck, when, running one hard winter with a desperately hungry pack, he had attacked a solitary Indian travelling across the frost-bound levels of the lakes. Now, as the mixed smell of the wolf-breed, and hated man-breed, rose to his nostrils, the old enmity slumbering within him leaped again to life.

For the rest of that day, he dogged the footsteps of the pair; and when they separated at twilight, Kiopo going to hunt, and Dusty Star returning to camp, it was the boy he followed, not the wolf. And little did Dusty Star suspect, as he went alone through the darkening woods, that every step of his homeward way was shadowed by the Terror of the Carboona on delicately-stepping feet.

Over and over again the wolf wanted to leap upon the boy and destroy him then and there, yet the vague fear of the human being, which disturbs wild animals, haunted his nerves, and he could not throw it off before Dusty Star reached the camp.

All that night, he watched in the edges of the forest, roaming to and fro uneasily, and did not finally leave the neighbourhood till just before dawn.

CHAPTER XXI

HOW DUSTY STAR MET THE TERROR

Midsummer--the Moon of Roses--had melted into the Thunder Moon, and the Moon when the blueberries ripen drew nigh. Now if there was one thing above another which Goshmeelee loved in all the world, it was a good feed of berries. So that when the early tang of the Fall began to tickle her nose, the blueberry feeling made itself felt also, and she made up her mind to appease it. By this time, the cubs had long pa.s.sed out of babyhood, and were growing into good-sized little bears, quite able to take care of themselves. But as it was a long climb to the berry patches, and Goshmeelee couldn't be sure that they would be ripe, even if she found them, she decided not to c.u.mber herself with the family, but to leave it at home. So, making her wishes more than clear by a good-natured cuff apiece when the little bears wanted to follow her, she lumbered contentedly off upon her quest.

Now on the very morning on which Goshmeelee started to find her berries, Dusty Star was also climbing up Carboona, after having waited until he had seen Kiopo trot off in the opposite direction after game. Of late, Kiopo had developed a strange uneasiness. He was continually leaving the camp and returning to it at short intervals. When in the camp he was always on the alert, watching the forest with a wary eye. By his behaviour, Dusty Star was convinced that his finer wolf-sense had detected some threatening danger which he himself could not perceive.