Dusty Star Part 15

Kiopo told him nothing directly, but the two were by this time in such complete sympathy that the boy learned half the danger, merely by feeling as the wolf felt. He also watched the forest, wondering from what quarter the danger threatened. Yet never had the great woods appeared to hold themselves in such deep untroubled peace. Nothing broke their stillness save the occasional sharp chirr of a chipmunk, or the tapp, tapp of the little black-and-white wood-p.e.c.k.e.rs on some hollow limb. Night came, and the stillness only deepened,--night--and the soundless glitter of the stars.

Once only Dusty Star saw, or fancied he saw, a wolf stand in a clear s.p.a.ce in the glimmer of the coming dawn. And at first, thinking it was Kiopo, he had not moved. But when at last, he had gone forward to see, he found the place where it had stood empty.

Slowly, day by day, the sense of danger pa.s.sed. Kiopo went off hunting for longer and longer distances. But he avoided the upper slopes of the Carboona, and followed trails that led him well away. And not again, either in late twilight, or early dawn, did Dusty Star catch the shadows at their old illusive game. Only one thing remained, and that was the very plain objection which Kiopo had to Dusty Star going up into Carboona at any time of the day. Now when Kiopo objected to anything strongly, his ways of expressing himself were perfectly clear. Not only his eyes, his ears and his mouth, but his whole body said _No_ in the plainest possible way. Dusty Star had no excuse for not understanding that Kiopo objected to his going up Carboona. Yet the more definitely Kiopo objected, the more Dusty Star wanted to go.

He was moving very quickly now, because he was anxious to get as far as possible, in case Kiopo discovered where he had gone, and came to fetch him back. Kiopo was doubtless very wise, and knew the forest better than any one else; yet Dusty Star was quite sure that he had a wisdom of his own, and he liked sometimes to set the Indian "Yes" against the wolf "No." Now, as he mounted higher and higher into an unexplored world, he enjoyed the feeling of having a.s.serted his right to decide things for himself. And every time he stopped to look back, he could see a vaster tract of forest and hills, lying out and out to a distance that had no end.

He was above the forest now, and had entered the borders of the great barren where the waterfowl had their homes along the solitary pools. He pushed on rapidly. Except the flocks of wildfowl, he saw no other life.

Here and there, in patches on the rising grounds, he came upon the blueberries, beginning to be ripe. But the bears had not visited them yet, and there were no signs of other large game. It was a little lonely here on the high barren. He wondered, all at once, what he should do if he came upon a grizzly. It was a long, long way from camp, and Kiopo's protection. He began to be conscious that he was very much alone.

Something made him look suddenly behind.

Not fifty paces away he saw an enormous wolf.

It stood stock-still, as if caught in the act of stealthy movement, and Dusty Star noticed with uneasiness that between them there was no obstacle or cover of any kind. A couple of swift bounds and the creature could be upon him. Instinctively he realized that it had been stalking him for some time, and was now preparing for the final rush.

For a moment his heart failed him. Then he rallied. Face to face with the Terror of the Carboona, Dusty Star did not flinch. The fine Indian breed of him, descending through long generations, rose magnificently to the test.

He took in his surroundings with a glance. On one hand lay a pool; on the other, a tangle of bushes. Behind him, the ground rose. He waited for the wolf to make the first movement.

For a moment or two, Lone Wolf remained in the half crouching att.i.tude in which he had been surprised. Then, snarling threateningly he began to move slowly forward.

Dusty Star drew his hunting-knife in readiness, and stood his ground.

The wolf continued to advance. When not more than a dozen paces separated them, he stopped again. Dusty Star noted the cruel light in his eyes, and knew that he paused for the first spring of the attack.

Yet his own gaze did not falter. He held the wolf boldly with his eyes.

Never before had Lone Wolf borne the direct stare of the human eye face to face, and the experience made him uneasy. He felt the presence of a mysterious power out of all proportion to the body which contained it.

His own eyes glittering with evil as they were, lacked this power. He was fully conscious of his own importance--a great wolf, lord of a wide range; yet some unexplained feeling within him told him that he was now in the presence of a creature greater than himself. For all that, he knew that this new enemy must be attacked, and his right to enter Carboona challenged. For he felt that here, though he could not understand it, was a challenge from the wolves.

Without further warning, he sprang. In the same instant, Dusty Star leaped aside, escaping by a hair's breath the slash of the wolf's fangs at his throat. But he had not been able to leap quite far enough, and, though he tried to save himself he fell. As he did so, he drove his hunting-knife with all his force into the wolf's side.

What happened next was like a thunderbolt from a blue sky.

As the keen blade went home, Lone Wolf yelped and turned furiously on his fallen foe; but before he could slash a second time, a huge black body bounded through the air from the tangle of bushes on the right. The thing was so utterly unexpected that the wolf was completely taken off his guard. The great body, descending full upon him, bore him to the ground.

If his a.s.sailant could have kept its hold, the reign of the Lone Wolf, mightily sinewed though he was, would have been over for ever; but the force of the creature's landing had been so great that it slightly lost its balance. That slight loss saved the wolf's life. With a snarl of mingled rage and pain, he tore himself from his enemy's clutch with a tremendous wrench; then, not daring to face those terrible claws again, he bounded off across the barren, leaving a trail of blood.

In the first moment of astonishment, Dusty Star had not recognised his deliverer. Yet Goshmeelee it was, and no other, who now stood before him, gazing at him reprovingly out of her little pig-like eyes.

It was exactly as if she had said:

"You are out of bounds. You have no business to be here. If I hadn't happened to come in the nick of time you'd never have escaped to tell the tale!"

Dusty Star was well aware that all this was perfectly true, even though Goshmeelee didn't put it into plain Indian speech. Also he could see that her rescue of him had been at the cost of some damage to herself.

In the brief moment of her grapple with the wolf, his long fangs had seized. It was not a serious wound, but it bled. Goshmeelee, with her immense practicalness, instantly produced from her mouth the washing apparatus dreaded by her cubs, and began to lick the injured spot. Dusty Star looked at her very solemnly with his big brown eyes.

"I never meant you to get hurt," he said in his throaty Indian voice. He kept repeating the words over and over again.

If Goshmeelee had ever been examined in the tongues spoken at Washington, London, Paris, and the other great centres of civilized gabble, by the learned gentlemen so high up in the educational world that it must make them dizzy to look down the precipices of their own minds, she would have been regarded as a perfect "dreadnought" of a dunce. But if they and she had to compete in the tongues used by the forest-folk, not to mention the running language of the water-voices and the wind, I should have been greatly surprised if she had not left them very far behind indeed! So, although she did not know a single word of Dusty Star's Indian talk, she grasped the meaning of it at once, and knew that he was being sorry with his mouth.

When she had licked as much as necessary, she looked pleasantly at Dusty Star with every bit of her good-natured face. That her wound was better, and that she was still ready for blueberries, was what she wanted him to understand.

And Dusty Star fortunately remembered the spot on the barren where the blueberries were on the point of being very nearly ripe. If Goshmeelee had not pa.s.sed that way, Dusty Star was delighted to think that (although it was nothing in comparison with what she had done for him) he could nevertheless put her in the way of filling with berries that part of her which was wanting to be filled.

He grabbed her by the fur, and gave her a tug.

"You come with me, and _I'll_ show you!" he said.

And Goshmeelee went.

CHAPTER XXII

THE MOON WHEN THINGS WALK

By signs that were unmistakable, Dusty Star knew that a new, strange restlessness had invaded Kiopo's bones. It was not that he watched the forest borders with suspicion, as before, for an invisible foe. That uneasiness might be there, but it seemed for the present to be swallowed up in a deeper restlessness which preyed upon him day and night. After Dusty Star's return from his Carboona excursion, Kiopo had regarded him with a reproving eye. It was useless for Dusty Star to pretend that nothing had happened. Kiopo never met the Lone Wolf; and Goshmeelee bulging with berries did not blab. Nevertheless, Kiopo knew that the Little Brother had taken the law into his own hand, and that trouble was on the way.

Kiopo could not rest. The Fall had come, and, with the Fall, its wandering impulses. An unquiet itch had got into the skin of things, and into the heart of things a strange desire. Every wild creature felt it, each in its own degree. The Cariboo were off on their vague journeyings that took them half across the world. It was the moon when things appeared and vanished; the moon when travelling voices came out of the north, when a thin sleep covered the earth by day, and when things went out walking at the falling of the night.

Kiopo also walked.

Where he went Dusty Star could not tell. He watched and watched; but Kiopo always eluded him at the coming-on of dusk. Mere hunting did not account for it. The kills he made were not numerous. Often he brought back what barely sufficed for their needs. It was only too clear that something beyond mere hunting occupied his mind.

What made the thing still more peculiar was that, wherever it was Kiopo went, there he also howled. Night after night, about an hour after sundown, Dusty Star would hear the familiar voice raised in melancholy wailing in the distance, as if it resounded from the sides of a gorge.

And as he lay awake, listening to the woeful sound, he would hear, ever and anon, dark voices out of the north, that came clanging above the hollow woods, and making the silence quake. And though he told himself that it was only the first flights of the geese, he could not get rid of the feeling that other voices went along the middle sky, and that the dark was haunted with wings.

At last he determined to discover where it was that Kiopo went to do his howling, and what happened when he howled. So, one evening, when the wolf, as was his custom, slunk into the shadow of the woods, Dusty Star, on noiseless moccasins, disappeared also. He kept Kiopo in sight for some time without his knowledge. Then, when at last his form became indistinguishable in the gloom, he followed as best he could the direction he believed he had taken.

Due south-west from the camp, a high spur of rock jutted from the mountain at the side of an immense gorge. It struck boldly out like an ocean promontory; and on nights when the wind was high, it would have been easy to imagine that the deepening roar which rose from the straining spruce woods beneath was the welter and crash of a rising sea.

Dusty Star had seen the place several times in the day-time, and it struck him now that it would be a likely spot for Kiopo to choose for his nightly performance. The trail thither lay through thick forest and was not an easy one to follow. But the boy had a strong sense of direction, and every time he reached an open s.p.a.ce between the trees, he took his bearings from the stars. As he went, he listened intently for the first notes of Kiopo's singing, and before he had travelled half the distance, they came. In the deep stillness of the night, the call sounded comparatively close. There could be little mistake as to its direction, which was either that of the promontory, or some spot very near it.

Seven times he heard the cry, each time clearer than before: then there was a long silence, disturbed by not a single sound. Through the breathless stillness, Dusty Star continued his secret advance. By the last howl he guessed that he must be drawing very near to his goal; yet that very nearness made it necessary for him to use the greatest caution in order not to give Kiopo the alarm. Soon he saw a huge ma.s.s of rocks loom blackly between him and the rising moon.

He did not dare to attempt to climb its almost perpendicular sides; but, skirting the base of it, worked his way up the mountain slope so that he might reach it from above. He arrived at last at the beginning of the promontory, and, lying flat on his stomach, looked about him. On all sides, the rocks took strange appearances, like humped beasts, crouched, and watching. Yet nothing stirred, nothing breathed. Of Kiopo there was not a sign. In front of him, a large boulder hid the end of the promontory from sight. Dusty Star worked himself slowly round it, foot by foot. When he was half-way round, he stopped; for there, at the extreme end of the rocks, with his back towards him, he saw Kiopo sitting motionless, as he gazed out into the enormous night. Then, he saw him throw up his head; and again the long, throbbing howl made the gorges ring.

Dusty Star had heard howling many times before. Since his earliest infancy, the throats of wolf, fox and coyote had haunted his ears like nursery song-books with ancient, terrible tunes. But to-night, the tune seemed to gather a new terror, and made his pulses throb. His first impulse was to call to Kiopo so that he might not do it again. Only this was one of those times when, in spite of the intimate comradeship which bound them together, he stood a little in awe of that mysterious wolf-mind which was in Kiopo, and which seemed to understand the stars.

In the breathless stillness which followed the cry, Dusty Star listened to the quickened beating of his own heart.

Once again, Kiopo howled. This time, he was answered. From the hollow gloom of the forest below there came a deep-toned "woof" that was half a roar.

Dusty Star saw Kiopo immediately stiffen into attention, as he turned his head in the direction of the threatening sound. Owing to his position he could not see what the wolf saw, but Kiopo's att.i.tude told him that he was watching something that had come into sight from among the trees. His whole body was tingling with excitement. He cast all further secrecy aside, and ran towards Kiopo. The wolf turned quickly, and growled. As Dusty Star fully understood, the growl was one of disapproval, not of anger. It said plainly: "You are not wanted. You are very much in the way."

Dusty Star knew, when too late, that this was true. Yet he was glad he had come. Kiopo could not keep _this_ thing secret, as he had kept others. He would see what was to be seen: whatever the danger was, Kiopo and he would meet it together.

Again Kiopo lifted his voice; but this time it was no weary howl, making melancholy echoes: it was a short, deep bark, like an explosion.