Kazan Part 10

"And there are twenty thousand others just like you in this northern quarter of the continent--all killing, killing for hundreds of years back, and yet you can't kill out wild life. The war of Man and the Beast, you might call it. And, if you could return five hundred years from now, Henri, you'd still find wild life here. Nearly all the rest of the world is changing, but you can't change these almost impenetrable thousands of square miles of ridges and swamps and forests. The railroads won't come here, and I, for one, thank G.o.d for that. Take all the great prairies to the west, for instance. Why, the old buffalo trails are still there, plain as day--and yet, towns and cities are growing up everywhere. Did you ever hear of North Battleford?"

"Is she near Montreal or Quebec?" Henri asked.

Weyman smiled, and drew a photograph from his pocket. It was the picture of a girl.

"No. It's far to the west, in Saskatchewan. Seven years ago I used to go up there every year, to shoot prairie chickens, coyotes and elk.

There wasn't any North Battleford then--just the glorious prairie, hundreds and hundreds of square miles of it. There was a single shack on the Saskatchewan River, where North Battleford now stands, and I used to stay there. In that shack there was a little girl, twelve years old. We used to go out hunting together--for I used to kill things in those days. And the little girl would cry sometimes when I killed, and I'd laugh at her.

"Then a railroad came, and then another, and they joined near the shack, and all at once a town sprang up. Seven years ago there was only the shack there, Henri. Two years ago there were eighteen hundred people.

This year, when I came through, there were five thousand, and two years from now there'll be ten thousand.

"On the ground where that shack stood are three banks, with a capital of forty million dollars; you can see the glow of the electric lights of the city twenty miles away. It has a hundred-thousand dollar college, a high school, the provincial asylum, a fire department, two clubs, a board of trade, and it's going to have a street-car line within two years. Think of that--all where the coyotes howled a few years ago!

"People are coming in so fast that they can't keep a census. Five years from now there'll be a city of twenty thousand where the old shack stood. And the little girl in that shack, Henri--she's a young lady now, and her people are--well, rich. I don't care about that. The chief thing is that she is going to marry me in the spring. Because of her I stopped killing things when she was only sixteen. The last thing I killed was a prairie wolf, and it had young. Eileen kept the little puppy. She's got it now--tamed. That's why above all other wild things I love the wolves.

And I hope these two leave your trap-line safe."

Henri was staring at him. Weyman gave him the picture. It was of a sweet-faced girl, with deep pure eyes, and there came a twitch at the corners of Henri's mouth as he looked at it.

"My Iowaka died t'ree year ago," he said. "She too loved the wild thing. But them wolf--d.a.m.n! They drive me out if I can not kill them!"

He put fresh fuel into the stove, and prepared for bed.

One day the big idea came to Henri.

Weyman was with him when they struck fresh signs of lynx. There was a great windfall ten or fifteen feet high, and in one place the logs had formed a sort of cavern, with almost solid walls on three sides. The snow was beaten down by tracks, and the fur of rabbit was scattered about. Henri was jubilant.

"We got heem--sure!" he said.

He built the bait-house, set a trap and looked about him shrewdly. Then he explained his scheme to Weyman. If the lynx was caught, and the two wolves came to destroy it, the fight would take place in that shelter under the windfall, and the marauders would have to pa.s.s through the opening. So Henri set five smaller traps, concealing them skilfully under leaves and moss and snow, and all were far enough away from the bait-house so that the trapped lynx could not spring them in his struggles.

"When they fight, wolf jump this way an' that--an' sure get in," said Henri. "He miss one, two, t'ree--but he sure get in trap somewhere."

That same morning a light snow fell, making the work more complete, for it covered up all footprints and buried the telltale scent of man. That night Kazan and Gray Wolf pa.s.sed within a hundred feet of the windfall, and Gray Wolf's keen scent detected something strange and disquieting in the air. She informed Kazan by pressing her shoulder against his, and they swung off at right angles, keeping to windward of the trap-line.

For two days and three cold starlit nights nothing happened at the windfall. Henri understood, and explained to Weyman. The lynx was a hunter, like himself, and also had its hunt-line, which it covered about once a week. On the fifth night the lynx returned, went to the windfall, was lured straight to the bait, and the sharp-toothed steel trap closed relentlessly over its right hindfoot. Kazan and Gray Wolf were traveling a quarter of a mile deeper in the forest when they heard the clanking of the steel chain as the lynx fought; to free itself. Ten minutes later they stood in the door of the windfall cavern.

It was a white clear night, so filled with brilliant stars that Henri himself could have hunted by the light of them. The lynx had exhausted itself, and lay crouching on its belly as Kazan and Gray Wolf appeared.

As usual, Gray Wolf held back while Kazan began the battle. In the first or second of these fights on the trap-line, Kazan would probably have been disemboweled or had his jugular vein cut open, had the fierce cats been free. They were more than his match in open fight, though the biggest of them fell ten pounds under his weight. Chance had saved him on the Sun Rock. Gray Wolf and the porcupine had both added to the defeat of the lynx on the sand-bar. And along Henri's hunting line it was the trap that was his ally. Even with his enemy thus shackled he took big chances. And he took bigger chances than ever with the lynx under the windfall.

The cat was an old warrior, six or seven years old. His claws were an inch and a quarter long, and curved like simitars. His forefeet and his left hindfoot were free, and as Kazan advanced, he drew back, so that the trap-chain was slack under his body. Here Kazan could not follow his old tactics of circling about his trapped foe, until it had become tangled in the chain, or had so shortened and twisted it that there was no chance for a leap. He had to attack face to face, and suddenly he lunged in. They met shoulder to shoulder. Kazan's fangs snapped at the other's throat, and missed. Before he could strike again, the lynx flung out its free hindfoot, and even Gray Wolf heard the ripping sound that it made. With a snarl Kazan was flung back, his shoulder torn to the bone.

Then it was that one of Henri's hidden traps saved him from a second attack--and death. Steel jaws snapped over one of his forefeet, and when he leaped, the chain stopped him. Once or twice before, blind Gray Wolf had leaped in, when she knew that Kazan was in great danger. For an instant she forgot her caution now, and as she heard Kazan's snarl of pain, she sprang in under the windfall. Five traps Henri had hidden in the s.p.a.ce in front of the bait-house, and Gray Wolf's feet found two of these. She fell on her side, snapping and snarling. In his struggles Kazan sprung the remaining two traps. One of them missed. The fifth, and last, caught him by a hindfoot.

This was a little past midnight. From then until morning the earth and snow under the windfall were torn up by the struggles of the wolf, the dog and the lynx to regain their freedom. And when morning came, all three were exhausted, and lay on their sides, panting and with bleeding jaws, waiting for the coming of man--and death.

Henri and Weyman were out early. When they struck off the main line toward the windfall, Henri pointed to the tracks of Kazan and Gray Wolf, and his dark face lighted up with pleasure and excitement. When they reached the shelter under the ma.s.s of fallen timber, both stood speechless for a moment, astounded by what they saw. Even Henri had seen nothing like this before--two wolves and a lynx, all in traps, and almost within reach of one another's fangs. But surprise could not long delay the business of Henri's hunter's instinct. The wolves lay first in his path, and he was raising his rifle to put a steel-capped bullet through the base of Kazan's brain, when Weyman caught him eagerly by the arm. Weyman was staring. His fingers dug into Henri's flesh. His eyes had caught a glimpse of the steel-studded collar about Kazan's neck.

"Wait!" he cried. "It's not a wolf. It's a dog!"

Henri lowered his rifle, staring at the collar. Weyman's eyes shot to Gray Wolf. She was facing them, snarling, her white fangs bared to the foes she could not see. Her blind eyes were closed. Where there should have been eyes there was only hair, and an exclamation broke from Weyman's lips.

"Look!" he commanded of Henri. "What in the name of heaven--"

"One is dog--wild dog that has run to the wolves," said Henri. "And the other is--wolf."

"And _blind_!" gasped Weyman.

"_Oui_, blind, m'sieur," added Henri, falling partly into French in his amazement. He was raising his rifle again. Weyman seized it firmly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Wait! it's not a wolf!"]

"Don't kill them, Henri," he said. "Give them to me--alive. Figure up the value of the lynx they have destroyed, and add to that the wolf bounty, and I will pay. Alive, they are worth to me a great deal. My G.o.d, a dog--and a blind wolf--_mates_!"

He still held Henri's rifle, and Henri was staring at him, as if he did not yet quite understand.

Weyman continued speaking, his eyes and face blazing.

"A dog--and a blind wolf--_mates_!" he repeated. "It is wonderful, Henri. Down there, they will say I have gone beyond _reason_, when my book comes out. But I shall have proof. I shall take twenty photographs here, before you kill the lynx. I shall keep the dog and the wolf alive.

And I shall pay you, Henri, a hundred dollars apiece for the two. May I have them?"

Henri nodded. He held his rifle in readiness, while Weyman unpacked his camera and got to work. Snarling fangs greeted the click of the camera-shutter--the fangs of wolf and lynx. But Kazan lay cringing, not through fear, but because he still recognized the mastery of man. And when he had finished with his pictures, Weyman approached almost within reach of him, and spoke even more kindly to him than the man who had lived back in the deserted cabin.

Henri shot the lynx, and when Kazan understood this, he tore at the end of his trap-chains and snarled at the writhing body of his forest enemy.

By means of a pole and a babiche noose, Kazan was brought out from under the windfall and taken to Henri's cabin. The two men then returned with a thick sack and more babiche, and blind Gray Wolf, still fettered by the traps, was made prisoner. All the rest of that day Weyman and Henri worked to build a stout cage of saplings, and when it was finished, the two prisoners were placed in it.

Before the dog was put in with Gray Wolf, Weyman closely examined the worn and tooth-marked collar about his neck.

On the bra.s.s plate he found engraved the one word, "Kazan," and with a strange thrill made note of it in his diary.

After this Weyman often remained at the cabin when Henri went out on the trap-line. After the second day he dared to put his hand between the sapling bars and touch Kazan, and the next day Kazan accepted a piece of raw moose meat from his hand. But at his approach, Gray Wolf would always hide under the pile of balsam in the corner of their prison. The instinct of generations and perhaps of centuries had taught her that man was her deadliest enemy. And yet, this man did not hurt her, and Kazan was not afraid of him. She was frightened at first; then puzzled, and a growing curiosity followed that. Occasionally, after the third day, she would thrust her blind face out of the balsam and sniff the air when Weyman was at the cage, making friends with Kazan. But she would not eat. Weyman noted that, and each day he tempted her with the choicest morsels of deer and moose fat. Five days--six--seven pa.s.sed, and she had not taken a mouthful. Weyman could count her ribs.

"She die," Henri told him on the seventh night. "She starve before she eat in that cage. She want the forest, the wild kill, the fresh blood.

She two--t'ree year old--too old to make civilize."

Henri went to bed at the usual hour, but Weyman was troubled, and sat up late. He wrote a long letter to the sweet-faced girl at North Battleford, and then he turned out the light, and painted visions of her in the red glow of the fire. He saw her again for that first time when he camped in the little shack where the fifth city of Saskatchewan now stood--with her blue eyes, the big shining braid, and the fresh glow of the prairies in her cheeks. She had hated him--yes, actually hated him, because he loved to kill. He laughed softly as he thought of that. She had changed him--wonderfully.

He rose, opened the door, softly, and went out. Instinctively his eyes turned westward. The sky was a blaze of stars. In their light he could see the cage, and he stood, watching and listening. A sound came to him.

It was Gray Wolf gnawing at the sapling bars of her prison. A moment later there came a low sobbing whine, and he knew that it was Kazan crying for his freedom.

Leaning against the side of the cabin was an ax. Weyman seized it, and his lips smiled silently. He was thrilled by a strange happiness, and a thousand miles away in that city on the Saskatchewan he could feel another spirit rejoicing with him. He moved toward the cage. A dozen blows, and two of the sapling bars were knocked out. Then Weyman drew back. Gray Wolf found the opening first, and she slipped out into the starlight like a shadow. But she did not flee. Out in the open s.p.a.ce she waited for Kazan, and for a moment the two stood there, looking at the cabin. Then they set off into freedom, Gray Wolf's shoulder at Kazan's flank.

Weyman breathed deeply.

"Two by two--always two by two, until death finds one of them," he whispered.

CHAPTER XII