The Snowshoe Trail Part 19

The caribou's powerful limbs pushed out a mighty leap. Frenzied, Harold shot again; but his nerve was broken and his self-control blown to the four winds. The animal had gained the shelter of the thickets by now, and Harold's third and fourth shots went wild. Then he lowered his weapon with a curse.

It is part of the creed of a certain type of hunter to never admit a clean miss. "My sights are off," Harold shouted. "They didn't shoot within three feet of where I aimed. d.a.m.n such a gun--but I think I wounded him the third shot. You'll find him dead if you follow him long enough."

Bill answered nothing, but went to see. In the firing he hadn't even raised his own gun to his shoulder. There is a certain code among hunters in regard to shooting another's game: an unwritten law that, except in a case of life and death, one hunter does not interfere with another's shooting. It was through no desire to embarra.s.s Harold that he didn't a.s.sist him in putting down his trophy. He was simply giving the man full play. Bill stared at the caribou tracks in the snow, followed them a hundred feet, and then came mushing back.

"You didn't seem to have put one in," he reported simply.

"I didn't, eh?" Harold answered angrily. "How could you tell, so soon?

I suppose you're woodsman enough to know that a wounded animal doesn't always show blood. I'd be ready to bet that if we followed him far enough we'd find him dead."

"We'd have to follow him till he died naturally of old age," was the good-humored reply. "We can't always. .h.i.t, Lounsbury. He began to trot when he got into the trees--a perfectly normal gait. I think we'd better look for something else."

"Then I want you to carry my gun awhile, and let me take yours. The sights are off a mile. It's all ready, and here's a handful of extra sh.e.l.ls. You ought to be willing to do that, at least."

Harold had forgotten that this man was not his personal guide, subject to his every wish. He held out gun and sh.e.l.ls; and, smiling, Bill received them, giving his own weapon in exchange. They mushed on down the trail.

But Harold's miss had not been his greater sin. To miss is human; no true sportsman holds it against his fellow. The omission that followed, however, was by all the codes of the hunting trails unpardonable. He supposed that he had refilled his rifle magazine with sh.e.l.ls before he put it in Bill's hands. In his confusion and anger, he had forgotten to do so; and the only load that the gun contained was that in the barrel, thrown in automatically when the last empty sh.e.l.l was ejected.

XVIII

Several seasons before there had been a fatality on the hillside above Creek Despair. An ancient spruce tree, one that had watched the forest drama for uncounted years, whose tall head lifted above all the surrounding forest and who had known the silence and the snow of a hundred winters, had languished, withered and died from sheer old age.

For some seasons it had stood in its place, silent and grim and majestic in death. On the day that the three hunters emerged on their snowshoes in search of meat for their depleted larder, the wind pressed gently against it. Because its trunk was rotted away it swayed and fell heavily.

There was nothing particularly memorable in this. All trees die; all of them fall at last. Its particular significance lay in the fact that as it shattered down, sliding a distance on the steep hillside, it sc.r.a.ped the snow from the mouth of a winter lair of a scarcely less venerable forest inhabitant,--a savage, long-clawed, gray-furred grizzly bear.

The creature had gone into hibernation weeks before: he was deep in the cold-trance--that mysterious coma of which the wisest naturalists have no real knowledge--when the tree fell. He hadn't in the least counted on being disturbed until the leaves budded out in spring. He had filled his belly well, crawled into a long, narrow cavern in the rock, the snow had sifted down and sealed him in, his bodily heat had warmed to a sufficient degree the little alcove in the cavern that he occupied, his blood temperature had dropped down and his breathing had almost ceased, and he had lain in a deep, strange stupor, oblivious to the pa.s.sage of time. And he felt the rage known to all sleepy men on being awakened.

The grizzly is a particularly crafty, intelligent animal--on the intellectual plane of the dog and elephant--and he had chosen his winter lair with special purpose in mind of a long and uninterrupted sleep. The cavern mouth was so well concealed that even the sharp eyes of the wild creatures, pa.s.sing up and down the creek hardly a hundred feet away, never guessed its existence. The cavern maw had been large once, for all to see, but an avalanche had pa.s.sed over it. Tons of snow, picking up a great cargo of rocks and dirt that no stream dredge in the world could lift, had roared and bellowed down the slope, narrowly missing the trunk of the great spruce, changing the contour of the creek bed and concealing its landmarks, and only a square yard of the original entrance was left. This opening was concealed by a little cl.u.s.ter of young spruce that had sprung up in the fallen earth. Yes, old Ephraim had had every reason to believe that no one would find him or break his sleep, and he was all the more angry at the interruption.

The falling tree had made a frightful crash just over his head, and even the deep coma in which the grizzly lay was abruptly dissolved. He sprang up, ready to fight. A little gleam of sunlight ventured through the spruce thicket, down into the mouth of the cavern, and lay like a patch of gold on the cavern floor. It served to waken some slight degree of interest in the snowy world without. It might be well to look around a moment, at least, before he lay down to sleep again. At least he had to sc.r.a.pe more snow over the cabin mouth. And in the meantime he might be lucky enough to find the dearest delight in his life,--a good, smashing, well-matched fight to cool the growing anger in his great veins.

Ephraim was an old bear, used to every hunting wile, and his disposition hadn't improved with years. He was the undisputed master of the forest, and he couldn't think of any particular enemy that he would not encounter with a roar of joy. As often, in the case of the old, his teeth were rotting away; and the pain was a darting, stabbing devil in his gums. His little, fierce eyes burned and smoldered with wrath, he grunted deep in his throat, and he pushed out savagely through the cavern maw. It was only a step farther through the spruce thicket into the sunlight. And at the first glance he knew that his wish was coming true.

Three figures, two abreast and one behind, came mushing through the little pa.s.s where the creek flowed. He knew them well enough. There were plenty of grizzly traditions concerned with them. He recognized them in an instant as his hereditary foes,--the one breed that had not yet learned to give him right-of-way on the trail. They were tall, fearful forms, and something in their eyes sent a shudder of cold clear to his heart, yet he was not in the humor to give ground. His nerves were jumpy and unstrung from the fall of the tree, his jaw wracked him; a turn of the hair might decide whether he would merely stand and let them pa.s.s, or whether he would launch into that terrible, death-dealing charge that most grizzly hunters, sooner or later, come to know. His mental processes did not go far enough to disa.s.sociate these enemies with the stabbing foe in his gums. For the same reason he blamed them for disruption of his sleep. His ears laid back, and he uttered a deep growl.

There was no more magnificent creature in all of the breadth of the forest than this, the grizzly of the Selkirks. He was old and savage and wise; but for all his years, in the highest pinnacle of his strength. No man need to glance twice at him to know his glory. No tenderfoot could look at him and again wonder why, in the talk round the camp fire, the tried woodsmen always spoke of the grizzly with respect.

It was true that in the far corners of the earth there were creatures that could master him. The elephant could crush the life from his mighty body with the power of his knees; Kobaoba the rhino, most surly of all game, could have pierced his heart with his horn; perhaps even the Cape buffalo--that savage explosive old gentleman of the African marshes, most famous for his deadly propensity to charge on sight--could have given him a fair battle. But woe to the lion that should be obliged to face that terrible strength! Even the tiger, sinuous and terrible--armed with fangs like cruel knives and dreadful, raking, rending claws--could not have faced him in a fair fight.

But these were folk of the tropics, and his superiority was unquestioned among the northern animals. Even the bull moose had no wish to engage in a stand-up-and-take, close-range, death fight with a grizzly. The bull caribou left his trail at the sound of his heavy body in the thicket; the wolf pack, most deadly of fighting organizations, were glad to avoid him in the snow. His first cousins, the Alaskan bears, were more mighty than he, but they were less agile and, probably, less cunning. Such lesser creatures as wished to continue to enjoy the winter sunlight stepped softly when they journeyed past his lair.

He was a peculiar gray in color,--like brown hair that has silvered in many winters. His huge head was lowered between his high, rocking shoulders, his forelegs were simply great, knotty, cast-iron bunches of fiber and tendons; his long claws--worn down by digging in the rocks for marmots--were like great, curved fingers. As he stepped, his forefeet swung out, giving to his carriage an arrogance and a swagger that would have been amusing if it hadn't been terrible. His wicked teeth gleamed white in foam, and the hair stood stiff at his shoulders.

There is no forest crisis that presents such a test to human nerves as the charge of a grizzly. There is no forest voice more fraught with ferocity and savagery of the beasts of prey than his low, deep, reverberating growl. Human beings have not yet reached such perfection of self-mastery that they can hear such a sound, leaping suddenly like a thing of substance through the bush, and disregard it. It was to be that these three foes, journeying toward him along Creek Despair, did not disregard it now. For all the depth of the snow, he pushed through the spruce thicket into the sunlight.

Thus the three hunters met him--in all his strength and glory--not fifty feet distant at the base of the hill. He seemed to be poised to charge.

Bill's keen eyes saw the bear first. All at once its huge outline against the snow leaped to his vision. At the same instant the bear growled, a sound that halted halted Virginia and Harold in their tracks.

For an instant all four figures stood in indescribable tableau: the bear poised, the three staring, the snowy wastes silent and changeless and unreal.

It was the last sight in the world that Bill had expected. He had supposed that the grizzlies were all in hibernation now; he hadn't conceived of the possibilities whereby the great creature had been called from his sleep. And he knew in one glance the full peril of the situation.

Often in his forest travels Bill had met grizzlies, and nearly always he had pa.s.sed them by. Usually the latter were glad to make their escape; and Bill would hasten their departure with shouts of glee. Yet this man knew the grizzly, his power and his wrath, and most of all he knew his utter unreliability. It is not the grizzly way to stand impa.s.sive when he is at bay, and neither does he like to flee up hill. If the animal did think his escape was cut off--a delusion to which the bear family seem particularly subject--he would charge them with a fury and might that had no equal in the North American animal world. And a grizzly charge is a difficult thing to stop in a distance of fifty feet.

The presence of Virginia in their party had its influence in Bill's decision. In times past he had been willing enough to take a small measure of risk to his own life, but the life of every grizzly in the North could not pay for one jot of risk to hers. Lastly he realized at the first sight of those glowing, angry eyes, the ears back, and the stiff hairs on the shoulder that the grizzly was in a fighting mood.

For all the complexity of his thought, his decision did not take an instant. There was no waiting to offer the sporting opportunity to Harold. Virginia was not aware of a lapse in time between the instant that Bill caught sight of the bear and that in which his gun came leaping to his shoulder. He had full confidence in the hard-hitting vicious bullet in Harold's thirty-five, and most of all he relied on the four reserve shots that he supposed lay in the rifle magazine. The grizzly dies hard: he felt that all four of them would be needed to arrest the charge that would likely follow his first shot.

He didn't wait for those great muscles to get into action. The animal was standing broadside to him, his head turned and red eyes watching; if Bill had his own gun, he would have aimed straight for the s.p.a.ce between the eyes. This is never a sportsman's shot; but for an absolute marksman, in a moment of crisis, it is the surest shot of all. But he did not know Harold's gun well enough to trust such a shot. Indeed, he aimed for the great shoulder, the region of the lungs and heart. The gun cracked in the silence.

The bullet went straight home, ripping through the lungs, tearing the great arteries about the heart, shivering even a portion of the heart itself. And yet the grizzly sprang like a demon through the deep snow, straight towards him.

It is no easy thing to face a grizzly's charge. The teeth gleam in red foam, the eyes flash, the great shoulders rock. For all the deep snow that he bounded through, the beast approached at an unbelievable pace.

He bawled as he came--awful, reverberating sounds that froze the blood in the veins. If the course had been open, likely he would have been upon him before Bill could send home another shot. There could only be one result to such a meeting as this. One blow would strike the life from Bill's body as the lightning strikes it from a tree. But the snow impeded the bear, and it seemed to Virginia's horrified eyes that Bill would have time to empty the magazine. She saw his fingers race as he worked the lever action of the gun: she saw his eyes lower again to the sights. The bear seemed almost upon him. And she screamed when she heard the impotent click of the hammer against the breech. Bill had fires the single shot that was in the gun.

Before ever he heard the sound Harold remembered. In one wave of horror he recalled that he had forgotten to refill the magazine with sh.e.l.ls.

Yet leaping fast--red and deadly and terrible upon the heels of his remorse--there came an emotion that seared him like a wall of fire.

He saw Bill's fate. By no circ.u.mstance of which he could conceive could the man escape. A shudder pa.s.sed over his frame, but it was not of revulsion. Rather it was an emotion known well to the beasts of prey, though to human beings it comes but rarely. Here was his enemy, the man he hated above all living creatures, and the blood l.u.s.t surged through him like a madness. In one wave of ecstasy he felt that he was about to see the gratification of his hatred.

In the hands of a brave and loyal man, the rifle Harold carried might yet have been Bill's salvation. It was a large-caliber, close-range gun of stupendous striking power. Yet Harold didn't lift it to his shoulder. Part of it was willful omission, mostly it was the paralysis of terror. Yet he would have need enough for the gun if the bear turned on him. He saw that Bill's had was groping, hopeless though the effort was, for one of the sh.e.l.ls that Harold had given him and which he carried in his pocket.

But there was no time to find it, to open his gun and insert it, and to fire before the ravening enemy would be upon him. He made the effort simply because it was his creed: to struggle as long as his life blood pulsed in his veins. He knew there was no chance to run or dodge. The bear could go at thrice his own pace in the deep snow. His last hope had been that Harold would come to his aid: that the man would stop the bear's charge with Bill's own heavy rifle; but now he knew that Harold's enmity of cowardice had betrayed him.

But at that instant aid came from an unexpected quarter. Virginia was not one to stand helpless or to turn and flee. She remembered the pistol at her belt, and she drew it in a flash of blue steel. True and straight she aimed toward the glowing eyes of the grizzly.

At the angle that they struck, her bullets did not penetrate the brain, but they did give Bill an instant's reprieve. The bear struck at the wounds they made, then halted, bawling, in the snow. His roving eye caught sight of Virginia's form. With a roar he bounded toward her.

The next instant was one of drama, of incredible stress and movement.

For all his mortal wounds, the short distance between the bear and the girl seemed to recede with tragic swiftness. The animal's cries rang through the silent forest: near and far the wild creatures paused in their occupations to listen. Virginia also stood her ground. There was no use to flee; she merely stood straight, her eyes gazing along her pistol barrel, firing shot after shot into the animal's head. Because it was an automatic, she was able to send home the loads in rapid succession.

But they were little, futile things, with never the shocking power to stop that blasting charge. Her safety still lay in that in which she had always trusted, the same that had been her fort and her stronghold in all their past adventures. Bill saw the grizzly change in direction; his response was instinctive and instantaneous. He came leaping through the snow as if a great hand had hurled him, all of his muscles contracting in response to the swift, immutable command of his will.

For all the burden of his snowshoes and the depths of the drifts, his leap was almost as fast as the grizzly's own. He had but one realization: that the girl's tender flesh must never know those rending claws and fangs. He leaped to intercept the rending charge with his own body.

But his hand had found the sh.e.l.l by now, dropped it into the gun, and as a last instinctive effort, pulled back the lever that slid the cartridge into the barrel. There was no time to raise the gun to his shoulder.

He pointed it instinctively toward the gray throat. And the end of the barrel was against the bear's flesh as he pressed the trigger.

No human eye could follow the lightning events of the next fraction of a second. All that occurred was over and done in the duration of one heart-beat,--before the shudder and explosion in the air from the rifle's report had pa.s.sed away. One instant, and the three figures seemed all together; Bill crouched with rifle held pointed in his arms, Virginia behind him, the grizzly full upon them both. The next, and Harold stood alone in the snow and the silence,--awed, terrified, and estranged as if in a dream.

Except for the three forms that lay still, half-buried and concealed in the drifts, it was as if the adventure never occurred. The spruce trees stood straight and aloof as ever. The silence stretched unbroken; its immensity had swallowed and smothered the last echo of the rifle report and the grizzly's roar. There was no movement, seemingly no life,--only the drifts and the winter forest and the futile sun, shining down between the snow-laden trees.

Yet he knew vaguely what had occurred. The bullet had gone true. It had pierced the animal's neck, breaking the vertebrae of the spinal column, and life had gone out of him as a flame goes out in the wind.

But it had come too late to destroy the full force of the charge. Bill had been struck with some portion of the bear's body as he fell and had been hurled like a lifeless doll into the drifts. Virginia, too, had received some echo of that shock, probably from Bill's body as he shattered down. Now all three lay half-hidden in the snow. Which of them lived and which were dead Harold dared not guess.

But he had no time to go forward and investigate before Bill had sprung to his feet. He had received only a glancing blow; the drifts into which he had fallen were soft as pillows. In reality he had never even lost consciousness. Still subject to the one thought that guided and shaped his actions throughout the adventure, he crawled over to Virginia's side.

No living man had ever seen his face as white as it was now. His eyes were wide with the image of horror; he didn't know what wounds the dying bear might have inflicted on the girl. There was no rend in her white flesh, however; and his eye kindled and his face blazed when he saw that she yet lived.