CHAPTER XI

The Wild of the Wild

Colonel Hallibut rode the lone trail, his hounds at his heels. A spent moon draggled across a spiteful, crumpled sky, low down above the fringe of ravished forest. The wind had died, and the night was still, except for the calls of the forest things that voice their woes and joys at night. There were the low “whoo-hoos” of the owls, the “perru-perrs” of the night-hawks, and away far down toward the westward came, now and again, a fluted call dying in a wail that bespoke the lynx’s unsuccessful stalking. Deeper down in the forest a stray timber-wolf called hopelessly to a wandering pack. Anon the call was answered faintly, but clearly, far above; then a new note came into the strayer’s voice, and the yelp was sharper, clearer than before.

Colonel Hallibut rode on, his head low and his rifle thrown across his saddle-pommel. Occasionally his lips moved and he sat erect with a jerk.

“Hate me, do they?” he mused. “I wonder why? And I wonder why I should care? I am growing old and fanciful, I guess. Thank God I have my dogs—and a dog is a true friend.”

The thin moon dropped down behind the heavy fringe and the night blackened as the trail narrowed.

“I don’t know but I’ve made a mistake in making Watson and Smythe my agents,” thought the man. “I can’t trust either of them, and——”

From far ahead there came again the long, low cry of a wolf; not the undulating cry; but the long-drawn, unvarying note that bespoke the rejoining of the pack. Hallibut lifted his head and half-reined in his horse.

“Howl, you devils,” he cried. Then he slapped the horse’s neck with the rein. “If it were mid-winter now,” he soliloquized, shrugging his shoulders, “I wouldn’t just feel safe in this place.”

Miles of the trail still lay before him—miles of lonely land. But the man was inured to the Wild; he had ridden the night trail many, many times. Still the life had taught him caution. He knew that in mid-winter, when the food was scarce, the timber-wolves grew fearless and were bad company. In winter he would not have thought of journeying on this trail alone. But it was barely autumn now, and he gave himself not the slightest thought of danger, but rode boldly on.

The Colonel was the big man of his particular day. The village of St. Thomas, miles onward, he practically owned, as well as the greater portion of the partly cleared land surrounding it. St. Thomas was simply a drab-colored blotch on the Wild as yet, but the lake lay close to it and its natural resources promised to make of the half-cleared country about it a great land some day not far future. Hallibut owned the grand home of the country-side; a big, rambling house of planed boards, with wide rooms and oiled hardwood floors. It sat on the crest of a hill among a grove of butternuts, and near it stood the stables and kennels, famous far and near.

Horses were a rarity in those old days, but in Colonel Hallibut’s stables were some of the best blood-horses of the time. He loved riding and he loved the chase. Being of English birth he had adopted the customs of his homeland and carried them to the limit. His cellar contained bitter ale, beer, and choice wines. He loved to sit beside his wide fireplace with his long pipe alight, a mug at his elbow, and hounds snoozing about him, and there dream, with his pets, of the events of the day’s chase. He was a power in his land. No man dared to gainsay his command. He held more than money-power; he represented the law as well. He was a monopolist. He had secured land for the asking; land for a pittance; land for an hour or two of patient head-work. He owned thousands of acres. The scarcity of hard timber, occasioned by heavy northern forest fires, had recently enhanced its price so materially that one thousand acres of prime hardwood was worth a small fortune, provided there were facilities for shipping the timber. Hallibut owned the facilities in the shape of a trim schooner, which he now felt he could use to advantage; for he had long realized the wealth resident in those beautifully timbered ridges of the Bushwhackers. Having seen the great maple and beech, the magnificent walnut and the yellow and black and white oak, now worth many dollars a thousand, Hallibut was willing to pay a good price for the timber. He had purchased a strip of timber along Lee Creek across from the Bushwhackers, and erected a portable mill there.

In order to show the Bushwhackers that he wished to be neighborly, the big man had built them a schoolhouse and supplied a teacher for it, in doing which he felt that he had been actuated by pure magnanimity, without thought of gain.

But the Colonel was finding out that the Bushwhackers resented his advances of friendship, and he wondered why. Now they were threatening him, and they must learn that he did not fear them.

The Colonel had never married, but kept as his housekeeper an old-country woman of advanced years. Her name was Davis, and her grown-up son, Dick, lived with them and looked after the kennels and stables.

Austere as he appeared to be to the people in village and country-side, Colonel Hallibut was in reality a man of great and generous impulses. He was a man of reserve, for in his heart rested a pitiful little story—pitiful because so simple.

Years ago, on a fine estate in England, he had possessed a little sister who was all the kin he could claim in the world. He more than loved the girl—he worshiped her as few men have been known to do. She could not make a wish he would not gratify. And the girl—she loved the big brother better than anything in the world, until that other love awakened within her. One day she forsook the brother, leaving a brief note behind. She had married a man who was beneath her station in life, and fled with him across the ocean. Hallibut faced his grief and went the way alone. From that day his world had been a lonely world. Change of scenes, excitement, or even the chase could never make him forget. The sister’s face was always there. He sold the estate and sought forgetfulness in travel. Then he did what he should have done at first—he sought the girl. But he found her not. He joined the army, but even the thrill of the fight gave him no respite from sad memories. At last he turned for solace to the Wild; and in the big house, with one old family servant, he had lived for years now. Out in the open all day long, and at night by his fireplace with a picture in the glowing coals and a portrait looking from the wall—this was the man’s life as it was lived.

As the horseman penetrated deeply into the forest gloom and the heavy shadows settled more closely about him, making the trail hard to keep in its blackness, he began to wish he had asked Dick to come out and meet him, as he sometimes did when forced to return after night. The woods had a way of playing pranks upon him. He was not bred for the bush, and therefore there were things about it that he could never hope to learn at his age. Still he knew the trail he was on well enough to have followed it blindfolded, had it been necessary. He settled lower in the saddle, and with his mind on Smythe and Watson and the Bushwhackers, he passed down the trail.

He had been perhaps two hours in the saddle, and was nearing what was known as the Fire-Lick, a low, charred scar of territory that had been swept by fire years ago, when he was aroused from his meditations by the growls of his hounds. The dogs were acting in a most peculiar manner, running ahead for a few feet and then retreating almost beneath the horse’s heels. The horse, too, seemed to catch their spirit, for he reared once or twice, and would have thrown the rider had he been other than Hallibut himself.

“What the devil!” cried the man, striking the horse with the quirt and whistling to the hounds.

“What’s the matter with you all, anyway?”

The horse leaped forward so suddenly that an overhanging branch caught the rider’s cap and swept it from his head. With a promise that he would teach the animal to act differently, the Colonel slid down from his saddle and with the bridle-rein over his arm stooped to feel in the darkness for his cap. A hound almost beneath the horse lifted its head and howled, and the frightened beast with a snort reared and, jerking away from the man, sprang down the trail in the direction from which he had come.

Hallibut arose and fumbled the hammer of his rifle. He had his hands full with the dogs, for they crowded around him whining and growling and in every way manifesting fear of the unseen enemy. He did not understand it. It was a pretty predicament for him to be in, surely. It meant ten miles of a walk, and he was tired. He stepped out and, followed by the dogs, made to cross the Fire-Lick that stretched like a black lake before him. At its border a circle of gleaming eyes met him.

“Wolves!” he shuddered, and throwing forward the rifle he drew a bead on those shifting balls of fire and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell dead. No explosion followed, and the circle narrowed toward man and dogs. Hallibut sprang for a nearby tree and drew himself up into its branches.

As he swung aloft a dark shape hurled itself into the air, and he heard the wolf’s teeth snap within a few inches of his pendant legs.

“They’ll get my hounds,” thought the man. “Back, Pinch; back, Gabe; Nell, you fool, get back there,” he cried excitedly.

But the fighting blood was up in the dogs. In numbers they were inferior to the foe, but in fighting tactics they were superior. The master knew each dog by its voice. And now it was Pinch gurgled a challenge, and the whimper of Nell bespoke her eagerness to back him. Gabe, the heaviest of the hounds, had closed on the wolf which had first sprung. Hallibut heard the snapping of bones—then a number of other wolves hurled themselves forward. He could hear the dogs snarling as they fought, and he lent his voice to their encouragement.

“Easy, Gabe,” he shouted; “Nell, girl, easy now. Lead ’em into the open. Don’t let ’em get you in the thick timber.”

Hallibut had placed another cap on the nipple of his rifle, and as the struggling mass surged back into the charred space he fired into it point-blank. A wild howl told that a wolf had been hit.

“That’s all I can do, poor chaps,” he called.

His powder and ball were in the saddle-bags.

“They’ll kill them all,” cried the man. “They’ll kill my dogs. Ha, if Dick only knew and would loose the big ’uns.”

The “big ’uns” were a pack of wolf-hounds which on account of their vicious natures Hallibut kept in confinement.

Even as he spoke upon his ear fell the sharp crack of a rifle far eastward on the trail, and as its echo died there arose the deep musical bay of the wolf-hounds. Hallibut scrambled upright on a limb and probed the darkness with his eyes. Those gallant hounds beneath had heard the baying, too, and they were fighting as they never had fought before. One of the dogs retreated backward, fighting feebly with two gaunt shapes that strove to bear it to earth. Hallibut, with a cry that was half a sob, forgot all caution in the animal love he bore his best and dearest companions.

“They’d do it for me,” he cried; and clubbing his rifle he leaped to the ground. He was barely in time to save the brave Nell, who with torn sides and lolling tongue had fallen at last, fighting still and snapping with all her remaining force. Just as one of the wolves sprang, Hallibut brought the heavy rifle-barrel down upon its head, crushing the skull as though it had been an egg-shell. The dog scrambled up and met the other wolf as it sprang toward her master. Then a cyclone of panting, bounding bodies swept in and there was grand play in the Fire-Lick for a brief space of time.

“Oh, Colonel!” cried a voice.

“This way, Dick, lad, and be quick,” the man responded breathlessly.

Dick found his master leaning weakly against a tree.

“Are you ’urt, sir?” he asked, dismounting.

“No. See if they’ve killed Gabe and Pinch, Dick. Lord! but how those little hounds did fight!”

Dick returned in a short time.

“I found two dead wolves, and I can’t find any of the dogs, sir,” he said. “Listen!—they’re givin’ of ’em ’ell, sir, an’ no mistake.”

Hallibut sat down on a log and drew the maimed dog over against his knee.

“Nell, old girl,” he said chokingly, stroking her long ears, “you’re a tartar, Nell.”

The dog whined and licked his hand.

“Pinch, sir,” cried Dick, “’e be limpin’, but he be none the worse beyond bein’ sore as anythink, sir.”

In half an hour the rest of the pack had returned and were gamboling and leaping about Hallibut. Great, deep-chested, throaty dogs those wolf-hounds were. Their one consuming desire being to tear down and kill, they felt for the man before them only the blind devotion of dog for master. Hallibut had given them more blows than pats, but he knew how to command respect among dogs.

“How many was in the pack, sir?” asked Dick. He had drawn two dead wolves into the open and was now dragging a third.

“Somewhere about ten, I should judge,” replied the Colonel. “But I can’t understand why they should be on the rampage at this time of year.”

“Look at this one, sir,” cried Dick. “’E’s so thin that ’e must ’ave nigh starved to death. All of ’em are thin. There’s only one reason as I can think of that would make ’em vicious, sir: they’re starvin’—that’s why.”

“Nonsense,” cried Hallibut. “Why, the heavy timber is alive with food.”

“Yes, sir, I know that. But you see, sir, these wolves can’t get into th’ ’eavy timber; at least they won’t go. They won’t go through a peopled settlement, an’ they can’t pass back into the woods by the way they came, sir.”

“And why can’t they?”

“Well, sir, I think it’s ’cause you’ve put that mill on the creek. You see they must ’ave come by way of the lower swale—hit’s the only way they could come. An’ when you built th’ mill the saws frightened ’em back further so that they’ve been all through th’ second-growth and they’ve naturally been starvin’ slow, an’ it’s come to such a pass as they’ve growed desperate, sir.”

“By George, Dick, I believe you’re right,” cried Hallibut.

He arose stiffly and looked about him.

“Well, my putting that mill there might have been the death of me all right,” he said. “But, lad, you haven’t told me why you came to meet me with the hounds.”

“Yes, sir; it was this way. A man from the village was chased by this ’ere pack last night. ’E was over at the stables to-night an’ ’e told me. I came out a ways and listened for a time, an’ when I ’eard ’em ’owl I let the big ’uns loose, thinkin’ as you ’ud not mind my doin’ it under th’ circumstances, sir.”

“You did just right, lad,” said Hallibut. “But did you bring their leashes, Dick?”

“Right ’ere in my saddle-bag, sir.”

“Well, you’d better tie ’em up before they happen on an Indian. This country is getting so’s Indians are becoming more valuable every day.”

Dick chuckled.

“They do ’ate Injuns an’ niggers, sir; an’, sir, that reminds me, there’s an old Injun from the Point by the name of Noah Sturgeon waitin’ up at th’ place to see you, sir.”

The Colonel knit his brows.

“Sturgeon,” he repeated; “Noah Sturgeon,—don’t think I ever heard of him——”

“Your ’orse, sir?” questioned Dick, looking about him.

“Never mind about my horse—I’m going to ride yours. You follow up and keep a tight grip on the hounds. I don’t want that old Indian to get eaten up.”

They passed on down the black trail, and the spot that had witnessed the struggle between the “big ’uns” and the starving things of the Wild grew silent again with a great and oppressive silence. Only the tiny bare branches of the trees clicked under the restless wind that slumbered fitfully when the night grew old. The clouds crept from the sky away down and below the forest-fringe; then the white stars came out and rested, looking down on the Fire-Lick. Their soft light swept the open and fell across the crumpled forms of the dead things that had roamed the forest-Wild. They lay pitifully silent and huddled, their red tongues lolling; their starving days at an end. Further into the second-growth bushland there were others of them, lying cold, beyond all life of the Wild. They had been cut off from their own; they had starved and fought and died. But they were only wolves after all.