Chapter 14

AT BAY

Bill Carmody was no coward; but neither was he a fool, and for the first time the seriousness of his position dawned upon him. Other shapes appeared and ranged themselves beside their leader, and as the man looked upon their gaunt, sinewy leanness, the slavering jaws, and blazing eyes, he shuddered. Here, indeed, was a very real danger.

He decided to camp. Fire, he remembered to have read, would hold the brutes at bay. Wood there was in plenty, and, quickly clearing a space in the snow, he soon had the satisfaction of seeing tiny tongues of flame crackle in a pile of dry branches.

He unslung his light axe and attacked the limbs of a dead pine that lay at the edge of the road.

After an hour's work his cleared space was flanked on either side by piles of dry firewood, and at his back the great pile of tops afforded shelter from the wind which swept down the roadway, driving before it stinging volleys of snow.

He spread his blanket and drew from his pack the unappetizing food. He warmed the remaining half-can of salmon and whittled at his nubbin of bread.

"Dinner is served, sir," he announced to himself, "dead fish with formaldehyde dressing, petrified dough, and _aqua nivis_." The storm continued, and as he smoked the gravity of his plight forced itself upon him.

The laggards had caught up, and at the edge of the arc of firelight a wide semicircle of insanely glaring eyeballs and gleaming fangs told where the wolf-pack waited.

There was a terrifying sense of certainty in their method. They took no chance of open attack, wasted no breath in needless howling or snarling, but merely sat upon their haunches beyond the circle of the firelight--waiting.

Again the man shuddered. Before him, he knew, lay at least fifteen miles of trail knee-deep with snow, and he had left but one small ration of unpalatable and unnutritious food.

"I seem to be up against a tough proposition," he mused. "What was it Appleton said about battle, murder, and sudden death? It looks from here as if the old boy knew what he was talking about. But it is kind of rough on a man to roll them all up into one bundle and hand it to him right on the kick-off."

He had heard of men who became lost in the woods and died horribly of cold and starvation, or went down to the rush of the wolf-pack.

"As long as I stick to this road I won't get lost," he thought. "I may freeze to death, or starve, or furnish a cozy meal for the wolves yonder, but even at that I still have the edge on those others--I'm damned if I'm _lost_!"

And, strange as it may seem, the thought gave him much comfort.

He tossed more wood on the fire and watched the shower of sparks which shot high above the flames.

"To-morrow will be my busy day," he remarked, addressing the wolves. "Good night, you hell-hounds! Just stick around and see that nothing sneaks up and bites me."

He hurled a blazing firebrand among the foremost of the hungry hoard, but these did not retreat--merely leaped back, snarling, to lurk in the outer shadows.

Bill's sleep was fitful. The snow ceased to fall during the early hours of the night, and the pair of blankets with which he had provided himself proved entirely inadequate protection against the steadily increasing cold.

Time and again he awoke and replenished the fire, for, no matter in what position he lay, one side of his body seemed freezing, while the other toasted uncomfortably in the hot glare of the flames. And always--just at the rim of the fire-light--sat the wolves, waiting in their ominous circle of silence.

But in the interims between these awakenings he slept profoundly, oblivious alike to discomfort and danger--as the dead sleep.

At the first hint of dawn Bill hastily consumed the last of his unpalatable food and resumed his journey.

Hour after hour he toiled through the snow, and always the wolf-pack followed, haunting his trail in the open roadway and flanking him in the deep shade of the evergreen forest, moving tirelessly through the loose snow in long, slow leaps.

Seventeen of them he counted--seventeen murderous, ill-visaged curs of the savage kill! And the leader of the pack was a very demon wolf. A monstrous female, almost pure white, huge, misshapen, hideous--the ultimate harridan of the wolf-breed--she stood a full two hands above the tallest of the rank and file of her evil clan.

The foot and half of a foreleg had been left between iron jaws where she had gnawed herself out of a trap, and the shrunken stub, depending from a withered shoulder, dragged over the surface of the snow, leaving a curious mark like the trail of a snake.

The remaining foreleg was strong and thick and, from redistribution of balance, slanted inward from the massive shoulder, which was developed out of all proportion to its mate, giving the great white brute a repulsive, lopsided appearance.

The long, stiff hair stood out upon her neck in a great ruff, which accentuated the fiendish ferocity of her, adding a hyena-like slope to her ungainly body. But it was in the expression of her face that she reached the climax of hideous malevolence.

One pointed ear stood erect upon her head, while the other, mangled and torn into a serried red excrescence, formed the termination of a broad, ragged scar which began at the corner of her mouth, giving her face the expression of a fiendish grin that belied the green glare of her venomous, opalescent eyes.

The loss of the leg seemed in nowise to hamper her freedom of action. She moved ceaselessly among the pack with a peculiar bounding gallop, fawning in subtle cajolery upon those in the forefront, slashing right and left among the laggards with vicious clicks of her long, white fangs; and always she watched the tiring man who found his own gaze fixed upon her in horrid fascination.

There was something sinister in the wolf-pack's noiseless pursuit. The brutes drew nearer as the man's pace slowed to the wearying of his muscles.

Instinctively he knew that at the last there would be no waiting--no delay. The very minute he sank exhausted into the snow they would be upon him--the great white leader and her rapacious horde--and in his imagination he could feel the viselike clench of iron jaws and the tearing rip with which the quivering flesh would be stripped from his bones.

At midday the man placed the sheath-knife in his belt and threw away the pack. Relieved of the burden, his shoulders felt strangely light. There was a new buoyancy in his stride.

But the relief was temporary, and as the sun sank early behind the pines his brain was again driving his wearied muscles to their work.

The wolves were following close in now, and the silence of their relentless persistence filled the man with a dumb terror which no pandemonium of howling could have inspired.

His advance was halting. Each step was a separate and conscious undertaking, and it was with difficulty that he lifted his moccasins clear of the snow.

Suddenly he stumbled. The leaders were almost upon him as he recovered and faced them there in the white reach of the tote-road. They halted just out of reach of the swing of his axe, and as the man looked into their glaring eyes a frenzy of unreasoning fury seized him.

His nerves could no longer stand the strain. Something seemed to snap in his brain, and through his veins surged the spirit of his fighting ancestors.

A sudden memory flash, as of deeds forgotten through long ages, and with it came strength--the very abandon of fierce, brute strength of a man with the mind to kill.

"Come on!" he cried. "Fight it out, you fiends! I may die, but I'll be damned if I'll be hounded to death! You may get me, but you'll _fight_! When a McKim goes down some one pays! And if it is die--By God! There'll be fun in the dying!"

With a weird primordial scream, as the first man might have screamed in the face of the first saber-tooth, he hurled his axe among them and sprang forward, flashing the cold, gray blade of his sheath-knife!