Part 3

Then the cow joined him, and Rauten went to meet her. The storm within him calmed down. For the cow began to lick him, and her tongue was soft, so caressingly soft. His shoulder blazed red like the sunrise, and his neck wept warm tears on to the moist earth. Every touch of the cow’s tongue was a reward, humble admiration of him only—the greatest and the strongest among the elk bulls of valley or mountains, the crowned king of elks in Ré Valley. Nothing could stand up before him. He broke down everything before him like a falling tree in the bushes. He trotted southwards with the cow by his side across Bog Hill, like Victory itself, even though one ear was but half a one, and his body wept blood. Round their legs the white heads of the bog down-grass moved like fat white birds, while the elks ploughed their way, dark grey under the sloping rays of the newly-risen sun.

* * * * *

The three-year-old lay on his back all the morning, wedged in between the stump and the tree-trunk.

There was no possible means of getting out again. He could not turn, the space was too narrow, and his legs could get no hold in the empty air. He worked till he grew weak. Then he lay still, knees bent heavenwards as if he were praying to the sun for help. His tongue lolled limply out of one corner of his mouth, and the sun burned his face pitilessly. Then he shut his eyes.

§ 8

That same day in the afternoon Bjönn from Lynx Hut was following an elk spoor southwards through Ré Valley.

Bjönn ran quickly, nose to earth. He crossed wide marshes and small bogs where the dwarfed pines spread their wide, flat crowns like noses. He crossed ridges and valleys, and at last his course went towards Bog Hill.

There his song grew wildly excited. Gaupa was half a league farther north, but he overtook the dog within an hour. He went straight up to the helpless elk, whose legs still pawed the air. He aimed, pulled the trigger, and the bull elk moved no more.

“H’m”—Gaupa wondered.

“That is an elk bull,” he mused, “but in what a strange position! How in all the world did he happen to lie on his back between that stump and the spruce tree? It is inexplicable.”

He investigated the bog, picked up a tuft of hair which was dark, and then another which was lighter. But the whole bog looked as if someone had driven a harrow from end to end, and from side to side criss-cross.

“H’m,” Gaupa mused once more. Lord, what a fight there had been! He walked about studying the spoors. His eyes searched the earth. Two bulls had been here. One remained down there on the slope, and he had blown life out of him with his own “Tempest.” But the other bull was larger—and why, of course it was Rauten, the wizard elk. The cleft spoors stood out with curved outer edges as the spoors of a bull generally are.

Gaupa raised his head reflectingly. Round about him the calm glow of autumn burned in the air and on the earth. The slopes were multicoloured with pinewood and leafage intermingled, spotted like the coat of a lynx.

He began to flay the dead elk; but as it was too late in the day to go down in Lower Valley with the news that he had killed an elk, he decided to go east and spend the night in the nearest highland farm.

On his way he meditated on Rauten, but he was not such a fool as to try to trace him. That would be sheer waste of time. He was not such a fool as to try that. For many are the hunters who have returned with sore-pawed and worn-out dogs when they have had the wizard elk before them.

Rauten had peculiar ways. He rarely ran faster than the dogs could go, but he never really stopped, never long enough for the hunter to overtake him. He sought out all the lakes and ponds in existence, and crossed them. You might follow him for hours and hours if your dog did not give up—as he was sure to do sooner or later. Very eager dogs were known to chase Rauten till they completely lost their way, and they had been found in far-off districts past the mountain gap. Also all foresters in those parts agreed that bad luck went with the wizard elk. Petter Kleivaberget fell and broke his arm when chasing Rauten. Arne Öigarden shot his own dog in mistake for the elk—a fine dog, too, worth a hundred dollars. And the man from Krödsherred who attempted to run down Rauten on ski one winter broke both skis and as nearly as anything died in the snow. He was so weak when he reached the Tolleiv Mountain Farm that he could not walk across the pasture—he crawled on all fours and was a whole hour about it too, so it was clear to anybody how near to death’s door he had been.

No, Gaupa would not follow Rauten.

He went east to Morsæter. The house lies in a little valley branching out from the Ré Valley proper. As he walked he felt uneasy. His head was heavy and he coughed now and then; he breathed heavily going uphill—he who never used to notice a hill, he who could mount the slopes at a run. Presently he began to perspire also. Gaupa did not usually perspire for just nothing.

It was probably because he had sat down on a peak last night and felt exceedingly cold, after sunset. He had been running pretty hard just before, so that he was a little moist. And that mountain peak was quite bare, and such places are invariably rather cold.

Some years before Gaupa had had pneumonia. An epidemic raged in the district at that time, and there were many funeral parties and many sad-looking pine branches along all roads. And the young people did not dance again until Midsummer Eve.

Gaupa had really been very bad at that time, and Harald Övrejordet, the lay preacher of the valley, the high priest as they called him, came up to him and begged him to be converted from all his sins. Perhaps he would have turned from his evil ways, if he had not felt that selfsame day that the sickness had taken a turn for the better, and that he was going to get well. Therefore he was in no hurry, he would wait and see. He recovered completely and remained in sin for the time being.

But ever since then Gaupa found that if he ran really very hard a sharp needle seemed to run through his right lung. That needle was a perfect nuisance. It had cost him several horse-loads of meat, for it had forced him to stop while the elk ran away.

He felt that needle now, but, curse it, it was sure to go away again.

Towards evening the sky grew filmy, the sun dull-eyed, the earth grey. A lake to the north was just then gleaming pale under the wooded slopes. The fire went out and the lake was nothing but water.

The wet, naked rocks in the east mountains were also fiery while the sun shone. They seemed to be drops of fire which had fallen amongst mountain peaks and forests. They too went out.

Gaupa walked towards Morsæter, Bjönn on the lead. The needle in his lung was burning—a confounded nuisance and no doubt about it. It came like lightning, and so unexpectedly that it jerked his whole body. But it was sure to go away again.

In the gloaming he saw the flat pasture round the Morsæter. The forest yawned, and he reached the fence. The roof had been freshly shingled, and looked very white and clean.

He searched for the key of the door. It was usually to be found in a hole in the wall, but not so that day. He tried other places, but there was no key.

As a matter of fact Gaupa was man enough to open a lock. He also knew how to take out window frames, so tenderly and carefully that they bore no mark of axe or knife. No house was locked to him, and if the worst came to the worst he would crawl down the chimney!

The padlock was opened without trouble. Gaupa merely gave it a few mysterious taps with his sheath knife. The hook released the body of the lock and seemed to say, “Please enter.”

While Gaupa was cutting wood for the night behind the house, the echo from his axe beat his ears like shots. The sky was sleepy and cloudy. Perhaps there would be rain.

He stood by the hearth cutting chips to start a fire, and felt his head reeling. But his will controlled the knife, so that the fat pine-root chips curled before him like small bouquets.

The fire was lit, and then three living things were in the hut—Gaupa and Bjönn and the Fire. Gaupa sat on the hearth stone, creeping close to the fire. For it was cold and shivery that night, ever so cold. The boiling-hot coffee helped a little against the cold, glowing inside him for a little while, but very soon he shivered again. Cold blasts went down his spine, and they made him start and say “Damn” to the fire.

He pulled his bed near the fire. Two sheepskin rugs were there, and he found another in the next room. He went to bed with one under and two over him, but even then he felt cold. It was as if his body had ceased to produce warmth, he was cold from within, and a pang shot through his right side and would not leave him, however much he rubbed himself with his hard hand.

After a short time he fell asleep and dreamed—that he was chasing Rauten, running till he was quite winded—it was quite absurd how very much he was out of breath. And Rauten with the half-ear stood before him looking at him out of deep human eyes, but Bjönn lay still beside him licking his paw—what an idiot of a dog! But when Gaupa fired he saw the bullet leap out of the muzzle of the gun and run slowly through the air as if time was of no account, and when at last it reached Rauten’s forehead the bullet rolled down as if it were a pea, which Rauten bending low picked up and chewed, very much as Bjönn did when you gave him sugar.... And at that moment Rauten was changed into a man, the Ré Valley Swede, only he had those enormous elk horns on his head. Gaupa’s hand fumbled for another cartridge, but then he woke up, perspiring.

Morning came—after a long, long night. Gaupa wanted to go to Lower Valley with news of the elk. He flung his legs out of bed and stood on the floor. But what the devil was the matter? His head had grown so heavy; the floor rose, he had to stretch out a foot to keep it from upsetting him. He had never felt anything like it! Perhaps he was going to be taken ill out there! Perhaps he would remain in that bed as helpless as a baby! “No,” he muttered, “I’m damned if I do.”

He sat down again and put his shoes on. That was better, but he could not swallow a bite. The food seemed to grow in his mouth as soon as he had bitten it. All the same he packed his sack and went outside.

Mist engulfed him like an enormous white wave. He saw the trees like shadows, and the little barn in the meadow was hidden from sight.

With Bjönn on the lead he staggered across the meadow; and when he opened the gate in the fence, nature was so silent that the slightest noise seemed to saturate the air with sound.

He crossed the brook that runs from the little lake, and a few fish ran back into the lake, their backs so high that they moved the surface of the water. They are playing already, he thought; the trouts are laying their roe now about Michaelmas time.

Gaupa sat down. Bjönn pulled at the lead as if wishing to investigate the mist.

Gaupa felt that he was far from being well. For by that time there was a hot pang in both his sides, and his chest seemed too small for his breathing. It was four full hours’ walk to the Lower Valley. He might meet people before that. He had seen wood cutters at a place near Spæende Lake, where he passed a couple of days before, but even that is two hours’ walk, and Gaupa, the Lynx, was so uncertain of himself that he doubted whether he could manage that little bit in two hours.

In fact he began to see himself as he was that winter with pneumonia, a helpless man, whom his legs would not carry. At times he was in this world and at times in another, where everything went awhirl and upside down.

If now he should lie like that under a spruce tree between Morsæter and Spænde Lake, it would be anything but funny, No one would find him, for who could know the ways of the Lynx? It would be better to crawl back to his bed of last night than risk a sick-bed under a spruce tree.

And then Gaupa behaved in a strange way. As usual he was wearing his brown cap with a very small peak, which he had worn for ever so many years. It may seem strange that he should drag about such a rag of a cap, but there is nothing so strange about it after all, for it was a Lucky Cap, and after Bjönn and “The Tempest” it was Gaupa’s most cherished possession. Gaupa, it may be said, never went into the woods without that cap, and it showed signs of wear, for in the middle of the crown there was a round hole all through to the lining. The branches had made that when he moved about under the trees.

Gaupa took off his cap as solemnly and earnestly as if he were entering the Lower Valley Church on a Mass Sunday, but he was sitting by a mountain lake, bareheaded and black-haired in the mountain mist.

Then he flung the cap through the air, watching its flight with tense eyes. The cap turned a few somersaults, described an arch, struck the heather with a soft whisper, and lay still. Gaupa walked softly up to it and noticed very carefully the direction of the peak. It pointed to the house, and Gaupa knew then that he would go back. There could be no doubt about it.

For he believed in the power of the cap, and had never had cause to regret it. Many a time the cap had shown its remarkable power of giving good advice. When uncertain about the direction to be taken in order to find game, he had often thrown his cap, and where the peak pointed when it fell, there he went, and there the elks were, even when he could never have dreamed of finding them there. The cap was as good as a dog with a supernaturally fine scent.

Gaupa returned to the hut, and one need not laugh at him for that. Anyone living like he did sees many strange things which sound even strange in the telling. Beasts and bird and fish, yea, even trees and grass possess strange powers and may tell the future to those who have ears to hear.

Inside the but Gaupa tore off some bits of stale bread, hard as stone, for Bjönn, and then he crept in under his sheepskins.

* * * * *

It cleared up later in the day. The earth changed her face and began to smile, the last flakes of mist vanished in the air as if by magic.

At sunset a red eye seemed to shut among the peaks. A long ridge of shadows made its way up an eastern slope. It rose slowly, inexorably, like water in a lock. The last rays of the evening sun covered a hill like a red cap.

Dusk fell, but the yellow birches round the bogs seemed to have drunk the sunshine and kept it in them, so that even in the gloaming the silver birches stood out like patches of sunlight that had been forgotten. On the fence round the pasture a tiny bird poured forth clear ripples of song into the stillness of the evening.

There were no signs of life near the hut.

Inside, Bjönn was crouching at the foot of the bed, his nose under his tail and his ears flat. The hearth was black and dead, under the sheepskin rugs Gaupa lay, a quick breathing was heard. Once the dog rose to lick Gaupa’s hairy head. Then a rough hand with black nails was extended to stroke him. “Poor doggie,” someone whispered.

Then the dog curled up again at the foot of the bed, swallowed noisily a few times, and then there was no sound but the laboured breathing from the bed.

A silent fight was fought in that lonely mountain hut. A hardened body rose up against something intangible something that could not be hit, a trembling of every muscle, a heaviness in head and chest not to be shaken off. At last he was conscious that his whole body noted every single sensation, and he could not ward off a feeling of dread. Nobody had any errand up there at that time of the year. The manure had been spread over the pasture, and he could not think of any other work for the people from the valley, knowing that they had no wood-cutting to do.

Then he thought of Bjönn, whom he could feel like a warm cushion across his feet. Bjönn was a wise dog. Often when the elk had fallen, far away, the dog returned to him to tell with eyes and gesture, and he followed him to where the elk lay. Would he not also be wise enough to fetch people, if his master rose no more?

Dusk came, even in Gaupa’s brain. The sheepskins were so hot that he longed to throw them off, only he knew it would be dangerous to do so.

Sometimes his eyes opened, and then they were moist as if he were moved to tears or as if he had done a long, hard sprint. The corner of his mouth worked incessantly; he was never without that, but it did not disturb him then.

A sharp gleam of light played upon a tin pan on the wall for a very long time. Then the face of night lay close up to the window panes, looking in, and the pan ceased to gleam! Only the newly-shingled roof of the cowshed stood out white in the darkness.

§ 9

On such September nights moonlight in the mountains seems like magic.

That night the moon was full and round, a glowing pupil in the blue eye of heavens. A light mist floated over the lake, the outlines of the mountains blurred like shadows. The western Ré Mountains looked as if they had opened to let out all their hidden treasure of silver. The streamlets wormed their way like molten metal down the steep slopes; far below they foamed like avalanches of snow. When the water went to rest in the lakelets down at the bottom of the valleys, the silver gleam moved lazily below the wooded slopes. A big animal crossed a moonlit glade. It was not an animal at all, but a dream which the forest and the night see in their sleep. Long shadows fell on the glade and the deer waded in them. But the rays of the moon caressed its back with soft, trembling touch, and its eyes were wet.

Noiseless like a cat Rauten went forward, no sound under his hoofs, no crack from a broken branch. He walked as if careful not to waken what sleeps about him; but he did not quite succeed. A capercailzie was perched in a tree just above him. Her head crept out from under her wing and her hairless eyelids opened; her neck hung down as she stared, but Rauten disappeared, and the bird hid her head under the wing once more.

A hare jumped up—a spirit in flight.

Now and then Rauten’s nose nearly touched the earth. He sought the scent of a cow elk. For he was alone again to-day. The cow he had fought for so valiantly the day before no longer wanted him. Cows are unstable like all females. Rauten was not the one and only elk for her any longer.

But Rauten might find other mates; he was never at rest, because of the cows. He wanted to fight for them all, to strike terror in the heart of every bull he met, beat them with his antlers till they would writhe limply like willow twigs.

He stopped sniffing towards a faint movement in the air, his ears eagerly caught a tiny sleepy murmur from the brooks. But there was no scent but that of bogs and woods.

He went on silently with enormous strides—a fairy-tale walk towards sunrise.

In the mountain hut there was nothing but that laboured breathing from the bed. Every once in a while Bjönn would sigh deeply as if he were greatly troubled. Then he would lick his jaws a few times and sleep on, while the moonlit square moved across the floor like a living thing.

A breath of wind soughed round the walls—hush—sh—sh; a loose window pane let in a tiny draught.

Then the dog’s head was raised instantly, suddenly as when a wild animal is disturbed in his lair. Bjönn was awake and alert. Eyes glowing, nostrils alternately large and small. He smelt some scent which that breath of air had carried into the hut.

He jumped on to the floor with a soft thud and stood with both forepaws on the window-sill. His triangular ears were stiff with eagerness; he saw something out there, growled deep down in his throat as if in anger. What did he see?

Suddenly he left the window and stood by the door. With an impatient bark he scratched the door to get out. Realising the futility of that, he rushed back to the window and the floorboards groaned beneath his weight. Again he stood up, his forepaws on the sill, howling as if in pain. What did he see out there?

In the bog below the pasture there was an elk. No bush could be more immovable than he. The elk seemed to sleep or to listen for something. His antlers appeared to float on the silvery lake below—full of shining silver bowls gently rocking on its surface.

Gaupa sat up in the bed. There must be something very special to make Bjönn carry on like that....

He could see through the window from where he sat, and it seemed to him that never before were air and mountains so fiery yellow and so strange-looking. They seemed to him to be burning with fever....

Farthest away and highest up he saw the sky, blue and teeming with stars. Below there swam a mountain, revealing its bristling back, and the slope was wrapped in a misty veil. Nearer to him at the bottom of the valley the lake flamed so brightly as to hurt his eyes, and on the bog nearer still he saw ... he saw——

He stroked his eyes with his finger and looked again.

An elk was standing on the bog between the pasture and the lake, asleep or listening.

Gaupa wondered whether he was losing his senses or beginning to see visions.

Once more his hand touched his eyelids, and he felt how weak and limp his arm was. He turned his head. There was Bjönn, whining and scratching at the door, so the fever had not quite mastered him. There was his rifle, “the Tempest,” leaning against the wall. It had the same flashing steel trigger as always, and he saw the elk’s head which he himself had carved on the butt. These could not be mere visions. He was quite in his senses, and there _was_ an elk down there on the bog.

He threw off the sheepskin rugs, stepped out of the bed, leaning on the bedpost. He was no longer the Lynx, the man of muscles and sinews—no, he was a staggering uncertain thing, bereft of his strength. His head throbbed as if a thousand little animals were trying to break out through his skull. His chest was too small, and he drew in air in short laboured gasps....

Gaupa somehow managed to get across the floor and seize “the Tempest.” How delightfully cool the steel felt to his hot palms!

After a while he reached the window and stared out. The elk remained immovable, looking northwards towards the Big Bear which unceasingly runs along its azure path in the sky.

Then Gaupa pushed the muzzle of his gun straight through the window-pane. A crisp clang of breaking glass followed, some pieces falling on the window-sill, others on the floor.

Dead silence reigned in the hut once more. The dog stood erect beside the man, his ears cocked, trembling with excitement, waiting for the shot.

Gaupa crouched, his knees bent, his chin pressed against the butt. How nice and cool it felt! He took aim, and when his eye caught the shining sight on the muzzle a calm relief seemed to fill his body, killing the fever....

Rauten stood down there. What was that he heard in the moonlight? The sound immediately begot a picture in his brain. He saw and heard an icicle breaking from a precipice and falling down on to the glacier below. It was broken to pieces and shattered with a shrill clang.... It was the sound of the falling window-pane.

Up in the hut Gaupa took aim. First his aim sought the starry flowers in the sky. Then it sank past the multitude of stars, sank lower and lower, crossed the mountain slope, skirted the lake, stole along the bog, fumbled for the elk’s antlers and found them. There it rested awhile, only to glide downwards along the dark body, stopped again, and remained.

Gaupa’s forefinger crooked. His eyelids did not move, nor did Bjönn’s.