Part 6

A little later a man stood where the two had left, staring into the west.

He opened his mouth as if to inhale something from the air. He placed his hand behind his ear, inclining his head, his mouth always open. His eyes were far away from the world about him. They looked at the earth, but in the far distance.

The hills swam westwards towards the naked bulk of Ré Mountain, wave upon wave in long, easy swell.

Two animals were running towards Ré Mountain, a big one in front, a smaller one after. They were fighting over the distance between them, at times increasing and then again diminishing. The elk ploughed through the undergrowth with his long, heavy body, his antlers swishing through the green pine needles, his legs clip-clapping evenly and surely. When he lifted them his hoofs touched with a sound like dry sticks beating each other. Once in a while an antler would bang heavily against a tree-trunk.

Rauten kept up a steady, even trot; his flight was unhurried and unafraid, as was in keeping with the greatest beast in the forest, the strongest and wildest of elks, between valley and mountain. He ran because somehow it seemed wise, not because he was afraid. His nozzle was raised almost horizontally and his antlers lay along his back.

Bjönn ran after him. His tongue had grown too long—protruding out of his mouth, his eyes were wild, and the earth burnt his paws, which barely touched the ground only to fly up again. He divided up the distance in lightning leaps. Pine needles clung to his fur, and the shaggy body of the dog flew along like some enormous insect.

Gaupa was forgotten in the dog’s mind, all men were forgotten. He went back thousands of years when the wolves howled along elk spoors in Ré Valley. He was one of them, a dog which no man’s hand had caressed, and no man’s eyes had subdued.

Those grey, fleeting elk legs in front of him called up a bloodthirsty song in his sinews. Passion howled within him, and off and on when he gained on the elk his throat howled out. It was not Bjönn from Lynx Hut, it was the voice of dead wolves returning.

His nose no longer sought the earth, he ran through a thick reek of scent. Every breath filled his nostrils with the maddening smell of game, and everything about him seemed to run. Red pine trunks ran to meet him and Rauten, spruce trees crawled forward, jumping across the marshes. They were left behind, but fresh ones came again and again and again.

Gaupa lifted his head. His eyes returned from the far distance and sought a certain point on the western slopes, a spruce-clad hillock where the silver birches blazed like a flame, and there his gazed fixed. From that hillock came a sound, sudden and unexpected, like a spark from a fire of thorns.

“Wow!” It was a dog’s voice, clear and strained, let out of a throat which had quite enough to do with mere breathing.

The voice on the hillock spoke no more.

Gaupa remained in Owl Glen. He did not hurry. He wanted to be quite sure where Rauten was going, and from his post he could hear half a league away.

A short time afterwards Bjönn barked from the same place, deep-voiced and growling, as a watch-dog barks at strangers. Rauten was at bay!

“Wow! Wow! Wow!”

Then Gaupa began to run, his gun in his hand, its muzzle glaring black, and inside there was a cartridge with the Swede’s Bullet.

Gaupa was hidden in the forest, but appeared again on a hillock farther on, stopped listening as he pushed back his lucky cap. Then he was submerged in the greenery once more.

The dog’s voice to the west was the only token of life on the slopes, breaking the silence incessantly at short, regular intervals like the ticking of a grandfather’s clock.

Bjönn was barking at some close-grown spruce copse. It looked as if he were talking to it, again and again without receiving any answer.

In there amongst the spruce bushes some thin, grey tree trunks seemed to move once in a while. They were the elk’s legs. Some rough boughs with brown bark, just like a small bush, moved amongst the spruce needles. They were the elk’s antlers.

Rauten stood there. Apparently he was not very much concerned about the dog. He turned his head here and there, as if he had a suspicion of something intangible yet dangerous in the forest around him.

Whenever Rauten met that tiny, shaggy, barking animal, which smelt of man, the forest seemed to become unsafe for him, wherever he went. Perhaps it was a reminiscence from that autumn when his mother fell north of Black Mountain, when she blew a golden dust out of her nostrils and moved no more. Ever since that day he had the same feeling when he met a dog. Something alive was close to him, something he could not see, but which he knew was there all the same. From every tree, from every copse something spied upon him; fear threatened from them all....

He felt it then, as he drew his breath after the long run from Owl Glen. He did not catch the scent of Gaupa over there, or he would not have stopped so soon.

“Wow! Wow!”

At each bark Bjönn threw up his nozzle, half closing his eyes, his ears flattened backwards and teeth gleaming. Then he looked at Rauten a little and barked a little again, somewhat quietly, as if to convince Rauten that he was not dangerous at all. He was only out for a friendly chat....

Suddenly the spruce copse vomited a long grey figure, and Rauten’s fore-feet stood where Bjönn had been but was no longer, for Bjönn knew his business and needed no time to get out of the way.

“Wow! Wow!”

Once more there was nothing but those restless grey tree trunks and those brownish-grey living branches in the undergrowth.

But then Bjönn was once more the dog he really was, the dog from Lynx Hut, a beast who took his food from Gaupa’s hand.

As he regarded the elk’s rough throat until he imagined it between his own teeth, he remembered the throats of other elks, which Gaupa used to cut open so that Bjönn could drink the blood. That happened quite often when the deer were standing still among the copses, and the idea made Bjönn look round expectantly. Gaupa ought to come and make thunder about him, the elk ought to stagger, fall on one side, and remain on the earth. “Wow! Wow!”

But Rauten had come to the conclusion that the thing which disconcerted him was something very real, which made dry twigs crackle, and so he ran on again. Bjönn whimpered with disappointment and followed him. The steady barking ceased.

Beads of sweat appeared on Gaupa’s bald head as he ran. When he heard how the elk had broken away he swore softly, being wholly and entirely out of breath.

§ 20

It was late in the day when the snow began to fall.

The first snowflake came alone, thin and light as down.

The flake could not keep its equilibrium, but flew here and there aimlessly, and took its own time about settling down on earth. It had been on earth before, swimming in the white marsh mist one raw morning in the autumn. Afterwards it had lived where the clouds live, but now it came down again and settled on an aspen leaf, white on red, the first snow of winter.

Little by little the air filled with innumerable white butterflies, floating down from the heavens, a gift from God to earth and man, falling, falling.

On the Tolleivsæter Mountain which falls off steeply towards Ré Valley two animals were crawling, one larger, the other small. The first was Rauten, the other was Bjönn.

They followed a narrow gully in the mountain, a chasm which meandered downwards first to the north, then southwards, and then north again. It was no more than a narrow ledge in the mountain where the animals walked. They were hanging at the edge of an abyss and far below the bottom of the valley made a dark shadow in the white whirl.

Rauten led the way, and there was no longer anything long and clumsy about him now. His feet felt each step, carefully seeking a foothold. The knee-joints bent with a little noise, once in a while his hoofs slid a little and scraped the grey reindeer moss.

After him went Bjönn, crouching and frightened, without a sound. They were climbing between earth and heaven, but the snowflakes danced past them into the abyss, and Ré River was heard faintly somewhere far below.

Thus the elk and the dog went on, slowly, slowly. Once they passed some large black holes among the rocks, and then both Rauten and Bjönn felt very uncomfortable. Rauten stopped, his nostrils dilated and eyes ablaze, Bjönn lowered his tail and sniffed towards the rocks, his muzzle quivering, for the animal after which he was named had been in there recently to seek for a winter lair.

After a long time the elk and the dog reached the foot of the mountain. Rauten tore through the birch bushes, and the dog’s voice woke up again. They came to a deep gully—two rocky precipices and between them water boiling into foam far below.... Rauten leapt twice his own length. He flew through the air before he reached earth once more, and ran on. Bjönn made a detour, found a short cut, and when Rauten sprang into Ré River he was not alone. Two splashes were heard from the river, one for the elk and one for the dog, and they ran on straight up the western slope, Bjönn now and then giving vent to short barks.

After a while Gaupa reached the eastern slope. He was like a well-wrung rag. His cap was in his pocket now, his hair was plastered to his skull, his eyes were red and strained, like those of one who has kept awake many nights. His mouth was gaping open, the muscles of his jaws being too tired to keep it shut.

He stopped to regain his breath. What time could it be? Nearly two. He thought as much. Six, seven hours had passed since Bjönn had begun driving the wizard elk. Gaupa had heard the song from the dog’s throat many times that day, east and west. He had been north and south, God only knows exactly where he had been, running and walking. He had stopped at all the well-known elk stations, but Rauten had passed them all, for he did not run like other elks. And now it was two hours since Gaupa had last heard Bjönn.

Gaupa laid his hand behind his ear as he had done that morning in Owl Glen. He tried to hold his breath so that it should not drown the slightest sound in the silence of Ré Valley. He seemed to listen for a message from the snowflakes, but the flakes bore no message. They were like a whirling swarm of silent butterflies. Only when he turned his back to the weather, the flying atoms battered on his knapsack with a barely audible sound as from elfin artillery.

He sat down. The mountains about him were changing their colour, growing white. The weather lightened a little and the earth was revealed, far, far away. He saw Gipsy Lake straight below, pitch black amongst the whiteness.

Hark!

Out of the north-west came a sound, the bark of an almost exhausted dog, a slight break in the silence. Gaupa lifted his head; his entire face, framed in dark beard, stiffened with excitement.

Was that Bjönn? Yes it was! He saw the mountain ridges west of the valley and followed their outlines northwards, as they rose and sank, wave upon wave towards the sky. And farthest north two specks grew out of their white slopes, one larger than the other. First they grew in size, then they rapidly diminished, and at last they vanished altogether.

Bjönn and Rauten had gone into the western mountains. Well, Gaupa had better follow them.

He found a descent not far from where he stood, and went at a jog-trot across the marshes around Gipsy Lake.

Then came the western slope, a sky-high precipice difficult to ascend. The minutes crawled slowly, as evening shadows pass over the fields. And Gaupa crept slowly upwards.

Once or twice he lay down on his back, face upturned. A few snowflakes settled on his skin. They felt like a wet tongue licking him, pleasantly cool. He gathered a little snow from the heather about him, placing it against his hot head, enjoying the coolness of it.

Then he rose and went on his way. A dry branch hooked on to his trousers and made a big rent in them. He heard the brooks grow strangely mute; their voices were no longer natural, and when close at hand they sounded far off. And in his ears there rang a song, thin and high like the buzzing of a gnat.

Oh to lie down and rest, rest a long, long time.... Nonsense, Bjönn and Rauten had gone westwards, and Gaupa had better follow them.

In an hour he reached the barren mountain, the naked bulk of which stretched before him. About a league to the west was another valley, Three Valley. Gaupa knew that an elk would occasionally go there when fleeing from a hound. It had happened often to himself and Bjönn. Probably Rauten had gone that way too.

But he had to rest before descending. He took out food from his knapsack and tried to eat, only his mouth was so dry that it was like biting sawdust. There seemed to be no moisture left in his mouth.

Ever since the chase began Gaupa had not rightly considered the fact that Bjönn was following no ordinary elk. Mystical ideas do not generally go with laboured running in broad daylight.

Then his brain was so strangely empty and weak. He felt as if the power of reasoning had been sweated out of him. His head seemed full of mist, out of which the ideas could not find their way. They worked at the things nearest and immediate, with the spoors and the chase.

But he knew that Rauten would have great difficulty in leaving Bjönn that day. Bjönn was well-rested, his paws hardened and muscles as tough as pemmican—very devil of a rugged deer-hound ready to follow an elk to Hallingdal—or even to the valley beyond that.

Gaupa jogged along west once more. He felt better after his rest, and he began to think. The people of the valley had given him a nickname, Gaupa, the Lynx, although by rights his name was Sjur Renden, as could be seen on his baptismal certificate as well as on his assessment—and they called his hut Lynx Hut, although the correct name was “Elvely” (River Shelter). Christened so by the parson who happened to pass by when they were building it.

But if they had given him a nickname like that, by hell, they should be made to respect it and to recognise the fact that he did honour to the name, for he would show them that he was a Lynx who could go on when other men failed. He would chase him into hottest hell, that elk with the enormous antlers and the restless soul of the Swede. And when he, Gaupa, returned to Lower Valley, clothes in rags and hands bloody, the news would spread like wildfire that Rauten was killed, shot somewhere in the western mountains towards Hallingdal—driven out of Owl Glen at seven in the morning—and the man who shot him was no other than Gaupa—of course.

And even the papers would print the fact: “The well-known hunter Sjur Renden....”

Thoughts slipped away again, as fatigue filled his body once more after the rest his brain held nothing but mist, mist. But somewhere in his consciousness one thing remained hard and fast, the thing that said, “Run, run, for God’s sake run.” Such was the will of Gaupa, the slayer of elks.

§ 21

In the Three Valley a dog had opened full cry, a glorious cry, for his quarry was standing still.

Rauten stood still because he was so tired that he had to. During the last run earth seemed unstable beneath him, and wherever he went he saw a lair before him, full of peace and quiet; he might go to rest under that spruce, or there—and there. Only he could not get rid of that eternal worrying by a big black fox that followed him like his own meaningless shadow. He had tried everything—climbing mountains, jumping across gullies, but the dog followed him with an endless succession of angry barks.

In the course of all those hours those barks had become no more than a habit to the ear; they did not feel like real terror any more, only a slight fear, a subconsciousness of danger. But Rauten was at length compelled to rest now, standing in a spruce copse in Three Valley.

Bjönn was there, lying down. The dog also was nearly spent. His legs seemed to have disappeared of late, and when they ran it was from innate habit.

Several times he had crossed the spoors of Gaupa. The earth threw up the familiar scent into his nostrils, like a message from his master to say that he was there, only “Go on!” And Bjönn went on, he was going for ever now.

His hair was soaking wet; both he and the elk were steaming like fast-running horses in cold weather. The snow lay on the heather like white wool, a frozen bilberry stood up from it, a reminiscence of summer in the midst of winter. Two pine trunks rose tall, straight, and copper-red behind both the animals.

“Wow! Wow!” said Bjönn. There was an interval between each bark, and his voice was so hoarse as hardly to be recognised. He snatched a mouthful of snow now and then, for his thirst. “Wow!”

Both animals felt themselves stiffening after they stopped. Rauten had a broad gash across one of his thighs made by a dry branch. There was reproach in his eyes as they regarded the little animal before him, whom he had never hurt and who would not let him be in peace. But rest, rest, that was all, the only thing.... Rauten stood still.

In the meanwhile Gaupa was hurrying westwards towards Three Valley. His footfall made no sound in the snow, as if he were running on soft moss. He jogged along, walked at times, eating snow.

He found the spoors of the dog and elk, indistinct but unmistakable: long lines across a tuft of wiregrass from the elk hoofs, and close by them clear marks of Bjönn’s paws. He followed the spoors with childish joy, lost them, found them again, and made straight for Three Valley.

All idea of time had long since left him. Only the mountain seemed endless. The snow continued to fall, and the ever-falling white flakes made him dizzy. At last he saw a tall, narrow rock on a ridge before him, a rock exactly like a tall chimney, that he knew to be on the slope towards Three Valley.

He was soon there. The earth sank before him, the valley could be seen—thin forest on the slopes, long marshes with a sleepy river, a large lake, a white summer pasture with a couple of dark houses, far away near the bend of the valley.

A pang of joy rang through Gaupa, vivifying and exciting, for a dog’s bark floated out in the grey air straight below him from the slope.

More barks followed; the whole valley filled with the song of it. Gaupa wondered at the sound. “Poor old dog, he has gone hoarse,” thought he. But what a dog! He was an animal without blemish, no dog like him. He would soon have assistance, warm drink, a taste of warm meat....

Gaupa slipped down the wooded slopes quickly and carefully. Just down there, just down there, he thought time after time. Ten minutes, five minutes more, and the Swede’s Bullet should fly unseen from the muzzle of “The Tempest.”

The next day he would return to Lower Valley, clothes in rags, with bloody hands. And Martin Lyhus would have to take his pipe out of his mouth to ask, staring in astonishment:

“What is it you say? Have you shot him?”

Gaupa stopped to make sure of the movement of the air.... He was in luck, it was straight against him. He could see it in the flying snow. But it would soon clear up. The flakes were restless, flying about like gnats, not falling quietly. That was a sure sign of approaching clear weather.

Gaupa followed a small spruce-grown gully in the slope, and just in front of him, very close now, stood Bjönn holding the wizard elk in check. To Gaupa stealing downwards, the forest grew alive, every tree listened for the dog’s barking, he felt as if on the point of discovering a wonderful secret.

He could not see the animals and heard only one, though he knew there were two. He stopped to look round for cover, and observed something strange about his hands. He stood petrified looking at them, he did not recognise them as his own. They were trembling now, however much he willed them not to do—trembling in spite of himself.

Then he felt a slight shiver in his whole body, something he could not control—and a cool feeling across the lower part of his body. The hunter’s shivers! he thought.

“Wow!” was heard from below, and then a sudden silence. Gaupa held his breath, waiting for the next bark. Surely he could not have frightened him? The wind could not have turned, taking his scent with it to those sensitive nostrils?... Then the barking started again, Rauten was still standing—like a rock.

Gaupa could not rid himself of this inexplicable trembling, and he could not shoot while it lasted. He was no longer the master of his own body, he was not the real Gaupa any more. The real Gaupa had never shivered before an elk—the devil he hadn’t!

Now he really had to be calm. For ten hours dog and man had been hard at work. At last they were at their goal, nearly near enough to touch it, and his hand trembled; he might make a false movement, and the goal might once more dart away to unknown distances.

He knelt down, filled his hands with snow and held it to his skull. It cooled first, then felt too cold.

Bjönn suddenly gave the angry bark which tokened that his prey was escaping, the bark so well known to Gaupa that the sound of it raised anger within him....

Escaped again!

Gaupa stayed kneeling while the thawing snow ran in big drops down his head. His dark-blue eyes changed colour. They were lighter and glazed. His lucky cap was white with snow; his gun lay in the hollow of his arm, held tight to his breast—lay as if listening like Gaupa himself.

Silence. Dead silence. Running water somewhere in Three Valley gave an echo of life.

Gaupa rose. Silence. No barking then.

He ran out of the hollow up to a bare ridge. Then he heard Bjönn again and he understood that the dog was running beside the elk, even in front of him now and then. He could even see the two animals on the long marshes at the bottom of the valley. Rauten ran his jogging even trot, long and tall, forever turning his head from one side or the other as if listening. “A hopeless range,” thought Gaupa. Distance was simply mocking him. At such a range he would not dare to risk the Swede’s Bullet.

The elk crossed Three River and his legs raised white arches of water. Bjönn swam and was on the other side as soon as Rauten. They disappeared, but were seen again, Rauten heading straight for Three Lake.

Gaupa threw back his rifle, breathed deeply and went down the slope.

* * * * *

Rauten and Bjönn came to Three Lake, which lay black and still as night. A waterlily leaf was riding on the surface at rest. The whole lake was all peace, and the green heart-shaped leaf in conjunction with the two animals, the hunted and the hunter, formed as it were a picture of the very life of the wilderness, eternal peace of eternal time, painful efforts of the moment, life or death.

Rauten went straight into the lake, making openings in its smooth surface with his hoofs, cutting it with his thin legs where he waded out quickly, the water rising along his shoulders and flanks. A startled trout ran out from under the bank like a shadow across the white sand into the dark depths. Beside the elk was Bjönn, swimming.

The water gurgled higher and higher about Rauten; at last he swam, his snout so low that he ploughed through the water like a boat’s keel. Bjönn scraped the elk’s back with one paw, found no hold, and tried again. Then he caught the mane with his teeth and soon stood on the back of the wizard elk who was swimming across Three Lake.

The dog did not feel worn out then. He was tasting the fiercest joy. Under him he heard the laboured breath of Rauten, felt the entire huge body trembling with effort, muscles hardening and slackening as the elk trod the water. It was Bjönn from Lynx Hut, sailing! The elderly elk hunter from Lower Valley who never gave up from dawn to dusk—even to another dawn.