Part 7

Then he poured out his joy from his hoarse, dry throat, and mingling with his song of conquest came the groans from Rauten, who was swimming, wild-eyed. He steered towards a pine top on the farther side of the lake. Terror sat on his back as he swam for his life. Once he felt teeth in his back, and the same icy shiver ran through him as ran through his forefathers when they broke down in the snow with the wolves swarming fiercely over them.

Bjönn bent down and tugged a big tuft of hair out of the elk’s back he dropped it on the water, where it remained floating.

“Wow! Wow!”

He plucked out another tuft.

One might say a raft was sailing along the water, with Rauten’s horns for rowlocks.

Bjönn noticed a tall tree-stump moving across the marshes. It was Gaupa, his master, and his pride knew no bounds. He could conquer every elk from one mountain to the other, if they were many times his own size. He could drive them, bark exhaustion into them, until at last he would drink his fill out of their throats. “Wow! Wow! Wow!”

Gaupa crouched on the marshes north of Three Lake.

He was in pain. The elk’s head and Bjönn floated away farther and farther, and if he were to shoot there was an even chance that he might shoot his dog as easily as the elk. But when Rauten went ashore he would try a shot, howover hopeless.

The Swede’s Bullet could not be risked at such uncertain range, and therefore he changed cartridges quickly. Then he crouched in position for shooting, left elbow on left knee. His cheek caressed the gun. He sat immovable, a huntsman stiffened in the last decisive movement of the hunt.

He trembled no more, although the tension burnt in him like a hidden fire. He saw out of the water a large body grow through the falling snow.

And one of Gaupa’s eyes shut as if sleepy. The other, however, was open, and icy cold. He did not breathe, his whole body was taut calm. “The Tempest” roared, shooting out its breath with a white handful of smoke, and for a moment Gaupa’s ears were plugged up with sound.

But Rauten, who was wading ashore, heard something like a woodpecker hammering at a tree on the shore. Then came the roar of the shot, behind him, and he stretched himself off into the forest, a rain of waterdrops about him. Bjönn followed.

§ 22

Gaupa pursued the chase once more.

Dusk was falling. He did not hear Bjönn any longer, but he had the spoor.

The weather cleared up towards evening. The sky seemed to absorb the snowflakes, making them light and dry. The heavens became fixed and formed a pale-yellow dome over the earth.

The silence increased after the shot and the barking. A man followed a spoor in the new snow, but Sjur Renden did not run any more. He walked!

His face showed signs of utter exhaustion. The cheek, chin, and eyelids were hanging down. His mouth, too, hung open, although he did not breathe heavily. The corners of his mouth were drawn into a grimace of contempt.

The marshes were white, but the ground under the trees was not covered with snow. The woods had assumed an air of solemn grandeur which was not diminished by the oncoming dusk.

Gaupa was fairly staggering. That last effort near Three Lake seemed to have drained his last forces. All the same he went on and on, always showing that grin of contempt, as if he were mocking at the elk spoor before him.

In the middle of an open space where the pines had once been burnt down and never grown up again to their former state, he stroked his eyes with the back of his hand, as people do when they wake up and yet are not really awake.

He walked on a few steps, stopped again and touched his eyes. What devilry disturbed his sight? He saw as clearly as clearly a shiny yellow moon, not quite round, but slightly elliptical as the moon is when she is on the wane. This moon stood in the air a few gun-lengths before his eyes and it moved when he moved. It was so blazingly, glaringly yellow that it made the air gleam yellow. Gaupa felt as if everything glowed and blazed before him. The very dusk flamed. He was dazzled, and shut his eyes for a long time. When he opened them again the air was as it ought to be, soft and nearly dark. But after a few steps that idiotic moon came back.

He knew well enough what moon this was. He had seen it before. Over-exertion, curse it. And his knees felt as they always did when that glaring yellow moon appeared. All the sinews seemed to have been taken out of his joints, all elasticity had left his legs. They moved about anyhow beneath him, without his volition.

Then Gaupa went under a spruce tree and lay face downwards. His face touched some whortleberry ling and he could smell the soil. A bunch of berries caught his eyes, a large, bright red bunch, and they made so intense an impression on him that he seemed to feel the juice seething inside them. Never in all his life had he seen so red a bunch of whortleberries. His eager hands seized them and pushed them into his mouth. He crushed them with his tongue and their juice ran in his dry mouth, an exquisite joy. He looked for more berries, crawling on all-fours round the spruce tree like a child—an oldish man with a flowing beard.

While doing this he saw Bjönn coming, keeping to the spoor, going backwards. The dog gave up before reaching his master, and lay down a little way off. He was utterly exhausted.

Gaupa went up to him, knelt down, talking to him and stroking him. And it seemed to him that those dog’s eyes spoke. Why had he not come when Rauten stood still on the northern slopes? they asked. Why had he missed when the wizard elk rose up from Three Lake? Bjönn had done what he could, the dog’s eyes declared. All the same Rauten was running about in the valley, free, unwounded.

Gaupa sat still, stroking Bjönn’s head.

“I also could do no more,” he said aloud; “but wait till to-morrow.”

The weather cleared up as evening came on. The sky turned blue as the sea, the stars twinkled like tiny lanterns, some clear white, some dullish red. In a small barn near Three River Gaupa and Bjönn slept.

Farthest out in the valley where the moon was rising like a yellow lantern where earth and sky met an elk stood for a long time snuffing towards the north. He was dripping wet. After a while he lay down, and the snow thawed slowly under him.

Thus Rauten lay all that night, his eyes ever open, ears alive, nostrils working. Towards morning it was so cold that his wet back grew white with hoar-frost.

§ 23

About dawn Gaupa and Bjönn dug themselves out from the hay in the barn.

Gaupa had lost his matches the day before, and could make no fire. The only way was to bury himself in the contents of the barn.

His shoes stood frozen stiff at the door. They were so hard that it was out of the question to put them on. He tried many times, but in vain. To wait for the sun to thaw them would take too long—so he thawed them with the warmth of his own body. They softened, and soon after he and Bjönn were following the spoor of the wizard elk.

They found his night lair where the snow was thawed and some hairs lay about. But Rauten had left several hours before, Gaupa could read that much in the spoor. It had hardened, there was a crust on, and also Bjönn told him they were not near him yet.

They chased the elk from sunrise to sunset.

The spoors were there, and there was something alive about them. Every mark of the hoofs meant a movement forwards—one footmark after the other from one slope to another, an endless chase.

The spoor, so strangely alive, kept Gaupa’s interest warm. It was like turning leaf after leaf of an exciting book where the end cannot be guessed.

Once they found fresh excrements after Rauten, and Bjönn grew doubly eager after smelling them. But Gaupa would not let go until he was fairly sure of being near enough.

He did not think much that day either of the fact that he was hunting no ordinary earthly animal; Rauten was only an elk who had wandered for many years among Ré Mountains, mocking all efforts on the part of those who tried to get at him. He was the elk that Gaupa himself had rather avoided. But now he would measure himself against him. As long as he had a bite of food, as long as Bjönn could move, he would stick to that spoor—and he swore loudly and forcibly.

He went towards the west for several hours. The weather was wonderfully fine. The mountain plains in their majestic calm reflected the sunlight like a mirror. The light dazzled his eyes and made him sun-blind. Little black lakelets looked like spots of ink on a white tablecloth.

Rauten had gone into a long lake, and Gaupa found no spoors up from the water. He went round the lake several times, but no tracks could be seen.

He reflected. Could this lakelet, without even a name, be Rauten’s tomb? Could the elk have been drowned out there? It seemed impossible.

He circled the lakelet once more, and in the little brooklet which fed the lake he saw some strange holes in the mud at the bottom. The brook was shallow, and the sun showed him the bottom quite plainly. Those holes down there had a distance between them about as long as the stride of an elk.

He followed the brook for about a quarter of an hour, and found the place where Rauten had left the water. Gaupa had never seen an elk try to hide his tracks so cunningly.

About noon he went straight towards the sun, ignorant of the names of the mountains around him. Then the earth yawned before him, and he perceived a valley so large and deep that it must be Hallingdal.

He heard also that the air was vibrant with some sound, a dull, heavy roar with some sort of rhythm in it. He could not understand what it was. The wind shifted, and into his ears poured the deep, full boom of church bells. Once more the wind shifted, and he heard nothing but that vibrating roar.

Then he remembered that it was Sunday—for ordinary people, but not for him. The elk spoors led straight towards the valley and the church bells—one might think Rauten was going to church. But on a slope the track turned abruptly, and there Gaupa smelt the homely, acrid smell of smoke, the sign of people and houses.

He walked on after the smoke, sniffing his way like a dog on an open scent. A little later he stood before a low Hallingdal cottage with a tall chimney. He touched the doorhandle; Bjönn stole in in front of him, and in a moment was chasing a cat, as red as a fox. But cats made Bjönn mad. He threw one paw over the animal, pinning her to the floor, and then bit twice across her back. There was the sound of crunching as when Bjönn ate bones, and then a cat died in Hallingdal.

They gave him matches and food, and he walked uphill again. He released Bjönn, who soon returned. Rauten was too far in front of them.

Dusk met Gaupa in a bare valley without summer farms where he could spend the night. His axe resounded in the silence as he cut down dry pines. He slept in the shelter of a rock, Bjönn clasped tightly to his breast.

A few hundred yards from Gaupa’s night lair something dark showed up on a ridge. Was it a rock? No, the rocks were not black then, they were white with snow.

That dark thing did not move.

After a while it did move. Two eyes gleamed wet in the moonlight, a tined antler crossed the harvest moon behind it. Rauten was lying there.

He thought he heard some strange sounds in the evening, but there was little wind and he could not make sure.

He was waiting for daylight.

The snow was glittering, the crystals of snow were like innumerable stars which were for ever being lit and extinguished. The mountains were softly moving clouds, cradling the tired body of Rauten, while a few isolated mountain spruces, from which the sun had thawed the snow, were like darkly dressed dwarfs in the hollows.

It was nearly two days and two nights since Rauten left Owl Glen in Lower Valley.

§ 24

When Gaupa hung up his coffee-kettle over the fire he felt shivery after his cold bed. The kettle boiled, and he swallowed hastily four or five cupfuls of scalding-hot coffee. Then he noticed a strange pattern in the grounds at the bottom of the empty cup. The lines were funny, he thought, they made quite a picture.

He turned the cup round and round, and there was not much imagination needed to make those brown lines mean an elk lying on his back.

Then Gaupa smiled to Bjönn.

“We’ll have him before sundown. He lies here.”

A little later the fire under the rock wall was deserted, and while it was dying slowly the resinous smoke floated like a dark mist over the neighbouring bog.

Gaupa had not walked far when Bjönn rose on his hind legs and caught the open scent. He would not come down on all-fours for fear of losing it, and went on hopping on two legs several steps, and Gaupa swore prodigiously out of the joy in his heart. He loosed the leash, and let Bjönn storm into the mountains towards the pale-yellow sky of the dawn, from which a faint sheen fell on the snow.

The snow was crisp now after the night’s frost, and it crunched a little under each of Bjönn’s steps. A family of grouse flew up like a shower from some osier bushes, a cock grouse called “gak-gak,” and soon after the dog sang out farther east. Rauten had company once more.

Three hours later Gaupa was steaming with sweat. He passed unknown summer farms where the windows in the sun shone like fire. It was warm, for summer was still in the air. Winter lay on the ground prematurely born. The trees were dripping, the snow grew wet and heavy, crunching a little under Gaupa’s shoes. A young hare sniffed the snow which he had never seen till the day before, big brown eyes staring with wonder at the bewitched world.

The chase went on—and it was evening.

§ 25

It was night, the third night since Rauten left Owl Glen.

He was lying in a brook in Ré Valley, on Bog Hill where once he fought the three-year-old. On all-fours he was lying in the brook, the water unceasingly licking his stiff limbs, and Rauten enjoyed the refreshing coolness. Once he bent his head to drink, his flanks hollowing.

Before him on the bank of the brook lay Bjönn. He did not say anything, having barked enough throughout the day. It was quite dark, the moon not yet being up and the snow having been thawed on that sun-exposed slope so that no light was reflected by the snow either. Only the silver bark of a birch gleamed faintly among the dense spruce woods.

A good stone’s throw farther south on the slope Gaupa sat, his back against a tree-trunk. His pack lay at his side and his rifle across his knees. Inside it rested a cartridge containing the Swede’s Bullet.

Gaupa felt exceedingly cold, for he was wet with perspiration when he sat down, and now he felt as if he were wrapped up in icy-cold sheets. He beat his arms across each other, carefully so as not to make a noise, and sat on.

In the dusk he had reached Black Mountain and heard Bjönn baying on Bog Hill, but darkness came before he reached him, and he could not discern the sights of “The Tempest” except against the sky.

When he came to the spruce where he was sitting now he heard Bjönn’s last bark, and understood from it that the elk was not running, for the barking sounded so feeble.

Rauten and Bjönn were presumably somewhere in that brook, and if he knew Bjönn he would not leave the elk that night. But when the sun rose over the eastern ridges and lit up Ré Valley, then Gaupa would steal forth, as soon as he could make sure where Rauten was standing. The brook in the hollow murmured unceasingly.

Gaupa listened. No, he could not hear that inexplicable muttering far away which belonged to the night and the unbroken silence. The brook deadened it. He felt how the forest about him was asleep, standing, eyes closed. All the same there _was_ something, that restlessness which has no origin. He seemed to hear something breathing like a human being somewhere.

He remembered one incident after the other told of the remarkable animal who was standing unseen somewhere near him.

There was Anton Rud. Last autumn he was cutting resinous pine-stumps to distil tar, far up Tolleivsæter way.

One evening he kept on longer than usual, and it was dusk when he walked slowly down to the hut again.

He stopped to light his pipe, when he heard a cough below, a faint, dry cough, first once and then twice running. He heard also the noise of someone walking, and he sat down to wait, for it sounded as if someone were coming uphill.

But nobody came, nor did he hear that cough any more. He thought it strange, and called out aloud asking whether there was any human being.... No answer.

In the morning he went up to the same place to search the soil a little. He could not understand that cough—it sounded exactly like a consumptive coughing and clearing his throat. There were no traces of a human being, but he found elk spoors like Rauten’s, and he stopped stump-cutting that selfsame day.

Gaupa remembered that story and many others.

In the meanwhile Rauten and Bjönn remained in the same spot in the hollow, the dog looking steadily at the huge deer before him, his nozzle rested on his forepaws, and he looked like a long, narrow mound of grass or peat. Off and on something moved on the mound; Bjönn’s ears rose and lay down again.

A big bird, an owl, flew noiselessly over the forest, wings caressing the air.

After a while Gaupa nodded drowsily as he sat by the tree-trunk, but he felt so cold that he was wide awake again in no time, and then he heard somewhere a horse’s bell. He turned his head here and there, and the horse’s bell was to be heard from every direction. But it was impossible that there should be a horse’s bell at that time of the year; nobody put bells on a horse in the summer. He happened to take out his watch, and the horse bell suddenly sounded much louder and nearer. Then he understood that what he had been listening to was the tiny tink-tink of his own watch. It was ten o’clock.

A little later something trod softly in the darkness—very softly. He turned and the tread grew alive, became something tangible which was Bjönn. The dog came close up to him and laid his head on his master’s knee; and Gaupa embraced him, whispering fond words into his ear. Bjönn licked his master’s face and he let him do so. Then he fed him from his sack, gave him much food, whispering and prattling with the beast all the time, telling him that Bjönn must be a clever dog and hold Rauten till either the moon or daylight came, and then “The Tempest” should sing.

But Bjönn did not stay long with Gaupa; he wagged his tail a little, and trotted a few steps away from him. Then he seemed to remember something he had forgotten, went back, sniffed Gaupa’s beard and pressed his cold, wet nose close to his cheek. Then he disappeared in the darkness; there was a sound of rustling among the spruce branches, and then the brook was once more the only living thing Gaupa could hear or see.

He thought of Bjönn’s strange behaviour, how he came back to nose his beard. And he remembered the night before he left Lynx Hut, when he was remelting the Swede’s Bullet, how strangely Bjönn stared at him, whimpering as if in the full knowledge of something evil.... However, such things were not worth noticing.

Rauten had not moved the length of a mouse while Bjönn was away.

Then the dog began to walk stiffly in front of the elk, barking once or twice, and Rauten’s peace was broken. He got on to his forelegs, rose and stood still. Bjönn became eager, for he knew that Gaupa was close by, and he could not understand that it was difficult for his master to shoot in complete darkness.

Gaupa heard the sharp crack of a twig, then another. “There goes Rauten,” he thought.

A little later he heard the antlers striking a tree-trunk, and the dog’s bark came nearer, eager and aggressive. “There is the elk coming,” he thought.

Over him the branches hung like a wide-meshed net, a faint light from the sky penetrating it. But the under-bush was so black that he saw the trees only like vague shadows and in there the wizard elk was coming. Listen! how the antlers rustle among the spruce needles with a dry swishing sound, as when you sweep the floor of the hut with a broom!

Gaupa did not stir, but clasped his hands round his gun in trembling excitement. He sat immovable like an animal in its night lair, his eyes burning as if they would burn a hole in the darkness enveloping him.

Both beasts were close by and below him. Once he thought he saw a large shadow glide past down there, but he was not sure. He heard the dog throw himself aside and Rauten’s heavy steps. But he could not, could not see him.

Slowly Bjönn withdrew a little, following the wizard elk.

Gaupa crawled after them on all-fours, slowly, slowly. He was so close after them that he surely could have thrown his gun at the elk, if there had been light enough, and it seemed to him that he was crawling at the bottom of a black lake with the tree-tops floating on the surface of the water.

Then Rauten stopped and the dog’s barking grew rhythmic. Gaupa dragged himself ward on his stomach, and in a glade he caught sight of Bjönn, a dark bundle which glided here and there over the earth. But the elk, the elk?

He did not dare to move farther, and remained where he was, “The Tempest” ready. Over the western ridges the starry sky was sparkling.

Little by little Bjönn calmed down, till finally he remained on the same spot, and from the direction of his head Gaupa guessed whereabouts Rauten must be. For a long time he had been looking for something showing up like antlers against the sky between two tree-trunks, and he was only waiting to see that something move.... It did move, quite distinctly, and Gaupa lifted the barrel of his gun towards the sky, then lowered it towards the antlers, then far enough down to hit the body—and then the Swede’s bullet left the mouth of “The Tempest.”

The splitting flame from the gun sent a broad beam of light across the glade where Bjönn stood. And in front of the dog Gaupa saw as if in a flash of lightning the head of Rauten above some bushes. The head was lifted high, large eyes staring, and the half ear stood out very clearly.... Then darkness came again. Not a sound, no heavy thud of an elk falling, no eager dog’s bark.

Gaupa was half blinded from the sudden change from glaring light to absolute darkness. He listened for the well-known dry crackle of fleeing elk’s hoofs, but it did not come.

Then his ears caught the sound of something astir close in front of him. It could not be Rauten dying, for he would surely have heard him falling.

He struck a match, and at that moment a cock grouse chattered furiously somewhere up south—a coldly mocking guffaw like the laughter of a lunatic. If the grouse chattered in the middle of the night it must have been roused by the elk, therefore Rauten must be far away already. But what, then, was that which moved before his feet?

The match went out, there was a draught in the air. He scratched another, there was a swish along the box, a tiny explosion, and a little fire was born and burnt uncertainly within the hollow of his hand. Two spruces stood within the circle of the light, staring with wonder as if they had just awakened and wanted to know what kind of tiny sun was dancing on the ground.

Gaupa went forward to some yellow moss, that showed elk spoors. But in the middle of the glade Bjönn lay on one side. His eyes blinked a little at the light from the match, but there was in them something strained which Gaupa did not recognise. He knelt down beside the dog, stroking him and talking to him, but Bjönn took no notice, and his flanks laboured so strangely and quickly.

Gaupa lit another match and saw blood on Bjönn’s hair a little behind the left shoulder. He felt with his hand, which became wet. The dog started to open his mouth as if to yawn—and he gaped, and he gaped, and never finished.

“Bjönn!” Gaupa whispered—“my own dog!”

But Bjönn only gaped.