CHAPTER IX

HOW THE GREAT BULL FLED FOR HIS LIFE

All the afternoon they laboured on and on, and by degrees two things came to pass. The woods thinned, there were open spaces, the banks grew lower and more open. They were coming to the lake.

The other obvious change was in the wind. It had veered to the north and blew bitterly cold, while fine particles of frozen snow began to strike the travellers faster and faster. As it grew dusk the air was freezing hard, and that wind from the north was getting up.

Then, also in a moment, the white expanse of the lake spread before their eyes--dim and shadowy, lost in the distance.

Nell's heart sank a bit at that moment. It was all so fearfully dreary and exposed. The forest they had passed through seemed a friendly shelter beside this! But it had to be faced. The river passed through it and the journey must be taken up again--away over there in the far-away dimness--where the stream poured out, wider, going east to join the Moose River.

"I suppose," said Nell, looking round with carefully assumed indifference, "we'd better camp here. It's getting dark."

"Not much shelter," David suggested. "Hope it isn't going to work up a blizzard."

His sister was sure it was late in the year for a blizzard. She said that, but in her heart she knew that April was an uncertain month always. She stood looking and looking, while the blowing fur tails hid the troubled expression of her face.

"Come along," she said at last, "round by the north bank, we'll go--there," she pointed some distance along to the left with her fur-mittened hand.

David asked why not straight across--it was level and easier.

"Is it because of the trail?" he asked. "The snow will cover that. Just look how it's coming down."

Nell said it was because of the river stream. She was a little afraid of ice bridges, or holes under the snow. The stream in the middle would be swifter than the sides. You never know how the surface freezes, or where the strong stream begins to make its way beneath. The girl thought of all that, because she had been here with her father and he had shown her what to beware of as the spring thaws approached. This was important, while David's mention of their trail was also a point. She decided that they would not go on to the lake, at present. They would follow a more difficult way around the north side and make a camp when they had put some distance between themselves and the place where the river entered the lake.

With this intention then they first did some confusing work. They struck out straight ahead over the snow; then, having gone some distance came back on their own tracks to the starting-place, took off their snowshoes and climbed the bank, lifting the sled over obstacles. It was strenuous work, but it could be done for a yard or two, and all they wanted was to hide their start. Having reached a bare stretch beyond brushwood clumps, Nell went back to obliterate the trail. In this she was helped by the wind, which, blowing harder and harder in icy gusts, whirled the snow round about in eddies, scattering it afresh in finest powdery flakes.

"All the better," said Nell, panting a little as she climbed the slope again. "Now then, Da, 'on, on we go,' as our old spelling book said--next thing is a camp. This blizzardy wind is beastly, but it's helping us all the time."

David agreed as he always did, bravely coming up to the scratch at all times in his sister's steps. All the same, he had never in his life felt worse--that is to say, more exhausted and despondent. The thought of having to set to again and make a camp, and a fire, if it would burn, and then face the night almost unprotected, was not cheering. However, Nell was right about the blizzard; the advantages made up for the misery.

As long as they could they went along the north shore of the lake itself, close to the bank. They returned to it, because of the much easier going, of course, after they had confused the trail by a land tramp of perhaps half a mile. That was awfully hard and could not have continued much longer, as their strength was giving out owing to the obstacles.

Presently, when it became increasingly difficult to see, Nell pulled up at a place where the shore formed some small protection, because the land rose in a slope with trees on the higher part. They could not camp on the ice here, so they landed in a likely place, hopeful of shelter from the snow-laden bushes, and began to make what preparation they could.

To tell the truth, even Nell could have cried at that moment. But there is a great deal in being responsible "boss" of anything! You can't let yourself go if you have real grit, and she had plenty.

They scraped and scraped at the snow till they reached down to the frozen bank and made a sort of barrier. A great deal of it blew back again, but that had to be borne. Fortunately the fire was kind enough to burn--the worst of the storm had not come then--and they were able to get a meal of hot tea and bacon. It made a great difference. Then, protected in a small measure by the upturned sled and the bundles, the bushes, and the heaped up snow, they got ready for "bed." At the last moment Nell did rather a clever thing. She scraped the fire off its first place lower down, making it up again with a good bundle of wood. Then she and David lay down in their bags on the hot, dried ground where the fire had just been built. It answered so well that they both fell asleep at once in spite of the increasing storm.

Nell was very weary indeed. The burden was a growing one, because she had had so little rest in forty-eight hours of strenuous work. Therefore a cry from David close to her ears seemed to ring in her head for hours before she realised that he was shaking her shoulder and calling to her in rather an agitated voice, for him. Then she was awake on the instant. Wide awake and throwing sticks on the dying embers, for the one thing necessary at that instant was obviously a fire.

"It's _wolves_," David was saying. "But, Nell, they stop up north as a rule, don't they? I say, what a beastly row."

Nell was loading the little Winchester. She heard the "beastly row" very clearly, but did not show agitation.

"They are after something," she said. "Don't you remember once before when we heard them at home Dad said they'll follow some animal that is trying to escape for miles--a hundred miles--any distance till it is exhausted. They are so persistent when they are hungry, I expect it's a deer, poor thing!"

"Bucks are awfully clever at confusing their own trails though," urged David, who hated to think of wolves succeeding, "they'll jump thirty feet sideways bang into bushes to throw those beasts off the scent. I do think they are clever. I say, Nell, there's one good thing!"

"What?"

"Why the wind. It's blowing hard from them to us. That's why we hear them so plainly--don't you see? If it was the other way they'd get scent of us. Jolly thing they can't!"

"It is," said Nell decidedly, inwardly praying that the wolves would stay on the north side, but that depended on which way the hunted creature fled.

The two crouched low under the snow wall, waiting and listening to those howls that had roused David. It was a dreadful sound--the howling of the wolf pack in full cry after its flying prey. The weird shriek of it came down the wind in gusts. Perhaps the horrible brutes were at fault! Nell hoped so. David said so, he was anxious to help the deer if that were possible, but his sister preferred to remain entirely apart! One does not want to get mixed up with wolves on such a night.

The noise of the howling grew louder, and Nell threw a good armful of dead wood on the blaze to rouse a high flame. She and David were standing up gazing anxiously over their snow wall up the slope of the shore, when suddenly they received a shock that was very startling.

Out of the driving whiteness of the blown snow loomed a huge plunging shape. It was lurching down the bank directly on to them--like a nightmare in a very horrid dream--when apparently it saw the fire, and checked. For a moment the two in the camp were aware of amazing antlers and a long distorted face, then the creature swerved with a fine effort, bounded aside with a loud blowing snort, and took to the lake some yards beyond, higher up.

"Did you see--did you see?" David was shaking his sister's arm in excitement.

"Don't, Da, I've got the rifle. Put more wood on the fire, quick. Hark to the others!"

"Poor old chap, he's got a start," said the boy, piling on wood and glancing back up the hill. "I wish you could kill the lot, Nell."

Nell laughed in spite of everything.

"I! Let's hope they won't notice us, if they're hot on the old bull's trail."

The weird howling drew nearer, till the bitter blast of the north wind seemed full of it, and then--sudden as the appearance of the desperate bull moose--shadows flitted over the rise as though they were part of the snowstorm.

Nell fully expected one or more of the wolves to come over the barrier, though she knew the fire would frighten them, but the pack, about eight or ten at the outside, were running close together on the hot scent of the big moose. Perhaps the fire did scare them aside, as it had scared him. The darkness swallowed them, and the fierce long-drawn cry of the howl lessened as the wind caught it. They were gone, over the lake.

When Nell felt Robin's coat she noted that his hackles were stiff and his throat quivering with deep growls. Robin could put up with most of the wild folk--after a fashion--but wolves made him furious! All three of the party sat down again close to the fire, and comforted themselves with hot tea and dried meat.

"Something happens every night," commented David thoughtfully; "this was the queerest. Who'd have thought of a bull moose down here--and wolves!"

"How can we tell how far they'd come," said Nell. "He looked awfully done. Da, his antlers were jolly fine--all of seven feet across. I expect he was an old bull and that they singled him out of the herd and kept him back from the others--that's the way they do."

"I do hope he got away," said the boy again.

Nell hoped so, too, but she didn't think it likely. Wolves are fearfully persistent.

After a bit they went back to bed and actually slept till a faint, faint pink light spread over the flatness of the lake.

The wind was less keen, but it still blew the snow about in eddies, and Nell was very eager to be off while this help was on their side.

She looked back towards the river and the far woods. Nothing showed. They struck camp very quickly indeed, for her hurry was infectious. She felt unsafe out here in the open, for figures show a long way upon clean snow.

They kept to the edge more or less. Not quite the edge, because there is always a good deal of rotten ice under the banks, but within a little of it. It was easier going, and of course Nell was not quite sure where the river ran out of the lake and onward. She longed desperately for that fresh start on the river road. It would be wonderful to have crossed the lake and be actually on the straight track to Moose River.

All day they drove on and on, stopping once or twice in likely places on the banks for a rest and food. This lake was not nearly so large as the Abbitibbi Lake, or several others--it was not so wide. Away over the snow they could see the opposite--the southern--shore. But they could not see the end. It was probably twenty-five miles long from the entrance of the river at the west, to its exit in the east, and that's a long, long way even on snowshoes, when you are on the trail with a sled, even a light sled.