Silvertip's Chase

by Brand, Max

  CHAPTER XIII

  The Chase

  WHEN Frosty heard the outbreak of the dogs and the voice of the man, he had to snap his big teeth close to the head of his mate before she would leave off her greedy feeding and lift her red, dripping muzzle.

  “A full stomach makes a slow foot,” he told her. “Come! Let us go!”

  She was reluctant. He urged her with the powerful thrust of his shoulder, and at last she slunk away, regretfully, slackening her pace every now and then. He studied her with a critical eye. She had eaten like fire. Already she was logey with food. She ran with her head down, and her tail down, also. She kept coughing, and she stumbled over small obstacles.

  Behind them the noise of the dogs and the man ceased. Then it came once more, and a pair of dogs rushed straight at Frosty through the starlight. He turned back to get ready for them, merely saying to his mate:

  “Guard my heels and I’ll take them. Guard my back and I’ll handle them.”

  No matter how unfit she might be for battle, she fell in behind him and faced to guard his back. But the two big dogs that came glimmering out of the starlight veered off to this side and that. They retreated to a little distance and howled.

  Both Frosty and his mate charged the pair. The pointers turned and fled faster than the wolves could follow. For a timber wolf is not very fleet of foot. He is made for endurance and the shock of hard fighting, not for flight, like the fox or the coyote. Only in the rough country of the uplands will a timber wolf pull away from a pack of dogs. The she-wolf managed to slash the hip of one of the dogs; that was all.

  Then she turned with Frosty and started to race off at full speed. He calmed her and made her come back to a dogtrot. For it was plain that she could not stand the test of a hard run at once. Frosty himself was not exactly comfortable, for there was a considerable burden of meat inside him, and yet he had eaten nothing in comparison with his companion. Her sides thrust out with her meal. Her panting was a painful thing to hear.

  It was better to go on rather slowly, always in the direction of the higher foothills and the mountains beyond them.

  “We are safe, anyway,” said the she-wolf. “We are safe, because there are only two dogs, and they can do us no harm. I laughed to see how they ran.”

  “There is the scent of man in the air, and you know that always means danger.”

  “It is from the collar that you wear, like a dog, around your neck,” said his mate, sniffing at the linked steel.

  He tossed his head, and the collar slid a little upward through his fur. Already he had some cause to be grateful for the protection it had given to him, for in the battle that won him his mate, the second big wolf had struck for the throat of Frosty, and merely snapped a fang short off on the metal that ran around his throat. For all that, it was a hateful thing, because it continually reminded him of the most dreadful moment of his life.

  Still, he could not conceive what had happened after the blow that bad knocked him senseless. During the interval, in the darkness of his mind, the steel teeth of the trap had been removed from his hind leg and the steel bondage of the collar had been placed around his neck. The man had withdrawn and sat against a tree, bleeding. And he, Frosty, had been free to escape.

  Sometimes he felt as though that collar were man’s claim upon him, a detached hand that had him by the throat, and by which he might be one day throttled, as he had seen a brute of a wolf trapper once throttle a litter of helpless young puppies at the mouth of a cave. Or perhaps a mysterious agency was attracted to the steel and would one day draw him back to mysterious man.

  They got out of the low, rolling ground and climbed to the top of the first steep rise, where the she-wolf flung herself down on the ground suddenly. She was sick, and she could hardly travel farther.

  “Only,” she gasped, “only a fool runs from a memory. Only a fool runs from a shadow.”

  Frosty looked down at her heaving sides. Then he scanned the dark shadow of the lower ground beneath him. It might be, in fact, that no more danger was coming toward them, though in that case it was very strange that the two dogs, alone, dared to remain so close. Here they were again, glimmering shapes in the starlight, and pausing at a little distance, they sat down to howl at the enemy. The lips of Frosty twitched as he considered the keen edge of his teeth and the softness of their throats, but he was not a witless one to try to catch four faster feet than his own.

  Then out of the distance he heard a deadly chorus. There were more voices like those of the pointers. He could hear the keen yelping of the greyhounds, thin and far away, and, above all, the harsh cries of dogs whose voices were exactly like those of the ugly pair of monsters that had fallen upon him when he was in the trap.

  There were more than a score of throats giving music to that chorus. The heart of Frosty suddenly grew small in him. He stood over his mate and said to her:

  “Do you hear?”

  “It is far away,” she panted huskily.

  “It is pointing toward us, and the yelling of these two dogs holds the light on us like a shaft of sunshine, and guides the others. They are coming rapidly. Up, up! Away with me!”

  She rose with a lurch so slow and so heavy that the heart of Frosty failed in him again. Certainly she was hard spent, and yet the worst of the run might remain all ahead of them. In this condition he dared not lead her at a rapid pace. He could merely pick rough going, always, so that their trail would furnish as much difficulty as possible to the dogs in the distance.

  But what great difference did the trailing make when the two pointers, always near by, guided their companions out of the night with their outcry?

  Moreover, the gray of the morning began now, streaking around the rim of the horizon and making the mountains stand up black and huge against the eastern sky.

  With terrible speed the clamor from the rear rolled up on them. He saw his mate swing her head in impatient fear from side to side, hunting some escape.

  “We must hide! We must hide!” she gasped.

  “They have noses that will find us,” said Frosty.

  “Then we can fight them away from some narrow place,” said the she-wolf.

  “Man kills from afar,” said Frosty.

  “Run far ahead then,” she said. “Let me stay here behind. I am sick. My knees are weak, and my hocks will not bear me up. Run ahead, and I shall handle myself.”

  He fell in behind her and nipped at her heels.

  “Little fool!” said Frosty, and drove her relentlessly before him up the way.

  The wind brought to them the smell of a barnyard, of man, and the thin, distant clamor of more dogs. The she-wolf would have swerved to the side, but Frosty drove her straight ahead.

  Of ordinary dogs he had no heed whatever. But those keen yelpings of the greyhounds from the rear he understood. Even the antelope could hardly run faster than those lean beasts. He had seen them overtake and kill the wing-footed rabbits. And once they came in sight of their target, nothing could keep them from overtaking a pair of wolves, particularly wolves running in the open.

  Worst of all, there was the harsh calling of greater throats, giving forth notes like those of the two monsters which had come before Bill Gary to the traps.

  Frosty felt cornered, though still at a distance. The steel hand of man was surely closing about his throat. And it seemed to Frosty that the collar was shrinking, shutting off his breath.

  He paid no heed, therefore, to the smell of the barnyard and the scent of man and the yelping of other dogs. He even welcomed the thing and drove his unwilling mate before him straight down into a hollow where stood the long, squat shadow of a ranch house and the larger mass of a barn behind it.

  “There will be confusion down there,” he told her. “Geese will cackle, and hens and ducks. Dogs will howl. The scents of a hundred cattle will cross our trail. Perhaps we shall be able to sneak away to safety across the dangerous ground.”

  But he had no very great hope of that. He only knew tha
t he would be safe if he took to his heels and left his mate behind him to be torn by the teeth of the pack.

  He could not do that. The power of instinct checked and held him powerfully to her. He was not one to change his mind when danger threatened.

  So they came down into the hollow, and as they reached the damper, colder air below, they heard the forefront of the dog pack break over the hill behind them — the pointers first, and then the greyhounds on the leash, and then the fighting heavy artillery of the crew. Worst of all, there were beating hoofs of horses, and the calling of men to one another. And always the cursed daylight brightened around the rim of the wide horizon.

  He saw the entangled mazes of corral fencing behind him. He turned, and, with a determined charge, drove the two pointers who were closest far away from him. They yielded ground readily, as always. While they lingered in the distance, he whirled about and leaped the nearest fence. His mate had already crawled under the lowest wire, and was disappearing around the corner of a great stack of hay that stood in the middle of the inclosure.

  A little yellow dog came scooting toward him, yapping at the top of its lungs, splitting the night with its sharp ki-yiing. He swerved toward it. The house dog, terrified by the size and the imminence of that danger, dropped flat on the ground.

  One stroke of his teeth and Frosty would leave it with a smashed back, dead. But he disdained an enemy of such proportions, and hurried on as fast as he could leg it, until, turning the corner of the haystack, he was amazed to find that there was no sight of his mate before him!

  No, not although his glance could now extend far across the fields brightened with dew.

  He dropped his bewildered head toward the ground and suddenly picked up her trail. It turned sharply to the side into one of the hollows that were worked under the side of the haystack, where cattle had fed and where scratching chickens had widened the entrances. Into one of those her trail led, and, crushing far back into the yielding hay, he suddenly found himself at her side. He heard her gasping.

  “Go on! Go on! I cannot run another step!”

  Terror made him cold. His body lay still. His heart was still, also. Some instinct, from the first, had told him that association with females is dangerous. Now he found himself trapped, and the peril of the hunt swarming in around him!

  CHAPTER XIV

  Wolf Strategy

  THE day freshened every moment. As the light grew stronger, the intricate entanglement of hay drew yellow bars across his vision.

  “Go on! Go on!” whispered the panting she-wolf. “Don’t wait here with me. We’ll both be lost! We’ll both be lost!”

  He swung his head against her.

  “Be still, little fool!” he commanded.

  She was still. He could feel that her stifled breathing was choking her. He could feel her shuddering as she strove to control her gasping breath.

  He needed that silence to study the approach of danger. The whole hunt had swept down and around the corral. It poured on. He was sure, for a few moments, that it was definitely gone, for there was no noise close at hand except the shrill screeching of the little yellow dog, which had taken up its post directly in front of the hiding place of the two wolves.

  That is what comes of foolish mercy to a treacherous enemy in a time of war, thought Frosty, and all his teeth were on edge with anger and disgust.

  Then the hunt came back, as though the yelling of the little dog had guided it. The doors of the house began to slam, and men carrying the deadly odor of gunpowder and steel issued. Their voices were loud. The riders of the hunt had returned. The scent of their sweating horses was strong in the nostrils of Frosty. The great dogs were roving here and there. Chickens, foraging in the early day, fled with scattering outcries from these marauders. And always the cursed dogs were giving tongue.

  Had they lost the scent in the entangled mazes of fresh tracks that crossed and recrossed the odorous ground of the corral? Well, the yelping of the little yellow dog would soon lead them aright.

  Yes, at this very moment there was a howl from a pointer, and then from another, right at the entrance to the lurking place of the wolves.

  Frosty nudged his mate with the shrug of a shoulder. This was the time. By the tightening of his muscles she could be able to judge that a sudden face attack was what he had in mind, and he could feel her muscles tightening, also. There was good stuff in her. She was not one to shrink from her duty in a great pinch like this.

  Now came the great voices which Frosty had feared most of all, and waited for — the heavy artillery of the Thurston pack, which was sweeping toward the haystack.

  Frosty came out of the hay with a bound. A big pointer, right in front of him, received a slash that opened his shoulder like a knife stroke. That dog would run no more on this day.

  The dazzled eyes of Frosty saw men on horseback outside the corral fence. He saw, closer in, greyhounds running, and big, grizzled monsters, covered with mouse-colored, curling tufts of hair exactly like the two dogs of Bill Gary, but even larger, if anything.

  The men yelled. The dogs gave tongue all in one voice. And the wretched little yellow dog that had caused all this crisis of danger fled screaming out of the path.

  That talkative busybody, the squirrel, betrays many a hiding animal in the heart of the woods. Frosty thought of that as he swerved around the corner of the haystack as fast as he could possibly leg it.

  Behind him his fleet-footed mate was racing. The fluff of his tail must be beside her head. And Frosty turned the next corner, and the next of the stack, and bolted straight back across the corral.

  He had simply doubled the stack, and was running, now, right on toward the spot where he had seen the horsemen, because he had judged that they would get into motion in another direction.

  He was right. They had scattered to this side and to that, and the whole stream of dogs was in movement out of sight, around the big stack of hay, as Frosty and his mate streaked back across the corral and leaped the fence.

  A little wilderness of labyrinthine barbed wire crossed and crisscrossed before them, bright with newness and the morning light here, and red with rust there. And Frosty held straight on through the midst of that wire. The strands which were farthest apart he dived between. The lower fences he jumped. He knew of old that ridden horses will not follow across barbed wire, even where it is stretched low along the posts.

  Off to the side he saw a little boy and two women at the back of the house, throwing up their hands, yelling in shrill voices. They were not to be considered, however, because no smell of gunpowder and steel came from them.

  In fact, Frosty gained so much by his doubling maneuver that he was actually well beyond the entanglements of the corral fencing before the head of the dog pack got wind and sight of him and lurched in pursuit. The horsemen were coming, too, scattering off to the side to avoid the fences. Rifles began to clang as Frosty shifted into a scattering of brush that worked up a steep hillside. And through that brush the two wolves dodged to the head of the hill.

  Frosty glanced at his mate, and saw that she was not scathed. Her eyes were red with labor and with terror. They were blank. She was incapable of using, now, the excellent brain which the god of wolves had put into her head. All that she could do was to follow blindly where her great mate led her.

  Her heavy meal of meat still weighted her down, but she was in her second wind. And before them stretched the ragged sea of the mountain uplands which Frosty knew so by heart, every corner, every hole, every den, every patch of brush.

  He realized, by the first glimmering of hope, how utterly he had been lost in despair.

  He knew the best way to head now. Just off to the right there was a canyon which a small stream of water had drilled and grooved and polished through the rising mountains. If they could get into that ravine they could shift from one side of the narrow water to the other, and so delay the dogs which ran so well by scent. And presently a horde of little branching canyons opened to th
e right and to the left. Up one of them they could flee and perhaps gain safety.

  It only needed that they should first make the long pull of the upgrade that would bring them to the edge of the canyon wall.

  He knew the best way, and he showed it to his mate now. There is nothing so killing as an upslope, but wolves handle such labor better than dogs, almost always. He felt that for the moment only man was to be feared, because the light of the day was bright now, and man could use that light to kill from afar with the barking voice of a trusty rifle.

  So Frosty legged it up the slope, cut suddenly to the right, and found himself running on an old Indian trail up the side of the valley. Sometimes that trail was ten feet wide. Sometimes it narrowed to three. Would the riders dare to follow on their horses? Or would they give up the hunt and leave it to the dogs to finish the day’s work?

  The trail rose in a straight line, hugging the great rocky wall of the ravine. From the outer edge of the ancient road the cliff dropped again hundreds of feet to where the little river widened into pools or narrowed again into arrow-straight white rushings of water. It was still a good mile, a long mile, to the place where the trail dipped downward and slipped onto the level floor of the narrow valley. It was still a mile from the broken bad lands where Frosty and his mate could begin to have hope indeed.

  And before that mile was over, Frosty knew that he would have to turn and fight.

  The pointers had fallen well behind now. They had not the legs to keep up with the arrowy flight of the greyhounds, and next to the greyhounds came the great fighting dogs of the breed of Bill Gary. The riders were also there, in the distance, driving their horses up the narrow, slippery, dangerous ledge with a remorseless courage. But they could not keep up with the dogs on such a grade as this. Therefore they lost ground at every turn. Only twice did they have a clear view of the fugitives and fill the air with whining bits of lead that made Frosty shift and dodge from side to side.