After the lapse of a minute or two, the brute quietly rose from his haunches, trotted a few paces, and then gave utterance to the dismal wail peculiar to his species. It had a baying, howling tone, which made the chills creep over the boy from head to foot. He had heard the barking and howling of wolves when crossing the prairies, but there was deep, thunderous bass to the one which now struck upon his ear such as he had never before heard, and which gave it a significance that was like a voice from the tomb.
The instant the brute left his station, Fred reached down, seized the muzzle of his gun, and drew it up. Then he made his way some twenty feet above, where he could feel secure against any daring leap from his foe. He had scarcely perched himself in this position, when the bay of the wolf was answered from fully a dozen different directions.
He had called to his comrades, and their replies came from every point of the compass—the same rumbling, hoarse, wailing howls that had notified them where a prize awaited them. A minute later, the brute trotted back to his place, where he sat down until the arrival of reinforcements.
“It isn’t one wolf, but a hundred, that going to besiege me!” gasped the terrified boy.
He spoke the truth.
CHAPTER XXI
A Terrible Night
The prospect of being besieged all night in a tree by a pack of mountain wolves was not a pleasant one by any means, and Fred, who had climbed up among the branches with the object of securing a few hours’ slumber, found little chance of closing his eyes for even a minute.
“It might have been worse,” he reflected, as he listened to the dismal howling, “for if they had happened to come down upon me when I was walking along the ravine, I could n’t have gotten into any place like this in time to save me. Wolves don’t know how to climb trees, and so long as I stay here I’m all right; but I can’t stay here forever.”
By-and-by there was a sharp pattering upon the ground, and then the hoarse howling changed to quick, dog-like yelps, such as these animals emit when leaping down upon their prey, and which may be supposed to mean exultation.
Fred came down sufficiently far from his perch to get a glimpse of the ground beneath. He saw nearly a score of huge mountain wolves, bounding hither and thither, and over each other, and back and forth, as though going through some preliminary exercise, so as to prepare themselves for the feast that was soon to be theirs.
“If I was down there,” thought the boy, with a shudder, “I suppose I’d last them about two minutes, and then they’d be hungrier than ever. They’ll stay there all night, but I wonder if they’ll go away in the morning. If they don’t, I can’t tell what’s to become of me.”
He watched them awhile with a lingering fear that some of them might manage to get among the branches, but they did not make the attempt. They had sufficient dexterity to leap from the ground up among the lowermost limbs, but had no power of retaining their position, or doing anything after they got there.
Nature had unfitted them for such work, and they did not try it. They seemed to possess tireless activity, and they kept up their leaping and frolicing as though they had nothing else in the world to do.
After watching them until he was tired, Fred carefully climbed up among the branches again, where he secured himself as firmly as was possible. He had lain his rifle across a couple of limbs above his head, and fixed upon a place within a dozen feet or so of the top, as the one offering the best support.
Here two or three limbs were gnarled and twisted in such a way that he could seat himself and arrange his body in such a way that he could have enjoyed a night’s slumber with as much refreshment as if stretched out upon a blanket on the ground. But the serenade below was not calculated to soothe his nerves into soft, downy sleep, and he shuddered at the thought of sitting where he was for four or five hours, with the pattering feet below him, varied by a yelp or howl, when he should feel disposed to close his eyes.
“But, then, it can’t be helped,” he added to himself, endeavoring to look philosophically at the matter. “I ought to be thankful that they didn’t catch me before I reached the tree, and so I am; and I would be very thankful, too, if they would go away and leave me alone. I’ve got a bed here twice as good as I expected to find, and could sleep as well as anywhere else.”
Almost any sound long continued becomes monotonous, and thus it was that scarcely a half-hour had passed when, in spite of the dreadful beasts below, his eyes began to grow heavy and his head to droop.
But at this juncture he received a terrible shock. Just as everything was becoming dreamy and unreal, he was startled by a jarring of the tree, as though struck with some heavy object. When it was repeated several times, his senses returned to him, and he raised his head and listened.
“I wonder what that can be?” he said to himself. “Is some one hitting the tree? No, it isn’t that.”
It seemed not so much a jarring of the trunk as a swaying of the whole tree.
Puzzled and alarmed, Fred drew his legs from their rather cramped position, and picked his way downward among the limbs until he had descended far enough to inform himself.
“Heaven save me! they’re in the tree!” he gasped, paralyzed for the moment with terror.
In one sense, such was the case. The frolicsome wolves had varied their amusement by springing upward among the lowermost branches. A brute would make a jump, and, landing upon the limb, sustain himself until one or two of his comrades imitated his performance, when they would all come tumbling to the ground.
Thus, it may be said, they were climbing the tree, but they were scarcely in it when they were out of it again, and Fred had nothing to fear from that source.
In his fright, he hastily clambered back again after his rifle, with the intention of shooting the one that was nearest, but by the time he laid his hand upon the weapon his terror had lessened so much that he concluded to wait until assured that it was necessary. And a few minutes’ waiting convinced him that he had nothing to fear from that source. It was only another phase of the hilarious fun they were keeping up for their own amusement.
“I guess I’ll try it again,” concluded Fred, as he proceeded to stow his arms and legs into position for the nap which he came so near commencing a few minutes before.
He did not consider it within the range of possibility that he could unconsciously displace his limbs during sleep sufficiently to permit him to fall.
He heard the yelping and occasional baying below, the rustling among the limbs, and the undulation caused by the animals leaping upward among the branches; but they ceased to disturb him after a time, and became like the sound of falling water in the ears of the hunter by his camp-fire. It was not long before slumber stole away his senses, and he slept.
A healthful boy generally sleeps well, and is untroubled by dreams, unless he has been indulging in some indiscretion in the way of diet, but the stirring scenes of the last few days were so impressed upon the mind of Fred that they reappeared in his visions of night, as he lived them all over again. He was again standing in the silent wood along the Rio Pecos, with Mickey O’Rooney, watching for the stealthy approach of the Apaches. As time passed, he saw the excited figure of Sut Simpson the scout, as he came thundering over the prairie, with his warning cry of the approach of the red-skins. The rattling fight in front of the young settlement, the repulse of the Apaches, the swoop of Lone Wolf and the lad’s capture, the night ride, the encampment among the mountains, his own singular escape, and, finally, his siege by the mountain wolves—all these passed through the mind of the sleeping lad, and finally settled down to a hand-to-hand fight with the leader of the brutes.
Fred fancied that the two had met in the ravine, and, clubbing his gun, he whacked the beast over his head every time he leaped at him. He struck him royal, resounding blows, too, but, somehow or other, they failed to produce any effect. The wolf kept coming and coming again, until, at last, the boy concluded he would wind up the bout by jumping upon, and throwing him down, and t
hen deliberately choking him to death.
He made the jump, and awakening instantly, found he had leaped “out of bed,” and was falling downward through the limbs. It all flashed upon the lad with the suddenness of lightning.
He remembered the ravenous wolves, and, with a shuddering horror which cannot be pictured or imagined, felt that he was dropping directly into their fangs. It was the instinct of nature which caused him to throw out his feet and hands in the hope of checking his fall.
By a hair’s breadth he succeeded. But it was nearly the lowermost limb which he grasped with his desperate clutch, and hung with his arms dangling within reach of the wolves below.
The famished brutes seemed to be expecting this choice tid-bit to drop into their maws, and their yelps and howls became wilder than ever, and they nearly broke each other’s necks in their furious frolicing back and forth.
The moment young Munson succeeded in checking himself, he made a quick effort to draw up his feet and regain his place beyond the reach of the brutes. It was done in a twinkling, but not soon enough to escape one of the creatures, which made a leap and fastened upon his foot.
The lad was just twisting himself over the limb, when he felt one of his shoes seized in the jaws of a wolf. The sudden addition to his weight drew him down again, and almost jerked his hold from the limb, in which event he would have been snapped up and disposed of before he could have made a struggle in the way of resistance. But he held on, and with an unnatural spasm of strength, drew himself and the clogging weight part way up, kicking both feet with the fury of despair.
The wolf held fast to one shoe, while the heel of the other was jammed into his eyes. This, however, would not have dislodged him, had not his own comrades interfered, and defeated the brute by their own eager greediness. Seeing that the first one had fastened to the prize, a half-dozen of them began leaping upward with the purpose of securing a share in the same. In this way they got into each other’s way, and all came tumbling to the ground in a heap.
Before they could repeat the performance the terrified lad was a dozen feet beyond their reach, and climbing still higher.
When Fred reached his former perch, he was in doubt whether he should halt or go still higher. His heart was throbbing violently, and he was white and panting from the frightful shock he had received.
“That was awful!” he gasped, as he reflected upon what had taken place. “I don’t know what saved me from death! Yes, I do; it was God!” he added, looking up through the leaves to the clear, moonlit sky above him. “He has brought me through a good many dangers, and He will not forsake me.”
After such an experience, it was impossible that sleep should return to the eyes of the lad. He resumed his old perch, but only because it was the most comfortable. Had he believed that there was a possibility of slumber, he would have fought it off, but there was not.
“I’ll wait here till morning,” he said to himself. “It must be close at hand; and then, maybe, they will go away.”
He looked longingly for some sign of the breaking of day, but the moonlight, for a long time, was unrelieved by the rose-flush of the morning.
CHAPTER XXII
Lost
Following the escape of their human victim, the wolves had maintained a frightful and most discordant howling, as if angered beyond expression at the style in which they had been baffled of their prey.
The lad sat listening to this, when suddenly it ceased. Silence from each beast came as completely and simultaneously as if they were members of an orchestra subject to the wand of such an enchanter as Theodore Thomas. What could it be?
For the space of two or three minutes the silence remained as profound as that of the tomb, and then there came a rush and patter, made by the wolves as they fled pell-mell.
At first sight this seemed a reason for congratulation in getting rid of such unwelcome company; but Fred saw in it more cause for alarm. Very evidently the creatures would not have left the spot in such a hurry unless they were frightened away by some wild animal more to be dreaded than themselves.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to use my rifle,” he thought, as he moved softly downward until he reached a point from which he could see anything that passed beneath. “It’s pretty rough to have to fire a fellow’s last shot, when he’s likely to starve to death for it; but a beast that can scare away a pack of wolves is likely to be one that will take a well-aimed bullet to stop—-”
This train of thought was abruptly checked by a sight which almost paralyzed him. He could dimly discern the ground beneath, and he was watching and listening when a large figure came to view, and halted directly beneath him, where the first wolf had sat upon his haunches and looked so longingly upward.
No noise could be heard and it seemed to move like a phantom; but, even in the gloom, the peculiar swinging motion of the body showed prodigious strength and activity. There could be no doubt, either, that the animal was a climber, and therefore more to be feared than a thousand wolves.
Fred had gained quite a knowledge of the animals of the country on his way across the plains, and in the indistinct view obtained he made up his mind that this was that most dangerous of wild beasts in the Southwest, the American cougar. If such were the case, the lad’s only defense lay in the single charge of his rifle. The cougar could leap among the limbs as easily as a cat bounds from the floor into the chair.
Fred had left his rifle beyond his reach, and he was about to climb up to it, when the possibility occurred to him that, perhaps, the cougar was not aware that any one was in the tree, and, if unmolested might pass by. Accordingly, the fugitive remained as motionless as a statue, his eyes fixed upon the dreaded brute, ready to make for his gun the instant the cougar showed any sign of making for him.
The animal, known in some parts of the country as the panther, or “painter,” remained equally motionless. It looked precisely as if he suspected that something was in the wind and had slipped up to this point to listen for some evidence of what it was. Fred, who had heard fabulous stories of the “smelling” powers of all wild animals, feared that the cougar would scent him out, but he showed no evidence of his ability to do so.
After remaining stationary a minute or two, he moved forward a couple of steps, and then paused as before. The lad was fearful that this was an indication that he had detected his presence in the tree and was about to make his leap; but, preliminary to doing so, all such animals squat upon their haunches, and pick out a perch at which to aim. This he had not done, and the boy waited for it before changing his own position.
The head of the cougar was close to the trunk of the tree, and he had maintained the attitude hut a few seconds when he started forward again and continued until he vanished from view.
“I hope he is gone,” was the wish that came to Fred, as he peered through the leaves, in his effort to catch a glimpse of him.
But the intervening leaves prevented, and he saw him no more.
He remained where he was for some time, on the look-out for the beast, but finally climbed back to his former place, where his gun was within reach, and where he disposed of himself as comfortably as possible.
In less than ten minutes thereafter, the whole pack of wolves were back again. The cougar had departed, and they returned to claim their breakfast. They were somewhat less demonstrative in their manner, as though they did not wish to bring the panther back again.
They were scarcely upon the ground, however, when Fred noticed that it was growing light in the east. The long, terrible night, the most dreadful of his life, was about over, and he welcomed the coming day as the shipwrecked mariner does the approach of the friendly sail.
The light rapidly increased, and in a short time the sun itself appeared, driving the darkness from the mountain and bathing all in its rosy hues.
The wolves seemed to dread its coming somewhat as they did that of the cougar. By the time the morning was fairly upon them, one of them slunk away. Another speedily followed, and it so
on became a stampede.
Fred waited awhile, and then peered out. Not a wolf was to be seen, and he concluded it was safe to descend.
He made several careful surveys of his surroundings before trusting his feet on solid ground again. When he found himself there he grasped his rifle firmly, half expecting the formidable cougar to pounce upon him from some hiding-place; but everything remained quiet, and he finally ventured to move off toward the eastward, feeling quite nervous until he had gone a couple of hundred yards, and was given some assurance that no wild beasts held him in sight.
Now that the lad had some opportunity to gather his wits, he paused to consider what was best to do, for with the coming of daylight came the necessity for serious work. His disposition was to return to the ravine, which he had left for the purpose of seeking a sleeping-place, and to press homeward as rapidly as possible. There was no time to be lost, for many a long and wearisome mile lay between him and New Boston.
As was natural, Fred was hungry again, but he resolved to make no attempt to secure food until night-fall, and to spend the intervening time in traveling. Of course, if a camp-fire should come in his way, where he was likely to find any remnants of food, he did not intend to pass it by; but his wish was to improve the day while it lasted. By taking to the ravine again, he entered upon the Apache highway, where he was likely, at any moment, and especially at the sharp turns, to come in collision with the red men, but the advantage was too great to overlook, and he hoped by the exercise of unusual care to keep out of all such peril.
He was on the margin of the plateau, and before returning to the gorge he thought it best to venture upon a little exploration of his own. Possibly he might stumble upon some narrower pass, one unfit for horses, which would afford him a chance of getting out of the mountains without the great risk of meeting his old enemies.
The Edward S. Ellis Megapack Page 273
