by Max Brand
It came in unexpected form.
Over the brim of the hill shoulder appeared two men. They were hatless, and their coats hung from them in rags. They were running at their full speed, though it was only the staggering speed of utterly exhausted men.
Into the light of the fire they dashed, and Ranger recognized Wully and Sam, with Sam well behind in this race for life, for such it seemed to be. Ten thousand small slashes seemed to have been inflicted upon each of them, for they were crimson with their own blood, issuing through the many rents in their clothes. Either their guns and cartridge belts had been taken from them, or they had thrown the encumbrances away to lighten their flight.
Straight across the patch of firelight they fled. There was no sound of pursuit behind them, but they did not pause. The hoarse, rasping sound of their panting would be long in the ear of Ranger. But more than the sound was the sight of their faces, blank and terrible with dread. They fled as from an inescapable spirit. They would flee forever, it seemed. Never again would they be what they had been that evening when they went out with a surly and haughty insolence to rob the Crosson Ranch.
Ranger stood up and looked with a cold heart into the pit of darkness that covered the plain.
Where they had failed together he must try his hand alone, and before long.
Chapter Ten
When Ranger saw the dawn rise on the next day, he was ready to face his blackest fortune. That is to say, he was sufficiently desperate to seek the thing that he feared, like a small child asking for the promised whipping to escape from the long suspense.
He had to enter the Crosson estate. And there never would be an easier time for such an approach than the present moment. Therefore he got his breakfast, put the little lean-to in order, took his rifle, and marched down across the slope of the hill and out upon the green of the Crosson spread.
His purpose was simple and obvious on the face of it. He would simply go up to the house, announce that he was now a comparatively near neighbor for the season, and introduce himself by name. If he were received in a surly manner, at least he would have made the fair and aboveboard approach, and could not be suspected of spying. On the other hand, he would have an opportunity to keep his eyes open, and, no matter how short the time for looking around, it would be very strange if he did not succeed in seeing something of interest worth reporting to Menneval at the end of the trip.
That was the simple plan of Lefty Bill Ranger, but he knew, in his heart, that it would hardly work out as smoothly as all this. There was danger down there on the Crosson land. He had seen the result of it twice. And he felt as cold and brittle as ice when he approached the central wood in the midst of which the Crosson house must be.
It was hardly a grove. It was more like a forest, the size of which he had underestimated both because it was at a distance and because he had been looking down upon it from a height. No wonder that the wild timber wolves had fled here. They might not all be the half-tamed pack that obeyed the strange lad who he had seen riding the mustang. There would be room in the avenues of this wilderness for both kinds to find refuge.
He was amazed, and could have been delighted by the scene. For the bright morning sun broke through the lofty roof of green and came pouring aslant through its columns, splashing the ground with a wild patterning of shadows and bright, shining gold. The resinous sweetness of the pines made the air fragrant. And his feet slipped quietly upon the deep beds of the pine needles.
But all the forest was not of this single pattern. In places the trees receded and dropped down from the great height of their companions. Wherever this was true, deciduous trees were growing, and hedges and masses of shining shrubbery.
He began to lose some of his fear. The place was such a delight and so ideally fitted to surround a house with shadow and coolness in the heat of the summer, and to break the force of the storm winds in winter that he began to envy the Crossons, and we hardly fear those who we envy.
He began to feel that he would like to have such a place for a home. And why not? There were still unnumbered acres in the mountain wilderness where a man needed only to take up his homestead in order to make the land his own. Why should he not prospect, not for gold, but rather for a home where he could spend the end of his days?
He paused, looking down a long avenue, partly clouded with the dark of shadow and the green of foliage, and partly glowing with rays of sunlight from above. This silent joy of the trapper’s was rudely shattered. He heard behind him a sound like the whisper of the wind. But there was no wind about he knew, and, whirling about, he confronted, not three strides behind him, a huge wolf, a veritable giant of his race. It favored the man with a view of its flashing teeth and bounded from view behind the trunk of a tree.
Ranger put out his hand and leaned heavily against the nearest support. He felt sick and faint. Was he to be run and hounded as Sam and Wully had been? Or had that softly moving, gray devil been waiting to leap at him and take him by the nape of the neck? The wolf was huge enough to have delivered a death blow with a single stroke of his fangs. He was of the kind that, long before, had been able to rip and tear pounds of living flesh from the flank of the buffalo as they raced over the plains.
The grisly dread that he had felt before now swept back upon him. His heart raced. His face was icy-cold. But he decided to go straight on. What else could he do? If the inhuman Crossons actually could send out these animal spies to work for them, would they not receive a report that a man had been seen stealing through the woods and had been frightened out of them? In that case, he would expect worse treatment than Sam or Wully had known. But if he went on toward the house, his honesty of purpose would be evident.
So he marched on, but in a very different humor. Now, with every step he took, his straining, aching eyes were driving among the shadows, trying to look around the corners of the big trees, or darting to the side. Every moment he was pausing to stare behind him, and he felt like one walking a tight rope over a chasm.
The next alarm did not come from behind, however. There was a sudden outbreak from the yelling throats of wolves immediately before him. He was at that moment on the edge of one of those clearings where the great heads of the forest stepped back a little, allowing a smaller and tenderer growth of trees and shrubs, and a small meadow that flashed like a jewel in the sun. He shrank close to the side of a big tree, grasped his rifle with trembling hands, and waited.
What he saw, first of all, was not the wolves, but a thing he dreaded more than wolves—the youth who had killed the puma in the brake. He bounded from the farther side of the clearing and went across the meadow like the wind, his long, black hair driven straight out behind him by the speed of his going. He was dressed in a sleeveless, closely fitted jacket of buckskin. He wore Indian leggings of the same stuff.
As he shot past the trapper, his face tense with the effort of running, there was an additional shock for Ranger. It was the color of the eyes. He was no Indian; there was no taint of Negro blood in him, either, in spite of the darkness of his skin. Sun and hard weather had accomplished that feat of double dyeing. The eyes of the lad were a piercing, brilliant blue, reminding Ranger of a pair he had seen before. He could not tell where.
The reason for the boy’s flight? It was at his very heels! Three huge timber wolves broke from the trees right behind the fugitive, and, red-eyed, slavering with eagerness, now yelling and now whining, they rushed after the youth.
The latter half turned his head. He made a still more desperate effort to put on speed, and Ranger, at last coming to himself, pulled the rifle to his shoulder. He was in no state for accurate shooting. For his hands shook and the muzzle of the weapon wavered violently. It was as though he had seen the lions turn upon the lion tamer.
The whole universe seemed turning topsy-turvy. For right at the heels of the running wolves, gaining upon them in a tawny streak, ran the biggest mountain lion Ranger had ever seen. It looked less like a puma than a maneless African lion, and i
t was fairly running through the wolves, not to tear down one of them, but uniting with them to overtake the boy.
Ranger swiftly shifted his aim from the leading wolf to the puma. There was, certainly, the chief danger.
But at that moment the boy disappeared from the earth to which he had been running. He was passing under a big tree whose lowest branch was a full nine feet from the ground to the eye of the trapper. Bounding high up, the youngster caught this branch with both hands, and the impetus of his running swung him on up. With an incredible agility, he climbed higher among the branches, and the wolves, gathering about the trunk of the tree, sat down upon quivering haunches and gave utterance to the long, rolling, heartbreaking cry that tells of a quarry at bay.
They had an ally who was not checked by the trunk of the tree. The puma, giving one upward look into the branches, sprang instantly up the trunk to the first forking, and then rushed higher through the limbs of the tree.
Lefty Ranger cuddled the rifle into the hollow of his left shoulder. He tried to take a bead, but the thing was nearly impossible. If his nerves had been steady, he could have sent a slug through that great, golden cat, but his hands were still shaking, his whole body was unnerved. And what he drew a bead on was a tawny shape that flickered upward among the branches, snarling terribly, its teeth already bared.
Still the boy was not quite lost. He swung out to the end of a long, powerful branch. It grew small. It yielded under him. The big cat crept out along the same limb, but now the boy was dangling from what seemed a mere handful of the outermost twigs. There he hung and began to swing himself back and forth with a strong oscillation. The three wolves, their yelling ended, gathered under him, waiting for the fall, crouching close to the ground and quivering with a dreadful eagerness.
What hope was there for the boy? Some hope still, it seemed. As the limb swayed back and forth and the youngster gained a greater and a greater vibration, suddenly he loosed his hold and shot outward and upward through the air. He turned as he sailed forward. Hands first, he plunged among the twinkling leaves of the nearest tree.
Down he quickly shot. He had grasped several small branches that yielded with him, and the shock of his fall carried him down. Under him raced the ravening wolves, but, as they reached the spot, the recoil of the limbs jerked the boy up as far as he had fallen. And there he was again, a twinkling shape among the upper branches.
Safe!
No, not altogether safe, as yet. For a golden form dropped out of the shadows of the first tree, flashed across the ground, and darted up the trunk of the second. Under the strain of the two heavy climbing bodies, the whole tree shook here and there, and the top of it nodded and trembled as though in the grip of a heavy storm.
The wolves were snarling, the puma whining with its frightful eagerness, and then a third sound distinctly came to the horrified ears of Ranger. It was a succession of beastly noises—snarls, whines, growls—but different from those of wolf and mountain lion. He could not believe his ears, but, as he stared, he saw the boy on an outer branch and knew that the voice was his, and that those animal sounds actually came from a human throat!
Chapter Eleven
Was he, then, more beast than man? Was that the reason the boy had been able to hunt with the wolves? Was that the reason that he was now actually escaping from both wolf and mountain lion?
To Ranger it was not like seeing a human being chased by beasts of prey. It was like seeing one destroyer pursued by others. How could he have more sympathy for one than for the other? And what was the mysterious story that lay behind this spectacle?
Still he strove to get a bead on the climbing puma, and still he failed as the thing went flickering up among the branches. The boy was now again at the outer end of a branch, and was beginning to swing from it, evidently planning to repeat his former maneuver of leaping from tree to tree. Monkeys, Ranger had heard, could do exactly that thing. But what man, since the world began?
It was not so easy, this time, for the tree was smaller, and the branch sagged so that, in the lower part of the swing, the wolves were leaping for the legs of the boy—leaping so high, indeed, that it seemed momently possible that they would reach him.
Yet as he swung, the same beastly sounds rolled from the throat of the man. Plainly he was deriding the other creatures, for, as they heard him, they fell into a veritable frenzy. The wolves yelled a death song. And the puma, pausing an instant in its advance, uttered the long, grisly cry that ends in a human whimpering and sobbing like that of a child lost in the wilderness.
They were maddened, wolves and puma, by the challenge that was being poured at them from the human throat.
And that instant came disaster. For as the youngster swung, the branch that supported him suddenly broke off short, and down he dropped a dozen feet. Cat-like, he twisted in the air and landed well, on hands and feet, so that he was instantly up again. Up again, but only for the moment. The biggest of the wolves leaped, gave the man its shoulder, and toppled him head over heels, and all three instantly swarmed over him.
He was lost!
In five seconds those powerful jaws, those cutting fangs, would tear him to pieces. And now into the tumult dropped the golden streak of the great cat. As it landed, the wolves bounded back, as from an acknowledged master, and there lay the boy, prone on his face, and the huge mouth of the puma was opened, ready to take him by the nape of the neck.
At that last instant Ranger finally drew his bead. Just behind the shoulder of the puma he took his aim. That bullet should cut through the heart and give the boy a fighting chance for his life. But he did not pull the trigger. For a strange thing happened then.
The prostrate lad, turning, sat up under the very face of the great cat, and with one hand grasping the lordly tuft beneath its chin, actually shook his fist in the eyes of the lion!
And the terrible puma, the man-hunting puma, merely blinked its eyes and sat down, curling its long, snaky tail around its flank.
The boy, flinging himself on his back on the bright emerald of the grass, threw his arms wide, closed his eyes, and lay still, except for the great labor of his chest, which rose and fell rapidly. The race in itself had been enough. The frantic climbing in the trees had been more than the trapper could believe of human sinews and muscle. There the boy lay, stretched out, eyes closed, regaining his breath with gasps.
The three man-hunting wolves came stealthily to him. They licked his face. They licked his hands. They would have lain down beside him, but the puma, rising suddenly, bared its great teeth and warned them away with a snarl.
A word came from the boy. Or was it a word that had no syllabification, and seemed only a prolonged mutter deep in his throat? At the sound of it the puma drew back, little by little, still sounding its grim warning. It lay down on the ground, lashing its side with its tail, its two forepaws covering the extended hand of the lad. The wolves instantly disposed themselves about him, one at each side, and one, a dark-maned giant, lay down at the boy’s head, panting hard, its big red tongue lolling and its glinting eyes constantly fixed upon the lion.
It was plain that no love was lost between these beasts of various species.
Ranger, bewildered and stunned by the dream-like nature of what he was seeing, told himself that he had left the world of reality and come into a world of madness. He would have turned and fled at that instant, but something told him that he could not disappear softly enough for his footsteps to miss the hair-trigger ears of the wolves or the huge cat. And, once discovered, would they not run him down in earnest as they had run down their master in play?
So he remained still, hardly daring to breathe, and gradually silence came over the scene as the panting died down, and there was nothing heard except the secret whisperings of the wind among the upper branches and the quiet music of the brook that ran into a big, bright-faced pool not far away.
This silence seemed to Ranger, from in his place, to endure for an hour; perhaps it lasted hardly two minutes. A
t the end of that time the boy stood up suddenly, and the four animals rose with him. He leaned above the puma, stroked its head, and, muttering a word, he sent the creature away. It went reluctantly, flicking the long tail from side to side, and twice pausing to look back at the master before it faded away into the gloom of the woods.
The youngster went to the bank of the pool, threw off his clothes, and tried the temperature of the water with his foot as his sun-black image reflected on the still face of the water. Ranger never had seen a man like him. He was not more than middle height. Certainly he never would be called heavy. Yet, as Ranger looked at him, he felt that he was seeing the perfect type of the athlete.
From head to foot there was not a sharp angle in his body. At no point was he overweighted; nowhere was he sparsely made. He was as smoothly made, with as round and deep a chest, as one of those sublime idealizations of humanity that the Greek sculptors loved to chisel from marble or cast in bronze. When he moved, a ripple of light passed over him. There was no hint of exaggeration in him, except, perhaps, the extraordinary size of the loin muscle, where it draped across the top of the hip. No wonder that he could run like a deer and climb as easily as a monkey.
When he had tested the water, he jumped to the top of a rock three or four feet above the level of the pool. The three wolves instantly bounded up beside him, and then he leaned into the air and sprang. His heels tossed up, pressed close together, his joined hands broke the water before his head, and into the pool he slid like a quiet image rather than a heavy, falling body. There was only a slight sound behind his feet as they disappeared; a small fish, jumping for a fly, makes a louder sound.
Ranger could see the swiftly sliding shadow beneath the surface, and, having fetched to a distance, the boy rose, shaking the long hair from before his face. He whistled, and into the water plunged the three great wolves. They swam strongly, their heads high, aiming straight for the man. But trouble was before them. They were in the middle of the pool when he dropped suddenly out of sight.
