by Max Brand
The tree under which the deer stood was a little apart from the main border of the forest, and to get at it the lobos would have to slip across a short open space. However adroitly they slid forward, there was little chance that they could come in striking distance of the buck. Was it not for that very reason that they had waited for the master to come up with them, that the force of his mind might assist them, as it had often assisted them in other times? If the deer lay down, that would be another matter, and a single strong burst might bring the fleetest of the three close enough for a stroke at the throat or at the hamstring. But give that deer a ten-foot start and it would leave the pack behind as surely as a freshly launched thunderbolt.
Oliver Crosson measured the distances with his eye, the while patting the shoulders of the female wolf gently.
The thing might be done, of course. He might, for instance, send out that young yellow lobo to the rear of the stag. There was a certain amount of cover to which that cunning stalker could take advantage until, worming close, it sprang up on the farther side of the deer—on the side that would turn the buck in toward the trees. Once among them, two gray devils would rise in its path and finish it.
But he carried in his hand a quicker solution of the task. The gun. Would his skill be sufficient? Would his hand be steady and the bead be drawn surely? Oh, if rusty sights would do, surely these bright steel ones could not fail him!
At that moment the deer bounded from the tree’s shadow and landed twenty feet away. There it stood for a quivering instant, flight already shining in its eyes, while the sound that had startled it rang faintly in the ears of the boy.
From far away, from the other side of the wood, came the ringing noise of a rifle report. The very direction, in fact, in which the strangers must have departed, and along the course of which he had left the two captured hostages. And what was that sound that followed on the heels of the report? Was it not the yelp of a wolf, dim in the distance?
Anger made him set his jaws hard for an instant. Then he forgot what might be happening in another part of the forest. He centered his attention on the deer. For the gray female wolf was rising stealthily to her feet. He could feel the tremor as her leaping muscles gathered for a supreme effort. She raised her head a trifle and rolled back her red-stained eye to ask for his permission before she bolted out into the open.
The stag, uneasy, turned its head quickly from side to side, the big ears fanning forward in the intensity of its effort to listen. It made one or two quick steps. Its hindquarters were sinking a little, and the sunlight flashed upon the gathering muscles. In another instant it would be shooting away across the green of the rolling ground, half in fear, half in the same careless joy that makes a songbird soar against the sun.
Crosson raised the revolver and leveled it. He had a mere glimpse of the bared teeth of the wolf as it snarled in silent fear of the unaccustomed tool. She knew that scent, but never in these hands. Where would he aim? There where the heart beat, behind the shoulder, under the sleek, fat side. But could a mere pressure of the forefinger turn the trick? Would the gun thunder from his hand as it had thundered from the hands of others that he had heard?
His heart raced—his face burned—his hand trembled wonderfully until, as the sights rose, he glimpsed the desired target. At the very instant that the stag sprang he pressed the trigger.
There was a report that sounded in his sensitive ears like the breaking of the assembled thunders of the world. The heel of the weapon kicked strongly back against his palm. The muzzle jerked spitefully upward and seemed to say to him—a miss!
Was it a miss? The stag bounded wildly forward, stretched out straight and true. He had only alarmed it. No, the second bound was not forward, but high aloft, and, landing from it, the buck fell loosely, heavily upon the ground. His head bounced up a little from the shock. His pink tongue lolled upon the grass. His eyes were as wide as ever, but the boy knew that there was no sight in them. The deer was dead.
Out from the brush sprang the three big wolves. And Crosson slowly followed them out from the shadow, from the cool of the woods into the burning of the sunshine, hotter than a bath of blood. He felt no heat. He had done this. The crooking of his forefinger had beckoned the life out of that strong and beautiful body, so made for speed. He had not missed in this first shot. Would he ever miss again in all the days of his life?
A small, cold, stern smile formed upon his lips. His nostrils expanded. He was tasting the most supreme joy that the world can offer, except one. To give life is greatest of all, to take life is only second. And he had taken it.
What? To sweat and strain and invite danger, knife in hand, muscle to muscle, nerve to nerve? No, that was nothing. That was to live as a beast among beasts. But to stand aloof, unharmed, unthreatened, and snuff out an existence like a flickering candle’s flame—that was indeed glorious, that was indeed to be a god! No wonder that his father had forbidden him to touch weapons. It was a gate that, once opened, laid at his feet all the world. He was no longer a child. He was a man.
The three great wolves stood over the kill, drooling with eagerness, but afraid to lay tooth in the booty until the master permitted. Not until he had begun the skinning and furled back the pelt and sliced out for them their portion dared they taste of the prize. But he did not move.
What was this thing, to occupy his hands? If he chose, could he not lay whole herds dead at his feet? The puma, the grizzly bear, hitherto unapproachable, the wolves of hostile tribes, the great elk, the deer, all the beasts of the wilderness were his slaves, were almost beneath his contempt, because he bore in his hand this little glittering toy of steel, its breath of fire, its word of lead.
He made a short gesture. The wolves shrank lower, looking at him in surprise that was almost fear. Then, waiting no longer, they took the permission and their fangs were instantly in the kill.
The boy stood by. He watched them slashing and rending. He heard the snapping of the tendons, the rip of skin like the tearing of strong cloth, the grinding snap as a bone was crunched by the power of the great jaws. They fed. His heart gloried in them, in their appetites, in his fatherhood, and their dependence. They hungered, and he supplied them. He loved them all the more because the meat was freely theirs, beneath his attention. It mattered not that they had no fresh venison in the house. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, there would be hunting days. Did he not know every water hole loved by the deer among the hills? Did he not know where to ring the favored places with his wolves and lie in wait? There would be no such rings now, no such chances of escape, if the bounding stag or doe broke through or over the reaching teeth of the lobos. He, with his gun, would be there. He would snuff out the life with a beckoning movement of a single finger, and after that he would apportion the spoils—a little for himself and for his father; the most of it for these four-footed friends. He watched them eat.
A message, mysteriously sliding through the resin-scented air of the woods, reached other nostrils. Two more wolves bounded out to the feast, another and another, until the muzzles of seven were red in the blood of it.
So the boy watched them and felt rich, like a king at the head of his long boards, watching his peers, his retainers, his doughty men at arms, eating the food that of his providence and wealth he had given to them. He felt like a patriarch, these were the younglings of the clan who would owe him allegiance, respect, and obedience because of his bounty.
A buzzard flew nearer in the upper air. It dropped close down toward them, swinging in a circle breathlessly fast, and then perching on the bending top of a tree. Others of its kindred had watched the descent of that vulture. They began to appear, a speck in the west, in the south, in the east. Still others would come, having surely marked how the hungry brothers and sisters had dropped out of their seats in the sky toward at least the hope of a feast.
Crosson smiled grimly up at them. They were detestable, but it was the law of their kind. Were not all living things subject to some such law? Did not some
browse on the grass of the field, and others feed on the pastures, and still others, birds and beasts, accept the foul leavings of the feast?
So it must be among men, also. Some drew from the soil by the labor of their hands; others drank up their profits by cunning and adroitness, but still others took by the sheer right of strength. His mind was full of romance. He could understand, in a stroke, why the knights-errant had ridden forth—not to plow, or to kill, but to take with their right hands.
They righted wrongs. Well, he would right wrongs, also. They helped the weak and the oppressed. Such would be his glorious duty, also. His fancy carried him into a bright, happy dream.
He was awakened from it by the noise of the snarling as the wolves, gorged and swollen with their fine fare, now lay down to maul the white bones of the dead with their bloody jaws.
Returning from his dream, he turned back into the wood. At the very edge of it he looked back, but not a single one of the feasters had risen to follow him. He spoke a soft word. All looked up, but only the female wolf arose, sullenly, and went after him. The others dropped their ears, like creatures that know that they are doing wrong, but they waited for the second command.
Crosson disdained to give it. He went on, but a new thought was in his mind.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Bill Ranger felt that he had learned enough and more than enough. He had no desire to enter into the narrative events of the lives of the two Crossons. He had decided before this that his best policy would be to get out of the environment immediately and to report to Menneval exactly what he had seen, Menneval to act as he thought fit and use his imagination as he saw fit, for Ranger felt like a child confronted with difficult problems in arithmetic, problems as yet untaught and unsolved.
At the edge of the creek, he watched old Crosson skillfully and swiftly clean the fish, chop off their heads, and throw them away.
“You oughta leave the heads on,” suggested Ranger. “Some of the juice leaks out, that way.”
“Let the juice leak,” said old Crosson. “It’s better than to have dead fish in front of you.”
There was a delicacy in this distinction of fish cooked with and without the head that Ranger only vaguely understood. “Well,” he said, “I’ll be getting along.”
The old man looked up at him as though amazed, and blinked his bewilderment. “But you haven’t eaten with us,” he said.
“I’d better be getting along,” said the trapper. “It’ll be late pretty soon and I’d better get started on my way.”
Old Crosson continued staring. “Suppose I were to visit your camp, would you let us go without eating?” he asked.
Ranger hesitated. It was a point well taken. “Well, I’ll stay,” he said suddenly.
Old Crosson gathered up the fish and they started back for the cabin.
A fire was kindled in the open fireplace. Ranger helped gather the wood, while Crosson wrapped the fish in broad leaves, as if to protect them from the singeing force of the flames.
“Tell me something,” Ranger said to break the silence. He was watching the fire blaze up, while Peter Crosson sat on his haunches like an Indian, considering the fire.
“Aye, I’ll tell you something,” said Crosson, without lifting his glance from the blaze.
“Tell me why you want me to stop here.”
Crosson smiled at the fire, or was it at his own thoughts? “Because I need you, son,” said Crosson.
It startled Ranger. It startled him that this Robinson Crusoe should need any man. It startled him that anyone should call him “son”—Bill Ranger, with his grizzled head.
“You need me?” echoed Ranger.
“I need you,” said Crosson, and nodded at the flames, as if to get confirmation from their jumping heads.
“Why, man,” said Ranger, “I certainly ain’t much to help anybody. I’m only a kind of ordinary trapper.”
“You’re honest!” snapped Crosson.
Again Ranger was startled. Was it not by this very formula that that man in the Far North, that robber and slayer and deceiver, that Menneval—was it not by the same formula that Menneval had addressed him, those lifetimes ago in Spooner’s saloon? Menneval had said that he was honest. Therefore, Menneval had committed to his hands a weight of gold dust and this odd mission. Honesty was a strange thing, it appeared. It opened the most unexpected doors.
“Will honesty help you?” asked Ranger. “Besides, I dunno that I’m extra honest. I’ve slipped a card . . .” He flushed; a gentle perspiration broke out on his forehead at the thought.
The other did not favor him with so much as a glance. “Yes, you’re honest,” he said. “And that’s the kind of a man I have to have now. He’s about to jump the brink. He’s about to spread his wings.” He paused.
“Who is?” asked Ranger.
There was no answer.
“You mean your son?”
“I mean the boy,” Crosson said almost fiercely. He took two sticks, and with them he lifted the fiery coals at the base of the fire. Under the coals he laid the limp fish in their wrappings of leaves. The wet oozed through the leaves and tiny drops appeared, like fresh dew.
“I dunno,” said Ranger cautiously. “I dunno how I could be any good to him. I’d need,” he added, “a leash of lightning and a hand like a thunderbolt.”
Crosson chuckled. “They wouldn’t be any good. Lightning wouldn’t scar his neck, and he’d jerk the thunderbolt away and throw it back at you. But with a silk thread, a spider’s thread, you could hold him forever.”
“Hold on,” said the trapper.
“You’ll understand me one day,” said Crosson. “I’m sorry for you, friend, but you’ll understand one day. You’ll never get away from him.”
Ranger gasped. “Why won’t I? Look here, Crosson, I ain’t picked myself to be a friend of his. He . . . he’s too quick for me.”
“Men go where they’re needed,” said old Crosson. “That’s the tragic thing about life. We don’t do what we want. We do what other people need us to do. We’re slaves. I’ve tried to make him free. I can’t. I’ve tried to make him so that other people wouldn’t mean anything to him. But it looks like I’ve failed pretty badly.” He nodded soberly at the fire and beat down the crinkling, fire-twisted sticks with the end of a branch.
“Tell me what you mean,” Ranger said.
The old man lifted a long, gaunt forefinger. “Am I a keeper for him any longer?” he said.
“For your son? Why, I dunno.”
“Look at me again. I look like a skull. I look as though I were already dead. Am I a keeper for him? No, I’m not. And some other man will have to be the keeper. I thought it would be five years from now, but the troubles are coming on us too fast. He’s tasting his strength . . . on men. Soon, he’ll taste blood. And then he’ll need another keeper. I’m not strong enough to keep up with him. But you’re strong. And you’re honest. And you’ll go with him.”
“Go with him where?” asked Ranger.
“How should I know?” said the other. “Go where he goes, when he’s on the trail of perdition. When he starts to kill, you’ll try to hold his hand.”
“I don’t follow your drift.”
“You will, though. You’ll follow it pretty well. Right now, you never saw a man in your life that interested you as much as he does. Tell me, ain’t that the truth?”
Ranger looked back into his mind, into his life. It was a crowded page that he surveyed there in that moment. At length he said, reluctantly: “Yes, that’s true. I never saw another man who interested me as much. What of it?”
“Then you’ll try to keep him straight. That’s all. You’ll try to keep him . . .”
Here, out of the distance, the report of a gun came to them.
Old Crosson stood up and listened. “That was a rifle . . . from the way that Chester Lyons was riding, with his girl.”
“Did you hear the wolf yell, afterward?” asked Ranger.
“No. My ears are growing
dull. I heard no wolf yell. Was there a wolf’s yell, afterward?”
“Aye, there was.”
Crosson stood for a long moment, silent, thoughtful, with something of great emotion unexpressed in his face.
Before he spoke or stirred, a smaller sound came to them from the opposite side of the wood.
“That was a revolver,” said Ranger.
Crosson looked at him with vague, horrified eyes. “Then . . . it’s happened,” he said.
“What’s happened?”
“I’ve kept him away from them all the days of his life. But now he’s got one.”
“What? You’ve kept who? What do you mean?”
“I’ve kept him . . . the boy. I’ve kept him from guns. But there can’t be two gangs in the woods at once. There can’t be.”
“I don’t follow that,” said Ranger.
But Crosson, lost in gloomy thought, refused to speak again on the subject. The moments went on.
Presently a gray she-wolf leaped out from the shadows of the trees and stood before them, flattening herself a little toward the ground.
Crosson looked earnestly at her. “He’s coming back,” he said.
“Who?”
“Oliver. He’s sent her on before. Look at her belly line. She’s been gorging.”
“Aye, it looks that way.”
For Ranger knew dogs from his Arctic trekkings, and he was a judge of a heavy meal. “What’s she been eating?” he asked.
“The gun shot that we last heard!” snapped Crosson. He sat down, cross-legged, heedless of his nearness to the fire, and rested his forehead on his hand.
And then, without a sound, another presence materialized beneath the brown shadows of the big trees. It was the boy, coming back with a light step and a cheerful face. For he was smiling, and his look was fastened upon the treetops. He came straight up to the fire, and sniffed the air. “You’ve got the fish roasting, Father?” he asked.
