The Greatest Works of James Oliver Curwood (Illustrated Edition). James Oliver Curwood
but the wind shifted. It was a fatal shift. The fire was raging from the west and south. Then the wind swept straight eastward, carrying the smoke with it, and during this breathing spell all the wild creatures in the triangle between the two rivers waited. This gave the fire time to sweep completely, across the base of the forest triangle, cutting off the last trails of escape.
Then the wind shifted again, and the fire swept north. The head of the triangle became a death-trap. All through the night the southern sky was filled with a lurid glow, and by morning the heat and smoke and ash were suffocating.
Panic-striken, Kazan searched vainly for a means of escape. Not for an instant did he leave Gray Wolf. It would have been easy for him to swim across either of the two streams, for he was three-quarters dog. But at the first touch of water on her paws, Gray Wolf drew back, shrinking. Like all her breed, she would face fire and death before water. Kazan urged. A dozen times he leaped in, and swam out into the stream. But Gray Wolf would come no farther than she could wade.
They could hear the distant murmuring roar of the fire now. Ahead of it came the wild things. Moose, caribou and deer plunged into the water of the streams and swam to the safety of the opposite side. Out upon a white finger of sand lumbered a big black bear with two cubs, and even the cubs took to the water, and swam across easily. Kazan watched them, and whined to Gray Wolf.
And then out upon that white finger of sand came other things that dreaded the water as Gray Wolf dreaded it: a big fat porcupine, a sleek little marten, a fisher-cat that sniffed the air and wailed like a child. Those things that could not or would not swim outnumbered the others three to one. Hundreds of little ermine scurried along the shore like rats, their squeaking little voices sounding incessantly; foxes ran swiftly along the banks, seeking a tree or a windfall that might bridge the water for them; the lynx snarled and faced the fire; and Gray Wolf's own tribe—the wolves—dared take no deeper step than she.
Dripping and panting, and half choked by heat and smoke, Kazan came to Gray Wolf's side. There was but one refuge left near them, and that was the sand-bar. It reached out for fifty feet into the stream. Quickly he led his blind mate toward it. As they came through the low bush to the river-bed, something stopped them both. To their nostrils had come the scent of a deadlier enemy than fire. A lynx had taken possession of the sand-bar, and was crouching at the end of it. Three porcupines had dragged themselves into the edge of the water, and lay there like balls, their quills alert and quivering. A fisher-cat was snarling at the lynx. And the lynx, with ears laid back, watched Kazan and Gray Wolf as they began the invasion of the sand-bar.
Faithful Gray Wolf was full of fight, and she sprang shoulder to shoulder with Kazan, her fangs bared. With an angry snap, Kazan drove her back, and she stood quivering and whining while he advanced. Light-footed, his pointed ears forward, no menace or threat in his attitude, he advanced. It was the deadly advance of the husky trained in battle, skilled in the art of killing. A man from civilization would have said that the dog was approaching the lynx with friendly intentions. But the lynx understood. It was the old feud of many generations—made deadlier now by Kazan's memory of that night at the top of the Sun Rock.
Instinct told the fisher-cat what was coming, and it crouched low and flat; the porcupines, scolding like little children at the presence of enemies and the thickening clouds of smoke, thrust their quills still more erect. The lynx lay on its belly, like a cat, its hindquarters twitching, and gathered for the spring. Kazan's feet seemed scarcely to touch the sand as he circled lightly around it. The lynx pivoted as he circled, and then it shot in a round snarling ball over the eight feet of space that separated them.
Kazan did not leap aside. He made no effort to escape the attack, but met it fairly with the full force of his shoulders, as sledge-dog meets sledge-dog. He was ten pounds heavier than the lynx, and for a moment the big loose-jointed cat with its twenty knife-like claws was thrown on its side. Like a flash Kazan took advantage of the moment, and drove for the back of the cat's neck.
In that same moment blind Gray Wolf leaped in with a snarling cry, and fighting under Kazan's belly, she fastened her jaws in one of the cat's hindlegs. The bone snapped. The lynx, twice outweighed, leaped backward, dragging both Kazan and Gray Wolf. It fell back down on one of the porcupines, and a hundred quills drove into its body. Another leap and it was free—fleeing into the face of the smoke. Kazan did not pursue. Gray Wolf came to his side and licked his neck, where fresh blood was crimsoning his tawny hide. The fisher-cat lay as if dead, watching them with fierce little black eyes. The porcupines continued to chatter, as if begging for mercy. And then a thick black suffocating pall of smoke drove low over the sand-bar and with it came air that was furnace-hot.
At the uttermost end of the sand-bar Kazan and Gray Wolf rolled themselves into balls and thrust their heads under their bodies. The fire was very near now. The roar of it was like that of a great cataract, with now and then a louder crash of falling trees. The air was filled with ash and burning sparks, and twice Kazan drew forth his head to snap at blazing embers that fell upon and seared him like hot irons.
Close along the edge of the stream grew thick green bush, and when the fire reached this, it burned more slowly, and the heat grew less. Still, it was a long time before Kazan and Gray Wolf could draw forth their heads and breathe more freely. Then they found that the finger of sand reaching out into the river had saved them. Everywhere in that triangle between the two rivers the world had turned black, and was hot underfoot.
The smoke cleared away. The wind changed again, and swung down cool and fresh from the west and north. The fisher-cat was the first to move cautiously back to the forests that had been, but the porcupines were still rolled into balls when Gray Wolf and Kazan left the sand-bar. They began to travel up-stream, and before night came, their feet were sore from hot ash and burning embers.
The moon was strange and foreboding that night, like a spatter of blood in the sky, and through the long silent hours there was not even the hoot of an owl to give a sign that life still existed where yesterday had been a paradise of wild things. Kazan knew that there was nothing to hunt, and they continued to travel all that night. With dawn they struck a narrow swamp along the edge of the stream. Here beavers had built a dam, and they were able to cross over into the green country on the opposite side. For another day and another night they traveled westward, and this brought them into the thick country of swamp and timber along the Waterfound.
And as Kazan and Gray Wolf came from the west, there came from the Hudson's Bay post to the east a slim dark-faced French half-breed by the name of Henri Loti, the most famous lynx hunter in all the Hudson's Bay country. He was prospecting for "signs," and he found them in abundance along the Waterfound. It was a game paradise, and the snow-shoe rabbit abounded in thousands. As a consequence, the lynxes were thick, and Henri built his trapping shack, and then returned to the post to wait until the first snows fell, when he would come back with his team, supplies and traps.
And up from the south, at this same time, there was slowly working his way by canoe and trail a young university zoologist who was gathering material for a book on The Reasoning of the Wild. His name was Paul Weyman, and he had made arrangements to spend a part of the winter with Henri Loti, the half-breed. He brought with him plenty of paper, a camera and the photograph of a girl. His only weapon was a pocket-knife.
And meanwhile Kazan and Gray Wolf found the home they were seeking in a thick swamp five or six miles from the cabin that Henri Loti had built.
CHAPTER XI
ALWAYS TWO BY TWO
It was January when a guide from the post brought Paul Weyman to Henri Loti's cabin on the Waterfound. He was a man of thirty-two or three, full of the red-blooded life that made Henri like him at once. If this had not been the case, the first few days in the cabin might have been unpleasant, for Henri was in bad humor. He told Weyman about it their first night, as they were smoking pipes alongside the redly glowing box stove.
"It is damn strange," said Henri. "I have lost seven lynx in the traps, torn to pieces like they were no more than rabbits that the foxes had killed. No thing—not even