The Greatest Works of James Oliver Curwood (Illustrated Edition). James Oliver Curwood
under the windfall. Rarely did they go beyond the limits of the swamp to hunt. Out on the more distant plains and the barren ridges they occasionally heard the cry of the wolf-pack on the trail of meat, but it no longer thrilled them with a desire to join in the chase.
One day they struck farther than usual to the west. They left the swamp, crossed a plain over which a fire had swept the preceding year, climbed a ridge, and descended into a second plain. At the bottom Gray Wolf stopped and sniffed the air. At these times Kazan always watched her, waiting eagerly and nervously if the scent was too faint for him to catch. But to-day he caught the edge of it, and he knew why Gray Wolf's ears flattened, and her hindquarters drooped. The scent of game would have made her rigid and alert. But it was not the game smell. It was human, and Gray Wolf slunk behind Kazan and whined. For several minutes they stood without moving or making a sound, and then Kazan led the way on. Less than three hundred yards away they came to a thick clump of scrub spruce, and almost ran into a snow-smothered tepee. It was abandoned. Life and fire had not been there for a long time. But from the tepee had come the man-smell. With legs rigid and his spine quivering Kazan approached the opening to the tepee. He looked in. In the middle of the tepee, lying on the charred embers of a fire, lay a ragged blanket—and in the blanket was wrapped the body of a little Indian child. Kazan could see the tiny moccasined feet. But so long had death been there that he could scarcely smell the presence of it. He drew back, and saw Gray Wolf cautiously nosing about a long and peculiarly shaped hummock in the snow. She had traveled about it three times, but never approaching nearer than a man could have reached with a rifle barrel. At the end of her third circle she sat down on her haunches, and Kazan went close to the hummock and sniffed. Under that bulge in the snow, as well as in the tepee, there was death. They slunk away, their ears flattened and their tails drooping until they trailed the snow, and did not stop until they reached their swamp home. Even there Gray Wolf still sniffed the horror of the plague, and her muscles twitched and shivered as she lay close at Kazan's side.
That night the big white moon had around its edge a crimson rim. It meant cold—intense cold. Always the plague came in the days of greatest cold—the lower the temperature the more terrible its havoc. It grew steadily colder that night, and the increased chill penetrated to the heart of the windfall, and drew Kazan and Gray Wolf closer together. With dawn, which came at about eight o'clock, Kazan and his blind mate sallied forth into the day. It was fifty degrees below zero. About them the trees cracked with reports like pistol-shots. In the thickest spruce the partridges were humped into round balls of feathers. The snow-shoe rabbits had burrowed deep under the snow or to the heart of the heaviest windfalls. Kazan and Gray Wolf found few fresh trails, and after an hour of fruitless hunting they returned to their lair. Kazan, dog-like, had buried the half of a rabbit two or three days before, and they dug this out of the snow and ate the frozen flesh.
All that day it grew colder—steadily colder. The night that followed was cloudless, with a white moon and brilliant stars. The temperature had fallen another ten degrees, and nothing was moving. Traps were never sprung on such nights, for even the furred things—the mink, and the ermine, and the lynx—lay snug in the holes and the nests they had found for themselves. An increasing hunger was not strong enough to drive Kazan and Gray Wolf from their windfall. The next day there was no break in the terrible cold, and toward noon Kazan set out on a hunt for meat, leaving Gray Wolf in the windfall. Being three-quarters dog, food was more necessary to Kazan than to his mate. Nature has fitted the wolf-breed for famine, and in ordinary temperature Gray Wolf could have lived for a fortnight without food. At sixty degrees below zero she could exist a week, perhaps ten days. Only thirty hours had passed sinee they had devoured the last of the frozen rabbit, and she was quite satisfied to remain in their snug retreat.
But Kazan was hungry. He began to hunt in the face of the wind, traveling toward the burned plain. He nosed about every windfall that he came to, and investigated the thickets. A thin shot-like snow had fallen, and in this—from the windfall to the burn—he found but a single trail, and that was the trail of an ermine. Under a windfall he caught the warm scent of a rabbit, but the rabbit was as safe from him there as were the partridges in the trees, and after an hour of futile digging and gnawing he gave up his effort to reach it. For three hours he had hunted when he returned to Gray Wolf. He was exhausted. While Gray Wolf, with the instinct of the wild, had saved her own strength and energy, Kazan had been burning up his reserve forces, and was hungrier than ever.
The moon rose clear and brilliant in the sky again that night, and Kazan set out once more on the hunt. He urged Gray Wolf to accompany him, whining for her outside the windfall—returning for her twice—but Gray Wolf laid her ears aslant and refused to move. The temperature had now fallen to sixty-five or seventy degrees below zero, and with it there came from the north an increasing wind, making the night one in which human life could not have existed for an hour. By midnight Kazan was back under the windfall. The wind grew stronger. It began to wail in mournful dirges over the swamp, and then it burst in fierce shrieking volleys, with intervals of quiet between. These were the first warnings from the great barrens that lay between the last lines of timber and the Arctic. With morning the storm burst in all its fury from out of the north, and Gray Wolf and Kazan lay close together and shivered as they listened to the roar of it over the windfall. Once Kazan thrust his head and shoulders out from the shelter of the fallen trees, but the storm drove him back. Everything that possessed life had sought shelter, according to its way and instinct. The furred creatures like the mink and the ermine were safest, for during the warmer hunting days they were of the kind that cached meat. The wolves and the foxes had sought out the windfalls, and the rocks. Winged things, with the exception of the owls, who were a tenth part body and nine-tenths feathers, burrowed under snow-drifts or found shelter in thick spruce. To the hoofed and horned animals the storm meant greatest havoc. The deer, the caribou and the moose could not crawl under windfalls or creep between rocks. The best they could do was to lie down in the lee of a drift, and allow themselves to be covered deep with the protecting snow. Even then they could not keep their shelter long, for they had to eat. For eighteen hours out of the twenty-four the moose had to feed to keep himself alive during the winter. His big stomach demanded quantity, and it took him most of his time to nibble from the tops of bushes the two or three bushels he needed a day. The caribou required almost as much—the deer least of the three.
And the storm kept up that day, and the next, and still a third—three days and three nights—and the third day and night there came with it a stinging, shot-like snow that fell two feet deep on the level, and in drifts of eight and ten. It was the "heavy snow" of the Indians—the snow that lay like lead on the earth, and under which partridges and rabbits were smothered in thousands.
On the fourth day after the beginning of the storm Kazan and Gray Wolf issued forth from the windfall. There was no longer a wind—no more falling snow. The whole world lay under a blanket of unbroken white, and it was intensely cold.
The plague had worked its havoc with men. Now had come the days of famine and death for the wild things.
CHAPTER XIII
THE TRAIL OF HUNGER
Kazan and Gray Wolf had been a hundred and forty hours without food. To Gray Wolf this meant acute discomfort, a growing weakness. To Kazan it was starvation. Six days and six nights of fasting had drawn in their ribs and put deep hollows in front of their hindquarters. Kazan's eyes were red, and they narrowed to slits as he looked forth into the day. Gray Wolf followed him this time when he went out on the hard snow. Eagerly and hopefully they began the hunt in the bitter cold. They swung around the edge of the windfall, where there had always been rabbits. There were no tracks now, and no scent. They continued in a horseshoe circle through the swamp, and the only scent they caught was that of a snow-owl perched up in a spruce. They came to the burn and turned back, hunting the opposite side of the swamp. On this side there was a ridge. They climbed the ridge, and from the cap of it looked out over a world that was barren of life. Ceaselessly Gray Wolf sniffed the air, but she gave no signal to Kazan. On the top of the ridge Kazan stood panting. His endurance was gone. On their return through the swamp he stumbled over an obstacle which he tried to clear with a jump. Hungrier and weaker,