The Collected Works of James Oliver Curwood (Illustrated Edition). James Oliver Curwood

the snow. He was intent on the cabin—only the cabin. It was his last hope. But Gray Wolf was still alert, taking in the wind, and lifting her head whenever Kazan stopped to snuffle his chilled nose in the snow. At last it came—the scent! Kazan had moved on, but he stopped when he found that Gray Wolf was not following. All the strength that was in his starved body revealed itself in a sudden rigid tenseness as he looked at his mate. Her forefeet were planted firmly to the east; her slim gray head was reaching out for the scent; her body trembled.

      Then—suddenly—they heard a sound, and with a whining cry Kazan set out in its direction, with Gray Wolf at his flank. The scent grew stronger and stronger in Gray Wolf's nostrils, and soon it came to Kazan. It was not the scent of a rabbit or a partridge. It was big game. They approached cautiously, keeping full in the wind. The swamp grew thicker, the spruce more dense, and now—from a hundred yards ahead of them—there came a crashing of locked and battling horns. Ten seconds more they climbed over a snowdrift, and Kazan stopped and dropped flat on his belly. Gray Wolf crouched close at his side, her blind eyes turned to what she could smell but could not see.

      Fifty yards from them a number of moose had gathered for shelter in the thick spruce. They had eaten clear a space an acre in extent. The trees were cropped bare as high as they could reach, and the snow was beaten hard under their feet. There were six animals in the acre, two of them bulls—and these bulls were fighting, while three cows and a yearling were huddled in a group watching the mighty duel. Just before the storm a young bull, sleek, three-quarters grown, and with the small compact antlers of a four-year-old, had led the three cows and the yearling to this sheltered spot among the spruce. Until last night he had been master of the herd. During the night the older bull had invaded his dominion. The invader was four times as old as the young bull. He was half again as heavy. His huge palmate horns, knotted and irregular—but massive—spoke of age. A warrior of a hundred fights, he had not hesitated to give battle in his effort to rob the younger bull of his home and family. Three times they had fought since dawn, and the hard-trodden snow was red with blood. The smell of it came to Kazan's and Gray Wolf's nostrils. Kazan sniffed hungrily. Queer sounds rolled up and down in Gray Wolf's throat, and she licked her jaws.

      For a moment the two fighters drew a few yards apart, and stood with lowered heads. The old bull had not yet won victory. The younger bull represented youth and endurance; in the older bull those things were pitted against craft, greater weight, maturer strength—and a head and horns that were like a battering ram. But in that great hulk of the older bull there was one other thing—age. His huge sides were panting. His nostrils were as wide as bells. Then, as if some invisible spirit of the arena had given the signal, the animals came together again. The crash of their horns could have been heard half a mile away, and under twelve hundred pounds of flesh and bone the younger hull went plunging back upon his haunches. Then was when youth displayed itself. In an instant he was up, and locking horns with his adversary. Twenty times he had done this, and each attack had seemed filled with increasing strength. And now, as if realizing that the last moments of the last fight had come, he twisted the old bull's neck and fought as he had never fought before. Kazan and Gray Wolf both heard the sharp crack that followed—as if a dry stick had been stepped upon and broken. It was February, and the hoofed animals were already beginning to shed their horns—especially the older bulls, whose palmate growths drop first. This fact gave victory to the younger bull in the blood-stained arena a few yards from Gray Wolf and Kazan. From its socket in the old bull's skull one of his huge antlers broke with that sharp snapping sound, and in another moment four inches of stiletto-like horn buried itself back of his foreleg. In an instant all hope and courage left him, and he swung backward yard by yard, with the younger bull prodding his neck and shoulders until blood dripped from him in little streams. At the edge of the clearing he flung himself free and crashed off into the forest.

      The younger bull did not pursue. He tossed his head, and stood for a few moments with heaving sides and dilated nostrils, facing in the direction his vanquished foe had taken. Then he turned, and trotted back to the still motionless cows and yearling.

      Kazan and Gray Wolf were quivering. Gray Wolf slunk back from the edge of the clearing, and Kazan followed. No longer were they interested in the cows and the young bull. From that clearing they had seen meat driven forth—meat that was beaten in fight, and bleeding. Every instinct of the wild pack returned to Gray Wolf now—and in Kazan the mad desire to taste the blood he smelled. Swiftly they turned toward the blood-stained trail of the old bull, and when they came to it they found it spattered red. Kazan's jaws dripped as the hot scent drove the blood like veins of fire through his weakened body. His eyes were reddened by starvation, and in them there was a light now that they had never known even in the days of the wolf-pack.

      He set off swiftly, almost forgetful of Gray Wolf. But his mate no longer required his flank for guidance. With her nose close to the trail she ran—ran as she had run in the long and thrilling hunts before blindness came. Half a mile from the spruce thicket they came upon the old bull. He had sought shelter behind a clump of balsam, and he stood over a growing pool of blood in the snow. He was still breathing hard. His massive head, grotesque now with its one antler, was drooping. Flecks of blood dropped from his distended nostrils. Even then, with the old bull weakened by starvation, exhaustion and loss of blood, a wolf-pack would have hung back before attacking. Where they would have hesitated, Kazan leaped in with a snarling cry. For an instant his fangs sunk into the thick hide of the bull's throat. Then he was flung back—twenty feet. Hunger gnawing at his vitals robbed him of all caution, and he sprang to the attack again—full at the bull's front—while Gray Wolf crept up unseen behind, seeking in her blindness the vulnerable part which nature had not taught Kazan to find.

      This time Kazan was caught fairly on the broad palmate leaf of the bull's antler, and he was flung back again, half stunned. In that same moment Gray Wolf's long white teeth cut like knives through one of the bull's rope-like hamstrings. For thirty seconds she kept the hold, while the bull plunged wildly in his efforts to trample her underfoot. Kazan was quick to learn, still quicker to be guided by Gray Wolf, and he leaped in again, snapping for a hold on the bulging cord just above the knee. He missed, and as he lunged forward on his shoulders Gray Wolf was flung off. But she had accomplished her purpose. Beaten in open battle with one of his kind, and now attacked by a still deadlier foe, the old bull began to retreat. As he went, one hip sank under him at every step. The tendon of his left leg was bitten half through.

      Without being able to see, Gray Wolf seemed to realize what had happened. Again she was the pack-wolf—with all the old wolf strategy. Twice flung back by the old bull's horn, Kazan knew better than to attack openly again. Gray Wolf trotted after the bull, but he remained behind for a moment to lick up hungrily mouthfuls of the blood-soaked snow. Then he followed, and ran close against Gray Wolf's side, fifty yards behind the bull. There was more blood in the trail now—a thin red ribbon of it. Fifteen minutes later the bull stopped again, and faced about, his great head lowered. His eyes were red. There was a droop to his neck and shoulders that spoke no longer of the unconquerable fighting spirit that had been a part of him for nearly a score of years. No longer was he lord of the wilderness about him; no longer was there defiance in the poise of his splendid head, or the flash of eager fire in his bloodshot eyes. His breath came with a gasping sound that was growing more and more distinct. A hunter would have known what it meant. The stiletto-point of the younger bull's antler had gone home, and the old bull's lungs were failing him. More than once Gray Wolf had heard that sound in the early days of her hunting with the pack, and she understood. Slowly she began to circle about the wounded monarch at a distance of about twenty yards. Kazan kept at her side.

      Once—twice—twenty times they made that slow circle, and with each turn they made the old bull turned, and his breath grew heavier and his head drooped lower. Noon came, and was followed by the more intense cold of the last half of the day. Twenty circles became a hundred—two hundred—and more. Under Gray Wolf's and Kazan's feet the snow grew hard in the path they made. Under the old bull's widespread hoofs the snow was no longer white—but red. A thousand times before this unseen tragedy of the wilderness had been enacted. It was an epoch of that life where life itself means the survival of the fittest, where to live means to kill, and to die means to perpetuate life. At last, in that steady and deadly circling of Gray Wolf and Kazan, there came a time when the old bull did not turn—then a second, a third