The Lonesome Trail. John G. Neihardt

glow, like the flare of a burning straw stack a half day’s journey over the hills, had grown up at the horizon of the east; and as the man stared, still in a maze from his recent fall, the moon heaved a tarnished silver arc above the mystic rim of sky, flooding with new light the river and the bluffs. The man stood illumined—a big brute of a man, heavy-limbed, massive-shouldered, with the slouching stoop and the alert air of an habitual skulker. He moved uneasily, as though he had suddenly become visible to some lurking foe. He glanced nervously about him, fumbled at the butt of a six-shooter at his belt, then catching sight of the blotch of huddled dusk that was the fallen pinto, the meaning of the situation flashed upon him.

      “That cussed cayuse! Gone and done hisself like as not! Damn me! the whole creation’s agin me!”

      He made for the pony, snarling viciously as though its exhausted, lacerated self were the visible body of the inimical universe. He grasped the reins and jerked them violently. The brute only groaned and let its weary head fall heavily upon the ice.

      “Get up!”

      Antoine began kicking the pony in the ribs, bringing forth great hollow bellowings of pain.

      “O, you won’t get up, eh? Agin me too, eh? Take that, and that and that! I wished you was everybody in the whole world and hell to oncet, I’d make you beller now I got you down! Take that!”

      The man with a roar of anger fell upon the pony, snarling, striking, kicking, but the pony only groaned. Its limbs could no longer support its body. When Antoine had exhausted his rage, he got up, gave the pony a parting kick on the nose, and started off at a dogtrot across the glinting ice towards the bluffs beyond.

      Ever and anon he stopped and whirled about with hand at ear. He heard only the sullen murmur of the silence, broken occasionally by the whine and pop of the ice and the plaintive, bitter wail of the coyotes somewhere in the hills, like the heartbroken cry of the lonesome prairie, yearning for the summer.

      “O, I wouldn’t howl if I was you,” muttered the man to the coyotes; “I wished I was a coyote or a grey wolf, knowin’ what I do. I’d be a man-killer and a cattle-killer, I would. And then I’d have people of my own. Wouldn’t be no cur of a half-breed runnin’ from his kind. O, I wouldn’t howl if I was you!”

      He proceeded at a swinging trot across the half mile of ice and halted under the bluffs. He listened intently. A far sound had grown up in the hollow night—vague, but unmistakable. It was the clatter of hoofs far away, but clear in faintness, for the cold snap had made the prairie one vast sounding-board. A light snow had fallen the night before, and the trail of the refugee was traced in the moonlight, distinct as a wagon track.

      Antoine felt the pitiless pinch of the approaching lariat as he listened. Then his accustomed bitter weariness of life came upon the pariah.

      “What’s the use of me runnin’? What am I runnin’ to? Nothin’—only more of the same thing I’m runnin’ from; lonesomeness and hunger and the like of that. Gettin’ awake stiff and cold and half starved and cussin’ the daylight ’cause it’s agin me like everything else, and gives me away. Sneakin’ around in the brush till dark, eatin’ when I can like a damned wolf, then goin’ to sleep hopin’ it’ll never get day. But it always does. It’s all night somewheres, I guess, spite of what the missionaries says. That’s fer me—night always! No comin’ day, no gettin’ up, somewhere to hide snug in always!”

      He walked on with head dropped forward upon his breast, skirting the base of the bluffs, now seemingly oblivious of the sound of hoofs that grew momently more distinct.

      As he walked, he was dimly conscious of passing the dark mouth of a hole running back into the clay of a bluff. He proceeded until he found himself again at the edge of the river, staring down into a broad, black fissure in the ice, caused, doubtless, by the dash of the current crossing from the other side.

      A terrible, dark, but alluring thought seized him. Here was the place—the doorway to that place where it was always night! Why not go in? There would be no more running away, no more hiding, no more hatred of men, no more lonesomeness! Here was the place at last.

      He stepped forward and stooped to gaze down into the door of night. The rushing waters made a dismal, moaning sound.

      He stared transfixed. Yes, he would go!

      Suddenly a shudder ran through his limbs. He gave a quick exclamation of terror! He leaped back and raised his face to the skies.

      How kind and soft and gentle and good to look upon was the sky! He gazed about—it was so fair a world! How good it was to breathe! He longed to throw his great, brute arms about creation and clutch it to him, and hold it, hold it, hold it! He wished to live.

       The hoofs!

      The distant muffled confusion of sound had grown into sharp, distinct, staccato notes. The pursuers were now less than a mile away. Soon they would reach the river.

      With the quick instinct of the hunted beast, Antoine knew the means of safety. His footprints led to the ice-fissure. He decided that none should lead away. He could not be pursued under ice. Stooping so that he could look between his legs, he began retracing his steps, walking backward, placing his feet with infinite care where they had fallen before. Thus he came again to the hole in the clay bluff, and disappeared. His trail had passed within a foot of the hole, which was overhung by a jutting point of sandstone. No snow had fallen at the entrance; he left no trail as he entered.

      Stopping upon his hands and knees, he listened and could hear distinctly the sharp crack of hoofs upon the ice and the pop and thunder of the frozen surface.

      “Here’s some luck,” muttered Antoine. He crawled on into the nether darkness of the hole that grew more spacious as he proceeded. As he crawled, the sound of pursuing hoofs grew dimmer. Antoine half forgot them. His keen sense had caught the peculiar musty odour of animal life. He felt a stuffy warmth in his nostrils as he breathed.

      Suddenly out of the dark ahead grew up two points of phosphorescent light. Antoine fell back upon his haunches with a little growl of surprise in his throat. Years of wild lonesome life had made him more beast than man.

      The lights slowly came closer, growing more brilliant. Then there was a harsh, rasping growl and a sound of sniffing. Antoine waited until the expanding pupils of his eyes could grasp the situation with more distinctness. “Can’t run,” he mused. “Lariat behind, somethin’ growlin’ in front. It’s one more fight. Here goes fer my damnedest. Rather die mad and fightin’ than jump into cold water or stick my head through a rawhide necktie!”

      He crawled on carefully. The lights approached with a strange swaying motion. Then of a sudden came a whine, a sharp, savage yelp, and Antoine felt his cheek ripped open with a stroke of gnashing teeth!

      He felt for an instant the hot breath of the beast, the trickle of hot blood on his cheek; and then all that was human in him passed. He growled and hurled the sinewy body of his unseen foe from him with a blow of his bear-like paw. He was a big man, and in his blood the primitive beast had grown large through long years of lonesome hiding from his kind.

      The dark hole echoed a muffled howl of anger, and in an instant man and beast rolled together in the darkness. It was a primitive struggle; the snapping of jaws, the rasping of hoarse throats that laboured with angry breath, snarlings of hate, yelps of pain, growls, whines.

      At last the man knew that it was a grey wolf he fought. He reached for its throat, but felt his hand caught in a hot, wet, powerful trap of teeth. He grasped the under jaw with a grip that made his antagonist howl with pain. Then with his other hand he felt about in the darkness, groping for the throat.

      He found it, seized it with a vice-like clutch, shut his teeth together, and threw all of the power of his massive frame into the struggle.

      Slowly, slowly, the struggles of the wolf became weaker. The lean, hairy form fell limply, and the man laughed with a strange, sobbing, guttural mirth—for he was master.

      Then again he felt the trickle of blood upon his cheek, the ache