At midday the man placed the sheath-knife in his belt and threw away the pack. Relieved of the burden, his shoulders felt strangely light.
There was a new buoyancy in his stride.
But the relief was temporary, and as the sun sank early behind the pines his brain was again driving his wearied muscles to their work.
The wolves were following close in now, and the silence of their relentless persistence filled the man with a dumb terror which no pandemonium of howling could have inspired.
His advance was halting. Each step was a separate and conscious undertaking, and it was with difficulty that he lifted his moccasins clear of the snow.
Suddenly he stumbled. The leaders were almost upon him as he recovered and faced them there in the white reach of the tote-road. They halted just out of reach of the swing of his axe, and as the man looked into their glaring eyes a frenzy of unreasoning fury seized him.
His nerves could no longer stand the strain. Something seemed to snap in his brain, and through his veins surged the spirit of his fighting ancestors.
A sudden memory flash, as of deeds forgotten through long ages, and with it came strength--the very abandon of fierce, brute strength of a man with the mind to kill.
"Come on!" he cried. "Fight it out, you fiends! I may die, but I"ll be d.a.m.ned if I"ll be hounded to death! You may get me, but you"ll _fight_!
When a McKim goes down some one pays! And if it is die--By G.o.d!
There"ll be fun in the dying!"
With a weird primordial scream, as the first man might have screamed in the face of the first saber-tooth, he hurled his axe among them and sprang forward, flashing the cold, gray blade of his sheath-knife!
CHAPTER XV
THE WERWOLF
Now, as all men know, Bill Carmody had done a most foolish and insane thing.
But the very audacity of his act--and the G.o.d of chance--favored him, for as the axe whizzed through the air the keen edge of the whirling bit caught one of the larger wolves full on the side of the head.
There followed the peculiar, dull scrunching sound that stands alone among all other sounds, being produced by no other thing than the sudden crush of a living skull.
The front and side of the skull lifted and turned backward upon its hinge of raw scalp and the wolf went down, clawing and biting, and over the snow flowed thick red blood, and a thicker mucus of soft, wet brains.
At the sight and scent of the warm blood, the companions of the stricken brute--the gaunt, tireless leaders, who had traveled beside him in the van, and the rag-tag and bobtail alike--fell upon him tooth and nail, and the silence of the forest was shattered by the blood-cry of the meat-getters.
Not so the great she-wolf, who despised these others that fought among themselves, intent only upon the satisfaction of their hunger.
Her purpose in trailing this man to destruction was of deep vengeance: the a.s.suagement of an abysmal hatred that smoldered in her heart against every individual of the terrible man kind, whose cruel traps of iron, blades of steel, and leaden bullets had made her a monstrous, s.e.xless thing, feared and unsought by mating males, hated of her own breed.
And now, at the moment she had by the cunning of her generalship delivered this man an easy prey to her followers, they deserted her and fell in swinish greed upon the first meat at hand.
So that at the last she faced her enemy alone, and the smoldering fury of her heart blazed green from her wicked eyes. She stood tense as a pointer, every hair of her long white coat bristlingly aquiver.
Suddenly she threw back her head, pointed her sharp muzzle to the sky, and gave voice to the long-drawn ululation which is the battle-cry of wolves.
Yet it was not the wolf-cry, for long ago the malformation of a healing throat-wound had distorted the bell-like cry into a hideous scream like the shriek of a soul fored.a.m.ned, which quavered loud and shrill upon the keen air and ended in a series of quick jerks, like stabs of horrible laughter.
And then, with tight-drawn lips and jaws agape, she hurled herself straight at the throat of the stumbling man.
Darkness was gathering when, a mile to the northward, Jake LaFranz and Irish Fallon, who were laboring with six big horses and a rough log drag to break out the trail, suddenly paused to listen.
Through the thin, cold air rang a sound the like of which neither had ever heard. And then, as if in echo, the long-drawn wail of the great white wolf.
They stared at each other white-lipped; for that last cry was a thing men talked about of nights with bated breath and deep curses. Neither had heard it before--nor would either hear it again--but each recognized the sound instinctively, as he would recognize the sound of Gabriel"s trump.
"It"s _her_!" gasped LaFranz. "G.o.d save us! It"s Diablesse--the _loup-garou_!"
""Tis none other--that last. But, man! Man! The first wan! Was it a human cry or from the throat of another of her h.e.l.l-begotten breed?"
Without waiting to reply the Frenchman swung the big six-team in their tracks and headed them toward camp. But Irish Fallon reached for him as he fumbled at the clevis.
"Howld on, ye frog-eater! Be a man! If "twas human tore loose that yell he"ll be the bether fer help, notwithstandin" there was more av foight nor fear in th" sound."
"No, no, no! It"s _her_! It"s Diablesse!" He crossed himself.
"Sure, an" ut is; bad cess to her altogether. But Oi got a hear-rt in me ribs o"good rid blood that takes relish now an" agin in a bit av a foight. An", man or baste, Oi ain"t particular, so "tis a good wan.
Oi"ll be goin" down th" thrail a piece an" see phwat"s to see. Oi ain"t axin" ye to go "long. Ye poor prayer-dhrivlin" haythen, wid yer limon av a hear-rt ye"ve got a yallar shtripe that raches to th" length an"
width av ye. Ye"d be no good nohow.
"But "tis mesilf ain"t fearin" th" evil eye av th" werwolf--an" she is called be the name av th" divil"s own.
"But listen ye here, ye pea-soup Frinchy! Ye"ll not go shnakin" off wid thim ha.r.s.es. Ye"ll bide here till Oi come back."
The other made a whimper of protest, but Irish Fallon reached out a great hairy hand and shook him roughly.
"Yez moind now, an" Oi mane ut! Here ye shtay. An" av ye ain"t here, ye"d bether kape on goin". F"r th" nixt toime Oi lay eyes on ye Oi"ll br-reak ye in two! An" don"t ye fergit ut!"
The big Irishman turned and swung down the tote-road, the webs of his rackets leaving a broad trail in the snow. LaFranz cowered upon the snow-plow and sought refuge in craven prayer and curses the while he shot frightened glances into the darkening forest.
He thought of cutting the horses loose and starting them for camp at a run. But, much as he feared the werwolf, he feared Irish Fallon more; for many were the tales of Fallon"s man-fights when his "Irish was up."
When the white wolf sprang the man had nearly reached the snarling pack. Before him, scarcely six feet away, lay his axe, the blade smeared with blood and brains, to which clung stiff gray hairs.
Instinctively he ducked and, as the huge form flashed past, his right arm shot out straight from the shoulder. The long, clean blade entered just at the point of the brisket and, ranging upward, was buried to the haft as the knife was torn from his grasp.
One step and the man"s fingers closed about the helve of his axe, and he whirled to meet the second onslaught.
But there was small need. The great brute stood still in her tracks and, with lowered head, snapped and wrenched at the thing that bit into her very lungs.
The stag-horn plates of the protruding hilt were splintered under the clamp of the mighty jaws, and the long, gleaming teeth made deep dents in the bra.s.s beneath. Her lips reddened, and before her the snow was flecked with blood.
All this the man took in at a glance without conscious impression. He gripped his weapon and sprang among the fighting pack, which ripped and dragged at the carca.s.s of the dead wolf.