He sat for a long while upon the sled.There was no need for him to go and see what had happened.He knew it as though it had taken place before his eyes.Once, he roused with a start and hastily got the axe out from underneath the lashings. But for some time longer he sat and brooded, the two remaining dogs crouching and trembling at his feet.
At last he arose in a weary manner,as though all the resilience had gone out of his body,and proceeded to fasten the dogs to the sled.He passed a rope over his shoulder, a man-trace,and pulled with the dogs. He did not go far.At the first hint of darkness he hastened to make a camp,and he saw to it that he had a generous supply of firewood.He fed the dogs, cooked and ate his supper,and made his bed close to the fire.
But he was not destined to enjoy that bed.Before his eyes closed the wolves had drawn too near for safety.It no longer required an effort of the vision to see them.They were all about him and the fire,in a narrow circle,and he could see them plainly in the firelight lying down,sitting up, crawling forward on their bellies,or slinking back and forth. They even slept.Here and there he could see one curled up in the snow like a dog,taking the sleep that was now denied himself.
He kept the fire brightly blazing,for he knew that it alone intervened between the flesh of his body and their hungry fangs. His two dogs stayed close by him, one on either side, leaning against him for protection, crying and whimpering, and at times snarling desperately when a wolf approached a little closer than usual. At such moments, when his dogs snarled, the whole circle would be agitated, the wolves coming to their feet and pressing tentatively forward, a chorus of snarls and eager yelps rising about him. Then the circle would lie down again, and here and there a wolf would resume its broken nap.
But this circle had a continuous tendency to draw in upon him.Bit by bit, an inch at a time,with here a wolf bellying forward,and there a wolf bellying forward,the circle would narrow until the brutes were almost within springing distance.Then he would seize brands from the fire and hurl them into the pack.A hasty drawing back always resulted,accompanied by angry yelps and frightened snarls when a well-aimed brand struck and scorched a too daring animal.
Morning found the man haggard and worn,wide-eyed from want of sleep.He cooked breakfast in the darkness,and at nine o’clock, when, with the coming of daylight,the wolf-pack drew back,he set about the task he had planned through the long hours of the night.Chopping down young saplings,he made them cross-bars of a scaffold by lashing them high up to the trunks of standing trees. Using the sled-lashing for a heaving rope, and with the aid of the dogs, he hoisted the coffin to the top of the scaffold.
“They got Bill, an’ they may get me,but they’ll sure never get you, young man,” he said,addressing the dead body in its tree-sepulchre.
Then he took the trail,the lightened sled bounding along behind the willing dogs;for they, too, knew that safety lay open in the gaining of Fort McGurry.The wolves were now more open in their pursuit,trotting sedately behind and ranging along on either side,their red tongues lolling out,their lean sides showing the undulating ribs with every movement.They were very lean,mere skin-bags stretched over bony frames,with strings for muscles—so lean that Henry found it in his mind to marvel that they still kept their feet and did not collapse forthright in the snow.
He did not dare travel until dark. At midday,not only did the sun warm the southern horizon,but it even thrust its upper rim, pale and golden,above the sky-line. He received it as a sign.The days were growing longer. The sun was returning.But scarcely had the cheer of its light departed,than he went into camp.There were still several hours of grey daylight and sombre twilight,and he utilised them in chopping an enormous supply of fire-wood.
With night came horror.Not only were the starving wolves growing bolder,but lack of sleep was telling upon Henry.He dozed despite himself, crouching by the fire,the blankets about his shoulders,the axe between his knees,and on either side a dog pressing close against him.He awoke once and saw in front of him,not a dozen feet away, a big grey wolf,one of the largest of the pack. And even as he looked,the brute deliberately stretched himself after the manner of a lazy dog,yawning full in his face and looking upon him with a possessive eye,as if, in truth, he were merely a delayed meal that was soon to be eaten.
This certitude was shown by the whole pack.Fully a score he could count,staring hungrily at him or calmly sleeping in the snow.They reminded him of children gathered about a spread table and awaiting permission to begin to eat. And he was the food they were to eat!He wondered how and when the meal would begin.
As he piled wood on the fire he discovered an appreciation of his own body which he had never felt before. He watched his moving muscles and was interested in the cunning mechanism of his fingers. By the light of the fire he crooked his fingers slowly and repeatedly now one at a time, now all together, spreading them wide or making quick gripping movements. He studied the nail-formation, and prodded the finger-tips, now sharply, and again softly, gauging the while the nerve-sensations produced. It fascinated him, and he grew suddenly fond of this subtle flesh of his that worked so beautifully and smoothly and delicately. Then he would cast a glance of fear at the wolf-circle drawn expectantly about him, and like a blow the realisation would strike him that this wonderful body of his, this living flesh, was no more than so much meat, a quest of ravenous animals, to be torn and slashed by their hungry fangs, to be sustenance to them as the moose and the rabbit had often been sustenance to him.
He came out of a doze that was half nightmare,to see the red-hued she-wolf before him.She was not more than half a dozen feet away sitting in the snow and wistfully regarding him. The two dogs were whimpering and snarling at his feet, but she took no notice of them. She was looking at the man, and for some time he returned her look. There was nothing threatening about her. She looked at him merely with a great wistfulness, but he knew it to be the wistfulness of an equally great hunger. He was the food, and the sight of him excited in her the gustatory sensations. Her mouth opened, the saliva drooled forth, and she licked her chops with the pleasure of anticipation.
A spasm of fear went through him.He reached hastily for a brand to throw at her.But even as he reached,and before his fingers had closed on the missile,she sprang back into safety;and he knew that she was used to having things thrown at her.She had snarled as she sprang away,baring her white fangs to their roots,all her wistfulness vanishing,being replaced by a carnivorous malignity that made him shudder.He glanced at the hand that held the brand,noticing the cunning delicacy of the fingers that gripped it,how they adjusted themselves to all the inequalities of the surface,curling over and under and about the rough wood,and one little finger,too close to the burning portion of the brand,sensitively and automatically writhing back from the hurtful heat to a cooler gripping-place; and in the same instant he seemed to see a vision of those same sensitive and delicate fingers being crushed and torn by the white teeth of the she-wolf. Never had he been so fond of this body of his as now when his tenure of it was so precarious.