CHAPTER V
The night was so bright that the spruce trees cast vivid shadows on thesnow. Overhead there were a billion stars in a sky as dear as an opensea, and the Great Dipper shone like a constellation of tiny suns. Theworld did not need a moon. At a distance of three hundred yards Philipcould have seen a caribou if it had passed. He sat close to his fire,with the heat of it reflected from the blackened face of a huge rock,finishing the snare which had taken him an hour to weave. For a longtime he had been conscious of the curious, hissing monotone of theAurora, the "music of the skies," reaching out through the space of theearth with a purring sound that was at times like the purr of a cat andat others like the faint hum of a bee. Absorbed in his work he did not,for a time, hear the other sound. Not until he had finished, and wasplacing the golden snare in his wallet, did the one sound individualizeand separate itself from the other.
He straightened himself suddenly, and listened. Then he jumped to hisfeet and ran through fifty feet of low scrub to the edge of the whiteplain.
It was coming from off there, a great distance away. Perhaps a mile. Itmight be two. The howling of wolves!
It was not a new or unusual sound to him. He had listened to it manytimes during the last two years. But never had it thrilled him as itdid now, and he felt the blood leap in sudden swiftness through hisbody as the sound bore straight in his direction. In a flash heremembered all that Pierre Breault had said. Bram and his pack huntedlike that. And it was Bram who was coming. He knew it.
He ran back to his tent and in what remained of the heat of the fire hewarmed for a few moments the breech of his rifle. Then he smothered thefire by kicking snow over it. Returning to the edge of the plain, heposted himself near the largest spruce he could find, up which it wouldbe possible for him to climb a dozen feet or so if necessity drove himto it. And this necessity bore down upon him like the wind. The pack,whether guided by man or beast, was driving straight at him, and it wasless than a quarter of a mile away when Philip drew himself up in thespruce. His breath came quick, and his heart was thumping like a drum,for as he climbed up the slender refuge that was scarcely larger indiameter than his arm he remembered the time when he had hung up athousand pounds of moose meat on cedars as thick as his leg, and thewolves had come the next night and gnawed them through as if they hadbeen paper. From his unsteady perch ten feet off the ground he staredout into the starlit Barren.
Then came the other sound. It was the swift chug, chug, chug ofgalloping feet--of hoofs breaking through the crust of the snow. Ashape loomed up, and Philip knew it was a caribou running for its life.He drew an easier breath as he saw that the animal was fleeing parallelwith the projecting finger of scrub in which he had made his camp, andthat it would strike the timber a good mile below him. And now, with astill deeper thrill, he noted the silence of the pursuing wolves. Itmeant but one thing. They were so close on the heels of their prey thatthey no longer made a sound. Scarcely had the caribou disappeared whenPhilip saw the first of them--gray, swiftly moving shapes, spread outfan-like as they closed in on two sides for attack, so close that hecould hear the patter of their feet and the blood-curdling whines thatcame from between their gaping jaws. There were at least twenty ofthem, perhaps thirty, and they were gone with the swiftness of shadowsdriven by a gale.
From his uncomfortable position Philip lowered himself to the snowagain. With its three or four hundred yard lead he figured that thecaribou would almost reach the timber a mile away before the end came.Concealed in the shadow of the spruce, he waited. He made no effort toanalyze the confidence with which he watched for Bram. When he at lastheard the curious ZIP--ZIP--ZIP of snowshoes approaching his blood ranno faster than it had in the preceding minutes of his expectation, sosure had he been that the man he was after would soon loom up out ofthe starlight. In the brief interval after the passing of the wolves hehad made up his mind what he would do. Fate had played a trump cardinto his hand. From the first he had figured that strategy would havemuch to do in the taking of Bram, who would be practically unassailablewhen surrounded by the savage horde which, at a word from him, hadproved themselves ready to tear his enemies into pieces. Now, with thewolves gorging themselves, his plan was to cut Bram off and make him, aprisoner.
From his knees he rose slowly to his feet, still hidden in the shadowof the spruce. His rifle he discarded. In his un-mittened hand he heldhis revolver. With staring eyes he looked for Bram out where the wolveshad passed. And then, all at once, came the shock. It was tremendous.The trickery of sound on the Barren had played an unexpected prank withhis senses, and while he strained his eyes to pierce the hazy starlightof the plain far out, Bram himself loomed up suddenly along the edge ofthe bush not twenty paces away.
Philip choked back the cry on his lips, and in that moment Bram stoppedshort, standing full in the starlight, his great lungs taking in andexpelling air with a gasping sound as he listened for his wolves. Hewas a giant of a man. A monster, Philip thought. It is probable thatthe elusive glow of the night added to his size as he stood there.About his shoulders fell a mass of unkempt hair that looked likeseaweed. His beard was short and thick, and for a flash Philip saw thestarlight in his eyes--eyes that were shining like the eyes of a cat.In that same moment he saw the face. It was a terrible, questingface--the face of a creature that was hunting, and yet hunted; of acreature half animal and half man. So long as he lived he knew that hewould never forget it; the wild savagery of it, the questing fire thatwas in the eyes, the loneliness of it there in the night, set apartfrom all mankind; and with the face he would never forget that otherthing that came to him audibly--the throbbing, gasping heartbeat of theman's body.
In this moment Philip knew that the time to act was at hand. Hisfingers gripped tighter about the butt of his revolver as he steppedforward out of the shadow.
Bram would have seen him then, but in that same instant he had flungback his head and from his throat there went forth a cry such as Philiphad never heard from man or beast before. It began deep in Bram'scavernous chest, like the rolling of a great drum, and ended in awailing shriek that must have carried for miles over the openplain--the call of the master to his pack, of the man-beast to hisbrothers. It may be that even before the cry was finished somesuper-instinct had warned Bram Johnson of a danger which he had notseen. The cry was cut short. It ended in a hissing gasp, as steam iscut off by a valve. Before Philip's startled senses had adjustedthemselves to action Bram was off, and as his huge strides carried himswiftly through the starlight the cry that had been on his lips wasreplaced by the strange, mad laugh that Pierre Breault had describedwith a shiver of fear.
Without moving, Philip called after him:
"Bram--Bram Johnson--stop! In the name of the King--"
It was the old formula, the words that carried with them the majestyand power of Law throughout the northland. Bram heard them. But he didnot stop. He sped on more swiftly, and again Philip called his name.
"Bram--Bram Johnson--"
The laugh came back again. It was weird and chuckling, as though Bramwas laughing at him.
In the starlight Philip flung up his revolver. He did not aim to hit.Twice he fired over Bram's head and shoulders, so close that thefugitive must have heard the whine of the bullets.
"Bram--Bram Johnson!" he shouted a third time.
His pistol arm relaxed and dropped to his side, and he stood staringafter the great figure that was now no more than a shadow in the gloom.And then it was swallowed up entirely. Once more he was alone under thestars, encompassed by a world of nothingness. He felt, all at once,that he had been a very great fool. He had played his part like achild; even his voice had trembled as he called out Bram's name. AndBram--even Bram--had laughed at him.
Very soon he would pay the price of his stupidity--of his slowness toact. It was thought of that which quickened his pulse as he stared outinto the white space into which Bram had gone. Before the night wasover Bram would return, and with him would come the wolves.
With
a shudder Philip thought of Corporal Lee as he turned back throughthe scrub to the big rock where he had made his camp.
The picture that flashed into his mind of the fate of the two men fromChurchill added to the painful realization of his own immediateperil--a danger brought upon himself by an almost inconceivablestupidity. Philip was no more than the average human with good redblood in his veins. A certain amount of personal hazard held afascination for him, but he had also the very great human desire tohold a fairly decent hand in any game of chance he entered. It was theoppressive conviction that he had no chance now that stunned him. For afew minutes he stood over the spot where his fire had been, a film ofsteam rising into his face, trying to adjust his mind to some sort oflogical action. He was not afraid of Bram. He would quite cheerfullyhave gone out and fought open-handedly for his man, even though he hadseen that Bram was a giant. This, much he told himself, as he fingeredthe breech of his rifle, and listened.
But it was not Bram who would fight. The wolves would come. He probablywould not see Bram again. He would hear only his laugh, or his greatvoice urging on his pack, as Corporal Lee and the other man had heardit.
That Bram would not return for vengeance never for a moment entered hisanalysis of the situation. By firing after his man Philip had tooclearly disclosed his identity and his business; and Bram, fighting forhis own existence, would be a fool not to rid himself of an immediateand dangerous enemy.
And then, for the first time since he had returned from the edge of theBarren, Philip saw the man again as he had seen him standing under thewhite glow of the stars. And it struck him, all at once, that Bram hadbeen unarmed. Comprehension of this fact, slow as it had been, worked aswift and sudden hope in him, and his eyes took in quickly the largertrees about him. From a tree he could fight the pack and kill them oneby one. He had a rifle and a revolver, and plenty of ammunition. Theadvantage would lay all with him. But if he was treed, and Bramhappened to have a rifle--
He put on the heavy coat he had thrown off near the fire, filled hispockets with loose ammunition, and hunted for the tree he wanted. Hefound it a hundred yards from his camp. It was a gnarled and wind-blownspruce six inches in diameter, standing in an open. In this open Philipknew that he could play havoc with the pack. On the other hand, if Brampossessed a rifle, the gamble was against him. Perched in the tree,silhouetted against the stars that made the night like day, he would bean easy victim. Bram could pick him off without showing himself. But itwas his one chance, and he took it.