Medicine Road (11 page)

But that had been back by the canon's throat. Now
he was out in the open center of the valley and suddenly the courage and calmness went out of him like
water wrung from a shrunken sponge. Through a
narrow opening between the great ten-foot boulders
that for the fortunate moment hid him and his followers, the young moose caught a fleeting glimpse
of the slavering king wolf and his full pack bearing
soundlessly down upon the very boulders behind
which he cowered.

The sight shocked Awklet into a state of near
panic. All of his inherited terror of the wolf smell
and the close sight of the white killers flooded up in
him. In an instant, the roles of hunter and hunted
were reversed, and the reversal very nearly stampeded the youthful bull who had borne himself so
bravely up to that last nightmare moment. He had
started out merely to look for Loki-to locate the
hiding place of his murderous pack, so that he might
then return to warn the herd and lead them in the
flight that would follow. Of course, his great mistake
had been in presuming that such an enemy would
be hiding. Now the frightened young bull moose
stood needlessly trapped, carelessly cut off from the
main caribou herd.

It was the type of blunder no animal could make more than once with Loki's kind. Yet, having made
it, all Awklet could do was crouch behind the gray
boulders with his equally paralyzed stags. Crouch
there and watch the king wolf lead his pack like a
ghost band of frost-furred furies straight past Awklet's rocky shelter and toward the leaderless herd at
the canon exit from Blind Valley. The only chance of
survival for the fearful moose and his trembling
caribou companions was to remain unseen as Loki
swept past their hiding place. If they could do that,
they might then make their way back to the main
herd while the wolves were preoccupied with their
attack upon it.

Like carved statues the frightened old stags and
their giant young leader stood among the protective
cover of the mottled boulders. Not a muscle
twitched. Not a breath stirred. And, fifty paces beyond, the wolf pack poured by in a panting white
flood.

At this instant Loki needed the wondrously keen
nose of his faithful Sukon to catch the all but nonexistent odor of the hidden enemy in the whistling
Arctic winds. But old Sukon was dead, fallen but the
hour before in the savage fight to break past Horsa
and Kajak in the canon's outer throat. The winds of
Arctic chance whistled in vain. Yet the nose is not
the hunting wolf's only weapon. Nor even his best
one. The eye is even more deadly keen. And Loki
had an eye. Just one eye, it was true. But such an eye
as no other wolf ever had. Through the years of its
cruel using, that lone orb had developed within itself an incredible power of sight. If a deer mouse
moved at twenty paces, Loki saw it. If a ptarmigan
or a snowshoe hare ruffled a feather or twitched a
white whisker at thirty paces, it was also seen. If a shifting caribou antler dislodged a puff of powdered
snow no bigger than a chickadee from a rock ledge
of the boulder behind which its nerve-ridden owner
was hiding, Loki saw that, too. Suddenly the great
king wolf twisted in mid-stride, his hoarse voice
breaking into a yammering snarl of discovery. Behind him the wolf pack veered its course and raced
amid a mad chorus of whimpering yelps and whining growls straight toward Awklet's boulder pile.

Back by Lost River's edge, Boron watched the
king wolf's pack stream toward the caribou herd.
He made no move that would cause his own disreputable pack to follow Loki's courageous lead. For
Boron knew something that the king wolf did not.
The caribou herd's mysterious vanishing and return
was not so baffling to the crafty scavenger as it had
been to Loki, nor was his character so valiant as the
latter's. Boron was as devious and shifty and cunning as the king wolf was bold and brave and
straightforward. And he had seen something Loki
had missed.

Having raced across the valley on higher ground
than Loki's pack, Boron had seen the last of the herd
plunge into Lost River and disappear under the apparently solid rock. Seeing them again, still dripping wet from their journey, he sensed that in some
way the mysterious river had carried them to safety
outside Blind Valley. With a scavenger's dishonesty,
he had kept to himself his knowledge of the herd's
plunge off Leaping Rock. Something about it had
puzzled his wily mind enough to warn him to silence. It had been troubling him constantly while
Loki had been up the river looking for a caribou
crossing place that did not exist. And now, as he hesitated to follow the king wolf across the valley into the danger of a fight with the aroused herd, his
skulker's knife-sharp instincts suddenly told him
what he and his cringing companions must do. Let
Loki die alone in his fight with the caribou. All the
better for Boron and his robber pack. With Loki
dead there would be only one king wolf in the
Northland-Boron!

The gaunt wolf growled and bickered with his followers a moment. They, too, had seen the caribou
disappear and now they were thinking, as their
leader had already divined, that the mysterious
warm river must lead out through the rock. Quickly
there was an agreement. Abandon Loki, of course.
Save their own skins and, more, have all the future
hunting in the Hemlock Wood to themselves.

Boron growled once more, then crouched and
sprang from Leaping Rock into the river. Eagerly the
others followed his example and, in their swift turn,
were sucked out of sight beneath the high rock of the
north wall. The trip through the great rock was pleasant, even beautiful. Boron's ragged cowards enjoyed
it hugely. The river's cavern was high and arching
and full of good fresh air. Great stalactites and stalagmites of weird, unearthly hue and faint phosphorescent luminosity decorated the entire way. The water
was tepid and relaxing in temperature, its current
swift and smooth with no bothersome undertows or
whirlpools. It was indeed a high-spirited band of deserters that bobbed out of the Half Moon Valley exit
of Lost River some few moments later. It was indeed
a happily panting pack of Arctic wolf scum that
swam shoreward through the quiet waters of the exit
pool. And it was indeed a lovely shallow landing
beach they found waiting for them at the pool's edge,
so peaceful and serene and entirely deserted.

Boron's treading paws struck bottom. He scrambled momentarily for footing, found it, started wading out. Suddenly his slit-eyed glance focused
unbelievingly on the dark forest rimming the gravel
edge of the pool. Suddenly the guard hairs on his
back, from skull to tail root, stood straight on end.
Caribou stags! At least fifty of them! Gathered there
and waiting in the black shadows of the timber,
gathered and waiting for him and his two dozen
mangy deserters.

The stags did not wait long. Boron had only time
to snarl a warning to his nearest fellows before old
Bartok was lunging across the narrow beach and
into the shallow landing waters. Perhaps a third of
the wolves, those still in deep swimming water,
managed to reach the far shore and escape. The others, including Boron, had no chance at all. Floundering helplessly in the beach shallows, they were
driven under and drowned by the sheer weight and
vengeful power of half a hundred angered old caribou stags.

Awklet and his isolated stags were waiting for Loki
when the Arctic wolf pack rounded the boulders
and bore down upon them. Rump to rump they
stood in their tight circle, antlers lowered, nostrils
wide with fear, eyes rolling in desperation. The
young bull moose, although terribly afraid, did not
give way to panic. He set his great muscular
hindquarters beneath him and swung the spreading
rack of his sharp-tined antlers almost to the snow as
the wolves came in. To his right and left, the caribou
were as frightened as their leader but seemed to take
sudden heart from his defiant example. They were
prepared to die as gallantly as had Horsa and Kajak
and the others of their bravely departed fellows before them.

For half a minute the wolves poured in at them,
leaping, slashing, snarling. They downed two of the
old stags and crippled a third, but the circle closed
up and fought on. They were blooded now, and a
blooded animal begins to fight on instinct, losing his natural fear in the heat of the battle. With his life at
stake and no escape possible, even so gentle a creature as the caribou, once badly injured, becomes extremely dangerous.

A full-grown stag is twice the size of a common
American deer. Big specimens will often exceed
forty-eight inches at the shoulder and weigh upward to 400 pounds. The antlers of the woodland
caribou are tremendous, having a short heavy beam
with a spreading rack that commonly carries more
than thirty tines or sharpened tips. Their skill in using these huge tree-like weapons against predatory
enemies is all the more amazing in contrast to their
otherwise clumsy and inoffensive appearance.

Thus it was that Awklet and his gentle friends
went well armed into the battle with the white Arctic wolves. And for a little while they gave them
blow for blow in the fierce struggle. But only for a
very little while. A few valiant old stags could not
long stand against the fury of a full wolf pack, no
matter how high their courage or how great their
fighting skill. Especially when that wolf pack was
led by Loki.

The king wolf, backed by Split Lip and Zor, now
drove in three times in rapid succession, attempting
to cut Awklet away from his fellows and thus hasten
the breaking of the caribou circle. On the third rush,
the big bull caught Zor with a lightning slash of his
forehoof, splitting the eager wolf's skull like a ripe
melon. In the same whirling instant he got one rack
of his young antlers under the charging Loki and
hurled him twenty feet away.

The king wolf landed with a jarring crash against
a nearby boulder. He was more surprised than hurt,
but the blow sobered him long enough for his first blind rage of killing lust to subside. At once, his
wily brain began to function with its old-time cruel
cunning. While the rest of the pack, momentarily
slowed by the almost simultaneous death of Zor and
downing of its giant leader, continued to circle the
caribou, Loki hung back to watch the way the battle
was going. Every instinct of his hunter's mind and
all the training of his long career in deer killing
came into play as he focused his lone eye on the little knot of caribou and the ring of wolves that surrounded it.

Beyond question the pack could finish off the big
moose youngster and these few old stags. But to do
so would take time and cost more of Loki's followers
their lives. This did not make either for good hunting or good leadership. It was true he had to finish
off the moose, but he had also to get his pack out of
the trap it was in. And he had to do that without losing any more of his valued pack leaders or old
friends. Here was a grave problem and the crafty
old leader of the Arctic wolves hung back quietly.

At the same time, Awklet sensed that he could not
stay where he was, and survive. The wolves would
kill the caribou one by one and then finish him. But
his keen intelligence told him not to try a straightaway race to rejoin the main herd. Strung out on the
run, the caribou would be easy prey for the pack.
They could not run away; they could not stand and
fight. There seemed no answer-no choice save to
stay and fight to the end where he was.

Then, suddenly, a desperate alternative suggested
itself to his anxiously moving eye. They were not
impossibly far from the main herd. Perhaps he and
the stags might fight in that direction, where they
did not dare run. It was a slim hope, one suggested by his instinctive leader's desire to be at the head of
his herd. The moment it occurred to the young
moose, he took action upon it.

Lowering his huge head, he gave a deep bellow of
encouragement to the stags. Then he started hooking and slashing his way toward that side of the
wolf circle that shut him off from the main herd at
Blind Canon. The old stags, perhaps realizing his
purpose, perhaps just blindly following their herd
leader, fell in behind him, protecting his rear and
presenting nothing but hard horns and knife-sharp
hoofs for the wolves to come in against. The latter,
apparently not conscious of the slow drift of the
fight toward the distant herd, kept up their standard
circling tactics. They darted constantly in and out in
their attempts to cut down single caribou, but it was
clear they were making no concerted effort to stop
the movement of the running battle.

Aroused by this success, Awklet fought onward
like a thing possessed. The wolves, nonplussed by
this sudden new fury in the young bull, fell back
and gave way to him. Then, in the very moment
when it seemed that the few stags could not fail in
their bold fight to rejoin the herd, Loki returned to
the fray.