Medicine Road (5 page)

Although he could not know it, Awklet was getting his first and greatest lesson in leadership. There
could be no place for weaklings in the wilderness
future that faced him. Yet for all her Spartan forcing
of the pace and for all her apparent disregard for her
adopted heir's welfare, there was in the eye of
Neetcha, when she looked at Awklet, an entirely dif ferent story. It was a look of motherly pride and
fierce devotion that went well beyond a normal parent's love. The circumstances surrounding her meeting with the moose calf were so poignant as to
guarantee a deeper bond between them than any to
be forged by blood alone. A new leader, possibly one
who might someday head the caribou themselves,
was being trained. His first hard lesson must be that
the wilderness gods, no less than any others, helped
those who helped themselves.

Neetcha at once assumed her leadership of the
herd. Her first act was to lead a cautious search for
the white wolves. If the latter were still in the forest,
she must know it. If they had gone, all was well.
They would not return until the following late winter. Once they quitted the Hemlock Wood, they
never turned back; they headed steadily into the polar darknesses from which they came. But as the
new caribou herd queen, Neetcha had to know if
they had started their return journey or were yet in
the woodland and still on the hunt. Toward this purpose she led her search.

With her went Bektan, Bela, and Blue Nose, all
trusted elder stags. For two days they drifted
through the Hemlock Wood, circling every
meadow, probing deeply into every thicket and
windfall. With nightfall of the second day they returned to the herd yard satisfied that the wolves
were finally gone.

Gazing about her at the grim reminders of
Loki's visit, Neetcha knew she had no time for
rest. Yonder, by the base of that slender balsam
from which she would never move, lay Olanchi,
the friend of her fawnhood. There by the ledge
rock beyond the balsam, still and huddled, lay Santu, the sister of her mother. Among the alders
behind the rock sprawled the motionless, frozenlegged form of Lepak, Neetcha's beloved brother,
while all about lay scattered the other pitiful victims of the king wolf's recent passing.

There was but one thing to do now-find a new
yard for the remainder of the herd and find it, not
tomorrow, but tonight. As the frosty moon rose an
hour later, it shone on the long straggling line of the
caribou herd, winding south through the silent forest aisles. At the head of the shuffling, nervouseyed column moved Neetcha, studying with wary
glances the trail ahead in anxious search for the
new hiding place and bedding ground. By her
flank, very much excited by the whole adventure,
ambled the spraddle-legged Awklet. He was getting his second lesson in proper herd leadership,
and enjoying it immensely. All was exactly right
with his innocent world. He had not a worry in the
whole wide woodland.

Meanwhile, far to the north, across the frozen sweep
of the tundra, roamed the huge, white-furred, oneeyed Loki. Running now at the head of the pack, the
king wolf had lost some of his recent good feeling.
Well as the hunt had gone and smoothly as the
home journey was progressing, Loki was growing
troubled. Something far back in a hidden crevice of
his savage brain kept bothering him. His uncanny
sense of memory had served him too well throughout the years of his kingship to be ignored. And it
was warning him now that he had somewhere and
recently committed a serious error.

His lone eye narrowed, his broad skull furrowing
with the effort of animal concentration. Presently he began to growl, low and deep. His pack mates
running near him drew quickly away, knowing
from the quality of the growl that their king was
angry. From past experience they had learned that
it was not good to run close to Loki when he was in
such a mood.

Then, suddenly, the growling ceased. The king
wolf suddenly knew what he had done wrong back
there in the Hemlock Wood. He should not have allowed that trapped moose calf to live. That had been
an act of weakness, a characteristic foreign to the
wolf nature. And the guilt of it was sufficient to send
Loki's memory back across all those frozen miles.

He slid his furry haunches in the powdery snow.
So abrupt was his halt that the first of the following
pack actually piled into him from the rear. His deep
snarl lashed out at once, warning them back. They
fell away from him instantly, sensing the quality of
his excitement.

Again his chest rumbled, the hoarse growl going
this time, and with less anger, to old Sukon, his favorite. At once the aging wolf understood that he
was to lead the pack homeward from that spot. His
replying growl to Loki was quick, and there was no
complaining from the others. It was the law of the
pack. The leader was to be blindly obeyed. Any wolf
that thought otherwise would have to fight Loki to
the death.

For a matter of seconds the great wolf stood alone
in the trail, watching the last of his pack mates follow old Sukon obediently northward. Then Loki
turned his broad head southward. His stumpy ears
flicked erect and for another moment he paused, as
though taken with some last questioning thought of
his decision. Then, swiftly, he was gone, leaving the emptiness of the halting place to the lonely sweep of
the Arctic wind. Only the deep impressions of his
giant pad prints remained to mark the direction of
his return to the Hemlock Wood, and even those
soon disappeared beneath the shifting snows.

When the king wolf reentered the southern woodland, he loped directly toward the cedar tangle
where he had left the entrapped moose calf. He
found it precisely as it had been, save for one small
detail. The calf was gone.

The story of his going, although nearly five days
old, read very clearly to Loki. The double line of
cloven-hoofed tracks, one set large, the other tiny,
stitched its way neatly out of the windfall and across
the snows of the meadow beyond it. The king wolf's
delicate nose told him even more. The big tracks
were those of a caribou doe, and the smaller tracks
belonged to the moose calf orphaned by One Ear,
Bakut, and Scarface. And that particular moose calf
was the one for which Loki was looking. Swiftly and
silently the huge white wolf took the trail of Awklet
and his foster mother.

It was full dusk when Loki came to the outskirts
of the abandoned caribou yard. Belly down, he
sneaked forward through the heavy snow, his keen
ears pricked for the first sounds of his quarry.
Presently he heard them-the coughing, stomping,
and grunting of caribou moving restlessly about.
Warily as a monster cat he halted on the crest of a
snowbank overhanging the yard.

Below him a dozen old stags wandered in lonely
misery. Headed by Bartok, a grizzled elder jealous
that the herd leadership had gone to such a young
doe as Neetcha, the twelve old stags had stubbornly
refused to follow the new queen. But in the whole snow-packed confines of the yard nothing else
moved. The main herd-and with it the doe and the
moose calf-was gone. Loki lifted his lips in a
soundless snarl of disappointment and turned back
to his quest.

The moon was good, the trail of the departed herd
broad and clear. Following its deep-rutted snow
track was cub's play for an old warrior like Loki.
Once away from the yard, he settled into the tireless,
mile-eating lope of the wolf that knows where he is
going and is in grim haste to get there.

Meanwhile, Neetcha had been in luck. What had
started out discouragingly with Bartok's refusal to
follow the herd had wound up nicely. The young
doe had succeeded in finding a fine new yard only a
few miles from the old one. Now, from the vantage
point of a ledge of rock in the center of that new
yard, she studied it carefully and grunted, soft and
deep, with satisfaction.

It was an excellent hiding place and the herd was
well placed within it. The does with early fawns
were bedded in its center, just beneath Neetcha's
look-out. Beyond them were the does due to fawn
shortly, and beyond them in turn the old stags, yearling stags, and the aging, barren does without
fawns. Within this outer ring of seasoned veterans,
the young mothers and their newborn infants rested
peacefully. For most of them it was the first time
they had known what it meant to bed down and
drowse and feel safe doing so. Yes, Neetcha had
good reason for satisfaction. And the herd had equal
reason to reflect her feeling. It had found a real
leader at last.

To the watchful young doe on the look-out rock, this new faith was rewardingly evident. It could be
felt. It arose from the herd in a continuous murmur of
subdued night gruntings. It made itself known in the
lack of moving about and place shifting among the
ordinarily nervous animals. And indeed this confidence did not appear misplaced. It would be next to
impossible for any intruder to enter the new yard.

Downwind from her, on the far side of the herd, a
single narrowed eye was conveying the same
thought to Loki, the Arctic king wolf. It had required all his vast woodcraft to creep this close to
the sleeping caribou. Now he was still faced with
the problem of crossing 100 paces of open, snowpacked yard to come at his quarry. And every step of
that 100 paces was blocked by a bedded-down member of the herd. Through the magic of his wonderful
nose, the king wolf knew that Neetcha was the doe
he had trailed out of the cedar tangle. In the still of
the night and with the light, fresh wind blowing
toward him, he was able to single out her scent from
that of all the others. And he knew, of course, that
the moose calf would be close by her.

Yet, providing he was skillful enough to work his
way within striking distance of her and the calf,
how would he get away after the deed was done?
The herd would be instantly on its feet and he
would be caught in the middle of 100 panic-stricken
caribou. Even for a king wolf, these were weighty
questions. And the odds against his getting away
unscathed were impossible.

Loki uttered another of his soundless snarls, his
decision made. It was typical of his breed that the
difficulty of escape failed to stop him. Attack was
the only problem. Following the old wolf-pack
logic that the truest trail is the straight one, he flat tened himself to the snow, wormed his way into the
sleeping herd and directly toward the look-out
rock. His intention was to cover what ground he
could before discovery, then to race for the rock and
the doe, trusting that the moose calf would be there
beside her.

It was a daring move and it almost succeeded. The
king wolf was within six paces of the rock when a
thin snow crust broke beneath his great weight and
brought a wild-eyed little figure out from the
shadow at the very base of the rock. For the second
time in his short life, Awklet stood face to face with
Loki and lived to tell of it. And tell of it he did. His
bleat of terror rang out in the night quiet like a trumpet blast. Instantly the entire yard was alive with the
noise and movement of the herd coming to its feet.

For once Loki could not act fast enough. He had
made his approach on the assumption that the calf
would be with the doe on top of the rock. The blunder of nearly stepping on him and causing the terrified calf to let out such a high-pitched squall
inflamed the king wolf's savage temper. In the confusion of his rage, Loki hesitated.

It was all the time Awklet required. With a great
clumsy sideways leap, the moose calf bounded out
of striking range. Had he been a moment later, Loki
would have cut his throat from ear to shaggy ear. As
it was, the king wolf would now do well to get the
caribou doe.

Snarling, he gathered his great haunches for the
leap that would end the life of the new herd queen.
Neetcha, up on the ledge, had at last begun to
drowse just before Loki had started toward her
through the sleeping herd. Her startled eyes opened
to the picture of a huge Arctic wolf hurtling through the air toward her. Awkwardly she lunged up and
forward, her one instinctive thought to get to her
adopted calf. In consequence, Loki's murderous leap
was met in mid-air by the driving weight of a fullgrown caribou doe. The momentum of Neetcha's
300 pounds of bone and sinew carried both her and
Loki over the edge of the rock.

They fell apart as they struck the hardened snow
ten feet below. When Loki came to his feet, shaking
the snow and ice from his eye, he saw nothing before him but charging hoofs and horns. For once,
the caribou were unafraid. They knew he was alone
and they knew they could kill him. Sensing this,
Loki leaped to the attack, knowing he must escape
at once.

Neetcha scrambled to her feet in time to see the
maddened herd pour in on him, and in time to see
his fearless return of the charge. Then, before she
could move to join her fellows, Loki had brought off
his 100-to-one chance. He was free and clear of the
herd and fleeing for the safety of the black forest beyond it. The herd, although it was fully aroused and
in a fighting mood, made no effort to pursue him. Its
new courage, taken from Neetcha's brave example,
was not yet that strong. The excited caribou only
stood sniffing the giant wolf's tracks and snorting
into the darkness. Joining them, Neetcha gazed long
and thoughtfully at those tracks, while at her flank
the curious Awklet also studied them. In that
stretching line of huge pad prints lay lesson three in
the calf's wilderness education: an Arctic wolf, like
any other living thing, could be defeated.

Loki fled northward, full of rage and set on finding the pack and returning at once to the Hemlock
Wood. To Loki, skilled in the dangerous art of lead ership, it was all too clear that the woodland caribou
had found a fighting queen in Neetcha. One who
might rally and guide them to the point where next
year's hunt could be quite a different matter than
the easy slaughter the pack had just enjoyed. His
wolf's instincts, and indeed his very pride, demanded an early end to both the caribou queen and
the upstart moose calf.