Darkness and Dawn (24 page)

Far off to northward, plaintive, long-drawn and inexpressibly
mournful, a wailing cry reechoed in the wilderness—fell, rose, died
away, and left the stillness even more ghastly than before.

Stern stood rooted. In spite of all his aplomb and matter-of-fact
practicality, he felt a strange thrill curdle through his blood, while
on the back of his neck the hair drew taut and stiff.

"What is it?" asked Beatrice again.

"That? Oh, some bird or other, I guess. It's nothing. Come on!"

Again he started forward, trying to make light of the cry; but in his
heart he knew it well.

A thousand years before, far in the wilds near Ungava Bay, in
Labrador, he had heard the same plaintive, starving call—and he
remembered still the deadly peril, the long fight, the horror that had
followed.

He knew the cry; and his soul quivered with the fear of it; fear not
for himself, but for the life of this girl whose keeping lay within
the hollow of his hand.

For the long wail that had trembled across the vague spaces of the
forest, affronting the majesty and dignity of night and the coming
stars with its blood-lusting plaint of famine, had been none other
than the summons to the hunt, the news of quarry, the signal of a
gathering wolf-pack on their trail.

"That's not the truth you're telling me, Allan," said Beatrice very
gravely. "And if we don't tell each other the whole truth always, how
can we love each other perfectly and do the work we have to do? I
don't want you to spare me anything, even the most terrible things.
That's not the cry of a bird—it's wolves!"

"Yes, that's what it is," the man admitted. "I was in the wrong. But,
you see—it startled me at first. Don't be alarmed, little girl! We're
well armed you see, and—"

"Are we going to stay here in the tower if they attack?"

"No. They might hold us prisoners for a week. There's no telling how
many there may be. Hundreds, perhaps thousands. Once they get the
scent of game, they'll gather for miles and miles around; from all
over the island. So you see—"

"Our best plan, then, will be to make for the banca?"

"Assuredly! It's only a matter of comparatively few minutes to reach
it, and once we're aboard, we're safe. We can laugh at them and be on
our homeward way at the same time. The quicker we start the better.
Come on!"

"Come!" she repeated. And they made their second start after Stern had
assured himself his automatic hung easily in reach and that the guns
were loaded.

Together they took their way along the shadowy depths of the forest
where once Twenty-Third Street had lain. Bravely and strongly the girl
bore her half of the load as they broke through the undergrowth,
clambered over fallen and rotten logs, or sank ankle-deep in mossy
swales.

Even though they felt the danger, perhaps at that very moment
slinking, sneaking, crawling nearer off there in the vague, darkling
depths of the forest, they still sensed the splendid comradeship of
the adventure. No longer as a toy, a chattel, an instrument of
pleasure or amusement did the idea of woman now exist in the world. It
had altered, grown higher, nobler, purer—it had become that of mate
and equal, comrade, friend, the indissoluble other half of man.

Beatrice spoke.

"You mustn't take more of the weight than I do, Allan," she insisted,
as they struggled onward with their burden. "Your wounded arm isn't
strong enough yet to—"

"S-h-h-h!" he cautioned. "We've got to keep as quiet as possible. Come
on—the quicker we get these things aboard and push off the better!
Everything depends on speed!"

But speed was hard to make. The way seemed terribly long, now that
evening had closed in and they could no longer be exactly sure of
their path. The cumbersome burden impeded them at every step. In the
gloom they stumbled, tripped over vines and creepers, and became
involved among the close-crowding boles.

Suddenly, once again the wolf-cry burst out, this time reechoed from
another and another savage throat, wailing and plaintive and full of
frightful portent.

So much nearer now it seemed that Beatrice and Allan both stopped
short. Panting with their labors, they stood still, fear-smitten.

"They can't be much farther off now than Thirty-Fifth Street," the man
exclaimed under his breath. "And we're hardly past Second Avenue
yet—and look at the infernal thickets and brush we've got to beat
through to reach the river! Here, I'd better get my revolver ready and
hold it in my free hand. Will you change over? I can take the bag in
my left. I've got to have the right to shoot with!"

"Why not drop everything and run for the banca?"

"And desert the job? Leave all we came for? And maybe not be able to
get any of the things for Heaven knows how long? I guess not!"

"But, Allan—"

"No, no! What? Abandon all our plans because of a few wolves? Let 'em
come! We'll show 'em a thing or two!"

"Give me the revolver, then—you can have the rifle!"

"That's right—here!"

Each now with a firearm in the free hand, they started forward again.
On and on they lunged, they wallowed through the forest, half
carrying, half dragging the sack which now seemed to have grown ten
times heavier and which at every moment caught on bushes, on limbs and
among the dense undergrowth.

"Oh, look—look there!" cried Beatrice. She stopped short again,
pointing the revolver, her finger on the trigger.

Allan saw a lean, gray form, furtive and sneaking, slide across a dim
open space off toward the left, a space where once First Avenue had
cut through the city from south to north.

"There's another!" he whispered, a strange, choked feeling all around
his heart. "And look—three more! They're working in ahead of us.
Here, I'll have a shot at 'em, for luck!"

A howl followed the second spurt of flame in the dusk. One of the
gray, gaunt portents of death licked, yapping, at his flank.

"Got you, all right!" gibed Stern. "The kind o' game you're after
isn't as easy as you think, you devils!"

But now from the other side, and from behind them, the slinking
creatures gathered. Their eyes glowed, gleamed, burned softly yellow
through the dusk of the great wilderness that once had been the city's
heart. The two last humans in the world could even catch the flick of
ivory fangs, the lolling wet redness of tongues—could hear the
soughing breath through those infernal jaws.

Stern raised the rifle again, then lowered it.

"No use," said he quite calmly. "God knows how many there are. I might
use up all our ammunition and still leave enough of 'em to pick our
bones. They'll be all around us in a minute; they'll be worrying at
us, dragging us down! Come on—come on, the boat!"

"Light a torch, Allan. They're afraid of fire."

"Grand idea, little girl!"

Even as he answered he was scrabbling up dry-kye. Came the rasp of his
flint.

"Give 'em a few with the automatic, while I get this going!" he
commanded.

The gun spat twice, thrice. Then rose a snapping, snarling wrangle.
Off there in the gloom a hideous turmoil grew.

It ended in screams of pain and rage, suddenly throttled, choked, and
torn to nothing. A worrying, rending, gnashing told the story of the
wounded wolf's last moment.

Stern sprang up, a dry flaming branch of resinous fir in his hand. The
rifle he thrust back into the bag.

"Ate him, still warm, eh?" he cried. "Fine! And five shots left in the
gun. You won't miss, Beta! You can't!"

Forward they struggled once more.

"Gad, we'll hang to this bag
now
, whatever happens!" panted Stern,
jerking it savagely off a jagged stub. "Five minutes more and
we'll—arrh!
would
you?"

The flaring torch he dashed full at a grisly muzzle that snapped and
slavered at his legs. To their nostrils the singe of burned hair
wafted. Yelping, the beast swerved back.

But others ran in and in at them; and now the torch was failing. Both
of them shouted and struck; and the revolver stabbed the night with
fire.

Pandemonium rose in the forest. Cries, howls, long wails and snuffing
barks blent with the clicking of ivories, the pad-pad-pad of feet, the
crackling of the underbrush.

All around, wolves. On either side, behind, in front, the sliding,
bristling, sneaking, suddenly bold horrors of the wild.

And the ring was tightening; the attack was coming, now, more and more
concertedly. The swinging torch could not now drive them back so fast,
so far.

Strange gleams shot against the tree-trunks, wavered through the dusk,
lighted the harsh, rage-contracted face of the man, fell on the
laboring, skin-clad figure of the woman as they still fought on and on
with their precious burden, hoping for a glimpse of water, for the
river, and salvation.

"Take—a tree?" gasped Beatrice.

"And maybe stay there a week? And use up—all our ammunition? Not
yet—no—no! The boat!"

On, ever on, they struggled.

A strange, unnatural exhilaration filled the girl, banishing thoughts
of peril, sending the blood aglow through every vein and fiber of her
wonderful young body.

Stern realized the peril more keenly. At any moment now he understood
that one of the devils in gray might hurl itself at the full throat of
Beatrice or at his own.

And once the taste of blood lay on those crimson tongues—good-by!

"The boat—the boat!" he shouted, striking right and left like mad
with the smoky, half-extinguished flare.

"There—the river!" suddenly cried Beatrice.

Through the columns of the forest she had seen at last the welcome
gleam of water, starlit, beautiful and calm. Stern saw it, too. A
demon now, he charged the snarling ring. Back he drove them; he
turned, seized the bag, and again plunged desperately ahead.

Together he and Beatrice crashed out among the willows and the alders
on the sedgy shore, with the vague, shifting, bristling horror of the
wolf-pack at their heels.

"Here, beat 'em off while I cut the cord—while I get the bag in—and
shove off!" panted Stern.

She seized the torch from his hand. Up he snatched the rifle again,
and with a pointblank volley flung three of the grays writhing and
yelling all in the mud and weeds and trampled cattails on the river
verge.

Down he threw the gun. He turned and swept the dark shore, there
between the ruins of the wharves, with a keen reconnoitering glance.

What? What was this?

There stood the aged willow to which the banca had been tied. But the
boat—where was it?

With a cry Stern leaped to the tree. His clutching hands fumbled at
the trunk.

"My God! Here's—here's the cord!" he stammered. "But it's—been cut!
The boat—
the boat's gone!
"

An hour later, from the gnarled branches of the willow—up into
which Stern had fairly flung her, and where he had himself clambered
with the beasts ravening at his legs—the two sole survivors of the
human race watched the glowering eyes that dotted the velvet gloom.

"I estimate a couple of hundred, all told," judged Allan. "Odd we
never ran across any of them before to-night. Must be some kind of a
migration under way—maybe some big shift of game, of deer, or
buffalo, or what-not. But then, in that case, they wouldn't be so
starved, so dead-set on white meat as they seem to be."

Beta shifted her place on a horizontal limb.

"It's awfully hard for a
soft
wood," she remarked. "Do you think
we'll have to stay here long, dear?"

"That depends. I don't see that the fifteen we've killed since
roosting here have served as any terrible examples to the others. And
we're about twenty cartridges to the bad. They're not worth it, these
devils. We've got to save our ammunition for something edible till I
can get my shop to running and begin making my own powder. No; must be
there's some other and better way."

"But what?" asked the girl. "We're safe enough here, but we're not
getting any nearer home—and I'm
so
hungry!"

"Same here," Stern coincided. "And the lunch was all in the boat;
worse luck! Who the deuce could have cut her loose? I thought we'd
pretty effectually cleared out those Hinkmatinks, or whatever the
Horde consisted of. But evidently something, or somebody, is still
left alive with a terrific grudge against us, or an awful longing for
navigation."

"Was the cord broken or cut?"

"I'll see."

Stern clambered to a lower branch. With the trigger-guard of his rifle
he was able to catch the cord. All about the trunk, meanwhile, the
wolves leaped snarling. The fetid animal smell of them was strong upon
the air—that, and the scent of blood and raw meat, where they had
feasted on the slain.

With the severed cord, Allan climbed back to where Beatrice sat.

"Hold the rifle, will you?" asked he. A moment, and by the quick
showers of sparks that issued from his flint and steel, he was
examining the leather thong.

"
Cut!
"

"Cut? But then, then—"

"No tide or wind to blame. Some intelligence, even though rudimentary,
has been at work here—is at work—opposed to us."

"But what?"

"No telling. There may be more things in this world yet than either of
us dream. Perhaps we committed a very grave error to leave the
apparently peaceful little nook we've got, up there on the Hudson, and
tackle this place again. But who could ever have thought of anything
like this after that terrible slaughter?"

They kept silence a few minutes. The wolves now had sunk to a plane of
comparative insignificance. At the very worst Stern could annihilate
them, one by one, with a lavish expenditure of his ammunition.
Unnoticed now, they yelped, and scratched and howled about the tree,
sat on their haunches, waiting in the gloom, or sneaked—vague
shadows—among the deeper dusks of the forest.