Medicine Road (4 page)

The fitful breeze struck the aging pack leader
fully in the nostrils, leaving him rigid with excitement. The hot, sweet scent of caribou fawn raced
deliciously down his spine. From between his ears
to his tail's root, the guard hairs on Sukon's back
bristled. Without a sound, he leaped toward the aspen grove, his pack mates straining at his heels. In
the trees, Neetcha and her twin fawns stood paralyzed. Then, in the last moment, they ran-the
fawns away from the wolves, the doe directly
toward them.

It was a brave act on Neetcha's part, but far too
late. Where she sought to divert the pack and lead
them away from her babies, she succeeded only in
making their leader swerve enough to avoid being
run over by her cloven hoofs. Sukon had smelled the
fawns, and now he saw them. Let the pack handle
the doe; he wanted younger, sweeter meat.

But the pack was not ready for Neetcha. She
burst into its ranks too suddenly, scattering the
surprised wolves right and left in the blind craziness of her last-minute race to save her young
ones. Before they could come together again, she
was gone. Three of them whirled to chase her, but
the rest kept on after Sukon and the fawns. The
three soon abandoned their effort and, fearing they would miss out on the more certain feast of
fawn meat, returned to share in the fruits of
Sukon's superior hunting judgment. They did not
return in vain.

Even after the first overwhelming wave of fear
had passed, Neetcha continued her wild flight. On
through the deepening snowbanks she plunged,
nor did she pause until she reached the innermost
heart of the Hemlock Wood. Here she huddled in
the deepest thickets, gasping until returning
breath began to flow with cooling regularity
through her lungs. Finally the shudders of exhaustion ceased to wrack her flanks, the tremble quieted in her limbs. Only then did she venture from
her hiding place.

At first she could not eat. She was weak from her
long race and sick with the memory of her fawns. But
the air was turning swiftly colder, and she sensed
that a harsh change in weather was coming. Instinct
bade her fill her stomach in preparation for it.

An early spring blizzard was brewing, one of
those fierce tempests that rage in the pause between
winter and spring in the Northland. Neetcha feared
such storms as did all the wild creatures. She made
haste now, that the approaching one would not find
her unready. Quickly she ate, first of the tender
birch and alder shoots, then of the tough, nutritious
bark of the larger limbs. Soon she was full, and
turned to seek shelter from the coming storm.

Shortly she found it, a bone-dry cedar tangle,
heavily lined with dead grasses. Here she made her
bed. But as she prepared to lie down, her senses detected moose smell.

The smell was quite close. Investigation revealed
that it was strongest in the very spot she had chosen for herself. And it was very fresh-so fresh that she
looked about her, fully expecting to discover who
was sharing her retreat. She saw nothing, and lay
down puzzled. Sniffing again, she caught another
smell, one that she knew and hated. But it was a
dead scent and the wolf that had left it was no
longer near. The moose smell, though, was very
much alive and confusingly close.

The cold filled the air, growing more intense with
each minute. Neetcha, settling wearily into her
warm bed, started to doze. But sleep did not come,
for suddenly a new fact of the moose smell began to
turn in her drowsing consciousness. It was the smell
of a calf, a very young calf.

A wave of mother feeling came up in Neetcha.
Her milk udder, swollen with her dead fawns' untaken supper, ached and burned. Presently she fancied she heard a muffled bleating. Strange how real
the sound was. It was almost too real. Neetcha rose
awkwardly to her feet, stood, ears pricked and
tense. Then she heard it again. Clearly and beyond
any doubt this time-the helpless, frightened
bleating of a very young baby. Swiftly she nosed
out the soundmaker, a day-old moose calf hopelessly entangled in a mass of snarled small
branches. The tracks of a gigantic wolf marked the
snow all about him.

Neetcha, the caribou doe, had found Awklet, the
orphaned moose calf. She needed no human intelligence to tell her what to do. In a moment she had the
calf freed from his prison. Without question the
moose baby followed the fawnless doe back to her
dry-grass bed. Without thought the bereaved caribou accepted the cold, hungry calf. And without
prompting, the infant suckled at his foster mother's warm breast, while Neetcha reveled in her relief and
gratitude for the nursing.

Thus in the deepest tangle of the Hemlock Wood,
with the fierce winds of an Arctic blizzard howling
their approval, began the strange story of Awklet,
the orphan moose.

The storm lasted seven days and nights, then was
gone as swiftly as it had come. With it went the
wolves. Like shadows, shapeless and without
sound, they drifted northward. Fifteen, twenty,
thirty-fully fifty of them. Eyes burning like live
coals in the gray half light. Restless heads swinging
constantly, nervous jaws chopping quick flecks of
yellowed froth. Homeward bound. North and north
and ever north. Hour after tireless hour. Mile after
trackless mile. Northward, ever northward and
homeward went the killer pack.

In its forefront went Loki himself, aloof and unapproachable as befitted his hard-won rank. Behind
him moved his scarred lieutenants, the elite of the
adult males in their full prime, the seasoned hunters
and fighters like Zor, Lukat, Split Lip, Bigfoot, and
the crafty Sukon, who stood just below Loki in the
pack command. Behind them came the rank and
file-the females, the old males past their prime, the
yearling cubs not yet in theirs.

Looking back through the swirling snows, Loki
found grim reason for satisfaction in his kingship.
The hunting had been and still was good. Even now,
in the thin scrub of the barren ground beyond the
forest, scattered pockets of game were to be found.
Yesterday it had been a tough old caribou stag in
company with four young does. The day before that,
two yearling moose were caught outside the shelter
of the last timber. So it had gone, excellent the entire
way, the finest winter hunt in many years.

In times past, the caribou herds had wandered the
entire Arctic. Since the earliest of Loki's memories,
the herds had supplied the wolf pack with its main
food. From the treeless wastes of Loki's own perpetually frozen homeland, across the vast sweep of the
barren-ground tundras to the stunted timber at
the northern approaches of the Hemlock Wood, the
caribou had come and gone and grazed as they
pleased. But a succession of severe winters had kept
them from the tundra mosses and forced them
southward into the sparsely wooded lands north of
the Hemlock Woods. This move, in turn, had forced
the wolves to follow them. Weak from starvation, the
once great herds had scattered before the inroads of
the white killers, seeking the last sanctuary available to them-the heart of the Hemlock Wood.
Thus, even in the years of Loki's life, the caribou had
been reduced from proud, free, fearless rangers of
the open tundra to shy, skulking, frightened creatures of the forest darknesses.

Nothing could have pleased Loki more. For in the
confinement of the deep woods the caribou lost the
courage and resolution to defend themselves, which
had always marked them in their tundra days. They
fell into the dangerous habit of "yarding up" like the forest-dwelling deer tribes. That is, they gathered together in a packed disorganized mass in
some protective stand of birch and alder. There, easy
feed was within immediate reach and the old, hard
days of tundra foraging could be quickly and happily forgotten. The very fact had provided the climax to this present year's wonderful hunting.

After leaving Awklet, Loki had found the main
caribou herd-what remained of the once great tundra herds-in its winter yard in the Hemlock Wood,
and had led the pack in a tremendous killing of the
helpless creatures. It had been a feast to remember
and to think about for the next year's hunt. Very
clearly, the herding-together instinct and the fierce
will to fight of bygone years no longer existed
among the stupid remnant of the tundra herds. The
caribou still fought back when attacked, and their
heavy antlers and razor-sharp hoofs were still
deadly, but they no longer clung together to make a
circle of hoofs and horns on which the wolves would
impale themselves. Instead, they broke away and
ran in small groups and forsook one another and
made the killing an easy, very pleasant thing. It became very evident to the king wolf that the former
defensive power of the great herds was forever gone.

Loki licked his lips and chopped his jaws with the
pleasure of that prospect. Already in his savage
brain thoughts were forming up for next year's
hunt. With the blood of this year's killing still warm
in his mouth, he was tasting that of the next. Even
now, while far to the south Neetcha, the caribou doe,
was contentedly dreaming of her wobbly-kneed
adopted calf's life, Loki was coldly thinking about
his death.

Neetcha had been absent from the yard when Loki
and his pack entered the Hemlock Wood. To this accidental fact she may well have owed her life, for the
pack's toll had been particularly heavy among both
the early calving does and their sisters yet heavy
with unborn young. The rest of the herd had stampeded and scattered through the nearby forest, instead of forming a fighting circle and attempting to
defend themselves as was their almost forgotten
custom. The frightened survivors of the king wolf's
raid were just beginning to filter back into the yard
when Neetcha approached from the south with her
new son.

Among the does destroyed or still missing was
old Aldera, the herd queen. As in most animal tribes
of herding instinct, the real leader of the caribou
had not been a male, but a female. The usual picture
envisioned of any of the woodland deer herds-be
they elk, moose, caribou or dainty black- or whitetail-is that of some lordly antlered bull or stag
moving proudly in the lead. It is a popular picture
but not a true one. Actually the real leader is nearly
always a cow or doe. And usually, as in the case of
old Aldera, this leader is one of advanced years,
gaunt and gray and cautious with the wisdom of
many winters.

Aldera had been the mother of Neetcha's mother
and the mate of Neetcha's grandfather in the days of
the retreat from the Barren Grounds. But whether or
not she was Neetcha's grand dam did not matter.
What did matter was that the old doe had consistently grazed with the younger and had, since the
days of the latter's fawnhood, unconsciously instructed her in the ways and warinesses of herd
leadership. Now, with their old queen missing, the remaining caribou would naturally look to Neetcha
as their new queen.

Of this the young doe knew nothing as she plodded northward through the deep snow of the departed blizzard. The steady swish-swish of her broad,
splayed hoofs trod and kicked clear an ample path
for the ungainly moose baby that followed her.
From time to time she would swing her bony head
rearward for a quick glance at the awkward calf. It
was a glance that seemed to say she cared not at all
whether the struggling youngster were there or not.
And at each such glance Awklet would bleat plaintively, demanding like some tired child that the pace
be slowed or a halt called altogether.

Neetcha paid no heed to these pleas but forged
steadily ahead through the deepening snows. Puffing complainingly, the moose orphan lunged and
stumbled in her wake. Occasionally he would fall to
his knees or, striking a pocket of soft snow, plunge
completely out of sight. At these times he would
bawl piteously, but Neetcha did not wait or give any
sign that she heard her adopted son's wails of despair. Straight ahead and unheeding, she continued,
as though for all of her the calf might be left behind
to lie in the snow forever. And somehow, on each of
these occasions, Awklet found the strength and will
to struggle onward and to come again, eventually, to
his rightful place at her flank.