Medicine Road (7 page)

At first the caribou had found their southerly
flight an easy success. After the first hurried week,
they slowed down and began to feed. The farther
south they went, the richer became the new pasturages. Even though Neetcha still kept them traveling a certain number of miles daily, they were
steadily gaining fat. All were in fine spirits, with
Neetcha's place as leader growing more firmly established with each night's resting grounds. Even
old Bartok, his rebel nature quite aware of the
young doe's success, kept his peace and browsed
with the herd.

Yet with all this easy living, Neetcha was not content. Something was wrong here; her leader's instincts sensed it. Vague feelings of unrest and
danger arose within her and would not be quieted.
But there was so much rich pasture on every hand,
with no sign of a natural enemy of any kind to disturb the herd's present tranquility, that anxiety
seemed foolish. And yet there was something
wrong. Here was the herd, two months' safe journey
from its threatened homeland, with all its members
brighter of eye and glossier of coat than ever before.
Here were all Neetcha's faithful followers alive and
happy at a time when they would normally have
been dying under the fangs of the white Arctic
wolves. Here were peace and safety and better
browse than any ever found in the Hemlock Wood.
Why, then, had not the caribou tried wintering in
the south before? If it was all this fine and simple,
why had the herd not done it before? Or had it? And
if it had, had it found the answer to the doubts now assailing Neetcha? Had it discovered some degree
of evil possibly greater than Loki and the white
wolves?

Meantime, the herd came into a wonderland of
lakes and waterways and open meadows. To be sure
there was ice on some of the water and snow on
much of the meadow, but nothing of any real
account-nothing, surely, to keep an enterprising
caribou from digging out a fat supper of the wonderful summer-dried prairie hay and southern moss
which lay everywhere just beneath the snow.

The herd, now ten weeks south, felt it had found
the Promised Land at last, and nothing could move
its contented members out of it. Neetcha, although
warned by her inner senses to keep traveling, could
offer no good reason for not halting. Within two
days the caribou, with perhaps as many as 500 in
the big herd now, were spread over a ten-mile area,
browsing and resting after their long migration.

On the third day Neetcha had the answer to her
forebodings. In seeking to lose Loki she had found
something worse than all the wolves in the Arctic
world-man! In the far north country of the Hemlock Wood there were, of course, men. An occasional
half-breed trapper or Indian hunter would pass
through in a season, but whole years had sometimes
gone by without the sight of a single man. For this
reason the caribou had acquired no fear of these rare
travelers. Now Neetcha had led the herd into a land
where Indian tribes lived the year around. Unknown
to her, sharp-eyed red scouts had been trailing the
migration for days, only waiting for it to halt in just
such open country as now surrounded it. It had been
a long time since caribou had been seen so far south
and the Indian rifles welcomed them eagerly.

All that day the shooting went on. The caribou,
ringed on all sides by the unfamiliar, terrifying flash
and roar of gunfire, fell like settlement cattle. Darkness brought the only relief and under its cover
Neetcha fled northward. Others of the herd, singly
and in scattered small bands, followed her. There
was no question of leadership now. Each animal,
Neetcha no less than the slowest-witted fawn, was
guided only by instinct.

When, ten days north of the Indian ambush, the
weary stragglers found one another and gathered
again into the herd group, there was less than half
the number that had started south. Neetcha knew
that they must go on and did her best to lead them
homeward. But their trust in her was no longer the
same. The line of march strung out a mile long.
Weaklings dropped out or wandered away. A growing number of the older animals hung back and began to herd with old Bartok, who had all along
distrusted Neetcha's leadership. The young doe
sensed this disintegration but did not know what to
do about it. Confused, and for the first time in doubt
of her own judgment, she hesitated. Bartok made no
move to take the lead in her place, and the caribou
came to a halt. Exhausted, discouraged, leaderless,
they gave up and lay down where they were. And
they were in a very bad spot.

Since fleeing the Indian rifles, they had traveled
by night and rested during the day so that no pursuer could approach without being seen. Now, although night was coming on, they clearly had no
intention of continuing the march. And while
Neetcha grunted and moved nervously among
them, still striving in every animal way she knew to
force them to their feet and back onto the trail, a silent white watcher narrowed his lone eye and
lifted his lips in a soundless snarl of pleasure.

Loki and his small, picked pack had found the
herd the day after the Indians discovered it, and
they had trailed it every day since. But with the caribou resting and watchful during the sunlight hours
and moving only at night, there had been no chance
for anything save a broad daylight stalk. And even
Loki had known better than to try that brazen
course with a herd that still numbered nearly 300.

Worse luck yet, in the presence of man, Loki's fellow wolves had begun to grow restive. Soon their
fear of the two-legged red hunters was greater than
their fear of their one-eyed leader. One by one they
had dropped away and turned back north, leaving
the king wolf at last alone to continue his long and
fruitless hunt. Their desertion had worried Loki a
great deal at the time. Now, suddenly, all was
changed. The fortunes of the stalk had shifted his
way again.

Obviously the caribou were not going to move
this night. Dusk was already thickening and they
were crowding loosely together and bedding down
with scattered carelessness. This was the end of the
trail. Loki sank lower still in his sparse cover of birch
saplings. He could afford to wait a while longer
now. The hour of the young doe he hated was at
hand. And next would come her miserable moose
calf that he so heartily despised.

An hour passed swiftly. The unsuspecting herd
slept soundly. Like a great shadow Loki drifted from
the birch trees, out and across the unguarded bedding ground. Exhausted by ten hopeless days on the
trail, the caribou never stirred as he slipped among
them. Neetcha, worn and weary beyond animal en durance, slept even more deeply than the others. It
was good that she did, for it made the end seem
only like a long dream-a dream that went on forever, without fear, without sorrow, without awakening. Loki destroyed her as easily and quietly as he
might have destroyed an Arctic hare. She uttered no
sound, made no struggle, died in peace and dignity
and without pain.

Awklet did not feel his foster mother's muscles
relax and go limp, although when the end came, he
was lying flank to flank with her-as he had since
tiny calfhood. He, like the others, was too trailweary, too far gone in heavy slumber to hear or heed
such a slight movement. Loki did not wait to savor
his luck. The doe was dead, the hulking young
moose still asleep at her lifeless side. The great
wolf's haunches gathered beneath him, then uncoiled like steel springs.

But Neetcha and his other tutors among the caribou had taught the big calf well. Among the lessons
he remembered was a certain trick shown him by
one of the old stags, a way of sleeping with the neck
so curved and tucked between the forelegs that no
stalking wolf could strike at the soft under part of
the throat. Awklet had admired this trick and
adopted it for his own. Thus it was that Loki's fangs
missed the great vein of the throat, struck instead
the gristle-tough muscle of the upper neck. The
shock of the unexpected error nearly dislocated the
king wolf's slashing jaws.

Awklet was up instantly, blood streaming from
the gaping wound in his neck. Loki, seeing he had
blundered again, and not choosing to face the maddened young bull moose in addition to a stampeded
herd of caribou, sprang hurriedly for cover in a nearby thicket of ground pine. Awklet immediately
charged the thicket, raging and stomping through it
like a demented thing. He had seen in the moment
of Loki's retreat the silent form of Neetcha and the
telltale blood upon the snow at her side. Again and
again, blind with rage and heartbreak, the yearling
bull ripped and thrashed through the cover into
which his enemy had disappeared. It was too late.
He found nothing but wolf tracks. The murderer
was gone.

Once away from the caribou herd, Loki slowed
down and began looking for a place to sleep. He
was very tired from his long following of the southern migration, but showed the wolf's typical cunning in selecting his bedding spot. It was on high
ground along the very edge of a rocky canon overlooking a swift-tumbling river. There was a good
moon, and no trees blocked his view of the surrounding country. Satisfied, he lay down and curled
up with a great, weary grunt.

Downwind from him, a hundred paces away on
the riverbank, a wicked-looking little pair of bloodshot eyes watched his every move. Many minutes after he had lain down, a huge shadow detached itself
from the stream edge willows, gliding from them
toward the king wolf's bedding ground. The
shadow was so big and grotesquely hump-backed as
to appear unreal. Only the deep-set, tiny eyes, burning like pinpoint coals in the darkness, labeled it a
living thing.

Loki fell asleep at once. In the first fleeting moments after unconsciousness overcame him, he
dreamed briefly of the night's adventure. He had
done exceedingly well. With the young queen doe
accounted for, the caribou herd would break apart
again. He would, of course, have been better pleased
to have gotten the big bull moose calf in the same
stroke. But then, the latter could safely wait until
next winter. Big as he was, he was only a yearling.
Far too young as yet to be reckoned a serious threat
to the continued easy hunting of the stupid caribou
with which he grazed. All was well in Loki's savage
world, and he could slumber the night away on that
pleasant fact.

The king wolf sighed in his sleep and was content.
He had forgotten about another young giant who
had not been too youthful to be a threat in another
time and distant place far back along the trail. Another young giant had also been only a little over a
year old when he won his great victory. The price of
that victory had been the kingship of the white Arctic wolves, and the name of the young upstart who
had claimed it-Loki! The king wolf sighed again,
going deeper still into his weary rest.

The great shadow paused, standing motionlessly
a dozen paces from the sleeping king wolf. It
seemed to gather itself, hovering huge and bat like
for a moment. Then it plunged forward, breaking
for the first time into the full glare of the Arctic
moon. It was Awklet.

But too many years of light sleeping had trained
Loki for such a surprise attack. The ground-shaking
rush of the young bull's charge awakened him and
sent him leaping and rolling to one side. Yet, fast as
he was, Awklet was faster. A razor-sharp forehoof lashed out with the speed of a striking snake. The
double-edged slash of the huge, splayed hoof caught
the king wolf on his blind side, ripping across his
bad eye, smashing him to the ground. He lay,
stunned and motionless, and Awklet wheeled savagely to charge again.

From some last resource of his great store of
courage, Loki forced one last movement. Senseless,
crippled, blind with the blood coursing over his
good eye, he staggered to his feet. In the way of his
breed he drew one more breath, took one more step.
That step carried him over the canon's lip, sent him
plunging into the icy waters below.

Checking his charge with braced forehoofs, Awklet was barely able to keep from following his enemy into the torrent. Recovering his balance, he
searched with his small red eyes for a sign of his adversary's body in the foaming rapids. But, although
he remained for many minutes, silent and watchful,
upon the canon's rim, his vigil went unrewarded.
Loki, king of the white Arctic wolves, had disappeared. It seemed that never again would he lead a
killer pack into the winter hush of the Hemlock
Wood. But fortune sometimes favors the wicked as
well as the bold.

The stream by which Loki had slept poured
through its narrow, rocky gorge for perhaps a quarter of a mile. Above and below the abbreviated
chasm the river was frozen from shore to shore. But
within the gorge itself the water ran as rapidly as a
millrace and was free of ice. To this fact Loki owed
his life.

Striking the water, his body sank like a stone. He
was carried along the gravelly bottom for several
hundred feet, then spewed to the surface. He bob bled downstream like a furry cork for the remainder
of the distance to the solid ice at the open water's
end. Here the current spat him safely out onto that
ice, as though he made a bad taste in the stream's
mouth and it could not rid itself of him soon
enough.