Novel 1968 - Down The Long Hills (v5.0) (11 page)

Chapter 12

H
ARDY AWOKE WITH a start. He had been sound asleep, and suddenly he was wide awake and listening. For a minute he heard nothing, then there was the sound of movement, and Big Red snorted angrily.

Hardy slipped from under the buffalo coat and tiptoed to the door. For a moment he stood there listening, and he heard a low whine of eagerness.

Peeping through a crack, he looked out. It had been snowing earlier in the night, but now it had stopped, leaving everything white and still—except for two…three…black spots on the snow.

Wolves…

He could see them quite clearly. They were big wolves, and they were close by. One of them was not more than thirty feet from the dugout, and all of them were looking toward the crude stable where Big Red was. The stallion sensed their presence, and was aware of the danger.

Hardy hesitated, his heart pounding. He must try to frighten them away. Pa had told him how wolves worked. One or two of them would get at a horse’s heels, staying just out of reach, but ready to run in and hamstring him if possible. Another wolf or two could circle in front, watching for a chance to rush in and grab at the animal’s throat.

These were timber wolves, larger than any he had ever seen. He could shoot at them, but the derringer would be useless and the one shot would not stop them for long.

Then he thought of it…
fire!

Turning quickly, he went to the fireplace and stirred the coals. Under the ashes a few were still alive, and he stirred them, adding barks and twigs that had been put aside for the purpose. He was frightened, but he knew he must help Big Red right away, before the wolves closed in on him.

He thrust a large branch into the coals and it caught fire. When it was blazing well, he took down the bar at the door and caught up the branch and rushed outside, yelling and waving the branch.

Startled, the wolves sprang away, and rushed off into the snow. Hardy went back and laid the branch at the edge of the fireplace. He glanced at Betty Sue. She was sleeping quietly, and he blessed the fact that she was tired and was a sound sleeper.

Carrying a large stick, he went out to the stallion. “It’s all right, Red,” he said reassuringly. He patted the big horse on the shoulder. “We’ll handle them.”

He stayed with the stallion a minute or two, but the chill began to strike him and he went back to the dugout and closed the door.

He dared not go to sleep again, for the wolves would be back as soon as they got over their momentary fear. He did not know how successful he would be in driving them off again, but he knew he would have to try. But first, he built up the fire.

When it was burning brightly he peered out of the door again. Sure enough, he caught a flicker of movement in the brush. One of the hungry beasts was lurking out there. What could he do?

And then a new idea came to him. Just how it suddenly became a full-fledged plan he had no idea. Twice he had gone to the door, simply opening and closing it and the sound had been enough to send a wolf loping away into the brush, but the animal had not gone far, and he had not hurried.

Outside the dugout, about halfway between the dugout and the horse’s shelter, but back toward the edge of the creek, was a big old stump. Hardy had cut several pieces of pitch from it for kindling, and there were droplets of pitch where it had oozed from cracks in the old pine stump.

If he could set that afire…

Gathering some bark, he rubbed it to shreds between his hands, then took a branch from the fire and went outside. He left the door open so that he could rush in if the wolves attacked. He doubted they would, for the man-smell was on him, and they had learned to fear it. But he felt sure they might soon know there was nothing to fear from him, might realize he was small and unarmed.

On top of the splintered stump he dug out a little hollow. It was the stump of a blow-down, broken off jaggedly, ought to burn well. He tried his branch, but the fire had gone out.

Going back to the dugout he got another one from the fire, added it to the shredded bark, and blew to tease it into a flame. It caught some bits of pitch, which blazed up brightly.

At the base the stump was partly hollow, and he kindled another fire there, and added fuel from branches lying about. Soon the fire was blazing well, and he withdrew to the dugout.

The stump was very pitchy, and pitch pine burns with a hot, bright flame. There was a good chance the fire would burn all night through—or through what was left of the night.

Inside the dugout he huddled near the fire, arms squeezing his knees for warmth, and he turned a little from time to time when his back grew cold.

Several times he peered out, but he saw no wolves. A long time later, when it was almost light, he crawled under the buffalo coat and went to sleep.

When he woke on the morning of the third day he knew it was time to go.

The stump was burned down to almost nothing, and the wolves might come back. They would follow him, he was sure, but from a distance. Wherever he stopped, he must be sure the place was one where there would be shelter for both them and Red, and where he could keep a fire going. Wild animals were afraid of fire, and in that lay safety perhaps.

It was a gray morning, and under a sullen sky they started west once more. They had scarcely started when they came upon the travois trail of the Cheyennes, the same one Scott Collins, Squires, and Darrow had seen only a short time before.

Hardy knew a travois trail when he saw one, and a travois meant Indians. At this time of year, he thought, they were probably headed for their winter camp, so their presence in this region did not alarm him. He was more worried about the wolves, but at first he saw no sign of them.

The snow was almost eight inches deep on the level, but it was drifted in places to a depth of three or four feet. Hardy avoided the drifts, and tried to keep a straight course to the west.

Though he was scared and tired, he was glad to be moving, and the big red stallion seemed as eager as they were to be on the way. They moved forward at a steady pace, and for the most part Hardy let the horse choose his own trail.

For a while they found no tracks at all. The snow was unbroken, and there was almost no wind.

Looming close above them were the Wind River Mountains. South Pass lay to the south of the range, and it was the accepted route to the west. If all he had heard talked about on the wagon train was true, they should be at South Pass soon. He had heard them say it was mostly a big, wide-open country where a body could scarcely tell when he crossed the divide. On one side the streams flowed toward the east, on the other toward the Pacific—or at any rate in that direction. Some of the water, he’d heard them say, wound up in the bottom of the Great Basin.

The trail they were taking followed Beaver Creek more or less. Suddenly he came upon the tracks of three riders. All the horses were shod, but he could see that only in an occasional track where it had been sheltered by a tree or bush, for the rest of the tracks were almost covered by last night’s snow.

“These look like yesterday’s tracks,” he said to Betty Sue. “It might be those men we got away from.”

“There were only two of them,” Betty Sue said.

“They might have picked up a friend. But no, these don’t look like the same tracks. I can’t make out enough to tell, though—it might even be Indians on stolen horses.”

He turned Big Red away to the north, then taking a westward direction again, he followed Beaver Creek. He could not rightly see the sun, but by what he thought should be noon they had put ten or twelve miles behind them. Big Red was tireless, and they had found no place to stop.

It was midafternoon before he saw a wolf. The animal was perhaps half a mile behind them, and when Hardy turned in the saddle he glimpsed it, loping easily along through the snow, just keeping them in sight. Fear tightened his throat. If there was one wolf, there would be others.

“We’ve got to find a place to stop,” he said. “You keep looking, Betty Sue. You might see something that I don’t.”

“Are there going to be wolves, Hardy?”

“Maybe. In this kind of country there generally are wolves. Nothing to worry about though,” he added. “We’ll have a place with a fire.”

“What if the wolves come before we get the fire lit?”

“They won’t come much before night,” Hardy said hopefully. “We’re going to make camp pretty quick.”

He knew it would be no use to shoot at them. Pa had done that once, but it only scared them for a little while, and then they had come back.

Big Red continued along Beaver Creek, and Hardy studied every nook and cranny for a place to camp. They would need something at their backs, and they would need fuel—lots of it. They also needed a place that was big enough to get the horse in with them. Twice Hardy saw a place he thought might do for camp, but each time he had to decide against it.

He kept thinking back to the tracks of those three riders. Would it have been better to have followed them? But he had no idea who they might be, or where they were going. He kept seeing tracks of animals too, for they were out and moving now, but most of the tracks were wolf tracks.

The afternoon wore on, and it grew colder. When he looked back again he saw there were two wolves now…and yes, another one, still farther back.

It would soon be dark. Red had slowed his pace, and Hardy knew the big horse was hungry and must be allowed to scratch away the snow to get at the grass before they tied him up. Hardy was not only frightened, but he was close to tears. There was no place to stop…no place. Behind him a wolf howled, answered by another. Suddenly he saw a wolf ahead of them, waiting in the trail.

Red saw it, too, but he did not turn and run…instead started for the animal, teeth bared.

The wolf leaped aside, in no way frightened. He was not a lone hunter, and the rest were coming. Wolves had pulled down horses before this.

Their way went down into a grove of trees, where it was dark. The stallion ran through the trees swiftly, and suddenly, in the gathering dusk, Hardy saw what he had been looking for.

Across the creek and under the shoulder of the hill was a cave. It did not look like a deep cave, just an overhang, but there was some scattered wood there, left by high water of the past.

“Over there, Red,” Hardy urged, “across the creek!”

The big horse splashed through the knee-high water and up the rocky bank on the far side. The bluff rose high above them. The interior of the cave under the overhang was black and forbidding, but close to the entrance there was a small parapet of stones made for a breastwork, or for a reflector.

Hardy slid down, gathered dry sticks under the overhang, and heaped them together. From the last camp he had brought some shavings and a handful of shredded bark, and he put these on the ground under the dried sticks and started a fire. It blazed up, died down, then caught again.

Picketing Big Red on a level spot nearby, he scraped off some of the snow to get at the grass underneath, but Red needed no showing. He knew where the grass was, and went after it.

Then Hardy set to work to gather more sticks. Betty Sue came with him, walking close to him. First of all he searched for a short, strong stick for a club, and then he gathered as much wood as he could find and piled it in the hollow under the bluff. He built his fire brighter.

It would soon be night. The wolves were out there. He could already see them coming closer and slinking around. Kicking a couple of rocks loose that were partly frozen to the earth, he hurled them at the wolves—and he had a strong throwing arm. The wolves ran off a few feet, then stopped. And that was when he thought of the slingshot.

He had no rubber or anything to use for rubber, but he could make a sling. His pa had made the first one for him when he was four, after telling him the story of David and Goliath, and he had practiced with it off and on for a year. Then he discarded it until he was six, when one day he tried it again and barked a squirrel with it. After that, he had practiced a good deal. He still couldn’t be sure of hitting his mark, although he did every once in a while.

With his knife he cut a strip from the worn bottom of the old buffalo coat, and made his sling. Then he hunted in the creek bottom for stones of the right size. The water was so cold that he nearly froze his hands hunting for them, but he had soon gathered fifteen or twenty.

He stood shivering over the fire, stretching his wet hands out toward the flames.…There was so much to do, and he was so tired. He had never been so tired in his whole life. And he was scared—scared of the wolves, of the Indians, of the cold, and of the distance to Fort Bridger.

“We’re going to make it, Betty Sue,” he said confidently. “I just know we are. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

Her voice was small, and she looked up at him, sensing something of what he felt.

“You roll up in that buffalo coat,” Hardy told her. “I’ll be fixing around for a while.”

He took up the stick and the sling and went out to the horse. One of the wolves, a big, heavy-chested brute, was not more than fifty feet away, just sitting there. Big Red had pulled back to the end of his tether and Hardy had to go past him, toward the wolf, to pull up the picket-pin. He was afraid Red might pull away from him.

He took a step over to the horse and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right, Red. Don’t you fuss none.”

He slipped a stone into the sling and, carrying the stick in his left hand, walked toward the picket-pin. The wolf got up on all four feet and seemed to snarl, deep in his throat. Suddenly, almost of its own volition, Hardy’s arm whipped over with the sling. The distance was short, and Hardy was lucky. He heard the
thump
as the stone struck the wolf, and the animal jumped straight up, yelping in surprise and pain, and then it scrambled off into the darkness.

Almost crying with fear, Hardy tugged and pulled at the picket-pin, but it held, half frozen in the hard ground. He worked at it, and finally it came loose and he pulled it up. Then catching up the stick and the sling again, he went back toward the overhang.