Shasta Of The Wolves — Chapters 16, 17, 18

THE DANGER FROM THE SOUTH

It was the old medicine-man, Shoshawnee, and he was making medicine to himself on the high lookout butte that commanded the prairies to the south.

The sunset was beginning to be crimson in the west.

It struck full in Shoshawnee's face, turning it blood-red.

But Shoshawnee had no thought for the colour of his face.

He had another thought inside him--a thought of such tremendous importance that there was no room for anything besides.

And this was that a danger lay there ambushed in the south.

No one else but Shoshawnee knew of the danger; but that was because he had a medicine which never told him lies, and which whispered things to him before they had arrived.

And already it had whispered to him that danger was near, and he had heard the huskies give the ghost-bark when they saw the wind go by.

When he had finished the medicine-song he sat silent, gazing on the prairies.

They looked very peaceful, lying abroad there under the sinking sun.

Shoshawnee's eyes, travelling over the immense levels, saw nothing that served to increase the unquiet of his mind.

Far to the south there stretched, from the Saska River westwards, a dusky band that was like a shadow cast by the sunset.

Shoshawnee knew that it was a herd of buffalo--one of those vast herds which in those old Indian days roamed over the wilderness for a thousand miles; coming always from the lake of mystery in the south; going no man knew whither; which no man had ever counted, or would count till the Palefaces came from the East, and the Red man's day was done.

Shoshawnee watched the buffaloes keenly.

So long as they continued their tranquil feeding, he knew that, whatever danger was afoot, it had not yet approached the outskirts of the herd.

For the buffalo are very wary and are always ready to stampede.

Yet, although his eyes were fixed intently out there so many miles away, his ears were alert for anything that might happen close about.

So, although he did not turn his head, he heard the faint whisper of the dried bent-grass as Shasta in his summer moccasins came lightly up the hill.

When he reached Shoshawnee, Shasta did not speak.

It is the Palefaces who rush at each other with their tongues.

The Red man is never in a hurry with his speech.

Why should you hasten your words when the prairies are so broad beside you, and there are no clocks to tick off for you the timeless drift of the summer air?

It is only in the cities that men have learnt to waste the hours by counting them;

and on the high buttes facing the sunset there is no time.

So the sun had dipped below the prairie before at last Shoshawnee spoke.

"The buffalo go west," he said slowly, as if the thing was of the utmost importance.

Shasta did not put a question actually into words, but he looked it.

Shoshawnee understood.

"There is much pasture to the west.

The buffalo eat the prairie to the setting sun."

"Do they eat the edge of the sunset also?"

Shasta asked.

Shoshawnee shook his head.

"The edge of the sunset is the end of the world," he said.

"At the end of all things there is no more grass."

Shasta was silent at that.

It was so unbelievable.

The thought stunned him.

No more grass!

"But _beyond_ the sunset," Shoshawnee went on, "when you come to the Happy Hunting-grounds, the grass is always green.

And there the blue flower of the camass never fades, and the sarvis berries never decay."

"The Happy Hunting-grounds!"

Shasta murmured in his low, husky voice.

"Where?"

Shoshawnee lifted his hand.

"Up there, presently," he said, "you will see the Wolf-trail.

It is along the Wolf-trail that you travel to reach them.

The Wolf-trail is worn across the heavens by the moccasins of the dead."

"Is the hunting better there than it is here?"

Shasta asked.

"Is there more game?"

"It is not _better_ hunting," Shoshawnee said, correcting him.

"It is happier.

The dead are full of happiness as they follow along the trail."

After that there was a long silence, as Shasta kept looking at the sky to watch for the beginning of the Wolf-trail, when the stars should appear.

But before that happened Shoshawnee spoke again.

This time he spoke quickly, using many words.

He spoke so rapidly, and the words followed each other so fast, that at first Shasta could not understand.

All he gathered was that danger was in the air, some great danger which as yet you could not see, but which was approaching, always drawing steadily nearer out there on the prairies, and which might arrive before you knew.

Then, as Shoshawnee went on, the danger took a shape.

It was the shape of Indians on the warpath--Assiniboines that came with deadly cunning and purpose, travelling like wolves along the prairie hollows.

Shasta sent his eyes far across the darkening plains, where all things were becoming shadowy and remote, and where even the great herd of buffalo beyond the Saska was no longer visible.

How far away the Assiniboines might be he could not guess.

Nor could Shoshawnee tell him, when he asked.

All Shoshawnee knew was that they were coming, and that when he had finished his medicine-making he would go and warn the tribe.

Of one thing only was he certain, and that was, that however near they might be they would not attack at night.

The Assiniboines were fierce and cruel but they dreaded the darkness, because they declared that the ghosts of their enemies and many evil spirits were abroad.

Their favourite hour of attack was just at daybreak when the first glimmer of dawn was mingling with the mist.

When the last light of sunset had faded from the sky, and the prairies were wholly dark, Shasta and Shoshawnee returned to the camp.

Shasta lay awake long that night, listening and wondering.

The words of the old medicine-man kept walking in his head.

Sometimes it was of the buffaloes he thought, with their pasture that lay out into the sunset and was a-shimmer with the long lights of the west; and sometimes of that mysterious danger that crept nearer and nearer, and gave no sign of its approach.

And then the butterfly, the sleep-bringer, flitted across his eyelids and he slept.

It was the western lark-sparrow that woke him in the morning, singing loud and clear upon the lodge-pole over his head.

And when he saw the sunlight clear through the painted wall of the tepee, and heard the cheerful morning stir of the camp, it seemed impossible that danger should be afoot in that tremendous peace.

Yet, as the day wore on and evening drew near, he felt the same foreboding at his heart as when Shoshawnee had spoken to him of danger when they sat on the lookout bluff.

As for Shoshawnee, he sat there all day, without food or drink, gazing steadily across the prairies and chanting the old medicine chants of the tribe.

When evening fell Shoshawnee returned.

He had already warned the tribe of what he feared, and Big Eagle had given orders that all was to be in readiness in case of an attack.

Scouts had been sent out, but had returned at sundown, saying that no signs of hostile Indians had been seen.

When Shasta went to bed that night the buffalo robe held no sleep for him; and wherever the butterfly flitted, it did not enter his tepee.

All night long he lay awake, restless and uneasy.

Often and often he left his couch and looked out.

The camp was very still and the stars in their high places glittered bright in a cloudless sky.

Now and then the small grey owl hooted dismally from the alder thickets beside the creek, or a coyote would bark fitfully somewhere far off in the night.

Shasta had not yet grown used to the prairie.

It was so vast, so unenclosed!

The forest with its crowding trees, and the immense gloom of a hundred miles of shade, was the thing that made him feel at home.

But now the camp of his people was pitched far out on the prairie, and the forest only existed in his dreams.

As for Nitka and Shoomoo and the wolf-brothers, they seemed even farther off, and to move in some old life lost among the trees.

Three times already since his first coming to the camp, it had been moved.

The ends of the new lodge-poles, cut in spring among the foot-hills and dragged by the ponies for enormous distances, now showed signs of wear.

The camp at present lay in a wide hollow surrounded by swelling ridges, and hidden from sight until you were close upon it.

The lookout bluff upon which Shoshawnee had kept his watch lay a good half-mile to the south, and commanded an immense sweep of prairie on every hand.

The last time Shasta had crept out of the tepee he had looked towards the bluff.

It humped itself, a black mass against the stars, like a huge bull-buffalo couched in sleep.

When he crept noiselessly back, it seemed to follow him, and when at last sleep overtook him, it was humped among his dreams.

Suddenly he was wide awake, his heart throbbing.

Something--he did not know what--had called to him, and roused him from his rest.

The tepee was still dark, but a faint glimmer--so faint as to be scarcely seen--showed that daybreak was at hand.

Shasta sat up, his eyes straining in the dimness, and his ears listening as only wild animals listen when they are startled.

For a little while he heard nothing but the stillness, which itself was so deep that it seemed as if it were a sort of sound.

Then, clear and strikingly distinct, he heard repeated the sound which had broken his sleep.

It was a wolf-howl, long-drawn and wailing, and it was answered directly afterwards by another, and yet another.

The cries were some distance off--how far Shasta could not tell.

The third came from some spot on the prairie beyond the lookout bluff.

Every pulse in Shasta's body beat in answer to the cries.

A wild excitement swept through him.

His mind seemed, for the moment, to throw off its Indian teaching and swing back into the wild.

Yet, wolf-like though the cries were--so alike that only the wolves themselves would have detected the difference--Shasta's perfect sense of hearing told him that these wailing notes came from no wolf-throats, but from those of Indians who imitated with marvellous closeness the familiar cry.

Shoshawnee was right.

The danger was at hand.

It was within speaking distance: it sang a death-note in the dawn.

Shasta lost no time.

He ran swiftly to Big Eagle's tepee.

Without waiting for any ceremony, he snatched aside the flap and stepped inside.

Rousing the chief he told him what he had heard.

Immediately Big Eagle sprang from his buffalo robes, and, seizing his arms, rushed out into the centre of the camp, uttering the gathering cry.

Instantly the whole camp was aroused.

The braves came running out of the tepees, their bows in their hands and their long quivers slung over their backs.

In less than five minutes the sleeping village was turned into an armed camp, with every man it contained prepared for the fight.

In the midst of the excitement Shasta disappeared.

When Big Eagle commanded the presence of the "medicine" wolf-boy, no one could say what had become of him.

Some were inclined to think that he had played a trick upon them, and that there was no danger at all.

But Shoshawnee, the old medicine-man, waved his arms excitedly, and declared over and over again that Shasta had been warned by the spirits, and that the Assiniboines were now close at hand.

CHAPTER XVII SHASTA GOES SCOUTING

When Shasta had given the warning and knew that the tribe was fully roused, he crept out of camp.

He went so secretly that no one saw him go.

Why he went he could hardly have told himself in the shape of a thought.

If the cries had not been wolf-cries, it is probable he would not have gone.

He was certain that they were not the genuine wolf-calls, yet they came so very close to them that an uneasy feeling inside him made him want to find out what sort of throat could make so exact an imitation.

The direction of his going was towards the lookout butte, from beyond which the last cry had come.

If danger was gathering in the prairie hollows it would be from the summit of the butte that you could tell the nature of it, and whether it was widespread or closely drawn.

As he approached the butte, his eyes and ears were open at their widest.

Things were indistinct and shadowy in the faint glimmer of the dawn.

Yet shadowy though they were, Shasta's piercing eyes stabbed them through and through.

Every bush, every clump of grass, every rise or fall of the ground--nothing escaped this piercing gaze.

He saw the buck-rabbit leap into the thicket.

He saw the coyote drift, like a trail of grey smoke, over the ridge.

And while his eyes and cars were busy, he did not forget his nose.

With the true wolf-instinct he travelled up-wind.

Whatever scents were abroad in the keen air, he would catch them surely, and sift them in his cunning nose.

In the early freshness of the dawn, the smell of the ground was sweet with dew.

There was not so much a breeze as a soft moving of the air.

Along it the whole vast body of the prairie seemed to breathe to the tip of Shasta's nose.

By this time the broad sweet prairie smell was familiar to him.

By contrast with it the old smells of the forest seemed to be sharp and thin, like arrow-heads piercing the brain.

But, as Shasta knew, this broader prairie smell was made up of a countless multitude of tiny odours that mixed themselves so confusedly that only the stronger ones could be disentangled from the rest.

For some time he did not get any smell which told him of danger, and he had reached the foot of the butte before he met anything suspicious.

Suddenly he stopped.

As far as you could see or hear, except that the light was a little stronger, everything was exactly as it had been.

And yet, to Shasta's quick sense, something had happened, and he knew that he was warned.

It was not that he saw or heard anything first.

It was his nose which had caught something that was not a prairie smell.

It was not of a thing that was there now.

The thing had gone by, but the scent of its passing clung still to the grass-blades, and Shasta seemed to see the Indian body which had left that faint message of itself in smell.

Then he found the trail--the dim thing that only wild eyes would see as it lay in the morning twilight.

At first he wondered what to do, whether to follow the track or to go up the butte.

He knew that whatever he did must be done at once, or he might be too late.

He went swiftly up the butte.

When he reached the top he lay at full length, gazing intently over the prairies.

In the pale light of the creeping dawn, they looked wider than ever.

They seemed to stretch away and away endlessly, as if the world did not cease at the horizon, but stooped down under the sky.

Shasta's eyes swept that huge greyness with a lightning glance.

The hollows lay roughly from northeast to southwest.

It was only here and there that it was possible to see their bottoms or what might be concealed along the borders of the streams.

For some minutes Shasta saw nothing suspicious.

Then, about two hundred yards to the west, he saw a creeping shape move across the top of a ridge and disappear.

It was followed by another and then another.

They slid very quickly over the open summit of the ridge.

At the very first glance he knew they were not wolves.

He watched a great number pass over in that peculiar sliding way.

When there was a pause, and no more seemed to be coming, Shasta turned to leave the butte.

What he saw as he did so made his heart leap.

There, not twenty yards away from the foot of the butte, stood an Indian, with his bow in his hand, ready to shoot.

At once Shasta realized that it was a stranger, one of the hostile tribe about to attack the camp.

While his mind worked swiftly, deciding what to do, his body never moved a muscle.

There he was, crouched upon the butte, as motionless as if he had been suddenly turned to stone.

If he attempted to escape the Indian by running east or west, he knew by the way the brave held his bow that a terrible winged shaft would come singing through the air.

The Indians had evidently seen him on the butte, and one of them had been told off to watch that he did not return to camp to carry a warning before the attack was made.

By creeping to the top of the butte in order to reconnoitre the outer prairies, Shasta saw that he had exposed himself to a hidden danger behind.

He saw himself cut off from the camp, utterly alone.

He had already given warning, it is true.

But his people might not know that the enemy were so close upon them, nor how many were gathering for the attack.

And whatever happened, he would be utterly powerless to help them in the fight with their relentless foes.

A feeling of desperation, of anger, swept over him.

It was like the anger which had wrapped its flames about him when he had turned on Musha-Wunk, the bully.

Suddenly, in a flash, he turned and darted over the brow of the hill.

Instantly the Indian shot, but Shasta had been too quick for him, and the arrow buried itself in the hillside.

Shasta was hidden now by the hill, and the Indian could not tell which way he had gone.

The boy went down the hill at a tremendous pace in a series of flying bounds.

When he reached the bottom he turned sharp to the left.

There was broken ground here, and a number of thickets.

Threading his way cautiously through these, Shasta worked eastwards, meaning to approach the camp from the far northeastern side.

He had not gone very far when he heard a series of war-whoops, followed by savage yells, and he knew that the battle had begun.

He regretted now that he had not brought his bow and arrows with him.

His only weapon was the flint tomahawk in his belt.

There was much more light now.

He could see everything clearly.

But the camp was not in sight, because it was hidden in its hollow to the west.

The sounds of the fight came to him plainly in the clear morning air.

There was a knoll in front of him.

He ran towards it, stooping low as in his wolf days.

He had only just reached it, and had thrown himself flat on his stomach, when all at once he heard the running of many feet.

The sound was coming in his direction.

He lay where he was, absolutely still.

All at once he was surrounded by Indians.

Something struck him sharply at the back of his head, and he remembered nothing more.

When he came to himself, he found himself lying across the back of an Indian pony, with a horrible aching in his head.

The pony was at the gallop.

He felt that he was held in his place by the rider.

He could not see the rider.

He saw nothing but a blur of grass that seemed as if it billowed under him in flowing waves.

The blood in his head made a singing like grasshoppers.

There was a tightness there as if it were going to burst.

He tried to think, but thoughts would not come.

He could not tell why he was on the pony's back.

Only the sharp smell of its sweating flanks entered his brain as one smells things in a dream.

Then the seas of grass billowed away into nothingness, and it was a blackness where lightnings flashed.

That was all he remembered of that long ride over the prairies, as he was carried by the Assiniboines back to their hunting grounds in the far northwest.

It was not till many moons afterwards that he learnt that, owing to his warning, their attack had only partially succeeded, and that his tribe had beaten them off after a fierce encounter in which both sides had lost heavily.

When the Assiniboines reached their camp, Shasta was thrown into a tepee and left to come to himself as best he might.

It was not long before he was forced to realize what had happened, and knew that he was a prisoner in the hands of the enemies of his tribe.

What he did not know was that they had carried him off to kill him at their great sun-dance as a religious offering.

Quite unknown to himself, his fame as a medicine-man had travelled far and wide over the prairies, and had even reached the mountains in the west.

This was the wolf-medicine which had made his tribe so powerful since his coming to them.

Once he could be killed, the medicine power would be destroyed also, but, as their own medicine-men assured them, it could be destroyed only by fire.

The weeks went by.

He was allowed out of the tepee by day, but bound with thongs every night, so that he could not move.

He was given much food in order to make him fat and pleasant for the ceremony.

As the time of the great dance grew near, the Indians redoubled their watch upon him.

He was not even allowed to come out of the tepee during the day.

The heat and the lack of exercise made him suffer in body and in mind.

All he knew of the outside world came to him through the hides of the tepee.

He would lie awake in the night, listening to the sounds that stirred abroad, and longing unspeakably to be out in the cool air under the star-glimmer and the sky.

And then the moon would rise and the interior of the tepee would appear in a silver gloom.

It was at the moon-rising that Shasta's restlessness increased till it was like a flame that licked along his bones.

His brain was on fire.

All the pulses of his body beat in the burning of the flames.

Then he would crouch, staring with bloodshot eyes that seemed as if they burnt holes in the tepee and pierced into the night.

Now and then he would moan a little, or make low wolf-noises in his dry throat, but for the most part he was silent, suffering dumbly, as animals suffer, feeling the old free wolf-life tugging at his heart.

Then there would come a moment when it was impossible to bear the torture in silence, and he would throw back his head and vent his misery in howl after howl.

It was small wonder if the Indians beat him for that.

Those dismal notes, ringing out in the deep silence of the night, were enough to make the toughest "brave" uneasy in his heart.

So each night that Shasta howled, he was beaten; and still the feeling was too strong to be overcome, and he was beaten again.

Then, when it was over, and he lay panting and bruised, he would fall upon his thongs in a blind rage, striving to tear them with his teeth.

But his teeth were not the fangs of Nitka, and the raw-hide thongs resisted his utmost efforts.

So when dawn broke he would lie exhausted, and fall into an aching sort of slumber till they came to unbind him for the day.

Once or twice during these nightly howlings he fancied he heard an answering cry far off among the bills; and once there had been a scratching outside the tepee, and he was certain that a wolf was there.

But before he could come to conversation with it an Indian had arrived to beat him, and it had slipped away.

At last the night came before the great dance that was to take place next morning at the rising of the sun.

It was in the beginning of the dance that a great fire would be lighted, and that Shasta would be burned, bound fast to a stake driven into the ground.

No one told him that this was his last night, and that it was on the morrow that he would be killed.

Yet for all that, some instinct warned him that some terrible thing was afoot, and that the end was close at hand.

It was in vain that he had waited all these weeks for his tribe to follow and rescue him.

Either they had been too severely punished by the Assiniboines to dare to follow till they had increased their strength, or else they had delayed too long and now had lost the trail.

So long he had looked for that rescue from the southeast; and the sun had risen and set and the moon had waxed and waned, and waxed again, and still there had sounded through the foot-hills no thunder of ponies' hoofs, nor ringing war-cry as the avenging braves swept on.

The night was very still.

Moon-rise was at hand.

For two nights in succession something had stolen to the outside of Shasta's tepee.

It had stayed only a short time, sniffing and scratching, and then had melted into the shadowy masses of the hills.

Shasta had spoken to it.

He had said very little, but then, being wolf-taught, he knew just what to say.

And so the mysterious visitor had departed wiser than it came.

No one saw this creature, either when it entered the camp or departed.

Even the husky dogs did not detect it in their sleep.

On softly-cushioned feet it glided noiselessly straight to the spot it sought; and when it had paid its visit, it seemed to float along the ground mountainwards like a trail of black mist.

And now, in a terrible suspense, Shasta was waiting, wondering if the thing would come on this, the last night, and whether its coming would bring a message of hope.

Suddenly his eyes shone and a thrill passed through him.

Outside, close against the bottom of the tepee, he heard a sniff.

It was the sound a wolf makes when it takes the air deeply into its lungs and then sends it out quickly.

Shasta began to talk wolf-talk close to the edge of the tepee.

The creature outside answered.

Then in a few moments, it melted into the night.

When it was gone, Shasta felt more utterly alone than before.

He was restless, excited, nervous to a high degree.

It was little wonder if he gave voice to the pent-up wretchedness within him in howl after piercing howl.

They let him howl that night without beating him, because they thought it was the last time the "medicine"-boy would lift his wolf-voice to the moon, and it was his death-song that he sang.

Shasta did not howl for long at a time.

He contented himself by howling at intervals, that were longer or shorter, as his feelings mastered him.

But presently his reason for howling changed.

Down the long throats of the canyons between the hills there came, now in solo, now in concert, a series of calls that set Shasta's blood ablaze.

He answered the calls time after time.

He knew every variation of them, from the deep-throated note that was almost a bellow, to the thin sharp call of the half-grown cub yearning for a kill.

And as Shasta sent out his desperate messages in reply, he used every note of the wolf-language that he knew.

Up and down the hills, wailing along the ridges, sobbing in the hollows, went the wild cries for help, and the answering cries that help was at hand.

At daybreak the howling ceased.

Over all the wilderness stole the grey silence--the silence of the dawn.

Shasta, lying bound in his tepee, watched the cold light as it slowly grew.

All at once, directly above his head, a clear song trilled forth.

It was a lark-sparrow perched upon the top of a lodge-pole, and welcoming the day.

Often and often he had listened to that song before and loved it for its gladsome sound.

But then he had been safe among his own people, and free to go in and out as he chose.

Now the song brought home to him afresh the sense of his loneliness and utter helplessness, bound by the cruel thongs.

The song ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and almost immediately afterwards the tepee was entered by two Indians.

Without unbinding Shasta, they lifted him up and carried him outside.

There he found an old white war-horse attached to a travois, or Indian carriage.

Shasta had seen a travois before, but had never ridden in one.

It was a sort of seat, or basket, fastened to poles, the thin ends of which crossed in front of the horse, while the thick ends trailed along the ground.