Текст книги "Mountain Man"

Автор книги: Vardis Fisher

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Through a cloud of smoke Sam looked over at Zeke. Though safer in pairs, the mountain men usually trapped alone. A lone trapper never for a moment put his rifle more than a few inches from his grasp. But no matter how wary they were they died violent deaths, one by one, year after year: there was never a rendezvous, at Pierre’s Hole, or Brown’s, or Laramie or Union or Bent, that they did not look round them to see which faces were missing. Bill was now looking at Sam. He guessed Sam knew that he had killed five, mebbe, six, of the twenty sent out to take him, and that the others were waiting for him to come out of Colter’s bilins. He had heard from Charley that these braves had met in a secret powwow and had cast lots to see which of them would have the first chance at the Terrer’s scalp. The lot had fallen to Eagle Beak.

"Don’t reckon I ever heard of him," Sam said.

Wall now, if you put a few rattlesnakes, a wolverine, a bitch wolf, a falcon hawk, and a nest of hornets in a pot and stirred them well and then pulled out an Injun, it would be the one who had sworn to cut off Sam’s ears and scalp, and cut out his liver, before the first currants were ripe. Charley said Eagle Beak had slain two Blackfeet before he was old enough to know what a woman was for.

"The first currants are ripe about July," Sam said.

There, was a long silence. Zeke puffed his old smelly pipe and stared at Sam under two brows that looked as tough as bedstraw. Bill was also studying the Minard countenance.

Where was he headed for? Bill asked at last.

The Musselshell, Sam said.

In Bill’s mind was a map of the route Sam probably would take—the path up Dog Creek and then over to Buffalo Fork; from there over to the Du Noir and up it to the South Fork and down it all the way to the Bighorn. He would then be south of the Musselshell at its big bend. Still, Bill reflected, sucking into his lungs a man-killing mixture of strong old tobacco and kinnikinic, Sam might not take the well-worn way, knowing that killers were on his trail. As likely as not he would go over to the Badlands and ride right through Wind River Valley.

"Wonder if she lived through the winter," Sam said.

Bill said he had taken a fresh head and put it on one of the stakes, for he figgered that fresh sign of the whiteman’s hatchet might be good medicine. She had acted awful disarted and skeared but she allus had. When he rode up early one morning she was gathering wild-flower seeds. He had talked to her but she had paid no heed and she hadn’t tried to pint her gun at him or anything. Did Sam kallate ever to figger her out?

"I don’t kallate l’ll ever figger any woman out."

How woman, made of man’s rib, could be so different was a riddle; old Bill Williams, he said a woman’s breast was like the hardest rock and there was no trail on it that he could find. This crazy woman’s breast seemed to be all butter. Any woman’s was, Sam said, for her children.

"And fer nuthin else, I guess. And white gals, they’re too much like pictures."

"I reckon," Sam said, quietly smoking.

"Ever heerd hide or hair uv her husbun?"

"Heard he was alive but I doubt it."

That was Abner Back, Bill said. Abner said the husband had escaped and was on the warpath; Crazy Bode, that was what they were calling him, a terror as bald as Lost-Skelp, hiding somewhere by the Great Falls. Sam had taken from a leather pouch a note pad and a pencil; he said he wanted Bill to write a letter for him to the Crows.

"Doggone it, Sam, I can’t write. You knowed that. But what’s on your mind anyhow?"

Sam said he wanted the rest of the braves to come on, so they could get it over with. He would send them a few choice insults. With note pad and poised pencil Sam waited. Wall now, Bill said, he might think of one or two he had learned. Bill spoke the syllables and Sam wrote them down. The first one said: Ba wara pee-x-ee buy-em. As nearly as he had been able to tell, Bill said, that one meant, "Once in a while I’ll cut your balls off."

If that was what it meant, Sam said, it was almost enough in itself; most men seemed to be horribly sensitive to an attack on that part of them. Did he have another one as good'?

Bill searched a mind that since he came west had paled under the snows of many winters. Why didn’t Sam say, simply, that he intended to wipe them out one by one, or in litters and batches, and send their topknots to the Blackfeet? That was fine, Sam said; how did he spell it out?

After Bill had pronounced the words over and over Sam had this on his note pad: Dee wappa weema sicky hay keeokoh. He said there seemed to be a lot of pa and ma in that one, and gave the paper to Bill, who could give it to Charley when he saw him, and ask him to read it to the hull nation.

Bill said it all reminded him of a Mormon. This fool from a wagon train of greenhorns had taken his holy book and a man to interpret, and had gone to the Cheyennes to make Mormons of them. Seems the Mormons believed the red people were one of the lost tribes of Jews, or something like that, and this preacher went over to tell them the good news. A fool of uncommon size, he stood on a tree stump facing three hundred warriors, their hair glistening with buffler fat, his face boyish and simple and rosy-red; and he told these red devils that they were lost Jews whose ancestors millions of moons ago had somehow crossed to South America. He told them they would all go down to hell and fry in hump fat eternally if they didn’t wash off their war paint and come every Sunday to hear Brigham Young preach the gospel. What then happened to that pore greenhorn was enough to make white women give up having babies. He was tuk away and spitted and roasted like a goose, and his holy book’s leaves made some of the brightest flames in the fire.

The Indians didn’t look like Jews, Sam said.

"They shorely don’t," Bill said.

"I thought their chief belief was a lot of wives."

Wall now, Jim Bridger he had talked to Brigham; he said Mormons were a special people, like the Jews once were. Sam said he reckoned all people thought they were special people.

After trapping with Bill and Zeke for two weeks Sam said he guessed he would be gone, to see if Eagle Beak wanted a hugging match. He would leave his packhorses and pelts with   them, and if his topknot was lifted out yonder, Zeke and Bill could have the pelts and horses. When Sam turned to leave, the emotion in Bill was running deep. He managed to say at last, "I figger ya jist hafta git it over with.”

"For them," said Sam dryly. He mounted the bay and turned for a moment to say good-bye. Zeke and Bill stood side by side, looking at him.

"Watch your topknots," Sam said, and raised his right hand in a good-bye salute.

"Watch yourn," Bill said. He felt like crying a little.

Zeke was silent.

20

SAM HAD so abandoned himself to a delightful winter of hot baths, hot meals, mountain climbing, music, and deep sleeps that his wariness was not what it had been. He made a conscious effort to shake himself out of his notion that all was well, and to realize, after entering the Wind River desolation, that he was in Crow country and was a hunted man in the lands of five nations and ten thousand enemies. In Crow villages the squaws were still gouging themselves with sharp flints and wailing at the heavens, because of the dead braves The Terror had slain. What a day it would be for Sam Minard if he ever fell (wounded perhaps) into the clutch of the Crow women! How they would spit their mucus in his face and empty their bladders and bowels over him! There was nothing the inflamed and shrieking lunatics would not do; they would hack testicles off, tiny piece by piece; dig eyes out with sharpened hawthorn sticks; skewer the end of a tongue and pull it out and slice it off in thin slices; run knife points along gums where they met the teeth, and slice the gums down and back—the frightfulness of their cruelties and obscenities, said those who had been captured and had escaped, could be known only to those who had suffered them. Sam was telling himself these things. Were these human females and mothers? It made a man look back to his own mother and wonder if he had ever really known her. He did not intend to he taken alive. He had told Bill that, and Bill had filled his pipe and said that a lot of men said they would never be taken alive but had been taken. If they took a man by surprise and he found a ride barrel against his back, or if he looked up from his supper or his skinning to see a dozen warriors with drawn bows or knives, hope would rape his mind and paralyze his will, and he would surrender and begin to pray for escape.

Sam rode straight into the heart of Crow country, his thoughts now and then leaping into the north, where the bones of his wife and child were in a cold cairn and a woman sat by two graves. Before long now he would travel only by night; his camps would be fireless and his food cold, until he reached the Yellowstone. His sole task in the next few days was to leave his mark across Crow country.

It was his seventh day out after leaving Bill and Zeke. He was riding along Wind River Canyon when he came to large hot springs just north of Owl Creek Mountains. He wanted a hot bath, but knowing that he would be a fool to linger here a moment, he headed north and east to the foothills of the Bighorns. The desolate country he was now crossing would become, before many years passed, the site of famous battles between redmen and white.

He rode through the late afternoon and the dusk and most of this night, never for a moment doubting that he was being trailed. Now and then he turned abruptly off the path and hid, hoping to surprise his enemy. But this Crow was not to be tricked. Maybe it was Eagle Beak or maybe it was Night Owl. Sam didn’t like it at all: he had allowed himself to be outmaneuvered, for he was now in eroded hill-country, with steep ravines, deep washouts, grotesque stone bluifs: there were countless places where an enemy could hide and look across sights at him—from a ridge, a pile of stones, a cave, a few stunted trees. He was reminded of an old mountain man’s words: "When ye is trailed in open country ride backwards, then ye can see what’s behind ye and yer horse will see what’s ahead." His gaze searching the landscape in pale moonlight, Sam told himself he had better get out of here. He had been across this part of the Wind River desolation only once before and was not familiar with it; in the north he could see piles of mountain or of cloud, but to the east or west he could see only the fantastic wastelands carved by winds and water. The ground was so stony and pitted that he would risk his horse if he tried to outrun a foe; and there were no good places where he could hide and wait.

It was about two hours before daylight. He had just ridden up out of a ravine and reached the crest of a hill when he felt the sudden sledge-hammer blow of it. In that fraction of a moment he knew all that any man could have known about it—that he had been shot and the bullet had gone through him, or the bullet had smashed his rifle, or had struck the carved hawthorn handle of the Bowie. In that split instant he reached a decision that was practically reflex action: dropping the bridle reins, he pitched forward, headfirst, like a man shot from his horse; but it was a planned falling. His horse would stand against great provocation when the reins were down. His life, he knew, would depend on his lying in such a position that he could see, if with no more than the corner of one eye, the bay’s head. Against an unseen foe who could be no more than a hundred or two hundred yards away this looked like the best of his chances. And so in the moment of striking the earth and sprawling on it Sam flung himself half around, so that with his left eye he could look up at the bay and watch the signals. They would be better signals than those of kildeer or red-winged blackbird. To anyone standing in the area and looking over at him he appeared to be a man who had plunged headfirst off his horse and was now dead or unconscious. Both hands were under his lower ribs, by design, one on the right, the other at the left of his breastbone, with palms outspread against the earth; his rump was humped up a few inches, as though he had jackknifed; his head was jammed back between his shoulders and turned down to one side. One leg lay straight out, the other at a right angle against it. His mind in these few moments had been working at lightning speed.

He knew now that a Crow who was a master of stealth had flanked him on the right and a little ahead of him; and out there, laying his gun across a stone or a hummock, had taken steady aim at Sam Minard’s torso and tired. Since Sam had almost instantly pitched off like a mortally wounded man the Indian would have little doubt that he had shot him through; but on approaching he would be as wary as the wolf. He might wait half an hour before making a move. But Sam was fairly comfortable and full of ironic contempt for himself: what an idiot a man was when he hung guns around his belly and thought he was safe! Because his self-esteem had suffered such a shock he told himself that he might catch a few winks of sleep while the red devil was deciding whether his enemy was dead or feigning. The bitter flashes of mirth came and went in him, for he knew that he stood a good chance to be dead within an hour. There might be a dozen Indians out there. Or if there was only one he might come within a hundred feet of Sam and shoot him again. He was not so sure now that his pitching off headlong had been the best plan; it might have been better to have made a run for it, though in that case the Indian would have shot his horse from under him. If it was a brave not fully seasoned in battle he would not shoot a second time; as softly as the wolf he would approach, step by step, gun reloaded, knife drawn; or in his deadly soundless way he might approach with only tomahawk in one hand, knife in the other. He would not know that Sam was watching the head of the bay, or that the movements of eyes, ears, and the whole face would tell him as surely as Sam’s own eyes could have done the moment the Indian left his hiding place and started forward. The bay’s eyes, his ears, his nostrils, the position of his head, and the visible sensation through his whole body would tell Sam in every moment what the redman was doing and how close he was.

Sam would have said that a full hour passed before a sudden movement in the bay’s head told him that the enemy had become visible. Sam now considered leaping up with his rifle and making a duel of it but he was not sure that his rifle would fire. Even so, his enemy would have the advantage of the first shot. If the Indian was as cool as ice—and some of the red warriors were—the second shot would mark the end of Sam Minard. Or if the second shot dropped his horse and the Indian had confederates Sam would be as good as dead.

He decided that his best chance was to play as dead as gone beaver.

The bay’s ears, eyes, nostrils, and whole face told Sam that the redman was advancing. Sam could hear no sound of feet. He had not expected to. His right eye was buried and could see nothing, but the upper part of his left eye had a clear view of the horse’s head, neck, and shoulders. The ears were now up and forward; the eyes were standing out a little in anger and fear; there were spasms in the nostrils and the neck muscles. By the direction of the beast’s gaze Sam knew that the Indian was coming in from the right and front. He felt a wish to examine the handle of his Bowie and the stock of his rifle, for he felt sure that the bullet had struck one of them. He could feel no wound, he had no sense of bleeding. What a lucky fool he had been! But as J im Bridger said, a man got real big luck only once.

Sam did not dare to make the slightest move, for the Indian’s eyes were almost as keen as the hawk’s. Knowing that the foe was slowly coming in and that the slightest movement would fetch a bullet into his back, Sam barely breathed. When he saw the bay’s eyes open wider for a moment, then return to their normal position, he knew that the Indian had paused. In fancy Sam could see him there, crouched, silent, peering, listening. What a hero homecoming he was dreaming of, when, waving The Terror’s scalp, he accepted the shrieking acclaim of his people! It was because the hero would want a perfect scalp that Sam knew he need not fear the tomahawk—for the hatchet, as old Gus Hinkle loved to tell the greenhorns, spiled the skelp.

For about five minutes (the horse’s eyes told him) the Indian stood and looked and listened. Sam knew that the redskin was studying the prone body for signs of breathing. He must have decided at last that his foe was not feigning, for the bay lifted his head suddenly a good three inches, flared his nostrils, and opened his eyes wider. These told Sam not only that the Indian was again advancing, but advancing more swiftly. That was good. Perhaps he was now coming at a fair walk, eager to lift the scalp and possess the horse. He knew that the Indian would stop again, when only twenty-five or thirty feet away, and again study the body for signs of breathing. If he saw none he would again advance, hoping to seize the bridle reins. If the horse backed away the Indian would pursue it, if he had no doubt that Sam was dead. Sam had his hands in such a position that he could draw a small breath without movement; it was his abdomen and not his diaphragm that moved a little in and out.

As he waited he could recall no time in his life when he had been more tense and anxious. He tried to relax just a little, for when the moment came to move he would have to move with what mountain men called greased lightning, which was almost as fast as the cougar’s speed when it leapt from the ledge to the shoulders of moose or elk. What disturbed Sam most was the fact that his enemy was behind him; it gave him a touch of gooseflesh. His left eye, strained and smarting and staring upward, and winking fast to keep the tears away and its sight clear, watched the bay’s head. He figured that when the foe was fifteen feet away, or surely no less than ten, the horse would bug his eyes and perhaps snort a little, and back off two or three steps. That was the moment when Sam would make his move, for in that instant the horse’s movements and its compulsion to flight would rivet the Indian’s attention.

Staring up, Sam saw that the bay’s eyes were growing a little wider all the time. They were an exact measure of the Indian’s movements and of his distance from Sam. But there were other registers in the handsome sensitive face of the bay—in the ears, the nostrils, in the nerves down the cheek, and in the neck. What a picture he made!—standing guard over his prone master, and staring in fright and anger and astonishment at the noiseless slinking creature in war paint and headdress, coming forward.

The sudden low snort came a little sooner than Sam had expected. The horse jerked his head up a good six inches and his eyes bugged with a mixture of ferocity and terror. In the same instant he backed off two swift steps. And in that instant Sam moved. His whole body shot backwards about three feet, propelled by his hands and arms; and all his muscles turned hard and tense for the leap that followed. In the moment of moving backwards he also came to his feet, his lungs filling with air; and he exploded a dreadful screaming cry that in the dry atmosphere could have been heard for two miles. It was such a fearful screech of rage that the Indian, only a few feet from the horse, his hands reaching out, was stricken; and before his nerveless right hand could raise his knife Sam’s powerful grasp was on his throat and the bones in his neck were snapping. As the bones snapped Sam’s right foot came up and with tremendous power struck the redman in his loins, sending him in a reeling spin. An instant later Sam was on him, to cut off the right ear and the scalp, and it was when drawing his knife

that he learned that the little finger of his right hand had been shot away.

After a second glance at his hand Sam turned away without taking the scalp and went to his horse. The beast had backed off about sixty feet, and there he stood, nostrils twitching, his whole body trembling, his bulging eyes looking at his master. Sam went up to him slowly, gently, saying "It’s all right, old feller, it’s all right"; and voice and hands tried to soothe him. Gentle palms caressed the head and neck; stroked down the flat hard cheeks; and down the forehead, a forefinger softly patting just above the upper lid of the eyes. Standing to the left of the head, Sam put his right hand under the chin to the right cheek, as Lotus had done with her pony that farewell morning; and while he stroked the cheek he searched the horizon around him and talked all the while. "You saved my life, old feller. Do you know that? You’re bettern the wren and the road runner and the magpie .... " Looking over the horse, Sam saw that he was covered with sweat. So he went on talking and patting, until the bay no longer trembled and had a normal expression in his eyes; and not until then did Sam look at the stock of his rifle. A piece of it had been shot out, along with his finger. The bullet had taken his finger, hit the stock, deflected, and plowed a furrow across Sam’s stomach and up his ribs. Two inches back of a rib it had torn out a piece of skin and flesh as big as his thumb. Drawing his leather clothing up, he studied his wounds. They were nothing at all. He would have a long scar across his side and he guessed he would call it his lotus scar. He would fill the wounds with tobacco, and with balsam sap when he came to spruce trees. For a few moments he looked at the bloody bone stub of his finger and wondered if he ought to try to draw skin over it. He guessed not.

Going over to the Indian, he tried to make out the features but they were lost in hump fat and red ochre. The Indian braves, he was thinking, were only boys at heart; they simply must smear themselves with rancid grease and dance through a clutter of rituals and shriek like lunatics to get their blood up. Was this Eagle Beak? In any case it was one of the twenty. Sam looked into the medicine bag; pieces of the totem should be in it—teeth, claws, tail, beak, or something. There was a beak. Sam studied it and thought it might be the beak of the golden eagle. Had he slain the most deadly one of all his enemies? He hoped he had.

All the while scanning the world around him, he took off the moccasins, thinking that Kate could use them; took the scalp and shook blood from it, and hung it and an ear from a saddle string; chewed tobacco and rubbed its juice in his wounds and over the bone stub; and then mounted the bay. Farther north in Crow country he would hang the medicine bag above a well-traveled trail, for all the passing braves to see. Glancing over at the dead warrior, he thought it a pity to leave such a brave man to the vultures and ravens.

He sat, the ritle across his left arm, and looked round him. It was God-forsaken country all right, if it could be said that the Almighty had disowned any of His handiwork: as far as a man could see in all directions it was ravines, gullies, washes, eroded bluffs, alkali lime wastes, with only stunted plants. He didn’t suppose that the bones of Eagle Beak would ever be found away out here. Curious to learn how he had been so neatly ambushed, Sam rode in the direction from which the bullet had come. He found the exact spot where his foe had knelt and fired, and guessed the distance at two hundred yards. It was a fair shot at that distance. He remembered that most Indians preferred gut shots. A good gut shot might take time but it always killed, whereas a shot in the rib cage might not be mortal, unless it struck the heart or exploded the liver.

Sam now perceived how his enemy had got close to him. Below was a deep ravine that ran forty yards east, swung sharply to the south for about a mile, and then to the southwest. Two miles back Sam had crossed the head of this ravine. Eagle Beak, on his trail, had ridden swiftly up the ravine, to wait for him. Sam felt hopelessly stupid. Only a fool would ride up a long ridge, with a deep ravine parallel to his line of travel. He might as well walk naked into a Crow village and climb into the pot and tell the squaws to pour boiling water over him.

Descending into the ravine, Sam found the Indian’s pony in a thicket of scrub juniper. It was a fine horse. The twenty picked warriors had had their choice from large herds. Near the horse was a bedroll. Feeling over it, Sam could tell that inside were ammunition and a skin of pemmican. There was no saddle. After tying the roll across the pony Sam mounted the bay,  and leading the pony climbed out of the ravine. The redman’s rifle he left by the stone where it had been fired.

He was hungry but his thoughts were on the Musselshell and back with the dead warrior. On his way to the Yellowstone he killed tive more warriors, three of whom, their horses and equipment said, belonged to the twenty. He was a little tired of killing these people; it was too much like knocking over fool hens. Two of those he killed were mere boys, with poor weapons, shaky trigger Hngers, and a childlike belief in magic. Perhaps he ought to go visit his father-in-law. He might find another Lotus there.

21

HE WAS THINKING of all this while riding across wolf country. During the deep winters in northern latitudes wolves roamed over the frozen world, looking for deer, elk, moose, even for mountain sheep and goat, that had become feeble from hunger and got stuck in the snow. When spring came, wolves looked for dead animals that had been buried by snowslides. The grizzly and other bears, ravenous with hunger after the long sleep, also searched along steep mountainsides, where the avalanches of melting snow swept down, uncovering the tender shoots of early plants, and animals that had died during the fall and winter. Sometimes wolf and bear met on these feeding grounds.

In the southern foothills of the Bighorns four big gray prairie wolves, the mother and father and two children, had found several deer that had been smothered by a snowslide. They had eaten and were making a cache of the remainder, at the base of a sheer ledge that rose above them, when with a movement as swift as any in the animal world the bitch turned, at the same time lifting her head and pulling her lips back to show her fangs. A deep warning growl came up her throat. The father wolf, alerted, looked over at his mate. The two youngsters also sounded a warning. Then all four, backs arched, ears forward, fangs clicking, looked off to the left, where an enormous male grizzly had risen to his hind feet, to have a better look around him. He had smelled the dead flesh. There he stood, a monster, his small eyes peering, his front furry paws hanging loosely. But for his sensitive sniffing nose he seemed to be in an attitude of prayer. Because the wolves were a hundred yards away it is possible that the bear did not see them, for like the buffalo’s, his eyesight was poor; but he smelled the meat and he thought he knew where it was. Sinking soundlessly to all four feet, he moved forward in an easy rolling gait of fat and fur. The wolves watched him come on and warned him with growls and snappings, and backs steadily arching higher. Even if the grizzly had seen the four of them he would not have paused. This male weighed eleven hundred pounds and was afraid of nothing on earth that he had ever seen, though he did try to keep sensibly out of sight when he smelled men and gunpowder. His only plan was to find the flesh and eat, and then stretch out for a siesta in the warm sun.

When sixty feet from the wolves he heard them and his dim eyes saw them. He then did what a grizzly bear usually did when faced by something whose nature and purpose he was not sure of. He rose to his hind legs, his front paws again in that curious attitude of prayer. He saw the four wolves—they now stood abreast, facing him, backs arched, mouths open, teeth snapping. He smelled the animal anger in them but he also smelled the flesh and he was too hungry to be prudent.

When the bear sank again and stood on his four enormous paws he seemed to consider his position for a few moments and then moved forward; and four wolves shot toward him like four gray lightning flashes. If a man’s eyes had been watching—and from the ledge above a man’s eyes were watching—they could not have followed the incredible speed and agility and grace of these four wild dogs. As the father wolf shot past on the bear’s right he snapped savagely at the sensitive nose; and on the other side the mother wolf snapped at it; and though the grizzly in a flash raised a paw and swept an area, long curved talons extended, the wolves not only were gone from his reach but had rushed past his flanks and turned and leapt to his back. Both mother and father had fangs over two inches long, and jaws so powerful they could crack the leg bones of an elk. Both nosed into the deep fur and sank their teeth in the upper flanks; and when the bear, astonished and burning with anger, made woofing sounds and awkwardly rose to his hind legs, the two wolves clung to him, fangs buried. The youngsters, obeying the knowledge that lay deep in their instincts, flashed forward the moment the bear reared, and tried to bite and tear through fur and hide to his ham tendons. The grizzly was covered over with tawny gray furies determined to kill him.

Most bears are by nature placid, good-natured, and friendly. if this grizzly had any power of thought in his small dark skull he must have wondered why he should be attacked merely because he wanted food. All the first sounds he made were of astonishment and wonder; then came exclamations of pain and anger; and when the parent wolves dropped from the back and gouged at the hams, eager to chew the tendons in two, the grizzly exploded with a roar of rage that shook the mountain, and sinking again to four feet, turned swiftly round and round, his front paws sweeping across great arcs but never touching his foes. It was now that the wolves showed their amazing agility and daring. Not a dog among them, not even the young ones, but knew that if the bear’s powerful paw struck them they would be ripped open from shoulder to ham. Yet with superlative courage they took their chances. The four of them were marvels of speed and light as they flashed in and struck, flashed out, burned in a lightning instant, and struck again. Never once was one found in the way of another. Time after time the bear’s long deadly claws came within an inch or less of striking dog flesh; but not once during the fight was wolf touched by fang or talon. The bear was so goaded, so out of his mind with fury and frustration, that he set up a bawling roar that became louder and louder, until the hills roundabout echoed it. For twenty minutes the savage fight continued, and not for a moment did any of the wolves pause in their lightning attack. The grizzly’s fur was too deep, his hide too thick and tough, for the dogs to be able to hamstring him. Besides, he kept turning, or standing up and coming down, or shaking himself like a monster in a great fur coat, or striking out with both front paws. Now and then the parents shifted their attack to his flanks or underbelly; and the father in an act of superb courage faced the monster and struck and furrowed the sensitive nose. This brought from the bear a cry that must have been heard for miles. The man on the ledge was wishing that a piece of great music could be played above this struggle—the tempest in the sonata in F minor, or—yes, indeed!—the choral in the Ninth.