Medicine Road Read online

  A second later she had looked up, horrified to see Elk Woman riding like the wind toward the spur of low hills, Johnny kicking and yelling across the withers of her racing pony.

  The next moment they had all been startled to see Tim leap on his saddle gelding and take out after the Indian woman. From his shouts and yells, they had assumed he was dashing off on an instant and brave attempt to catch the squaw before she could reach the sanctuary of the hills. But then, even as they were voicing their confused admiration for Tim's act, and before any thought of an organized pursuit of the squaw could be formed, the hills had belched out a cloud of screaming red warriors. Elk Woman and Johnny, followed by the hapless Tim, had disappeared into the belly of this cloud that then swept on unchecked, to surround the strung-out wagons....

  -from "Medicine Road"

  BLIND CANON

  THE SCOUT

  WINTER SHADOWS

  THE LEGEND OF THE MOUNTAIN

  GHOST WOLF OF THUNDER MOUNTAIN

  TUMBLEWEEDS

  FROM WHERE THE SUN NOW STANDS

  THE GATES OF THE MOUNTAINS

  CUSTER

  ALIAS BUTCH CASSIDY

  THE HUNTING OF TOM HORN

  ONE MORE RIVER TO CROSS

  YELLOWSTONE KELLY

  RED BLIZZARD

  THE LAST WARPATH

  WHO RIDES WITH WYATT

  CHIRICAHUA

  JOURNEY TO SHILOH

  MACKENNA'S GOLD

  THE CROSSING

  THE BEAR PAW HORSES

  SAN JUAN HILL

  DEATH OF A LEGEND

  WILL HENRY

  Orphans of the North

  Medicine Road

  There was no sound in the Hemlock Wood. The snow came to rest silently upon the forest's floor; the wind lay noiselessly among the spruce and balsam boughs. No movement disturbed the vast, uneasy quiet to hint that life still stirred the frozen pulse of the Arctic woodland-and yet it did.

  So, too, did fear. The very silence smelled of fear. It was in the staleness of the air, the unnatural hush of the hemlocks, the slowing fall of the snow. Beneath its eerie spell the animals crouched waiting, fearing the stillness, wanting it to end, yet fearing even more the sound they knew must end it. Presently the waiting was done, the frightening silence broken. From the north, borne on the cold wings of an awakening wind, came the long, quavering, low-keyed and weirdly beautiful hunting song of the white Arctic wolves.

  Thus was Awklet born into a world of savage uncertainty. The cow moose Bera was his mother. She was an old moose, gray with the snows of many winters. Awklet was to be her last calf, and that he might live old Bera was prepared to die. The wolf song was not new to her. She had heard it many times before. Always it came as it did now, when the animals were weak and thin from the wintertime's lack of forage, when they could not run or fight. They could only crouch in their hiding places and wait, hoping the wolf pack would pass them by.

  Quickly old Bera worked with her newborn calf. Nosing the baby ever deeper into the alder tangle, her red-rimmed eyes kept searching nervously from right to left. The calf stumbled awkwardly on legs that were yet too new. Time and again he fell, but old Bera's great, humpy nose was always there to urge him up and onward. Presently the old cow moose found that for which she sought-dry ground, free of snow and heavily grown with tough, acrid forest grasses. She hesitated, sniffing and grunting eagerly, and was quickly satisfied. The dry ground would not hold their scent overly long, and the strong smell of the native grasses would confuse what little odor she and the calf might leave upon it.

  The time grew short now. Hurriedly Bera forced the wobbly calf across the clearing and toward her chosen goal-an overhang of scraggly cedars whose branches were snarled in a thick, protective crown, and whose fallen trunks and limbs formed a perfect fortress-nest for her tiny young one. In the heart of this cover she made him lie down to await her return.

  The calf uttered little soft noises and touched his velvety nose to that of his mother. He did not understand the reasons for the old cow's worried actions. With his weak baby's vision he could scarcely see the things about him. Even his mother was no more than a big shadow that made reassuring sounds and gave forth a comforting smell. But in the wild a parent's orders are obeyed instinctively. Directions are somehow comprehended and carried out at once, and without argument. So it was that tiny Awklet lay precisely as old Bera left him, although her reasons for having him do so were entirely beyond his hours-old intelligence.

  Loki paused on the crest of a high snowbank and gazed down upon the silent Hemlock Wood. He was a tremendous wolf, deep of chest, thick of loin, heavy and powerful of flank. Great muscles rolled beneath his magnificent coat. Every movement he made was one of absolute power and certainty. He knew no hesitation, no doubt, no fear. And why should he? Loki was the king of the white Arctic wolves.

  He gazed long at the forest, his face without expression, his body without movement. Behind him the crowded ranks of his followers were frozen images awaiting his signal. At length he turned to them. They drew back, growling and muttering among themselves. He gave no sign that he saw or heard their uneasiness. His stumpy little ears lay back close to his broad skull. The bands of muscle along his jaws quivered only slightly. His face was a scarred white mask from which only one eye glared at his nervous followers. Where the other eye should have been there was nothing save an empty slit. Even in the remoteness of the Arctic, the price of kingship is a heavy one.

  Loki narrowed his one good eye. A low rumble shook his chest. Like released springs the muscles of the waiting wolves uncoiled. They went over the crest of the snowbank in a silent wave, cascading down its steep face like a waterfall of white fur. They melted into the forest below without a sound.

  Old Bera listened intently. The hunting song of the wolves had fallen away and she heard nothing. Satisfied, she gave Awklet a last nuzzle, turned, and forced her way out of the cedar tangle. Stepping into the open ground of the clearing, she moved with decision and sureness. Her baby was well hidden. The wolves would not find him, and what matter her fate? The calf was safe, that was the main thing. It remained only for her to lead the wolves away from his hiding place. That was as far as the wild mind worked. The fact that the calf would surely starve without her never occurred to old Bera.

  Through the snow-deep aisles of the forest the wolf pack coursed. Only the hush-hush of their feathery footfalls distinguished them from the ghosts they resembled as they followed Loki in search of game. In the rear of the pack, a little separated from the others, three big dog-wolves ran by themselves. They were One Ear, Bakut, and Scarface. Long dissatisfied with Loki's leadership, the three were growling and bickering angrily. Presently One Ear lagged even farther behind the pack's swift pace. His two companions dropped back with him. Soon the pack drew away and a turn in the trail hid them from its view. At once the three deserters struck out on their own, their course leading them at right angles to that of the pack.

  They had not gone far before they blundered across the fresh tracks of a cow and calf moose. Following this sign, their keen nostrils were suddenly stung with the full body scent of their quarry. They cut away from the tracks and headed across a small, open meadow directly toward the new, stronger odor. Ahead of them was a thick stand of alder and birch. They slowed their pace, their noses telling them their prey lay just beyond the cover, their instincts warning them they must now proceed with the greatest care. Loki was not far off and the law of the wolf pack made no allowances for deserters like themselves.

  Luck held with them. As they broke through the stunted trees, they stopped and dropped to their bellies in the snow. Across a second small clearing an old cow moose was putting the finishing touches to an amazingly clever calf nest. Had they not surpris
ed her at it, they would never have known the calf was there. As it was, they would get two suppers for the effort of one.

  There was no need for a signal. One Ear, Bakut, and Scarface knew their business. It wasn't as if this was the second or third, or even the tenth or twentieth cow moose they had stalked. Bakut would slash the great tendon in her right rear leg, Scarface that in her left. As she went down, One Ear would leap for her throat. It was that simple, and it would all be over very quickly.

  Loki brought the pack to a halt in the big meadow that formed the center of the Hemlock Wood. Here, as they had since the oldest of them could remember, the wolves would separate into small bands and work the forest in an ever narrowing circle. By nightfall they would have closed the circle and completed their work of destruction.

  Like the well-trained hunters they were, the various pack leaders took their followers and departed. Zor and Bigfoot were first, then Lukat, Split Lip, and old Sukon, the greatest hunter of them all save Loki himself. Watching them go, the king wolf's single eye narrowed suddenly. The meadow was empty now, the last wolf gone, yet he had not seen One Ear, Bakut, or Scarface with any of the departing packs. Loki growled, deep and ugly, in his throat. Unless his one eye was tricking him, the three must have left the main pack before it entered the meadow. Still growling angrily, he turned swiftly along the back trail, following the broad snow track the pack had made in reaching the meadow.

  Old Bera speeded her ungainly gait as she came across the clearing away from the cedar tangle. She must not be seen leaving her calf. The wolves must find her before they found her baby. She must play the old wilderness mother's game of leading danger away from her helpless young. Suddenly she froze in mid-step. Was that a movement there in the snow ahead of her? Just at the edge of the clearing, where the forest began? She reached out her huge, humped nose, peering uncertainly toward the alder and birch clump.

  The snow moved again, took sudden, frightening form. Wolves! Three of them. Crouched to their bellies in the snow, their furry haunches gathered under them, their almond-shaped, yellow eyes fastened upon her. Grunting hoarsely, she wheeled to face them.

  They came at her in a silent rush, and, as they came, old Bera was ready for them. She braced herself, easing her great weight back upon her hindquarters so that her razor-sharp forehoofs would be free to lash out at her attackers. Nostrils spread, small, red eyes rolling wickedly, heavy lips laced with nervous froth, she presented no reassuring picture to Loki's three deserters.

  One Ear hesitated understandably. Bakut and Scarface broke their charge, sliding to a stop at the same time. This was not going to be so easy as it had looked.

  Presently One Ear slunk off to the right, circling around to get behind the old cow. Bakut and Scarface followed him. Bera turned with them, step for cautious step. There were no beginners here. All four animals were veterans of dozens of such encounters. None wasted so much as a single breath or motion as the endless, silent circling went on. But old Bera had only two eyes-and there were three wolves.

  The circle was broken without warning. Suddenly Bakut charged straight in. As Bera reared to meet him, he sidestepped and dived in under her, slashing for her rear leg. She was forced to whirl and tuck the leg high to her side so that Bakut's fangs would strike only the tough muscles of her outer haunch, missing the inner, soft part of the leg for which he aimed. In doing this, she had to turn her eyes from One Ear and Scarface. They closed instantly, both leaping for her unprotected throat.

  At the same instant, Bakut's teeth closed on her haunch. The pain of the wound caused her to rear suddenly higher, making both One Ear and Scarface miss their aims and bury their fangs in the bone and sinew of her shoulder. The hurt of the new wounds forced an explosive grunt from the old cow moose.

  It was the first sound of the unequal struggle. It echoed like a pistol shot in the still air, startling Awklet to his feet within the cedar tangle. His action was purely nervous, could not be controlled. His mother's deep grunt had been too loud, too close, too instinctively frightening. Then, before he could move again, he heard another, more terrifying sound-the guttural snarling of angry wolves. It was a sound as fascinating as it was frightening, and the young moose could not resist the strange excitement and curiosity it called up within him. Stretching his thin neck toward the source of the fearsome noise, he blinked his weak eyes in infant wonderment.

  Loki traveled fast. Shortly he came to the spot where One Ear and his two companions had left the pack. Pausing only a moment to sample the freshness of their tracks, he swung off after them. He moved with the tireless gait peculiar to the hunting wolf, ears back, red tongue lolling, lone eye burning.

  Before long the trail of the deserters joined that of a cow moose and her day-old calf. Loki lengthened his stride. The scent was very fresh now and he knew his followers could not be far ahead. They were not. Within the next minute he heard their snarling.

  Swiftly the king wolf changed his course, racing toward the birch and alder thicket from beyond which the snarling came. As he ran, a new odor struck his nose-fresh blood. Then, suddenly, a fourth smell, strongest and deepest of them all, came to him.

  Loki trembled as he bellied into the snow and crept through the thicket. He always trembled at that smell. He loved it. It was in his very sinews. He knew its harsh scent as well as he knew his own, and the excitement of it never failed to set every fiber of his great body on sudden, tingling edge. It was the smell of death.

  As Awklet's straining eyes focused on the clearing, he saw his mother, gaunt old Bera, thrusting and slashing with her cloven forehoofs. First One Ear attacked, feinting and dodging, leaping and snarling. Then, when One Ear pulled away, Bakut and Scarface raced in, retreating swiftly when One Ear attacked again.

  Suddenly Bakut slipped beneath old Bera as she turned to thrust One Ear away from her flank. With invisible speed his fangs slashed across the tendons of one rear leg. At the same instant, One Ear leaped in and severed the sinews of the other. The old moose staggered and went down as Scarface found her throat with merciful speed.

  The young moose sank back into his nest, burying his head in its warm grasses. Wild confusion raced through him. He shook violently, his breath coming hard, his tiny heart pounding. Still, true to instinct and his mother's instructions, he did not move or make a sound. But blind obedience was not to save him now.

  With the cow down, One Ear, Bakut, and Scarface turned to finish the hidden calf. But as they did, the tall grasses at the edge of the clearing behind them parted silently. Loki's lips lifted in a soundless snarl. The expression on the king wolf's face was not a good thing to see. Noiselessly Loki launched his charge.

  Completely occupied with the hidden calf, his three followers did not hear his silent rush until it was too late. Scarface, trailing his two companions toward Awklet's nest, died first, his back broken by one grinding slash of Loki's huge jaws. His death snarl brought One Ear and Bakut to a sudden, sliding halt. Their stiffly braced forelegs were nearly touching Awklet before the two wolves came to a full stop. In wheeling to face their angry leader, one of the big wolves actually stepped on the terrified calf. It was too much for the nerve-wracked baby moose. With a bleat of terror he bounded to his feet, leaped blindly into the surrounding brush tangle. He had not blundered twenty feet before he was hopelessly caught in the snarled branches. There he hung, a trapped and helpless witness to a sight he was never to forget.

  One Ear and Bakut now faced their king. The latter's position astride the dead Scarface told them what had brought Loki here. They knew they had broken the law of the pack and they knew their leader had come to punish them for it. They knew, also, as Loki stepped over the motionless body of Scarface and glided toward them, how he meant to punish them for it.

  Awklet looked on, spellbound. Even in his instinctive dread of them, he could not take his eyes from the wolves. Nor could he, for all his frightened confusion, fail to note the contrast between Loki and his opponents. Where they were big, Lok
i was huge. Where the muscles of One Ear and Bakut rolled impressively when they moved, those of Loki bulged unbelievably. Where the grasses scarcely bent beneath the tread of the other wolves, they seemed not to bend at all under the footfalls of the king wolf. Yes, Awklet saw Loki, and he never forgot him. Of all his memories, that of the leader of the white Arctic wolves was to remain uppermost in the mind of the orphan moose calf.

  Shoulder to shoulder now, One Ear and Bakut awaited Loki's attack. He was almost upon them, but they showed no fear. Whatever else they may have been, One Ear and Bakut were no cowardsand they were no fools. Despite their breaking of the pack's law against hunting alone and despite the long years of Loki's savage administration of that law, they had the king wolf outnumbered two to one. Such odds were insurmountable. Loki might get one of them. He would never get both of them.

  At first it looked as though they were right. Barely two paces from them, Loki caught his foot in a protruding cedar root, stumbled, and fell, full-length, in front of them. They were upon him instantly, roaring and slashing crazily.

  From his prison in the cedar tangle, Awklet stared in dumb amazement. The snarling of the wolves was terrifying, but the fascination of their fury was greater to the tiny calf than his fear of it. He continued to watch, and, as he did, the impossible happened.

  With one great surge the king wolf regained his feet and shook free of One Ear and Bakut. Before the astonished wolves could recover, he dived past them. Then, turning with incredible speed, he was back upon them, all in-one-raging instant.

  Bakut died as Scarface had, without a struggle. Loki, coming upon him from the rear, closed his huge jaws on the vertebrae of his neck. There was a single, crunching splinter of bone and that was all. In the next moment he whirled and leaped at One Ear. But the latter was ready for him and met him in mid-leap.

  Shoulder to shoulder the two wolves crashed and reared upright, their forelegs tucked against their furry chests, their hind legs straining to gain an overthrow. Their fangs were clashing and grinding in movement too swift to follow as each sought the other's throat. For a moment the outcome seemed in high doubt, but Loki's fury was too great to be withstood. Slowly One Ear fell back before it, still striving to meet fang with fang, shoulder thrust with shoulder thrust. The end came abruptly.