CHAPTER XXIV—THE PACK.
Sandy’s first impulse was to run. Then he recalled what he had heard an old woodsman say, that to flee from a wolf pack is to invite almost certainly pursuit. Yet what other course was there for him to pursue? He had his rifle and some cartridges, but the pack was a large one and there was something in their appearance, even at that distance, that was strikingly sinister in its suggestion of unloosed savagery.
Behind the hesitating boy lay stretched a level snowfield without a tree or a rock showing above its surface for some distance. Ahead of him, and a little to his right, was the big rock pile already mentioned. The wolves were racing diagonally across the snow. If he did not act quickly the only refuge in sight, the heaped up pile of rocks, would be lost to him.
Hesitating no longer, Sandy put out every effort that was in him and started for the rocks. But as he flew over the snow with his heart beating as if it would burst his sides, he knew that if he won the race it would be only by a very narrow margin.
His feet felt leaden. Although he put forth every ounce of strength he possessed, it appeared to him that he hardly moved. He had experienced the same sensation in nightmares, when he seemed to be in the grip of peril without the power of crying out or moving a limb.
“I must make it! I must!” he kept saying to himself as he pushed forward.
But the space between himself and the wolves, who had seen his move and apparently divined the object of it, was growing terribly small. Racing at an angle to his line of progress, the creatures were swiftly closing up the gap which gave the boy his margin of safety.
The rocks, which he must reach to have even a fighting chance against the famished pack, appeared to his bursting eyes to be almost as far off as they had been when he started on his race for life. He saw that they were immense boulders with big, snow-filled crevasses between them. If only he could reach them he did not doubt but that there were innumerable natural fortresses among them from which he could safely defy the wolves.
But could he make it?
Life and death hinged on that question now, for there could be no doubt remaining but that he was the wolves’ quarry, the prey that they sought with dripping fangs and eager, blazing eyes.
The thought flashed through Sandy’s mind that the hunting must have been bad for the pack to make them pursue a human being, something which the savage but cowardly creatures rarely do unless driven to desperation by ferocious pangs of appetite. Hunger, as with most animals, will convert wolves, ordinarily despised by the northern woodsman, into beasts as dangerous as tigers.
Sandy had heard tales of the northern wolves when feed is scarce and the snow lies on the land. He was under no delusions as to his danger. But, strange to say, as he ran onward a sort of fierce pleasure in the race came over him.
At school Sandy had made some notable records on the track. But never had he had such an incentive to speed as now confronted him. He felt a savage determination to beat out those gray-flanked, drip-fanged creatures, if the life within him held out in the cruel test of speed and staying power.
The rocks loomed larger. He had crossed the line the pack was pursuing. A savage chorus of yelps arose as the leaders saw what had happened and swung their cohorts on a new tack.
And now the haven of refuge he was struggling for loomed up larger and closer. Only a few feet more and——
A rock concealed under the snow, an outcropping no doubt of the large, castle-like pile, caught Sandy’s foot. He plunged headlong into the snow. As he fell he could hear behind him the yelps of the pack. They thought that now the race was over beyond a doubt; that in a few seconds more their teeth would be tearing the helpless boy.
But Sandy, half stunned by the violence of his fall, managed to struggle to his feet in the nick of time. He could almost feel the breath of the leaders of the yapping pack at his neck when he found himself, he hardly knew how, on his legs once more and struggling with the last remaining ounces of his strength to reach the rocky cliffs, which alone held out a promise of safety.
Many things raced through his mind as he drove on. Thoughts of Tom and Jack, of his old school fellows and of his parents far away in Scotland, memories of old grudges and repented wrongs. Sandy had read of drowning people whose whole lives race before them in a dazzling film of realism in their last moments. He wondered if it was his end that was presaged by the vivid panorama of his career that was mirrored in his mind as he ran.
Behind him there arose a savage howl of disappointment. Cheated of their prey just when it appeared certain that it was within their grasp, the pack was giving vent to its feelings. The big, gaunt leaders gave forth a baying note, the hunting call of the pack.
Sandy set his teeth.
“I’ll beat you yet, you gloomeroons!” he muttered savagely.
He stumbled again; recovered his balance; went plunging half blindly on. His mind was now a blank to all but one thought: those rocks in front of him. He must reach them, he must, he must.
He stretched out his arms as if to try to grasp with his finger tips the rough surface of the foremost of the huge boulders. The wolves’ howls sounded more loudly behind him. His strength began to falter at their cries.
But by an effort he rallied his nerve and put forth another burst of speed.
The next instant he felt his hands touch the rocks in front of him. Almost simultaneously the leader of the wolves, a great, gaunt beast, fully shoulder high among his brethren, leaped at the boy.
But the jump fell short. With a savage snarl of disappointment, the great gray wolf fell back, while Sandy, with the strength of desperation, clambered upward among the rocks.
The leader of the wolves, a great, gaunt beast, leaped at the boy.