HOW DUSTY STAR MET THE TERROR
Midsummer—the Moon of Roses—had melted into the Thunder Moon, and the Moon when the blueberries ripen drew nigh. Now if there was one thing above another which Goshmeelee loved in all the world, it was a good feed of berries. So that when the early tang of the Fall began to tickle her nose, the blueberry feeling made itself felt also, and she made up her mind to appease it. By this time, the cubs had long passed out of babyhood, and were growing into good-sized little bears, quite able to take care of themselves. But as it was a long climb to the berry patches, and Goshmeelee couldn't be sure that they would be ripe, even if she found them, she decided not to cumber herself with the family, but to leave it at home. So, making her wishes more than clear by a good-natured cuff apiece when the little bears wanted to follow her, she lumbered contentedly off upon her quest.
Now on the very morning on which Goshmeelee started to find her berries, Dusty Star was also climbing up Carboona, after having waited until he had seen Kiopo trot off in the opposite direction after game. Of late, Kiopo had developed a strange uneasiness. He was continually leaving the camp and returning to it at short intervals. When in the camp he was always on the alert, watching the forest with a wary eye. By his behaviour, Dusty Star was convinced that his finer wolf-sense had detected some threatening danger which he himself could not perceive. Kiopo told him nothing directly, but the two were by this time in such complete sympathy that the boy learned half the danger, merely by feeling as the wolf felt. He also watched the forest, wondering from what quarter the danger threatened. Yet never had the great woods appeared to hold themselves in such deep untroubled peace. Nothing broke their stillness save the occasional sharp chirr of a chipmunk, or the tapp, tapp of the little black-and-white wood-peckers on some hollow limb. Night came, and the stillness only deepened,—night—and the soundless glitter of the stars.
Once only Dusty Star saw, or fancied he saw, a wolf stand in a clear space in the glimmer of the coming dawn. And at first, thinking it was Kiopo, he had not moved. But when at last, he had gone forward to see, he found the place where it had stood empty.
Slowly, day by day, the sense of danger passed. Kiopo went off hunting for longer and longer distances. But he avoided the upper slopes of the Carboona, and followed trails that led him well away. And not again, either in late twilight, or early dawn, did Dusty Star catch the shadows at their old illusive game. Only one thing remained, and that was the very plain objection which Kiopo had to Dusty Star going up into Carboona at any time of the day. Now when Kiopo objected to anything strongly, his ways of expressing himself were perfectly clear. Not only his eyes, his ears and his mouth, but his whole body said No in the plainest possible way. Dusty Star had no excuse for not understanding that Kiopo objected to his going up Carboona. Yet the more definitely Kiopo objected, the more Dusty Star wanted to go.
He was moving very quickly now, because he was anxious to get as far as possible, in case Kiopo discovered where he had gone, and came to fetch him back. Kiopo was doubtless very wise, and knew the forest better than any one else; yet Dusty Star was quite sure that he had a wisdom of his own, and he liked sometimes to set the Indian "Yes" against the wolf "No." Now, as he mounted higher and higher into an unexplored world, he enjoyed the feeling of having asserted his right to decide things for himself. And every time he stopped to look back, he could see a vaster tract of forest and hills, lying out and out to a distance that had no end.
He was above the forest now, and had entered the borders of the great barren where the waterfowl had their homes along the solitary pools. He pushed on rapidly. Except the flocks of wildfowl, he saw no other life. Here and there, in patches on the rising grounds, he came upon the blueberries, beginning to be ripe. But the bears had not visited them yet, and there were no signs of other large game. It was a little lonely here on the high barren. He wondered, all at once, what he should do if he came upon a grizzly. It was a long, long way from camp, and Kiopo's protection. He began to be conscious that he was very much alone. Something made him look suddenly behind.
Not fifty paces away he saw an enormous wolf.
It stood stock-still, as if caught in the act of stealthy movement, and Dusty Star noticed with uneasiness that between them there was no obstacle or cover of any kind. A couple of swift bounds and the creature could be upon him. Instinctively he realized that it had been stalking him for some time, and was now preparing for the final rush.
For a moment his heart failed him. Then he rallied. Face to face with the Terror of the Carboona, Dusty Star did not flinch. The fine Indian breed of him, descending through long generations, rose magnificently to the test.
He took in his surroundings with a glance. On one hand lay a pool; on the other, a tangle of bushes. Behind him, the ground rose. He waited for the wolf to make the first movement.
For a moment or two, Lone Wolf remained in the half crouching attitude in which he had been surprised. Then, snarling threateningly he began to move slowly forward.
Dusty Star drew his hunting-knife in readiness, and stood his ground. The wolf continued to advance. When not more than a dozen paces separated them, he stopped again. Dusty Star noted the cruel light in his eyes, and knew that he paused for the first spring of the attack. Yet his own gaze did not falter. He held the wolf boldly with his eyes. Never before had Lone Wolf borne the direct stare of the human eye face to face, and the experience made him uneasy. He felt the presence of a mysterious power out of all proportion to the body which contained it. His own eyes glittering with evil as they were, lacked this power. He was fully conscious of his own importance—a great wolf, lord of a wide range; yet some unexplained feeling within him told him that he was now in the presence of a creature greater than himself. For all that, he knew that this new enemy must be attacked, and his right to enter Carboona challenged. For he felt that here, though he could not understand it, was a challenge from the wolves.
Without further warning, he sprang. In the same instant, Dusty Star leaped aside, escaping by a hair's breath the slash of the wolf's fangs at his throat. But he had not been able to leap quite far enough, and, though he tried to save himself he fell. As he did so, he drove his hunting-knife with all his force into the wolf's side.
What happened next was like a thunderbolt from a blue sky.
As the keen blade went home, Lone Wolf yelped and turned furiously on his fallen foe; but before he could slash a second time, a huge black body bounded through the air from the tangle of bushes on the right. The thing was so utterly unexpected that the wolf was completely taken off his guard. The great body, descending full upon him, bore him to the ground.
If his assailant could have kept its hold, the reign of the Lone Wolf, mightily sinewed though he was, would have been over for ever; but the force of the creature's landing had been so great that it slightly lost its balance. That slight loss saved the wolf's life. With a snarl of mingled rage and pain, he tore himself from his enemy's clutch with a tremendous wrench; then, not daring to face those terrible claws again, he bounded off across the barren, leaving a trail of blood.
In the first moment of astonishment, Dusty Star had not recognised his deliverer. Yet Goshmeelee it was, and no other, who now stood before him, gazing at him reprovingly out of her little pig-like eyes.
It was exactly as if she had said:
"You are out of bounds. You have no business to be here. If I hadn't happened to come in the nick of time you'd never have escaped to tell the tale!"
Dusty Star was well aware that all this was perfectly true, even though Goshmeelee didn't put it into plain Indian speech. Also he could see that her rescue of him had been at the cost of some damage to herself. In the brief moment of her grapple with the wolf, his long fangs had seized. It was not a serious wound, but it bled. Goshmeelee, with her immense practicalness, instantly produced from her mouth the washing apparatus dreaded by her cubs, and began to lick the injured spot. Dusty Star looked at her very solemnly with his big brown eyes.
"I never meant you to get hurt," he said in his throaty Indian voice. He kept repeating the words over and over again.
If Goshmeelee had ever been examined in the tongues spoken at Washington, London, Paris, and the other great centres of civilized gabble, by the learned gentlemen so high up in the educational world that it must make them dizzy to look down the precipices of their own minds, she would have been regarded as a perfect "dreadnought" of a dunce. But if they and she had to compete in the tongues used by the forest-folk, not to mention the running language of the water-voices and the wind, I should have been greatly surprised if she had not left them very far behind indeed! So, although she did not know a single word of Dusty Star's Indian talk, she grasped the meaning of it at once, and knew that he was being sorry with his mouth.
When she had licked as much as necessary, she looked pleasantly at Dusty Star with every bit of her good-natured face. That her wound was better, and that she was still ready for blueberries, was what she wanted him to understand.
And Dusty Star fortunately remembered the spot on the barren where the blueberries were on the point of being very nearly ripe. If Goshmeelee had not passed that way, Dusty Star was delighted to think that (although it was nothing in comparison with what she had done for him) he could nevertheless put her in the way of filling with berries that part of her which was wanting to be filled.
He grabbed her by the fur, and gave her a tug.
"You come with me, and I'll show you!" he said.
And Goshmeelee went.