HOW THE WOLVES SANG
Next day, Sitting-Always had recovered. The awkward part of it was that no one could tell which of the medicine-makers had brought about the cure. Dusty Star went about with an uncomfortable sense that, sooner or later, he would be punished for his share in the performance. It had been a splendid piece of frolic; and when you had enjoyed yourself in an extra special way, it generally happened that the grown-up people would come down heavily upon you. Yet as the day went on and nothing happened, he felt more and more bewildered. He had often been punished for naughtiness far less daring. Now, when he had set everybody at defiance, no one said a word. But there were eyes. He could not hide the fact that people looked at him in a strange way as he went about the camp. Even in the home tepee his father and mother observed him curiously, and he felt their eyes upon him even when he pretended not to know.
Gradually, as the days went by, the impression faded. There was a more important thing that haunted his mind continually. Kiopo did not come back.
The weather grew colder. There was much business in the upper sky. By day it took the form of a great arrow-head of wings, driving from the north; by night it was a voice. And as the harsh honking cry fell from the roof of the world, Dusty Star knew that the vast waters of the North were giving up their geese.
And when the last arrow-head had winged, and the last honk fallen, the night-breeze that came sighing along a thousand miles of prairie was barbed with early frost.
One night, the strange restlessness that was in the hearts of the coyotes, making the prairie ridges clamorous with their choruses, disturbed Dusty Star so strongly that it brought him trouble in his dreams. He woke with a sense that something was calling him. As he listened, he recognized the familiar and yet always uncanny way in which the coyotes arrange their evening chorus—the short barks of the opening bars, which grow louder and more acute, till they change to the final howl. They were singing to-night as coyotes had chorused it a million times before. Yet to-night there seemed to Dusty Star to be something special in the cry, as if it were an invitation to him from the prairie folk to go out and do something, or be something, which he had neither done nor been before. Without waiting to question what the thing might be, he got up softly, and crept out of the tepee. Outside, the camp lay very still. Most of the inhabitants had gone to bed. Only here and there a lodge glimmered with the light of an inside fire which had not yet died down.
Dusty Star looked carefully round on every side to see if anything moved, and then glided away into the darkness.
The coyote calls had died away now, but he fancied that they had come from the direction of Look-out Bluff. The bluff was known to be a bad place. The Thunder-bird (so they said) visited it in the moon when the grass is green, and darkened it with his wings. Old Ahitopee, moreover, who had gone upon the Wolf Trail many moons ago, was reported to make evil medicine there, and to hob-a-nob with the prairie wolves. Nevertheless, Dusty Star took his courage in both hands, and went towards the bluff.
He was about half-way there, when he caught, far out upon the prairies, a faint, but carrying note. He stopped, listening intently, but it did not come again. For all that, Dusty Star was certain that he had heard the hunting call of a wolf.
He went on. Overhead, in the black sky, the stars glittered like arrow-heads of white fire. But, under his moccasins, the prairie seemed blacker than the sky. It was dead, dark, motionless. Yet the darkness seemed to have movement in it, as of a furtive travelling which you could not see. Things walked!
At the foot of the bluff, Dusty Star stopped. If old Ahitopee were making medicine, it might be as well to avoid that side of the bluff. Those who went upon the Wolf Trail did not like to be disturbed. He listened very carefully. The huge quiet of the prairies seemed filled with thread-like sounds as from that stealthy travelling which you could not see. Only the medicine of Ahitopee was not audible. It seemed safe to go on.
But now he had the fancy that, towards the north, a shadowy shape kept pace with him as he advanced. When he stopped there was no shadow, but when he moved, it was there.
At the summit of the bluff, he sat down to wait. He did not know what he was waiting for. That did not matter. The prairies knew. They had the Great Wisdom; the Wisdom of the Wolves.
Suddenly, to the north, he saw a pair of glowing eyes that watched him less than a dozen yards away, as motionless as if suspended in the air.
Dusty Star did not move an eyelid. He was not frightened. But he knew now that things were beginning to happen, and it made him feel a little strange. And beyond the eyes, further to the east, a pale light glimmered, which he knew would be the twilight that goes before the moon.
By degrees, as the glimmer grew, Dusty Star saw a shape that gathered about the eyes. It crouched a little, like a coyote. It looked bigger than a fox. And then he became gradually aware as the light increased, that he and the eyes were not alone. He counted one, two, three, four more pairs of eyes with shadows darkening about them east, west, and south. And beyond them there was an outer circle of similar shadows in the likeness of prairie wolves.
The light grew stronger. The moon rose. Dusty Star found himself the centre of a circle of coyotes who sat motionless on their haunches as if waiting for some signal.
Then, from a neighbouring ridge, there broke, clear and ringing, the long voice of a wolf.
The coyotes stiffened with attention. Then, first one, and then another, lifted its head and began to bark. The barking became louder. By degrees, the separate voices began to blend together in a wild, unequal chorus. And now and then some hunched shape; upon an outer ring would become a voice to swell the clamour till it rang echoing from ridge to ridge.
More and more, as the sound drove in upon him, Dusty Star felt a strange sense take hold of him; and as each separate set of barks changed to the combined roar of the final squawl, his entire body shivered to the thrill.
He felt the creatures all about him now. And yet they were not strange. The coyote world, the fox world, the world of the wolves and of the other prairie folk, was closing in upon him in narrower and narrower circles, hemming him in with a roar of sound.
He did not know what the chorus meant, nor what wild impulse urged the coyotes to sing. Nor could he tell why he himself should feel so strangely a part of it all. In the moonlight everything was very clear. For prairie eyes, it was not likely to make mistakes as to what one saw. Yet suddenly Dusty Star stared as if his eyes were starting out of his head.
Right in front of him, with its back to the moon, a great form, larger than a coyote, seemed to have risen out of the ground. As he looked, the creature, lifting its head, let out a long melancholy howl.
Dusty Star held his breath. Could it be?—was it possible?—Kiopo at last?
He was too excited to wait in order to be sure. Springing to his feet, he darted forward with a cry.
The wolf leaped swiftly aside, and was gone.
The creature's disappearance seemed a signal. There was a general movement on the butte. The next moment dusky bodies melted soundlessly down its furrows into the grey vastness of the prairies, and Dusty Star found himself alone.
He was bitterly disappointed. Now, when it was too late, he knew that he done the wrong thing. All his wisdom of prairie-craft and wood-craft had left him in one fatal moment: he had moved at the very instant when he should have remained still. Now he would never know if he had been face to face with Kiopo or not. A sob rose in his throat; a mist swam over the moon: he could hardly see for tears, as he went recklessly down the hill.