The wolf made a high leap for the man’s throat, but with the skill of a trained fighter, the man thrust the open jaw upward with his left arm and delivered a heavy blow on the chest of the beast with his right. The blow threw the wolf back but his heavy fur and loose skin protected him from being knocked out. A second time the grim, hungry beast sprang to the attack and again the man parried the open jaw and drove home a blow with his right. This time with so much force that the ugly gray beast reeled and fell on his back. But he was not stunned, and before the man realized that [[225]]he might have fallen upon the prostrate brute, the wolf was up again and was coming to repeat his attack.
However, there had been just enough of a pause to enable the man to form a plan, and when the wolf sprang at him for the third time, he did not merely ward off the gaping jaw, and he did not try to deliver another blow. His mind had hit upon a plan of closing with the fierce hairy monster. He shot out his right hand, seized a firm hold on the skin just behind the wolf’s left jaw, and brought his full weight down on the beast as he fell on top of him in the snow. The man let out a wild yell as for a second he felt the wolf limp under his weight. But he had rejoiced too soon. A wild animal, when cornered, never stops fighting until he is dead or completely overpowered and made helpless. The wolf was fighting again. True, his formidable vise-like jaws he could not use and the man had clenched his powerful hands around the wolf’s throat. It was a battle to the death, [[226]]with neither wolf nor man as yet the victor. The claws of the wolf are dull tools as compared with the sharp steel-like claws of the panther, but driven by hard, powerful muscles they are no mean weapons. Had not the man been protected by tough buckskin clothing, his skin would have been lacerated and he might have bled to death, holding his savage victim. The man was winning now. The struggles of the gray beast grew less and less violent, then they became like cramps and spasms, and then the long gray body lay still.
The man was sweating and bleeding; he still clenched the throat of the wolf as if unconscious of the fact that the animal no longer moved. And then he heard a long-drawn-out howl, the hunting call of the wolf pack. That brought him to. He sprang to his feet. He snatched off a young poplar, brittle with frost, and with it he crushed the skull of the beast, for he was still mad with the fear and rage of the battle.
Then he seized the dead beast by the forelegs, [[227]]flung it over his shoulder and ran for camp. The joy of victory seemed to give him unlimited strength. Half-way down to camp, he heard again the call of the pack. They were nearer now. He turned back and shouted, “Stay back, you dirty brutes!” and ran on.
He reached the camp when it was almost dark. “Father, I killed a wolf, I killed him,” he called as he staggered into the tepee. “He is right out there! I killed him, but he pretty near got me.” And then he fell into a dead faint like a runner who has used up his last bit of energy in winning a race. [[228]]
CHAPTER XXIX
A DISCOVERY
Ray at once made his older brother comfortable by placing a rolled blanket under his head. “Good gracious, Bruce!” he exclaimed, “you certainly look as if you had been in a fight.” And with these words he began to wash the blood from Bruce’s face, and Bruce came to very soon. But he could not tell how his left hand had become lacerated, nor did he even know that he had several bad scratch-wounds on his legs and body. Ray washed the wounds with warm water, dressed them with softened moose tallow and bandaged them with strips of clean bandanna handkerchiefs, the only thing in camp suitable for this purpose.
Ganawa had rushed out with his gun, and in a few minutes Ray heard him shoot. “I killed two,” he reported when he returned. [[229]]“The others ran away, and I think they will not trouble us again.”