“I wish it was nothing wuss,” muttered my guide, as he examined his weapons with a critical eye and loosened the cartridges for his revolvers in his belt to make sure that they would be easy to pluck out.
“Those hain’t our dogs, mister,” he remarked after he had examined his whole arsenal.
As I again fixed my attention on the noise, in place of the resonant voice of the hounds, I heard nothing but the crackling of branches, with an occasional half-suppressed wolf-like yelp.
Big Pete turned pale and muttered, “It’s them for sartin; it’s them agin! And I hain’t been drinkin’, nuther!”
Big Pete Darlinkel remained crouching in exactly the same pose he had first assumed, but his face looked sallow and worn. I marveled. Was this big westerner really awed by the situation we were facing? What disaster impended?
My guide’s eyes were fixed upon an opening in the woods and I knew that something would soon bound from that spot. I could hear the crashing of brush and half-suppressed wolf-like yelps, followed by a pause, then a rushing noise, and out leaped as beautiful a bull elk as I had ever seen—in fact the first I had ever seen at close range in his native wilderness. I had only time to take note of his muscular neck, clean cut limbs, his grand branching antlers, and—not my dogs but a pack of immense black wolves at his heels before I instinctively brought my gun to my shoulder. But before I could draw a bead Big Pete struck it, knocking the muzzle up.
“Hist!” he exclaimed, pointing to the bird.
The eagle screamed, descended like a thunderbolt and skilfully avoiding the branching antlers, struck the bull, driving one talon into the neck and the other into the back, flapping its huge wings as it tore with its beak at the body of the elk like a trained “bear coote.”
I was thunderstruck. The evident partnership of the wolves and bird needed explanation and it was not long in coming. A shrill whistle pierced the air, the black wolves immediately ceased to worry the elk, the eagle soared overhead, and for an instant the elk stood confused, then leaped high in the air and fell dead. The next moment I heard the crack of a rifle and saw a puff of blue smoke across the lake.
“That’s no ghost,” I said, when partly recovered from my astonishment.