But meanwhile in the village thicker and thicker fell the invisible arrows of the Terror; and in the lodges where they fell dwelt the cry of agony and delirium and the muffled shriek of death. The old woman Gunthai and the cripple Tabea were not spared. The old and the young, the weak and the strong, the brave and the cowardly found no spell to ward away the stroke of the hidden Hand.
At length the fear of the tribe grew into a frenzy. It needed but an incident to lash it into madness.
One evening as the night crept westward across the hills, a brave leaped upon a pony and yelling sent the frightened animal flying up the valley. He was fleeing from the curse that hung over the village. Then the fear became a madness. The people rushed from their lodges and, fighting for the nearest pony, fled after the lone rider who had disappeared into the night.
Those who were too weak or too unfortunate to gain the back of a pony hung to the mane and were dragged in the snow until their grips weakened, when they ran with frantic shrieks after their disappearing tribesmen. The valley leading from the village became choked with the fleeing people. Many of the stricken leaped from their blankets and followed in the wild rout, until their knees weakened and their brains swam, when they lay shrieking in the snow until death came.
From the deserted village the cries of the helpless followed the unhearing refugees, who fled as the bison flee when the pitiless hunter follows. Fainter and fainter grew the yelling until it was swallowed up in the wind that lashed the spraying snow. When the morning looked into the valley, it found no smoke arising from the silent lodges. Only the dead were there; the dead and the winter.
On the evening of the second day after the flight of the tribe, a lone form topped the hill above the village and looked down into the still white valley, where lay the snow-choked lodges, quiet as a dream. The form was short, and bent as with the toil and hunger of a long, hard trail. At its heels a gaunt, grey wolf limped and whimpered with the ache of emptiness and the frost.
The short, bent form stood still upon the summit and shading its eyes with a hand that trembled, cast a long and searching gaze upon the lodges of his people. No smoke, no voice, no roar of fires, scented with the evening meal!
The form straightened itself and stood with head thrown back, making a thin and pitiful figure against the cruel white glare of the icy evening sky. It put a hand to its mouth, trumpet-wise, and raising the other above its head, waved about a tuft of long, grey hair.
“Tae Ska! Tae Ska!”
The voice was scarcely raised above a faint, dry wheeze that sighed dirge-like above the lifeless valley. The grey wolf with its four trembling legs drawn together in the snow, raised its frost-whitened muzzle to the fading sky and with a long, wild wail drowned the feebler voice of its master.