Gaupa lifted his head. His eyes returned from the far distance and sought a certain point on the western slopes, a spruce-clad hillock where the silver birches blazed like a flame, and there his gazed fixed. From that hillock came a sound, sudden and unexpected, like a spark from a fire of thorns.
“Wow!” It was a dog’s voice, clear and strained, let out of a throat which had quite enough to do with mere breathing.
The voice on the hillock spoke no more.
Gaupa remained in Owl Glen. He did not hurry. He wanted to be quite sure where Rauten was going, and from his post he could hear half a league away.
A short time afterwards Bjönn barked from the same place, deep-voiced and growling, as a watch-dog barks at strangers. Rauten was at bay!
“Wow! Wow! Wow!”
Then Gaupa began to run, his gun in his hand, its muzzle glaring black, and inside there was a cartridge with the Swede’s Bullet.
Gaupa was hidden in the forest, but appeared again on a hillock farther on, stopped listening as he pushed back his lucky cap. Then he was submerged in the greenery once more.
The dog’s voice to the west was the only token of life on the slopes, breaking the silence incessantly at short, regular intervals like the ticking of a grandfather’s clock.
Bjönn was barking at some close-grown spruce copse. It looked as if he were talking to it, again and again without receiving any answer.