As the lynx pulled himself up the boulder, the wolf reached his right flank, and inflicted a ripping wound. Screeching in rage and terror, the defeated lynx sprang over the boulder and disappeared into the trees.
And now Kiopo, triumphant, but by no means pacified, was able to glut his hunger upon the deer. It was the first full meal he had enjoyed for a long time, and he was not slow to make the most of it. Usually, after such a meal, he would have been inclined to settle himself down for a long sleep; but in his present enraged state of mind, sleep was impossible.
All the evening, and through the night, he traveled maddened, and raging, devoured with the lust to kill. Woe to any living creature that should fall across his path! Fortunately for themselves, the forest dwellers seemed to receive mysterious signals that madness was abroad. That night, the Spirit of the Wild Creatures did much business on the trails. East, west, south and north, the warnings travelled. Along the lake shore, through the decaying silence of the cedar swamps, into the whispering glooms of the spruce woods, the voiceless tidings went.
Hunting was understood—the plain, pitiless killing for food. It meant death, and terror, but at least it followed the ancient law of the wilderness that one killed in order to live. But this other thing that recognized no law, and hounded to death merely because of the madness in its heart—this nameless Terror that seemed, in the haunted darkness, to be everywhere at once—this they shrank from, trembling, as from something more deadly than even death itself. And so, realizing that it was Madness and not Hunger that went hunting down the trails, the forest-folk took heed to the tidings, and slunk into their lairs.
CHAPTER XIX
THE PURSUIT
After Dusty Star had dropped from his tree to escape the grizzly, his one thought was to put as much distance as possible between himself and his terrible foe. He ran on and on, listening fearfully for any sounds which should tell him that the bear was in pursuit. Yet the fear of what was behind was not all. There was an equally great danger in front lest he should find himself face to face with the returning Indians who had gone out to seek the bear. His dread was all the greater because he knew that it was the same direction in which he was now travelling which they had taken on leaving the camp, and that it was extremely probable that, not having come upon the grizzly, they would now be on the homeward trail. At the slightest sound, he would stop, and listen, nervously scanning the trees ahead lest he should catch sight of a red-skin figure standing motionless in the shade. And behind, he would listen for the pad, pad of great bear feet, or the rustling of leaves in the pursuit. Yet in spite of all alarms, the sun was sloping a long way to the west when Dusty Star found himself still undiscovered and working his way along the side of a great hill many miles to the northward of the camp.
He continued to travel swiftly, yet still with the utmost silence. Although he saw little of any wild creatures, he was aware of their presence, though most of them kept well out of sight as they crouched in hiding, or drifted soundlessly as driven smoke along the ancient deer-paths that had been worn by the feet of the wilderness, age after countless age.
As the day wore on, it grew darker under the trees, and presently he noted the on-coming of that swift northern twilight which so soon deepens into night. So far, he had not struck any trail which could cause him uneasiness; and although a few moons earlier he might have stood in fear of some of the larger and fiercer of the forest beasts, his intimacy with Kiopo had taught him many things which kept the fear at bay. And yet, as he glided softly along, stepping as warily as one of the deer themselves, his fear of the greater beasts seemed to have passed into an awe of the forest itself. Often and often, in the deep stillness there had come to him a sense of something behind the beasts, elder to the oldest of them, more wise than the most cunning, which ran when they ran, stalked you with their stalking, and watched you with their eyes; something which, in the old darkness of the world, had spilt itself into fur and feathers, and moved with wings or feet. It was perhaps not exactly a comfortable thought; yet for all that, it need not necessarily be a bad Thing. On the contrary, it might even do you good, if you could get close enough to it, and learn not to be afraid.