CHAPTER XXVI
HOW THE WOLVES CLOSED IN
How the dance came to an end, and what happened when it did, Dusty Star never fully remembered. All he could recollect was that he found himself lying on the flat of his back, with Kiopo standing over him licking his face and hands with his large tongue. His wandering senses came back to him, and he sat up. All around, the wolves sat or lay with their tongues hanging out, panting after their exertions. In the centre, the white wolf sat as before, as if he had never moved. And the moon was there, and the stars, which also seemed to be panting, only they were too far off to see what they did with their tongues.
After that, Dusty Star did the only wise thing to do in his state of exhaustion. He gave himself up to the stillness, and let himself fall asleep. When he awoke, the moon had set, and dawn had risen over the buttes. Kiopo lay facing him with his head between his paws, watching till he should wake. Dusty Star looked for the pack. Not a single wolf was in sight. They had melted away into the barren gullies of the Bad Lands, as if they had been a dream. But the Bad Lands remained, and Kiopo, and an odd feeling in his bones; and Dusty Star knew that now the great journey must continue that could only end where the prairies were yellow with the East.
When the sun had lifted himself above the horizon, the travellers had already reached the last buttes of the Bad Lands, and saw the prairies stretching at their feet. As Dusty Star's eyes travelled over the enormous expanse, a sense of trouble came to him. Out there, concealed in the vast distances that hid it like a buffalo-robe, lay the home of his people. And he was going to return to them. As sure as the wolf-trail ran across the heavens, he was going back. But what would happen then? He would not see them as he had seen them before. The free life with Kiopo; the friendships with the wild kin that were not of his blood, yet seemed to be half his heart; the great mountain-world of Carboona, the mystery-land of the West:—all these had come between him and his people with their life in the tepees.... And Kiopo?... He belonged to Kiopo now, as Kiopo to him. He had danced himself into the wolf-world with the medicine of his feet. His body might remain Indian; but the wolf-dance was in his veins: his moccasins had touched the wolf-trail: his mind was half a wolf's.
As they crossed into the prairies, he kept looking out for any signs of the white wolf's pack; but not a vestige of them was to be seen. Yet although they were invisible to the eye, there were signs that they had not left the neighbourhood. Kiopo's manner alone was sufficient to show that the country was not so empty of life as it appeared. He was evidently on the alert, keeping on the watch in every direction.
Just before noon he disappeared. When towards the middle of the afternoon he caught up with Dusty Star, who had continued his journey, it was certain that he had been running with other wolves.
That night, just before sundown, a great idea flashed upon Dusty Star. Kiopo must find the white wolf, and bring the packs to camp. When they were all assembled, Dusty Star would tell his mind to the white wolf, and he, in his turn, would communicate it to the packs. He made the message clear to Kiopo, and the wolf immediately departed.
As the twilight fell, Dusty Star became aware that here and there it seemed to thicken into a wolf-shape, till at last it darkened to a pack. When the pack finally closed in upon the camp, he knew that he was imprisoned by a wolf-ring that shut out the world. And when the last wolf had taken its place, Dusty Star found that the white wolf, with Kiopo, was by his side.