Shasta of the Wolves

by Olaf Baker

There was much more light now. He could see everything clearly. But the camp was not in sight, because it was hidden in its hollow to the west. The sounds of the fight came to him plainly in the clear morning air.

There was a knoll in front of him. He ran towards it, stooping low as in his wolf days. He had only just reached it, and had thrown himself flat on his stomach, when all at once he heard the running of many feet. The sound was coming in his direction. He lay where he was, absolutely still. All at once he was surrounded by Indians. Something struck him sharply at the back of his head, and he remembered nothing more.

When he came to himself, he found himself lying across the back of an Indian pony, with a horrible aching in his head. The pony was at the gallop. He felt that he was held in his place by the rider. He could not see the rider. He saw nothing but a blur of grass that seemed as if it billowed under him in flowing waves. The blood in his head made a singing like grasshoppers. There was a tightness there as if it were going to burst. He tried to think, but thoughts would not come. He could not tell why he was on the pony's back. Only the sharp smell of its sweating flanks entered his brain as one smells things in a dream. Then the seas of grass billowed away into nothingness, and it was a blackness where lightnings flashed.

That was all he remembered of that long ride over the prairies, as he was carried by the Assiniboines back to their hunting grounds in the far northwest. It was not till many moons afterwards that he learnt that, owing to his warning, their attack had only partially succeeded, and that his tribe had beaten them off after a fierce encounter in which both sides had lost heavily.

When the Assiniboines reached their camp, Shasta was thrown into a tepee and left to come to himself as best he might. It was not long before he was forced to realize what had happened, and knew that he was a prisoner in the hands of the enemies of his tribe. What he did not know was that they had carried him off to kill him at their great sun-dance as a religious offering. Quite unknown to himself, his fame as a medicine-man had travelled far and wide over the prairies, and had even reached the mountains in the west. This was the wolf-medicine which had made his tribe so powerful since his coming to them. Once he could be killed, the medicine power would be destroyed also, but, as their own medicine-men assured them, it could be destroyed only by fire.

The weeks went by. He was allowed out of the tepee by day, but bound with thongs every night, so that he could not move. He was given much food in order to make him fat and pleasant for the ceremony.

As the time of the great dance grew near, the Indians redoubled their watch upon him. He was not even allowed to come out of the tepee during the day. The heat and the lack of exercise made him suffer in body and in mind. All he knew of the outside world came to him through the hides of the tepee. He would lie awake in the night, listening to the sounds that stirred abroad, and longing unspeakably to be out in the cool air under the star-glimmer and the sky. And then the moon would rise and the interior of the tepee would appear in a silver gloom.

It was at the moon-rising that Shasta's restlessness increased till it was like a flame that licked along his bones. His brain was on fire. All the pulses of his body beat in the burning of the flames. Then he would crouch, staring with bloodshot eyes that seemed as if they burnt holes in the tepee and pierced into the night. Now and then he would moan a little, or make low wolf-noises in his dry throat, but for the most part he was silent, suffering dumbly, as animals suffer, feeling the old free wolf-life tugging at his heart. Then there would come a moment when it was impossible to bear the torture in silence, and he would throw back his head and vent his misery in howl after howl.

It was small wonder if the Indians beat him for that. Those dismal notes, ringing out in the deep silence of the night, were enough to make the toughest "brave" uneasy in his heart. So each night that Shasta howled, he was beaten; and still the feeling was too strong to be overcome, and he was beaten again. Then, when it was over, and he lay panting and bruised, he would fall upon his thongs in a blind rage, striving to tear them with his teeth. But his teeth were not the fangs of Nitka, and the raw-hide thongs resisted his utmost efforts. So when dawn broke he would lie exhausted, and fall into an aching sort of slumber till they came to unbind him for the day.

Once or twice during these nightly howlings he fancied he heard an answering cry far off among the bills; and once there had been a scratching outside the tepee, and he was certain that a wolf was there. But before he could come to conversation with it an Indian had arrived to beat him, and it had slipped away.