We started on again, following the traces which led us straight towards the mountain. As we galloped along, Sperver called out:
"If good luck would have it that this cursed Plague had gone into a hole in the rocks somewhere to lie down for an hour or two, we might catch her before nightfall."
"Let's hope so, Gideon."
"Don't fool yourself that way. The old she-wolf is always moving; she never grows tired; she roams through all the hollow roads of the Black Forest. We mustn't indulge vain hopes. If she should happen to have stopped somewhere along the road, so much the better for us, and if she is still going, we have no reason to be discouraged. Come! hurry along!"
It was a strange occupation; that of a man engaged in hunting down one of his own kind; for, after all, this unfortunate woman was a fellow creature, endowed like us with an immortal soul, and feeling, thinking, and reflecting like ourselves. It is true that perverted instincts had brought her near the level of the wolf, and that some great mystery overhung her destiny. Her prowling life had doubtless obliterated her moral being, and even effaced her human character; but granted all this, it is, nevertheless, an incontrovertible truth that nothing in God's universe gave us the right to exercise over her the despotism of man over the brute creation.
Notwithstanding, a savage ardor hurried us on in pursuit; for my part, my blood boiled, and I was determined to stop at nothing which would enable me to get this strange being into my power. The wide waste of snow flew past us, and the fragments of crust, thrown up by our horses' hoofs, whizzed past our ears.
Sperver, sometimes with his head thrown back, and his long mustache blowing in the wind, and always with his gray eye on the trail, reminded me of the famous horsemen of the steppes, whom I had seen passing through Germany in my childhood; his tall, sinewy horse, with full mane and body tapering like a greyhound's, completed the illusion. Lieverlé, in his enthusiasm, bounded sometimes as high as our horses' backs, and I could not help trembling at the thought that, should he come upon the Black Plague, he might tear her to pieces before we could make a movement to prevent him.
The old woman led us a terrible chase; on every hill she had doubled, and at every hillock we found a false scent.
"It is easy enough along here," said Sperver, "for you can see a long distance ahead, but when we get into the woods, it will be another matter; we shall have to keep our eyes open there. Do you see how the cursed beast has confused her tracks? There she has amused herself sweeping the trail, and from that rising ground that is exposed to the wind she has slipped down to the stream and crept through the cresses to reach the thicket yonder. If it weren't for these two foot-prints, she would have tricked us completely."
We had just reached the border of a fir forest. In these forests, the snow never penetrates between the branches of a tree. It was a difficult way. Sperver dismounted to watch the tracks closer, and placed me on the left, that my shadow might not come between him and the ground. There were large open spots covered with dead leaves and pine-needles, which take no imprint. Thus it was only in the unsheltered places, where the snow lay on the ground, that Sperver could recover the trail.