The complacent trapper, ruminating pleasantly over his triumph and the handsome price his captive was to bring him, had covered perhaps a mile of his homeward journey when from far behind him came to his ears a novel sound, faintly pulsing down the still night air. Without seeming to pay it any attention whatever, he nevertheless was instantly and keenly concerned; and he perceived that the uneasy bundle on his back was interested too, for it stopped its indignant wrigglings to listen. Up to this moment Logan had believed that there was no voice in all the wilderness unfamiliar to his ears, no speech of all the wild kindreds which he could not in rough fashion interpret. But this cry he did not understand. Presently it was repeated, a little nearer, and a little more convincingly strange to him. He knotted his rugged brows. A few moments more and again it floated down the moonlight, high, quavering, musical, yet carrying in its mysterious cadences an unmistakable menace. Logan knew now to a certainty that it was a sound he had never heard before; and he knew what it was, though he refused to acknowledge it to himself, because it was a refutation of many of his most dogmatic pronouncements.
"It ain't wolves!" He muttered to himself obstinately. "Ther' ain't never been a wolf in New Brunswick!"
But even as he spoke, the sinister cry arose again, nearer and yet nearer; and he was obliged to confess to himself that, whatever it was, it was on his trail, and he was likely to know more about it within a few minutes. He was not alarmed, but he was annoyed, both at the upsetting of his theories and at the absence of his gun. Undoubtedly, these Charlotte County romancers had been right. There were wolves in New Brunswick. He was ready to apologize for having so sarcastically questioned it.
In spite of the fact that his dignity as a woodsman would not permit him to be alarmed, he could not but recognize that the cry upon his trail was made up of a number of voices, and that a number of wolves might be capable of making things very unpleasant for him. He remembered, uncomfortably, that in this weather, with the snow so hard that the deer could run their fastest upon it, the wolves must be extremely hungry. The more he thought of this fact the more clearly he realized that the wolves must be very hungry indeed, to dare to trail a man. He had been walking as fast as he could; but now he broke into a long, swinging lope, his moccasined feet padding with a soft whisper upon the snow. For a moment he thought of ridding himself of the burden upon his back; but this idea he rejected resentfully and with scorn. He was not going to be robbed of his triumph by a bunch of rascally, interloping vermin like wolves.
Meanwhile, the quavering high-pitched chorus was sweeping swiftly nearer through the moonlight, and Logan put on a burst of speed in order to get to a stretch of open burnt lands before his pursuers should come up with him. If he was to have a fight forced upon him, he wanted plenty of room and the chance to keep all his adversaries in plain view. He gained the open, with its scattered black stumps and gaunt, ghostly "rampikes" dotting the radiant silver of the snow, and was some eighty or a hundred paces beyond the edge of the woods before the wolves appeared. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the gray forms of the pack halt, come close together, then separate again, hesitating at the venture of the open. The hesitation was only for a moment, however. Then, in formation so close that one might have covered the whole pack with a bedquilt, they came on again. His trained eye had counted six wolves in the pack; and he was relieved to find that there were not more. From their cries he had imagined there must have been thirty or forty.
"HE SAW THE GRAY FORMS OF THE PACK."
Logan was too wise to run, now that he was in view of his foes. He stalked on with haughty indifference, till the pack was within twenty-five or thirty yards of his heels. Then he turned, and spoke, with an air of sharp, confident authority. Even through their hunger and their savage madness of pursuit the beasts felt the mastery of his voice. They paused, irresolutely, then opened out and sat down on their haunches to see what he would do.
After surveying them superciliously for a few seconds, the woodsman turned again and stalked on, keeping, however, a keen watch over his shoulder and his axe poised ready for instant use. As soon as he moved on, the wolves followed, but no longer in their pack formation. Not yet audacious enough to come within ten or twelve feet of this arrogantly confident being, whose voice had power to daunt them in the very heat of their onslaught, they spread out on either side of the trail, half-surrounding him, and keeping pace with him at a skulking trot. Their jaws were half-open, their long white fangs were bared in a snarling grin, and their eyes, all fixed upon him unwinkingly, glinted a green light of ferocity and hunger.
Little by little they drew closer in, while Logan pretended to ignore them contemptuously. All at once he felt, almost more than saw, one of the largest of the pack dart in to spring upon his back. Out went the bright axe-blade like a flash of blue flame, as he whirled on his heel; and the wolf dropped with a choked-off yelp, shorn through the neck. Thrice around him he wheeled the circle of the deadly blade; and the wolves deferentially slunk beyond reach of it, not yet ready to tempt the fate of their comrade.