XIII
French Louie completed his defensive measures by slipping his belt over the stub of a limb behind him, to keep him from falling to the ground if he should be overcome by weariness or faintness. Now his work was done, and he could spare time for speech.
"By gar!" he said, with a grin. "Too bad for dem pore wolfs! Dey suffer such a disappoint', if de blue jay eat me, an' not dem pore hongry devils!"
Then the pack rolled up out of the woods and washed in a snarling, howling, upleaping swirl around the spruce-tree, scratching at the bark, biting off the ends of down-hanging limbs. The snapping jaws clicked above the rush of grisly bodies in the gloom.
"By gar! Dem fellers is hongry!" French Louie repeated. "Dey so hongry, by gar, I better feed 'em! I feed 'em some! I wonder where is dat ole Two Toes, whose track I see aroun' so much! Hello, Two Toes! Every feller keep still, so Two Toes can talk! Eh, speak, yo' ole feller!"
For reply the wolves almost split their throats, as they clawed up around the trunk of the tree. The old trapper looked down into twenty pairs of glowing eyes of a dull, fiery red, winking and turning. Among them were flashes of white streaks—the lines of teeth snapped shut, without lips to cover them.
French Louie drew his bait-bag around in front of him. He fished a rabbit out of it, and cut a piece of meat out of the ham. He flattened it out, and then wrapped in it one of the thin gelatin capsules containing four grains of pure sulphate of strychnin.
"I guess dem fellers stay aroun' long enough for dat skin to dissolve!" the trapper considered. "I got some tallow pills, but dem fellers ain' in no hurry to go depart, not yet!"
French Louie flipped the little pill, not more than an inch in diameter, out into the edge of the mass of wolves rearing up around the tree. He saw a commotion about where the pellet must have struck.
Then he made another pellet of the same kind, and threw that down. He molded a dozen or more of the pellets. He knew that the smell of fresh meat could not escape that keen-nosed, reckless pack. From the snarls and the swirls in the dense crowd of wolves, he knew that where the pills landed the beasts snapped at them. Some unlucky ones must have bolted the bits of meat as they fell. The human scent did not matter to those ravenous creatures.
Then, suddenly, a wolf uttered a different cry—a squeal and a whistle. French Louie saw the animal charging away from the tree, turning and biting at itself.
"What?" the trapper exclaimed, in mock surprise. "Yo' no hongry for a tough ole trapper no more? By gar, I am surprise'!"
He kept on molding the pills and throwing them down. He was economical of his meat, but not too much so. He threw down every one of his capsules and then tossed down the thirty-odd pills which he had molded out of tallow—little cubes of tallow, hollowed out, filled with the poison, and then plugged up and sealed with a hot knife-blade.
Long before he had fed down all his poison the savage blood-howls of the wolves had a steady accompaniment of cries of another kind—squeals of terror and agony. The eyes of the old trapper could see, in the gray mass below him, wild struggles and commotions as the poisoned brutes turned to fly away, a greater agony afflicting them than that of any hunger they had ever known.
Despite the poison, however, French Louie could not see that there was any apparent diminution in the number of the pack. He knew that most of the wolves in all that great territory had joined together in a mob that would not have to cavil or wait when they found any victim worth eating. They had killed—killed any game, from bull moose to timid rabbit. He had often seen the work of small packs, but never had such a pack as this crossed his trail before.
He had two firearms, the bait-rifle and the short-barreled holster-rifle. After his poison had all been thrown down, he waited a little while before beginning to shoot. There was no hurry.
It occurred to French Louie that it was time for him to have a smoke. Accordingly, he filled his pipe and struck a match on the bowl. As the flame lighted up, the wolves under him, some of them with their jaws hardly four feet from him, tumbled back and scattered out, retreating from around the tree, yelping with surprise and fear.
He could see their shapes against the packed snow around the tree. They retreated sidewise, with their jaws turned toward him, their eyes blinking and glowing in the light of the match, which lasted long.
When the match went out, some of the wolves returned to the tree with a rush, leaping high and snapping. Out in the white of the snow others were tumbling around, staggering and falling, then reeling to their paws again.
"By gar! A hundred—two, t'ree hundred wolfs!" French Louie cried, with a grimace. "One fine beeg pack, by gar! Dey lay aroun' in daytimes—dey keep me treed a veek! But I expec' I begeen to shoot now, by gar!"
He threw up the twenty-two-caliber bait-rifle, which he had fired thousands of times. With it he could hit the eye of a red squirrel, and he had killed many grouse on the wing with its small pellets of lead. He had only to point it and pull the trigger, and even in the murk he easily struck the lank brutes silhouetted against the snow.
He fired a dozen shots in quick succession. From the muzzle of the rifle dripped a spark or two of fire at each shot, and the sound was not much louder than the crackling of a branch. As the bullets struck, wounded wolves squealed with anger and pain, and started to race out of the little clearing.
A moment later, from the impenetrable dark of the woods around the little opening, there returned the sounds of a dozen dog-fights on a magnified scale. They were fights to the death, for the little bullets bled their victims, and at the first whiff of blood the other wolves turned murderously upon the maimed brutes.
After those fights French Louie saw only a gray ghost or two, wraiths of the dark swamps, slinking along in the edge of the thick woods. He caught two or three glimpses of pairs of glowing eyes back in the gloom. Then silence fell, as suddenly as the noisy pack had broken into the little opening.
"By gar!" French Louie said, grinning. "Ain' I a good feller? I feed all dem wolfs! Dey well satisfied now! Come, doggie! Come, doggies! Good fellers! Let me pull your ears, doggies! By gar! I bet yo' run down ole French Louie agin, hey? By gar! I bet yo' wag your tails an' dance a jig, yo'll be so happy, seein' French Louie's track in de snow! I bet you will! By gar!"
But French Louie, though the silence of peaceful midnight was upon the forest, did not venture down from his tree. He remained on the branches where he had perched, and kept narrow watch of the surrounding woods. Sure enough, wolves still lurked in them. Several times he caught sight of those grisly shadows, and now he shot with the holster rifle. He landed one or two bullets, too.
Then for a long time the watchful old trapper saw nothing. Dawn began to show faintly in the east. Afar off he heard the hoot of an owl, and then the answer of another. Finally there came to his ears a distant yelp, the cry of a wolf—a kind of rallying cry, and yet only a tentative one.
French Louie laughed to himself when he heard his defeated enemy so far away.
"By gar! Dem wolfs gone away! I be'n a lonesome ole feller now!" the trapper exclaimed. "By gar! Why don' dem wolfs stay aroun' an' make good comp'ny fer a feller up a tree?"
Daylight arrived at last. French Louie dropped his snow-shoes to the ground and followed lightly. The snow around the spruce-tree was packed down hard by the springs of hundreds of sets of wolf-paws. Splotches of blood and scattered gray hair on the snow told where wounded wolves had been torn to pieces by their cannibal comrades.
French Louie needed no snow-shoes for a hundred feet around the scene of his victory. Whichever way he turned, he found poisoned wolves drawn up or stretched out in the rigors of death.
"Now ain' dat a tarn nuisance!" he growled. "By gar! I bet I got to skin feefty of dem tam wolfs! By gar! A feller got to work pretty hard for a livin', by gar, he has! I'm an ole feller, too! By gar!"
He dragged the carcasses to the spruce-tree in which he had taken refuge. He found dozens scattered around within a radius of two hundred yards—most of them within one hundred yards. He traced up other wolves which had gone farther, but whose trails showed the misery they had been suffering. He could tell by the track whether the beast had taken a pill or not.
French Louie had never seen such a pile of dead wolves in his life. He walked around it, chuckling, cursing, jeering, enjoying himself immensely.
Next he went back for his pack, and carried it with him to the pile of wolves, where he sat down and ate breakfast. He brewed a little can of hot tea, which he drank with gusto. Then he began to skin the brutes, shaking his head and exclaiming against the toil that was forced upon him by a cruel fate.
He was a long while skinning the animals and stretching their hides. He hung the pelts up to dry in a shelter he made at the nearest of his wigwams, in the next swamp beyond where he had been treed.
When the wolf-skins had been taken care of, he went on with his trapping. He followed up his lines over miles and miles of country. He crossed wolf-tracks going out, but none returning. The wolves were not running in packs, but in twos or threes, and many of them singly. When they reached the trap-line trail they launched themselves in the air on one side, and fell in the snow far down the hill on the other side.
French Louie had looked at the paws of all the dead wolves. Not one but had the full complement of toes on the left front paw. All the wolf-tracks that were leaving the country also had their paws in good condition.
"Now where is dat ole feller Two Toes?" he asked himself. "By gar, I bet dem other fellers eat heem up! Now ain' dat too bad? By gar! Dey eat dat ole feller up, an' he give 'em a gran' ole run aroun'! I know dat feller's track when I see it! He led 'em, he did! Now I am disappoint'! Well, good-by, ole feller!"
After the next snow-storm French Louie did not see another wolf-track anywhere in the territory of his lines. There were foxes, pekans, marten, mink, and other fur in plenty; but all the wolves seemed to have gone.