Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1953 (8 page)

           
The squeals of fury sounded loud and
louder behind Sam, as though Giluhda was upon him. But he found himself at the
gate, and through it, just as half a dozen pairs of hands slammed the heavy
fabric of logs shut and hurriedly braced poles against it. A moment later, a
heavy blow smote the stockade from outside, so that
its
stout timbers creaked and swayed. Giluhda’s trunk quested along the sharpened
tops of the logs. A chatter of awed excitement beat up from the houses and
pathways of the town.

           
Sam drew the ramrod out of his
rifle, and looked quickly around. Eagle Wing was standing near him.

           
“Give me the bullets,” said Sam.

           
“The bullets?”
Eagle Wing repeated the unfamiliar word.

           
“The bag of round balls for my
fire-weapon.”

           
Eagle Wing spread his open, empty
hands. “I dropped it when I ran. It is outside.”

           
“Then I cannot shoot Giluhda!” cried
Sam angrily.

           
The buffets against the groaning
timbers were being resumed. Giluhda seemed to pace along the outside of
Twilight
Town
’s defenses, looking for an entrance. Sam
hurried to a place where he could peer out between two thick logs.

           
He saw Giluhda draw away, quivering
with rage. His great, shaggy, brown hide shook upon his powerful limbs, his
hair bristled like a thatch of dried pine needles, and his tiny, wide-set eyes
gleamed and rolled in his enormous head. Sam groaned to himself.
If he had one bullet, just one bullet . . .

           
Back in the cornfield, several crows
had fluttered down to examine the dead body of their comrade that Sam had shot.
They cawed in dismay, and Giluhda’s wide-flapping ears caught the sound.

           
Abruptly he swung his gigantic bulk
around, as swiftly and surely as though he
were
on a
pivot. Ears wide, trunk lifted, he galloped at the crows. Still croaking, they
took wing and soared off toward the forest, and Giluhda hurried after them in
crazy fury against all living things.

           
Through the chinks in their
stockade, the people of
Twilight
Town
watched him go.

           
“Open the gates!” cried Sam, in
authoritative tones that would have done credit to a chief.

           
“My brother—” Otter began to protest.

           
“Open the gates!” said Sam again. “I
must go out and find my bullets. I am going to follow Giluhda. I am going to
fight him and kill him.”

peering
out cautiously. Sam brushed past them and
strode into the open. Almost at once he found the bullet pouch dropped by Eagle
Wing. He stooped for it,
then
began to load his rifle.

           
“Wait, brother,” called Otter from
the stockade. “I will come with you.”

           
“We will all go,” said one of the
council.

           
“No,” announced Woodpecker, in tones
of authority. “It is a task for young men, strong and swift. Let Otter go with
the white hunter. We others will stay.” When Otter came out, Woodpecker hobbled
after him. He came close to Sam.

           
“I speak my thanks, for myself and
for the Twilight People,” said the chief. “You are brave. You came far to help
strangers. I hope you destroy Giluhda, my son.”

           
He put his lean hand on Sam’s
shoulder. Sam smiled. Woodpecker had called him “son.” It was a promise of the
old
chiefs
complete friendship, like Otter’s
“brother.”

           
Otter had brought a bow with him,
and on his back he had slung a painted quiver full of arrows. The two moved
cautiously across the cornfield, eyes and ears straining for any hint of
Giluhda’s presence.

           
They followed the tracks of those
huge, round feet, to the thicket into which Giluhda had disappeared.
Beyond showed a plain path among trees and bushes, where the
tremendous body had smashed its way through.
The two friends headed
along that path, for some minutes of sober silence. Then Otter touched Sam’s
arm, and pointed to some evergreen trees.

           
“He stopped there to eat,” said
Otter in a whisper.

           
Sam looked. The grove of evergreens
looked as though it had been struck by a whirlwind. Several young trees had
been broken, and one, fully five inches thick, had been torn up by the roots.
Branches from these trees were crushed or ripped away. To

           
Sam, it looked as though Giluhda had
spoiled as much as he had eaten.

           
“Now he will go to drink,” whispered
Otter again. “See, his trail leads toward the
Big
River
.”

           
He pointed toward the southwest. Sam
wet his finger to test the slight morning breeze.

           
“It blows toward us from along his
trail,” he told Otter, also whispering. “He cannot smell us when we follow
him.”

           
Quietly and carefully, they moved
after Giluhda. As before, there was a track that almost anyone could follow.
The huge thing they hunted had broken off saplings along his way, and had
tramped over brush and undergrowth with no effort. Once they came to a belt of
big canes that extended from a brake, and through this was driven a boldly
broken passage, like that left by an ox wandering through a field of corn.

           
An hour and more had passed, and
they had covered perhaps four miles, when Otter stopped again, signalling for a
conference.

           
“Beyond this is a big drinking place
for animals,” he muttered, his mouth close to Sam’s ear. “Do not stir a leaf as
we go there, for Giluhda’s ears are big.”

           
With painful care they edged their
way through some close-grown brush with broad green leaves. Beyond that they
came upon a game trail, almost wide enough to let a wagon pass, and upon its
mossy surface showed the big round footmarks of Giluhda.

           
A few yards
more,
and light came strongly in among the trees ahead. Then they paused and looked
out into a clearing. It was as large as a good-sized garden plot, and the paws
and hoofs of many beasts had worn it bare of all growth. At the far side it
sloped gently down to the edge of the
Big
River
, which gleamed blue in the morning
sunlight. As Otter had said, this was a drinking place for all sorts of game.

           
Sam held his rifle ready, gazing
from side to side for some glimpse of the monster he had come so far to shoot.
But nothing moved, except one or two small, nimble birds in the upper branches
of a big sycamore.

           
“He is gone,” said Sam to Otter, and
stepped into the open.

           
“Stay here,” Otter cautioned him,
but Sam was already walking across the cleared space toward the water. Under
his feet the earth felt hard as a pavement; but at the damp far edge, Sam saw
deep, round holes.

           
He came almost to the brink of the
river, gazing down at the place where Giluhda had stood to drink. Fully a foot
deep into the wet clay his footprints drove, like huge post holes. Sam peered
into them, and clicked his tongue in triumph. Water was seeping into those
great tracks, but they were nearly empty— Giluhda could not have been gone more
than a minute or so.

           
“Brother!” cried Otter in loud
warning.

           
Sam whirled around. From a clump of
dogwoods Giluhda was emerging.

           
This time there was no comforting
stockade from which to look at the great, shaggy giant. Sam felt a chilly
shudder pass over him, like the breath of a freezing wind, as Giluhda tilted
his head to peer, and moved his trunk-tip gropingly as though to sniff the air.

           
Sam brought his rifle to his
shoulder.

           
As he did so, Giluhda lumbered
forward. Catching his sights on a point just between and above Giluhda’s
far-spaced little eyes, Sam fired. Giluhda didn’t even pause. Straight at Sam
the monster charged, on swiftly thudding feet.

           
That hairy mountain of flesh seemed
to be upon him with one furious bound, and Sam looked up in panic as Giluhda
loomed over him like a house. He hurled his empty rifle at those glaring little
eyes, sprang to one side, and dashed for the path among the trees.

           
Giluhda gave an ear-piercing cry,
and Sam glanced back as he ran. The huge beast had seized the rifle in his
trunk. He wagged it over his head like a baton,
then
slammed it to earth, pawing at it with a forefoot. Finally he hurled it from
him and again thundered in pursuit of Sam, just as Sam gained the mouth of the
trail.

           
Sam was a runner, by nature and by
training. Few young men of Brooke’s Fort or of the other settlements he had
visited could beat him in a fair race. Yet, as he fled for his life along that
trail, Giluhda rushed from behind to overtake him, and Sam knew that the
monster narrowed the gap with every swift stride of those thick legs. As he
forced himself to utmost speed, Sam expected to feel the grip of the snaky
trunk upon his neck or shoulder. He darted between two big oak trees, and
suddenly knew that he was safe for the moment.

           
Driving blindly after him, Giluhda
had jammed his broad shagginess into the space between those oaks, and he was
wedged there. Sam heard the angry, snorting squeal, the frenzied thrashing of
legs and shoulders. He fled toward an upstanding maple. With a leap and clutch
he caught a lower branch and pulled himself up.

           
Giluhda raged and strove between
those imprisoning trees. By sheer angry strength he forced his way forward
through the pinching passage, and ran to catch Sam. But the young hunter was
already high up into the maple, well beyond the uppermost stretch of the
straining trunk-tip.

           
“He can’t reach me,” exulted Sam—too
soon.

           
Giluhda caught the branch by which
Sam had climbed, and ripped it away as a man pulls a fig from a bush. He dashed
it down, then reached for a larger branch and pulled. The entire maple tree
swayed and creaked. As he pulled, Giluhda’s broad face tilted up toward Sam.
Blood smeared his shaggy brow. The tiny eyes stared, furious but intelligent.
Suddenly Sam believed all he had heard of the monster’s strange wisdom. In
those eyes he read murder.

           
Giluhda let go of the branch and
slowly circled the maple tree. From his vantage point, Sam could see that the
big back sloped both ways from the spinal ridge, like a peaked roof. Finally
Giluhda turned his massive forehead toward the trunk, moved close, and pushed.

           
He leaned his tremendous weight into
the effort, digging in his basket-sized feet as a horse drives his hoofs down
to pull a plough after him. Thick and strong as the maple was, it bent before
that surging pressure. Sam, clinging in the branches, felt as though he was
tossing in a gale. His elation over apparent safety departed. Holding on tight,
he looked down at his huge foe.

           
Giluhda drew back and prodded a root
with his trunk. He walked around the tree once more. Plainly he sought a point
from which to attack more successfully. A second time he bowed his great head
against the maple. Sam heard him grunt as he flung his weight forward.

           
The thick stem creaked and sighed. A
sickening pop sounded—a root had broken. Sam groaned under his breath. That
great hairy elephant-thing would push the maple down. Then, before Sam could
wriggle out of the branches

           
“Hai!
Hai!”

           
It was Otter’s voice, raised in a
shrill war whoop.

           
Giluhda paused, listening with
foreward-bent ears. Then he returned to his ramming attack.

           
“Hai!”
whooped Otter again.
Sam saw his shaven head lift among some bushes, not thirty feet away. Otter
held his bow in his left hand, and against its stave his fist clamped an arrow,
parallel with the bow. A second arrow he poised ready, notched on the string.

           
Rising, Otter drew the arrow to its
very head. Even above the creaking complaint of the maple tree, Sam heard the
twang of the bowstring. The arrow soared like a humming bird.

           
Loud rang the shrill, furious squeal
of Giluhda, and once more the great brown bulk stamped backward from the maple.
One wide, flapping ear was skewered by Otter’s shaft. Giluhda spun with uncouth
speed on his four big feet and flung up his trunk as though to charge.

           
But Otter had whipped his second
arrow across the bow-stave, and it, too, whizzed through the air, smiting
sharply into Giluhda’s lifted trunk, halfway between root and tip.

           
Wide gaped Giluhda’s big red mouth,
and loud he screamed. He lumbered ferociously at the bushes from which Otter
had launched his arrows, smashing them underfoot like grass. He raged and
trampled murderously. Then, on some pain-maddened impulse, he charged through
the woods, splintering small trees in his way.

           
“Come down.” It was Otter, stealing
forward to the foot of the maple. “Giluhda will be back when he does not find
me, and will try to break this tree down. Let him use his strength on it. We
will be far away.”

           
Sam fairly tumbled down through the
branches. Otter tested the wind with a wet finger, and pointed the way it blew.
They ran off that way, so that no current of air would carry back their scent.

           
“Go to the river,” panted Otter. “We
will do as we did before. We will wade in the water, and he cannot sniff out
our tracks.”

           
They doubled toward the river, found
the trail along which Sam had fled from Giluhda, and came again to the edge of
the cleared ground by the drinking place.