Medicine Road (13 page)

From some far corner of his indomitable courage,
in that last minute, the young moose summoned up
strength for one more attempt at survival. If he
could lure the king wolf close to his antlers for just
one off-guard second, for just one fleeting instant of
last-minute carelessness.... But old Loki knew a
thing or two about killing a wounded moose. He
certainly knew far better than to be drawn in close
to the antlers of a bull of this one's temper. Nor was
there any need for such risk. Not the way things
were going. Each new rip he put into his dark hide
was spurting more freely than the last. Half a dozen
deep gashes were already flowing; another three or
four would finish the job. After that, he had only to
stand back and give the brave young fool room to
fall. Shaking his huge head, growling softly and
deeply, Loki started in once more.

Awklet felt his strength going now. He knew that
the next minute held his life. Either he killed Loki
within that minute, or he would never kill him. His
own life was bleeding away as he stood there, waiting for the king wolf to come in. But if his great
strength was failing, the workings of that fine animal brain that Neetcha had trained so patiently were
not. Awklet, the orphan, was not dead yet.

The advancing Loki saw a weakening tremor
shake the body of the young bull. He knew the
moose was trying desperately to brace himself, to
keep from going down. But another racking shudder ran through his huge body, and another. Loki
stepped back, waiting. He was long familiar with
these tremblings. They always came when the body
was through fighting and the heart and brain would
not admit it. The end was nearer than he had
thought. The moose would need no more bloodletting. Any moment now would bring that sliding
pitch forward to the knees so typical of the deer
tribe in dying. From the knees, after a slight pause,
the great, awkward body would roll sideways, rump
over into the snow, and lie still. There might be a
convulsive kick of a hind leg, and that would be all.

Even as the thought took Loki, Awklet made a final, staggering effort to stand, then pitched and slid
slowly to his knees. His head was still feebly upheld, his small eyes, already half closed, still watching Loki. The big wolf moved two steps forward, his
tongue nervously flicking the froth from his jaws.
This was death; he knew it all too well. Tensely he
waited for the rest-for the powerful hindquarters
to collapse, for the upreared rump to slump sideways into the snow.

But the hindquarters did not collapse. Awklet re mained with rump in air, forelegs doubled beneath
him, glazed eyes staring stupidly at Loki. The king
wolf twisted his lips in a soundless snarl. Well, this
was a tough one! Dead and did not know it. Down
in the front, paralyzed behind, bleeding to death,
cut to ribbons, and still holding his stubborn head
up! All right. There was one quick way to end it now.
A simple, clean slash across the throat and jugular
vein would be all that was needed.

Relaxing, Loki moved in. Awklet's dulling eyes
followed him, helpless, uncomprehending. The wolf
paused, his broad muzzle less than a foot from the
dying moose's throat. In the one unguarded moment, in the tiny, fractional hesitation, Loki made
his last mistake. 1,300 pounds of doomed moose exploded in his face. Nearly three-quarters of a ton of
antlered dynamite blew up in the snow alongside
him. Awklet struck and he struck to kill. His thick
neck twisted back and down, catching and pinning
Loki beneath the crushing impact of his antlers.
With a supreme effort the king wolf wrenched himself free, his shoulder and half his scalp laid bare to
the bone by the ripping thrust of Awklet's blow.

He staggered away, fell, struggled to get up. Behind him, Awklet reared to his feet, wheeled, and
came for him. Loki tried to gather himself, to get his
legs under him, to rise and meet the hazy, humpshouldered form looming above him. But there was
a great weakness in him now, a vast roaring and
ringing in his head, a numbness as of strange cold in
all his limbs. The trees, the snow, the rocks grew
dim. All he saw was a great black, palm-antlered
mass rising high above him, then coming down and
down and down.

The moose. It had to be the moose. The one he had been about to kill. Something had happened. He
was down and the moose was not. He strove desperately to get up. To force his jaws to open. To strike
upward. But he was too dazed. Where was that
moose? Which way was that canon? Where was the
caribou herd? His wolf pack? Where was he?

No matter. It would clear up in a minute....
There, it was better already. Very clear now. He
could see every battle scar on that old wolf sitting
over there in the snow watching him. But something
was still wrong. Something about that wolf. Had he
not met him somewhere before? Did he not know
him? That huge head? That broad, keen-nosed muzzle? It could not be. Move a bit closer to him. Make
sure. It was, it was! Sukon! Sukon, old brother! But
wait? How could it be Sukon? What was he doing
here? Sukon had been killed.... Loki knew where
he was then.

He knew where he was, and why Sukon was waiting for him over there across the snow. North of that
snow, stretching far and away into the endless twilight of his beloved Northland, lay that last, long trail
from which no wolf returned. Faithful even unto
death, his old friend had come to take him home.

There remains but little to tell. It is caribou legend
how Awklet reappeared before the herd at Blind
Canon. Weak from his fearful loss of blood, he staggered out of the noonday blackness of the beginning blizzard at the very moment the herd was
breaking away under the wolf pack's frenzied attack. Old Split Lip, the last of Loki's lieutenants, saw
the moose's towering bulk loom out of the storm
and knew from that the king was dead. Stunned,
the wolves fell back as the herd, inspired by Awk let's return, raged into them. It was all over in thirty
minutes.

A third of the pack was destroyed in that grim
half hour. Another third was badly hurt. The survivors fled back into the jumbled boulders of Blind
Valley from whence, long after Awklet and the herd
gave up hunting them and were gone, they skulked
out into Half Moon Valley and followed Boron's
straggling cowards northward. They never regained
their former pack strength, never ran again beneath
another king like Loki. Peace came at last to the
Hemlock Wood and to the ancient borders of the
barren-ground tundra.

Perhaps Awklet was no hero, no perfect one.
Probably he lived and feared and fled and fought as
he did because he had to. And certainly he brought
nothing to the caribou they did not already have.
He only reminded them of a very small thing they
had forgotten. Freedom and the will to fight for it.

The long roach of timber on Fat Cow Island in midstream of the Black Fork bristled against the red
stain of the twilight, harsh as the hairs on an angry
dog's back. The foreboding hills across the river
crouched, still and quiet as so many monster, gray
cats. Above the subdued mutter of the stream's
sharp current, the hushed voices of the teamsters
sounded hollow and foreign. The chonk of an axe in
a piece of firewood carried half a mile in the heavy
silence.

An hour went by, and then another. At nine
o'clock, with the black prairie night folding in
around them, close and stuffy as the inside of an old
saddlebag, Andy Hobbs told the crew to go ahead
and turn in. He and Morgan Bates, quiet smoking,
quieter talking, sat the night away, waiting for Jesse
Callahan.

From the night two weeks back, when Jim
Bridger's red-haired, right-hand man had ridden
into the wagon corral outside Fort Laramie, Choteau & Company's whitebearded wagon master and his
swart boss muleskinner hadn't known a good
night's sleep. And with perhaps better than a fair-tomiddling reason. When a mountain man of Jesse
Callahan's reputation walked his barefoot pony up
to your fire and told you that Brigham Young had set
a hostile chief of Black Coyote's caliber onto your
wagon ruts, you had a mighty good excuse for staying awake nights. At least you did, if you knew anything about what a high plains hostile would do to
get his hands on ten pounds of low-grade gunpowder, let alone on twenty-four full kegs of prime Du
Pont. Like, say, those two dozen fat, black canisters
you had consigned to Fort Bridger in number four
wagon, there.

Now, stretching into your third week out of
Laramie, you hadn't seen so much as an unshod
pony track to tell you that you were being trailed by
the most white hating chief on the Medicine Roadthe high plains Indian name for the Oregon Trail.
And you were beginning to wonder if Jesse Callahan hadn't been feeding you a mess of trapper's lies
about old Brigham and Black Coyote being in cahoots not only to knock over your supply train but
to burn out Fort Bridger as well.

Then, at 2:00 A.M., the mountain man rode in. And
five minutes after he did, you had all the answer to
that last wonder you were likely to need. Happen
you were half smart, you did, anyway.

While the wagon master stirred up the fire, Jesse
chewed a slippery fistful of cold sowbelly, gulped
three dippers of cool branch water. With the edge
off of his all-day thirst and hunger, the red-haired
mountain man wiped the grease from his mouth,
made his talk quick and strong.

"Well, they're tailing us, all right. A big bunch,
near onto a hundred, I'd guess. They've gone into
camp back there a few miles. Lucky we beat them
around Jackpine Slash. I was late getting back because I wanted to belly in on them, thinking maybe
I could find out why they were laying back instead
of being up front, setting a trap. Well, I didn't find
that out, but I spotted something else a sight more
unsettling."

"Such as?" the dark-faced boss muleskinner
prompted.

"Such as a white man squatting to their smoke,
cozy as a blood brother. I wasn't so close I could see
who it was, but he was for sure white and for sure
nobody well knowed in these parts."

"Now!" Morgan Bates was incredulous. "You
ain't saying there's a white man other than old
Brigham Young mixed up in this deal?"

"I'm saying just that." The mountain man
scowled. "And I'll tell you something else I ain't
mentioned before. When Bridger told me about
Brigham Young hiring Black Coyote to knock off
this powder train, and asked me to mosey back to
Laramie to guide you on into Fort Bridger, he said
Washakie, the old Shoshone chief who told him
about the Mormon plot in the first place, had
warned him there was a strange new white man
working between Brigham and the Injuns. Bridger
laughed at that and so did I. Injuns will always
claim there's a white man to blame for leading other
Injuns into trouble." The narrow-eyed mountain
man paused. Shortly his hard gaze frosted over.
"Well, boys, me, I ain't laughing no more. There is a
white man steering those red sons."

"Find anything else?" Andy Hobbs frowned the question, like Morgan Bates, not knowing how to
figure the full importance of Jesse's discovery.

"Nothing else. But I'll tell you something, boys.
Old Watonga, he's got all his head men along with
him. I seen Yellow Leg, Dog Head, Toad, Blood
Face, that lousy little Skull which is Black Coyote's
shadow, and a couple of older chiefs I didn't recognize." Jesse removed his squat cherry-wood pipe,
spat disgustedly into the fire. "I mean to say that
right now I'm smelling more Injuns than we've yet
seen. And, by God, I don't cotton none to the stench
of them."

For a long minute, then, the bickering snap of the
dry cottonwood twigs and the sibilant hissing of the
older coals in the fire bed made the only disturbance in the night quiet. Finally Morgan Bates
found a frame for his thoughts.

"I reckon none of us wants to see no more hostiles," he muttered uneasily. "What you aiming to
do, Callahan?"