Medicine Road (3 page)

The young moose sank back into his nest, burying
his head in its warm grasses. Wild confusion raced
through him. He shook violently, his breath coming
hard, his tiny heart pounding. Still, true to instinct
and his mother's instructions, he did not move or
make a sound. But blind obedience was not to save
him now.

With the cow down, One Ear, Bakut, and Scarface
turned to finish the hidden calf. But as they did, the
tall grasses at the edge of the clearing behind them
parted silently. Loki's lips lifted in a soundless snarl.
The expression on the king wolf's face was not a
good thing to see. Noiselessly Loki launched his
charge.

Completely occupied with the hidden calf, his
three followers did not hear his silent rush until it
was too late. Scarface, trailing his two companions
toward Awklet's nest, died first, his back broken by
one grinding slash of Loki's huge jaws. His death
snarl brought One Ear and Bakut to a sudden, sliding halt. Their stiffly braced forelegs were nearly touching Awklet before the two wolves came to a
full stop. In wheeling to face their angry leader, one
of the big wolves actually stepped on the terrified
calf. It was too much for the nerve-wracked baby
moose. With a bleat of terror he bounded to his feet,
leaped blindly into the surrounding brush tangle.
He had not blundered twenty feet before he was
hopelessly caught in the snarled branches. There he
hung, a trapped and helpless witness to a sight he
was never to forget.

One Ear and Bakut now faced their king. The latter's position astride the dead Scarface told them
what had brought Loki here. They knew they had
broken the law of the pack and they knew their
leader had come to punish them for it. They knew,
also, as Loki stepped over the motionless body of
Scarface and glided toward them, how he meant to
punish them for it.

Awklet looked on, spellbound. Even in his instinctive dread of them, he could not take his eyes
from the wolves. Nor could he, for all his frightened
confusion, fail to note the contrast between Loki and
his opponents. Where they were big, Loki was huge.
Where the muscles of One Ear and Bakut rolled impressively when they moved, those of Loki bulged
unbelievably. Where the grasses scarcely bent beneath the tread of the other wolves, they seemed not
to bend at all under the footfalls of the king wolf.
Yes, Awklet saw Loki, and he never forgot him. Of
all his memories, that of the leader of the white Arctic wolves was to remain uppermost in the mind of
the orphan moose calf.

Shoulder to shoulder now, One Ear and Bakut
awaited Loki's attack. He was almost upon them,
but they showed no fear. Whatever else they may have been, One Ear and Bakut were no cowardsand they were no fools. Despite their breaking of
the pack's law against hunting alone and despite the
long years of Loki's savage administration of that
law, they had the king wolf outnumbered two to
one. Such odds were insurmountable. Loki might
get one of them. He would never get both of them.

At first it looked as though they were right. Barely
two paces from them, Loki caught his foot in a protruding cedar root, stumbled, and fell, full-length,
in front of them. They were upon him instantly,
roaring and slashing crazily.

From his prison in the cedar tangle, Awklet
stared in dumb amazement. The snarling of the
wolves was terrifying, but the fascination of their
fury was greater to the tiny calf than his fear of it.
He continued to watch, and, as he did, the impossible happened.

With one great surge the king wolf regained his
feet and shook free of One Ear and Bakut. Before the
astonished wolves could recover, he dived past
them. Then, turning with incredible speed, he was
back upon them, all in-one-raging instant.

Bakut died as Scarface had, without a struggle.
Loki, coming upon him from the rear, closed his
huge jaws on the vertebrae of his neck. There was a
single, crunching splinter of bone and that was all.
In the next moment he whirled and leaped at One
Ear. But the latter was ready for him and met him in
mid-leap.

Shoulder to shoulder the two wolves crashed and
reared upright, their forelegs tucked against their
furry chests, their hind legs straining to gain an
overthrow. Their fangs were clashing and grinding
in movement too swift to follow as each sought the other's throat. For a moment the outcome seemed in
high doubt, but Loki's fury was too great to be withstood. Slowly One Ear fell back before it, still striving to meet fang with fang, shoulder thrust with
shoulder thrust. The end came abruptly.

Loki suddenly staggered back and fell heavily to
the ground, as though he had lost his footing or had
received some mortal wound and fallen from its injury. At once One Ear launched his body through
the air, leaping forward for the kill. In the same moment the apparently helpless Loki struck upward
from the ground like a great white snake. His jaws
closed on the leaping One Ear's unguarded throat,
ripped sideways and outward.

One Ear did not die so quickly as Bakut and Scarface. He lived long enough to see Loki come and
stand over him, and to hear a last, deep growl rumble up out of the king wolf's chest.

As Loki turned to leave the clearing, the killing
rage that had suffused his mind began to fade. Normal thought returned. He paused. There was something he was forgetting. The calf! By the trail that he
had followed to the clearing, Loki had known that
the old cow moose had a calf with her. It must still
be somewhere close at hand.

He looked around the clearing very carefully. His
lone eye hesitated, then lingered on the cedar tangle
toward which the three wolves had been sneaking.
The king wolf growled deeply in his throat. Wily old
One Ear had not missed the calf. He had known
where it was. Loki growled again. One Ear had been
a good hunter. The pack would miss him.

In the cedar tangle Loki quickly noted the signs of
Awklet's flight and rumbled his disappointment. He
swung his great head this way and that, searching the air for odor signs telling of the way the calf had
gone. There was none. There were no baby moose
scents fresher than those in the nest itself, and they
were clearly stale.

Loki looked anxiously about him, seeing the
shadows growing swiftly deeper on all sides. The
hour grew late. Darkness was closing in. He must
get back for the gathering of the pack. With a third
low growl, the king wolf turned to go.

At this precise moment Awklet sneezed. Loki
stiffened and wheeled toward the sound. As though
to make sure of his discovery, Awklet sneezed
again-and found himself confronted with the awesome sight of an Arctic king wolf.

Loki towered over the helpless calf, his one baleful eye glowing in the semidarkness of the tangle.
His black lips curled back over his gums, exposing
the twin rows of his fangs. Death was very close to
the orphaned moose calf in that moment. Then
Awklet sneezed again.

A wolf, even a king wolf, is still a member of the
dog family. As such, he has a certain sense of playfulness, savage though it may be, a sort of basic interest in the puzzling antics of other animals. The
small moose's unnatural posture and born awkwardness aroused Loki's canine curiosity, delaying
his wolf's instinct to kill automatically. The sight of
the wobbly-legged moose calf sprawling rump
heavenward and hopelessly tangled in the heavy
brush made the old wolf sheathe his fangs and
stand still for a moment, his great head cocked inquisitively at Awklet.

There was ample reason for the pause. And the
undue mercy. A day-old moose calf, in the most favorable of circumstances, is close to Nature's least graceful handiwork. This one, with his grotesquely
homely face, spread-eagle position, and ludicrous,
calm-eyed expression surpassed his species in
comic ugliness.

The king wolf wondered that the calf was not
more afraid. He sat thoughtfully back on his
haunches, regarding Awklet with the utmost gravity. The calf could not have been more than hours
old, yet he showed none of the paralyzed terror
Loki was accustomed to seeing in his victims. He
simply hung there in his scraggly prison, staring
back at the huge wolf with a blankly quizzical
look. His furrowed brow, tremendous shaggy ears,
and bright brown eyes concentrated on Loki as
though the latter had come to help him, not destroy him.

The king wolf rumbled mutteringly in his throat,
prolonging his head-cocked regard of the awkward
youngster. He had killed more moose calves than
this homely dwarf had minutes of life. Yet there he
squatted on his haunches like a six-month cub,
studying this particular calf as though it were his
first encounter with one of his kind.

As Loki sat there studying Awklet, the mournful,
weirdly beautiful howling of the gathering pack
came across the snowy wastes of the Hemlock
Wood. Loki threw up his head and howled in return. The hour grew late and the duties of leadership called. He gave Awklet one last thoughtful
look, as though he might yet kill him, then turned
and started to trot off without a backward glance. As
he did, Awklet emitted a parting sneeze.

Loki stopped, turned around, peered back.
Through the gathering dusk he could make out a
small branch so placed beneath the moose calf's nose that its slightest movement tickled him, causing the sneezes.

Loki trotted back to the cedar tangle. His jaws
parted, his huge head snaked out suddenly. There
was a steel-trap clip of his two-inch fighting fangs
and the bothersome branch fluttered earthward,
severed not three inches from Awklet's soft nose.
Then, without so much as another glance at the
moose calf, he turned and disappeared into the
night.

Thus did Awklet come to know Loki. And thus
did Loki, through a chance whim, or through the
one unconscious kindness of his life, set the seal of
certain termination to the years of his reign in the
Northland.

Early calved as he was, Awklet was not the first born
of the deer tribe in the Hemlock Wood. Far to the
south of the dark thicket in which Loki had carelessly spared the moose calf's life, Neetcha, the caribou doe, huddled, trembling and waiting for the
wolf pack to leave the forest. Close to her nervous
flank pressed her young ones, two ten-day-old, premature fawns. The youngsters nuzzled her underside in inquisitive puzzlement and without reward.
Demandingly the spotted babies shoved and pulled
at the doe's udder. Nothing happened. No milk
came. Imperatively they voiced their wants, their
small bleats of protest echoing strangely loud in the
stillness of the aspen grove that hid them.

Neetcha quieted them, her quick nose bunts and
sharp snuffles warning them to be still, that grave
danger was near. They obeyed without question.

Presently the danger drew nearer. Neetcha could
not suppress the shudders that raced through her.
Instantly the fawns caught something of the doe's nervousness. The smaller of the two pushed an inquiring nose out from between his dam's forelegs,
imitating her action in sniffing the dead wind. As he
did, the breeze freshened for the first time in hours.

One fawn's dainty head recoiled. He blew out
through his small black nostrils, every short hair on
his spine lifted on end. His whole body was shaking
with the fear of that terrible smell which lay so suddenly in the wind. The other fawn caught the smell
in the next breath. He, too, snorted in alarm and
joined his brother in staring, spellbound, in the direction from which the dread scent came.

The doe grew tensely quiet, every nerve and muscle in her body stretched bow-taut. Unbidden, the
fawns froze to her side. The time of waiting was
done. Here came the makers of the smell!

Through the protective screen of the aspens, the
fawns watched, transfixed, as the wolves loped into
view. They could see their high-withered, swiftrolling gait, their slant yellow eyes burning in the
twilight gloom, their red tongues lolling wetly, their
nervous muzzles swinging back and forth in the
stirring breeze. There were at least a dozen of them.
They were easily counted as their ghostly shapes
fled forward across the snow. One, larger than the
rest, was in the lead. He had an abnormally big
head with a gash of a mouth that seemed literally to
split his face from ear base to ear base. The gray,
lean look of age and endless experience was written
in every expert flick of his stumpy ears, and quick
wrinkling of his broad muzzle.

Then, even as the fawns watched, the old wolf
slowed his gait and swung his huge head toward
them. Shortly he stopped altogether. Of all the cruel
hunters in Loki's pack, Sukon had the finest nose. When he drew up like that, sudden and sharp, there
was more in the evening wind than the smell of
snow. His followers quieted their panting, closed in
behind him, and waited as the delicate scent muscles in his blunt muzzle quivered and grew still. He
inhaled with deep sniffs, facing toward the panicstricken caribou in the grove. Then a vagrant shift in
the wind moved through the aspens-toward
Sukon.