Medicine Road (8 page)

The shock of his short ride through the icy waters
revived Loki, cleansing his head wound as neatly as
a skilled surgeon and leaving him, although sick
and weak, clear-headed and able to travel. He regained his feet, tottering and stumbling shoreward.
At the edge of the ice he found an open stretch of
dry, rocky ground leading northward. As he staggered along, his strength returned and, with his
strength, his anger.

That yearling moose calf was a demon. It was incredible that a lowly forest browser should trail and
attack a wolf-and a king wolf at that! But he had. In
all his long reign, Loki had never been nearer death.
And for the rest of his life he would carry a mark to
remind him of it.

Loki's deep growl rumbled. Yes, he and the young
bull had marked each other. Stamped forever across
the left side of Loki's face was the brand of the
cloven hoof reading: this wolf is mine! And upon
the crest of Awklet's neck was the sign of the fang,
scarred there for life, and warning by its cruel
signature-beware, let be, touch not, this moose belongs to Loki!

After seeing that his enemy did not come to surface within sight, Awklet followed along the edge of
the ice downstream to make sure he had not done so
below. There he found the stark evidence of Loki's
survival and escape. Awklet did not linger over the
familiar marks of the great pad prints. No moose, no animal at all, could trail a wolf once the wolf knew
he was being trailed. Awklet had beaten Loki this
time, but the battle was not over. If he could read
nothing else in the blood-stained footprints leading
off into the polar darkness, Awklet could read that
his war with Loki was only beginning. With a soft,
deep grunt the ungainly young bull turned away to
the south.

When Awklet did not return from his disappearance
along the attacking wolf's trail, the caribou assumed
he had met the same fate as his foster mother. The
thought only heightened their fright and confusion.
They milled around the dead queen, sniffing warily
at her still body, stamping and snorting their hatred
of the lingering wolf smell that clung to it.

Seeing their uncertainty, old Bartok quickly took
over the leadership of the herd. Bunting the nervous
fawns, herding the sulky does, threatening the
younger stags, he soon had them all rounded up
and moving away to the north. There was none to
challenge him now and Bartok stood and bugled in
senile fury as the docile herd obeyed his bluffing.
But suddenly, from the darkened forest beyond the
moving caribou, a voice far younger and more menacing than the old stag's took up the challenge.

The herd stopped moving, and a deep hush fell
over it as Awklet stepped from the tree shadows and
stood revealed in the gray light of the coming dawn.
He was indeed a sight to produce dead silence. His
head, neck, and shoulders were caked with clotted
blood. The great wound on his neck, forced open in
his attack on Loki, was bleeding afresh, staining his
humped withers with its bright crimson. His right
foreleg, from hoof to knee, was drenched in the same color. His heaving flanks were smeared with
the dried lather of perspiration, his pendulous lips
flecked with angry froth.

The young moose bellowed again, pawing the
snow in great surging showers, and the herd drew
hurriedly back, sensing that Neetcha's gangly calf
had overnight become a fearsome bull. Again he bellowed, thrashing his huge head among the crowding pines, showering ice and snow broadside. Then
he started slowly toward Bartok.

But the gaunt old stag wanted none of him. He
was half the enraged youngster's size, ten times his
age. Very wisely, and with no delay, Bartok lost himself in the comfortable middle of the herd, in this
way admitting he had no further interest whatever
in contesting the moose bull's claim to the leadership. Disdainfully Awklet allowed him to go. Then,
after a suitable number of admiring younger does
and dour old grand dams had sniffed at the wolf's
blood on his foreleg, he calmly ambled away and
bedded down. Following his confident example, the
herd gratefully resumed its interrupted rest.

But although he lay quietly enough, there was no
sleep for Awklet. That moment there on the canon's
edge had been brief, its action lightning fast. Yet for
an instant he had been within hoof's reach of the
wolf-and the moon had been very bright and good.
His foster mother's slayer had been no chance wanderer, no stray hunter, no outcast, no lonely killer for
food. He had been the same one-eyed white giant
Awklet remembered from the first hour of his life.
This was the king wolf of the Arctic killer pack.
There could be no two wolves like that one. Awake
or asleep, Awklet would never forget him.

Shortly after daybreak, the return of the herd to the Hemlock Wood continued uneventfully. There
was no question of leadership. The caribou for the
first time had a leader in which they could have utter faith, one who actually pursued and attacked
wolves! At last the herd had courage at its head. And
not courage alone, but wisdom. For Awklet had
learned the fourth hard lesson of wilderness survival: no enemy can be defeated by running away. In
leaving the Hemlock Wood, Neetcha had been
wrong, but in being wrong she had taught Awklet to
be right.

With sunup, the herd was moving north. None of
the caribou showed any further curiosity over the
body of their dead queen. Antlers swaying, splayed
hoofs clacking on the frozen ground, they filed past
her. Within minutes, the last of them was gone and
Awklet remained alone in the snow-swept-meadow.

He walked slowly forward, stood for a long time
looking down on the huddled form of the only
mother he had ever really known. At last he
stretched forth his great ugly muzzle and placed it
alongside the dead doe's soft-haired ear. For a moment only he nuzzled her, using the gentle, lingering nose bunts she had taught him in babyhood.
Then he turned away.

He did not look back again, nor did he slow his
pace. Awklet had said his last good bye to Neetcha.

It was a long, severe winter but at last the ice went
out of the rivers and the brief, lush spring of the
Northland came again. It was time, Awklet's instincts told him, for a herd leader to be at work.

Throughout the short months of the sub-Arctic
summer, he restlessly led his followers over every
trail of the vast domain that had been the grazing
grounds of their ancestors. This meant exploring
places the oldest members of the herd had never
seen. But Awklet forced the herd to move constantly,
and by autumn's close he had achieved the purpose
toward which the impulses of leadership drove him.
The caribou now knew every main track and side
trail of the sub-Arctic tundras to the north, as well
as all those of the Hemlock Wood to the south. No
longer would they need to run in blind ignorance
and panic when the white wolves came. This time
they would know the land for which they must
fight, and they would be prepared should they have
to take life-saving flight.

In either event, the land itself held certain grim
advantages for both the invaders and the defenders.
To the north, beyond the tundra, stretched the unbroken sheet of polar ice that was Loki's frozen lair.
To the east ran the low jumble of the Boulder Hills.
To the west stood the high, ragged teeth of the Icy
Mountain. Through these hills and mountains led
the two historic trails by which the wolf pack traveled southward each winter. Where they entered the
Hemlock Wood, each trail narrowed into a deep and
difficult pass-Retreat Pass to the east, Blizzard Pass
to the west.

But countering these inviting entrances to the
Hemlock Wood was the great natural shield of the
Rotten Lakes Swamp. This phenomenon of Nature
stretched entirely across the northern border of the
woodland between the two mountain passes. It was
not actually a collection of lakes at all but one continuous marshland fed from beneath the ground by
boiling-hot springs. From somewhere deep in the
smoldering core of the earth, these springs flowed
summer and winter alike. The potency of their heat
was so great that not even the sub-Arctic icecap could
subdue it. The result was a constantly crumbling
honeycomb of rotten moss ice and spongy tundra
snow to which no wild creature would trust itself.

Awklet had plodded patiently along the southern
edge of the great thermal swamp, looking for a way
to cross over it northward. When he found none, he
turned back to the Hemlock Wood. Nature had told
him in her mysterious way that no animal could
travel across those smoking morasses of rotten ice.
Loki would not be coming that way. No mortal wolf,
not Loki or any other, would come into the Hemlock
Wood across Rotten Lakes Swamp. In fortunate con sequence, Awklet could leave to Nature the guarding of four-fifths of the border between the Hemlock
Wood and Loki's land to the north.

With his explorations accomplished, Awklet lost
his restlessness and settled down to await the coming winter. He was content and the herd was ready.
They had followed him wherever his instincts had
taken him, and they had done it quickly and without question. Clearly they were happy with their
new leader and just as clearly they would obey him
when the time came to do so. Indeed, both the powerful young leader and the big-eared, gentle-eyed
followers had real cause for content with one another and with the woodland they loved so well.

The forefathers of the present herd had chosen
well when they ended their barren-ground retreat in
the Hemlock Wood. It was surely a region that resolute fighters might hope to defend. The caribou had
only to keep herd sentinels on watch over the two
trails, Boulder Hill and Icy Mountain, by which the
white wolves always came south. That was an easy
task and one that came quite naturally to a deer tribe
whose safety had depended for generations upon
just such herd sentinels. Once warned in good time
of the approach of the Arctic raiders, the fighting
circle could be formed successfully, as in the old
days of the tundra ancestors.

The only small danger was that Loki might know
of some third way into the Hemlock Wood, but that
was scarcely any danger at all. The white wolves
had always used those same two ancient roads. It
seemed unlikely that there were any other trails into
this peaceful land. And so the contentment of the
caribou herd grew greater and their sense of security more false.

Summer grew late, autumn disappeared like
quicksilver, winter shut in swiftly. The first two
months brought nothing but light snows. The big
cold did not come. The short gray days passed endlessly with no sign of the wolf pack. Awklet became
extremely concerned.

The winter deepened into December. The new
year turned. January and February fled by. Still the
animals of the Hemlock Wood awaited the deep
cold that always brought the white wolves down
from their Arctic homeland. But the cold did not
come. Nor did the wolves.

It was the strangest winter in the memory of the
eldest caribou, yet its mystery had a simple answer.
Once in a very long while, the great cold would not
come with its usual fierceness to the land of the
midnight sun. As a result, the wolves would not be
frozen out of their far northern hunting ranges,
would not be driven south to seek food. This was
such an unusual time, such a rare and open winter.

Spring came. The forest browse grew rich and
heavy on every hand and the living was good for
Awklet and his caribou followers. Another golden
Arctic summer swiftly faded. Autumn lingered
briefly. Soon the snows of early winter whitened the
Hemlock Wood. The animals sniffed the cold north
wind and wondered about the wolves.

Surely they must come now. Surely this winter
would bring them. But where were they? What had
happened to them? What were they waiting for?

The caribou grew dangerously tense. They would
not stay in one place, and Awklet had constantly to
lead them to new bedding grounds. Fortunately his
own calm confidence was contagious. And for this
there was great physical evidence. The appearance of the massive young bull moose in the full strength
of his fourth winter would have inspired courage in
a pine mouse. Fully 1,300 pounds in weight, he
stood five inches over six feet at the shoulder. His
coat, a dull shaggy red-brown in earlier calfhood,
was now sleek and deep and very dark, almost black
in color, with the belly and lower legs a bright,
creamy, fawn-yellow, after the striking pattern of his
Alaska-bred sire. His antlers, while not yet of the
magnificent rack and spread that later years would
bring, were still sharp-tined, clearly dangerous
weapons. For all his tremendous size, his movements were lithe and quick as those of a lynx, his
every attitude suggestive of alert, fearless, highly
dangerous fighting power.

The ugly scar that Loki had left upon him, and
that ran like a streak of angry red lightning across
his great hump-muscled neck from crest to jaw base,
served only to increase his look of savage fitness.
Small wonder that the caribou, looking at him, grew
quiet and, for the time at least, unafraid.