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Ebook has 851 lines and 67288 words, and 18 pages

Suddenly, part of a rock on the Indian's right seemed to split and launch itself into the air, with a rasping, tearing noise between a growl and a snarl. Quick as a weazel, the Indian leaped aside. The long fangs, intended for his throat, missed their mark by half an inch, but struck his shoulder with a clash of meeting bone. Instantly he whipped out his knife, and stabbed fiercely at his foe. As he did so, the wolf leaped away. She, in her turn, was the fraction of a second too late. She snarled as she felt the blade. At the sound of his mother's unexpected voice, the cub gave a bleating cry. The noise seemed to send a wave of fury through her. Once more she sprang with eyeballs that blazed.

But this time the Indian was prepared. He met her savage leap with an equally savage blow. And as he struck, he let loose the ringing war cry of his tribe. With a yelp of pain and baffled fury, the she-wolf bounded aside. The knife had done its deadly work. The searching man-cry had completed it. Bewildered, terrified, utterly cowed, the great wolf went bounding up the gorge, bedabbling the ground with blood.

Not till late the following day, weakened with loss of blood and moving heavily, did she drag herself back to the cubs in the new den. But the fibres of the mother-heart were firmly-knit within her, and the fibres of the wolf-race tough. Day by day her strength came back to her; and day by day the father-wolf, having discovered the new home and seeming to realize what had happened, brought freshly-killed game to the door of the den. He did not dare to enter. But the grand old mother dragged her body painfully to the meat, and the cubs never wanted for a meal.

And within earshot of the new den, as of the old, Little-Sweet-Voice, the white-throated sparrow, sang his heart out into the sun.

WHY "DUSTY STAR" WAS

They called him "Dusty Star" because he happened in the night. All over the prairies of the immense West you might find here and there, in the old buffalo times before the White men ploughed, those little circles of puff-balls that weren't there yesterday and which began under the stars. "Dusty Stars" the red men called them, in their strange prairie tongue. The name, like other Indian names, was very ancient. It was a word that went walking in the beginning of the world.

Dusty Star, unlike his name, was very young. But he was big--very big for his nine years. Even in the star-time he must have done a lot of growing, for when the morning light crept into the tepee, he was seen to be a considerable-sized baby--extra large for a papoose. And the thoughts in his head were like the bones in his body--big, very big! He soon grew tired of lying in his little beaver-skin hammock, slung so cunningly from one lodge pole to another, and listening to the prairie larks as they sang in the blue morning. He did such tremendous things with his fat arms that the lodge-poles creaked. And he screamed with the sheer force of being alive. When he fell out of the hammock and all but broke his neck, his mother thought he would be safer if she let him crawl. Even in his crawling days, he learnt a lot about the world. He learnt how grasshoppers jump and prairie mice run. He wanted to crawl right out along the prairie into the middle west. His mother caught him just in time. After that, she fastened a deer-thong round his middle. It wasn't fair, and stopped him being one of the greatest explorers--for his age--which the world has ever seen. But it probably saved his life.

After that he grew up as all prairie children grow, with a great deal of play by day, and a huge deal of sleep by night. And the sun and the wind were great companions, and meant very much to him; and the sun baked him to a fine redness, and the wind searched him, and seemed somehow to send gusts along his blood. And often and often he would fall asleep, listening to the eerie whisper and whack of it, when the poles creaked and the lodge-ears tapped; or to the long sobbing chorus of the coyotes, far out where the prairie humped itself to blackness against an orange-coloured sky, and the east began to be hollow for the rising of the moon. And where the wind ran, and the moon walked, and the coyotes chorused, was to him a magical country, with edges as sharp as the prairie ridges, that girdled all his dreams.

On the day that he was nine years old, Dusty Star sat outside the tepee, blinking in the sun. From where he sat he could look far across the prairies, and so observe anything that might be moving over its immense expanse. For a long time he saw nothing at all. That was not strange, since in that vast apparent flatness there were thousands of hollows where all manner of four-footed Cunningnesses could go about their business and never show so much as the tip of an ear to any human eye.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and many of the prairie people were not yet risen from their noon-day sleep. Presently, over the high butte to the north, he saw a buzzard on wide motionless wings, "sitting" in the blue. The circles he made were so immensely wide and slow that he scarcely seemed to move in that high watch-tower of the air where he scanned the world for carrion. Next, a pair of hawks came into sight, skimming above the clumps of sage and bunch-grass. And now Dusty Star knew by their busy flight that the smaller prairie folk had begun to follow the runways in their eager search for food. Then, as he watched, came a flash between the sage bushes, as a jack-rabbit dashed to feed on the juicy leaves that grew under the alder thicket by the stream.

Henceforward the cub was the centre of his little world. He called it Kiopo, because that was a name that meant for him all sorts of wolfish things, which he could not otherwise express and which he could never have explained to anyone grown-up; which, indeed, he could not explain even to Kiopo himself. He talked to Kiopo a good deal, and when he was not telling him of matters of the highest importance, he was plying him with questions. It did not discourage him in the least that Kiopo received the information with the utmost unconcern, and never answered one of the questions. Dusty Star concluded that baby wolves were like that. They might indeed be full of wisdom, but they expressed it solely by means of their teeth.

Kiopo left the marks of his teeth upon everything that he could bite. When Dusty Star's mother, Nikana, found them upon one of her best bead moccasins, so that many of the beads were missing, she gave him a tap with the moccasin that made him yelp with pain. But when Blue Wings, Dusty Star's baby sister, was, one fine day, found lying carelessly about on the floor of the tepee, to Kiopo's intense delight, and began to be treated like the beads, Nikana, roused by her screaming, gave Kiopo such a shaking, and such a cuffing between the shakes, that he really thought his last hour had come, and yelled as piercingly as Blue Wings herself. Not that he wanted to hurt things for the sake of hurting. He merely wanted to worry them, and to bite and bite, and bite.

It was all very strange after the old life in the Carboona, where the blue jays made such loud remarks to each other from thicket to thicket, and whoever hadn't got wings, went upon four feet. But here the tall, human creatures went always upon two only, and it was only the little Dusty Star that understood stomach-walking on all fours, and making companionable noises in the throat. As for Blue Wings--the cub that yelled when you bit her--she was a poor imitation of a human, though possibly with a high food value, if only they would let you try.

One of the hardest things to get used to was the tepee itself, with its peculiar Indian smells, so utterly different to the badger-hole where the only scent was the good home smell of the family, or perhaps of some fine old bone that had had many teeth at work upon it, and was trying hard to be dead. It was some time before Kiopo grew accustomed to the new smells, so as to be able to sort them out as belonging to the various objects which gave them. And when night had fallen, it was a dismal experience to wake up and see the inside of the tepee full of unfamiliar shapes in the glimmer of the moon. And then a great fear would take him, and he would lift the thin pipe of his cub voice and yelp aloud, because he wanted his mother, and because there lay at the back of his head a dim idea that there were ears upon Carboona that would catch the sound, and send a gaunt hairy body loping to the rescue. But the listeners upon Carboona were too remote to catch that wailing cry, and those that were close at hand were not disposed to be sympathetic. When Running Wolf shouted at him, he was all the more terrified, and yelped the louder, and when the angry Indian seized him and shook him into silence, his little heart was fit to break.

Under cover of the darkness, Dusty Star stole across to where the wolf-cub lay cowering, and gathered the little shivering body into his arms. And then he made him a lair in the buffalo robe that covered his own bed. And when Kiopo felt the warmth and good neighbourhood of the human brother's body, he cuddled himself against it with a sigh and whimpered himself to sleep.

In the day-time it was not so lonely because there were many things to sniff at and to watch. Besides there was always the big brother ready to play with him, and to come down on all fours from the great heights of the hind-leg-walking world, or to tickle him in the ribs when he rolled over on his back and exposed the round bulge that was his stomach to the public. It was wonderful how much Kiopo managed to cram into that bulge, and how his body grew in proportion to the bulge. His appetite never seemed to be satisfied. Bits of buffalo meat, old bones, odds and ends of waste, shreds of pemmican, or gollops of stew--the bulge took them all and still had room for more.

He was immensely curious about the outer world. There was the willow-copse by the stream where the brown water talked with a wet tongue. It was crossed by tiny trails of wood and water folk that had furtive scurrying movements and were very hard to catch. Kiopo's small wolf-eyes had the keenest possible sight, and what his eyes did not tell him about the little furtive folk, he found out by experiments with his paws, mouth and nose. Sometimes his curiosity got him into trouble, as upon the day when, pouncing upon an immense green grasshopper close to the water's edge, he lost his balance, and rolled head-over-heels into the stream. Fortunately the water was shallow, but the scrambling and spluttering and yelping were so tremendous that the commotion brought the big brother racing to the rescue. After that experience Kiopo learnt the lesson that however tempting game may be, it is best to look beyond it before you make your spring.

It was not long before he became a mighty hunter of mice. Between the grass bents and the stalks of the prairie plants, their runways ran like little roads down which they scurried in the early morning or late afternoon, doing a hundred miles of mouse geography to their watering-places at the stream. No cunning wolf-mother taught Kiopo to nose these narrow water-trails, and lie down beside them very craftily, with his head between his paws. Yet the ancient hunting-craft of wolf ancestors who had made their kills years beyond memory in the grey backwards of the moons, woke in his blood when the time arrived and showed him what to do. And Dusty Star, observing how, after countless failures, his cub gained mastery over the mice, admired his tireless perseverance, and loved the little hunter with all his Indian heart.

RUNNING WOLF MOVES

Running Wolf was like his name. He was always on the move. Ever since Dusty Star could remember anything at all, his father had been going and coming, disappearing without warning, and re-appearing unexpectedly, as if the feet of many wolves went hunting in his blood.

It was in the Red Moon, the moon of the harvest, that he now made up his mind to pay a visit to his tribe, and see how the world wagged itself where great Chiefs and Medicine-men smoked the medicine-pipe together in the wonderful painted lodges very far south. But as the journey was a long one, and the cold weather would follow the geese, before he could return, he decided that the whole family should travel with him, and take up their winter quarters with the tribe.

Once Running Wolf had made up his mind, there was not a moment to lose. Almost before you could have believed it possible, Osikomix, the piebald pony, had the lodge-poles fastened to his back, and the entire family--Nikana, Dusty Star, Blue Wings and Kiopo--were on their way, following the direction the wild geese would take when they left the vast northern waters when the call came from the south.

Their way lay at first through the meadows of high bunch-grass that lay beside the stream, where the alders were tinged with faint purple, and all the willow thickets shone a fine clear red. Kiopo badly wanted to stop and hunt mice, but Dusty Star made him clearly understand that no loitering by the runways was possible now, and that he must keep in his place in the procession behind Osikomix and Running Wolf.

After a while they came to the country of the cottonwoods, where the trees were turning yellow, and where the sarvis berries were scarlet like flame. And they reached the borders of the great southern prairies where the low roll of the ridges seemed to have no end.

At sundown, Running Wolf made his camp. The spot he had chosen was at the foot of a low cliff, under which ran a river, which would have to be forded before they could proceed on their journey. Running Wolf attended to Osikomix. Dusty Star helped his mother to collect brushwood for a fire. Kiopo went hunting along the river bank to get an evening meal. Blue Wings was the only person who remained idle. Yet even she sucked her thumb with unceasing perseverance, and made soft glug-glugging noises in her little Indian throat.

That night when Dusty Star had lain down in his buffalo-robe bed, with Kiopo curled at his feet, he stayed awake a long time. He listened to the voices that seem born of the darkness--the hoot of the little grey owl from the swamp across the river, the evening call of coyotes among the prairie bluffs and those other small mysterious sounds that creep about the silence without paws or walking feet. And overhead was the night--the enormous Indian night, with all its glittering fires--stretched like a huge tepee from horizon to horizon, though the stars upon its sides were anything but dusty, and if the Great Spirit walked there, he was careful that his moccasins should not crush the tiny stars. And when at length Dusty Star fell asleep, he dreamed of a great hunting across the windy places of the sky, where the buffaloes clashed their horns against the cliffs of Heaven, and the wolf-pack woke the echoes in the hollows of the moon.

The fording of the river next morning was a great delight. Dusty Star rode on his father's back, and Blue Wings went on her mother's. Osikomix, splashed grandly across, taking the water up to his belly. But when the party had reached the opposite shore, Dusty Star found that Kiopo was left behind. There he stood looking anxiously at the water, and enquiringly at his owners, as if asking which of them was coming back to fetch him. But as it was soon made plain to him that no one intended to do so, and that the party was preparing to continue on its way, he put his courage into all his paws and plunged into the stream. It was the very first time he had taken to the water, but his instinct taught him what to do, and he swam bravely across, dragging himself up the opposite bank, a little half-drowned caricature of a wolf, panting with excitement and pride.

After that, there were no more adventures for the day. At night, they camped as before, and again Dusty Star dreamed of the great hunting that swept between the stars.

It was in the afternoon of the nineteenth day's travel that they came at last within sight of the camp. When Dusty Star saw the great number of tepees crowded together, his eyes grew big with amazement. He had not thought there could have been so many lodges in all the world. To him it was a huge prairie city, whose houses were built of buffalo, with doors of buckskin at which no one ever knocked.

If Dusty Star's eyes were filled with wonder at the sight of so many tepees, Kiopo's nose was tickled with amazement at the quantity of smells. Every bush, every stone, every clump of grass he came to, told him of a dog. It might have been expected that fresh scents would greet him in a land of many trails. But so much smell at once, was overpowering, and disturbed his peace of mind.

Nothing could have been quieter or more orderly than the manner in which the travellers approached the camp. It is true that Kiopo was a little in advance, and that his hair was bristling uneasily between his shoulders, but that was only to be expected with so much smell in the air. Suddenly, without a moment's warning, a large hairy body sprang with a snarl from a clump of bunch-grass, and rushed savagely upon him. Now for all his dog training with his Indian friends, Kiopo was, in the mind of him, as well as in the muscle, a genuine wolf. So, when the husky rushed, Kiopo leaped aside, as the wolves leap. Before his enemy charged again, the long wolf fangs glittered; there was a lighting plunge of the whole body, and down the husky's haunch went a long clean rip. The husky turned in fury, and his teeth shut like a trap. They closed--but not on the little wolf. They clashed on an inch of clear atmosphere which lay to the west of Kiopo's hairy neck. And in almost the same moment, the husky got a second slash.

But alas for Kiopo! Wolf-like though his tactics were, he was not yet old or powerful enough to fight with more than one foe at once. His enemy's attack was a signal to all the huskies on that side of the camp. The moment before, hardly another husky was to be seen. Now they seemed to spring from every tepee and clump of grass. At least a dozen bore down on the combatants in a yelping, snarling pack. In an instant, and before Dusty Star could do anything to save him, Kiopo had disappeared from sight under a mass of writhing bodies, legs, and tails. Dusty Star was desperate, and cried wildly to his father and mother to save his little wolf. Fortunately it was not the first time that Running Wolf and Nikana had had to disperse a mob of Indian dogs. With loud yells and violent kicks they charged the rolling heap. Several Indians, hearing the commotion, came running to their aid. Dusty Star himself was foremost in the attack, yelling, kicking, pulling, pounding with all his might, utterly regardless as to whether he might be bitten or not. Wild with fury against the huskies, and his deadly fear lest Kiopo should be killed, he hurled himself on the pack like a little demon.

At last the huskies, beaten and kicked on all sides lost heart and were driven off. What was left on the ground was an extremely mauled and tumbled specimen of what less than five minutes before had been a very trim little wolf.

Instantly Dusty Star was on his knees beside his pet. Kiopo was bleeding in various places, and panting hard. Dusty Star put his arms round him, and besought him not to die. To die, however, was one of the last things Kiopo intended to do. Exhausted he might be, and wanting to get his breath, but his body was sound and his spirit unbroken. In the eyes that looked up gratefully into those of his big brother, there shone a clear, unconquerable light. Very soon he was able to get up and shake himself. Then, keeping a wary eye on all sides, he walked forward with his party, and so entered the camp.

Although his reappearance alive, when, according to all husky calculations, he ought to have been dead, was the occasion for many growls, and a threatening show of teeth, his enemies did not venture to attack him again. Unwelcome though he was, it was plain that he had come among them under the protection of powerful friends. An unprotected stranger would have indeed led "a dog's life," and sooner or later, died a dog's death, unpitied to the last. But into their hard husky intelligence, this fact had embedded itself like a stone: What the lord-humans protect, it is dangerous to attack.

KIOPO FINDS AN ENEMY

After this stormy introduction to the camp, the family settled down quietly enough. Running Wolf's long absence from the tribe had made no difference to his membership or position in it. Half-an-hour after his arrival, his tepee was set up in the place appointed for it by the head chief, and in two days' time the family were living the life of the camp as if they had never left it. To be quite truthful, Running Wolf, Nikana, and Blue Wings were living it. With Dusty Star it was different. The number of people of all ages, from newly-born papooses, up to braves and old squaws--some of them so wrinkled and bony that it almost seemed as if they had forgotten to be dead; the constant coming and going, the pony-racing, the chanting of medicine songs and the beating of drums;--all these things were so utterly strange and bewildering that, after the long day's experiences, he was almost too excited to sleep.

As for Kiopo, if an animal could have spent the whole of its puppyhood in the moon, and then, one slippery night, have all at once fallen off into the middle of the earth, it could not possibly have felt more an unwelcome intruder than Kiopo in his new surroundings. The fact of his arrival was now known to every husky in the camp, and each husky hated him from the bottom of his husky heart. For the most part they lived on the worst possible terms with each other. This individual dislike did not stand in the way of a combined attack upon a common enemy when opportunity offered. Left to themselves to arrange matters, Kiopo would not have had the ghost of a grasshopper's chance. There were two great obstacles to his immediate destruction. One was his owner, Dusty Star, who kept a pile of stones and a heavy stick, always ready for instant use; and the other was Kiopo himself.

Kiopo was now three parts grown, and was considerably larger than the ordinary wolf of his age. For the average full-grown dog, he was more than a match. The few that had ventured to fight him singly had learnt that to their cost. But against a combined attack of the whole husky rabble, he was naturally powerless. And owing to the peculiar make-up of the general husky mind, you never could tell from one moment to another when the rabble would unite. He knew himself surrounded by enemies. Go where he would, hackles were raised, lips curled back, and glaring eyes were fastened upon him. It was small wonder if, as week after week went by, he became nervous, irritable, and depressed.

Among all his foes, the one of whom he stood most in dread, was a big dog called Stickchi. He was a surly, sour-tempered, evil-eyed brute whom none of the other huskies dared to face, but whom they nevertheless regarded as one of the leaders of the pack. Stealing, fighting, and bullying were accomplishments which had earned for Stickchi this position of authority, and he took a constant delight in showing his power. It was he who had led the attack on Kiopo's arrival in the camp, and now he hated him with a murderous hatred. Kiopo returned the hate in full, though he stood too much in awe of the great bully to venture to attack him when they met. The principal thing that enraged Stickchi was that, while the other huskies at once got out of his way as their acknowledged master, Kiopo only avoided him at the last possible moment after he had fully expressed his feelings by drawing back his lips from his dangerous teeth in a defiant snarl. Then, when infuriated beyond measure by this open defiance of his authority, the bully charged his foe, Kiopo, leaping lightly aside, would seem to send his supple body floating through the air, and land a dozen feet away, only to crouch for a new spring, and bare those evil-looking teeth as before.

Yet in spite of his defiance, Kiopo harboured a great uneasiness at the back of his mind, for his keen wolf-intelligence told him that sooner or later, the day must come when the contest for mastery could be no longer postponed, and that the struggle would be a fight to the death.

Dusty Star, for all his vigilance, did not fully understand. He could not think why it was that Kiopo generally kept so close to the tepee, and rarely ventured any distance away unless he went with him. This was because Stickchi was as cunning as he was cowardly. Whenever he saw Kiopo with any one of the family he did not attempt to attack him, but contented himself with growling deep in his hairy chest, and looking very ugly. Like many other bullies, he was easily frightened, and he never forgot one particular experience when Kiopo had been busily gnawing an elkbone behind the tepee. Stickchi had made up his mind to have the bone. Believing that no one saw him, he had crouched on his stomach in his most cunning manner, and had begun a stealthy game of stalking. If Kiopo had not been so engrossed in his bone no amount of Stickchi's artfulness could have caught him unawares. But the treasure had such flavoury bits of very high meat attaching to it that, for once, he was completely off his guard. So, bit by bit, Kiopo blissfully gnawed, and, bit by bit, Stickchi's stomach drew nearer.

There is nothing much more exciting than to stalk something that is already stalking something else. And so, when Dusty Star, returning from the other side of the camp, came up quietly and saw the game that was being played, he joined in with delight. Inch by inch the artful Stickchi's stomach trailed elaborately over the ground, and, inch by inch, Dusty Star gained upon him.

At last there was only a tuft of wild turnip between Stickchi and his prey, and then open country for at least six feet.

Hardly daring to breathe, Dusty Star gathered his body together very tightly. In his right hand was a heavy stick. Stickchi also was making himself very tight, preparing for the final rush. He wriggled his body slightly, bracing his hind feet firmly against the ground. There was a second's pause before he uncoiled the powerful spring that was himself, and hurled his body on his unprepared victim. In that momentary pause a human whirlwind loosed itself on him from behind, and a heavy blow descended on his head.

With a yelp of fear and pain he bounded aside, twisting half round as he did so, to see what had attacked him. Quick as lightning, Dusty Star struck again, this time in the very middle of the husky's back.

The bully did not wait for another blow. Yelping with terror, he turned with his tail between his legs, and fled across the camp for his life.

After this lesson he observed Running Wolf's tepee from a respectful distance. But it only served to increase his enmity towards Kiopo, and he nursed black revenge at the bottom of his evil heart.

"SITTING-ALWAYS"

Among the many odd and unexpected things which Dusty Star found in the new life in the camp, one of the most peculiar and unaccountable was a grandmother, whose name was Sitting-Always.

But a grandmother, it appeared, though neither a spirit nor a star, was a Great Power to be reckoned with. There were days when she painted her face bright yellow. These were solemn occasions. If you made a noise or got in her way, she would wrinkle her skin till the paint cracked. If you continued the annoyance, she would smack. As a painted curiosity Dusty Star observed her with awe.

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