The Lonesome Trail. John G. Neihardt

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СКАЧАТЬ she became very tame. During her weakness the man had subdued her, and through the long nights she lay nestled within the man’s great arms and slept.

      When the snow became crusted, Antoine and Susette went hunting together, she trotting at his heels like a dog. To her he had come to be only an unusually large wolf—a masterful male, a good fighter, strong to kill, a taker of his own.

      One evening in late December, when the low moon threw a shaft of cold silver into the mouth of the lair, Antoine lay huddled in his furs, listening to the long, dirge-like calls of the wolves wandering inward from the vast pitiless night. Susette also listened, sitting upon her haunches beside the man with her ears pricked forward. When the far away cries of her kinspeople arose into a compelling major sound, dying away into the merest shadow of a pitiful minor, she switched her tail uneasily, shuffled about nervously, sniffing and whining.

      Then she began pacing with an eager swing up and down the place to the opening and back to the man, sending forth the cry of kinship whenever she reached the moonlit entrance.

      “Night’s cold, Susette,” said Antoine; “tain’t no time fer huntin’. Hain’t I give you enough to eat? Come here and snuggle up and let’s sleep.”

      He caught the wolf and with main force held her down beside him. She snarled savagely and snapped her jaws together, struggling out of his arms and going to the opening where she cried out into the frozen stillness. The answer of her kind floated back in doleful chorus.

      “Don’t go!” begged the man. “Susette, my pretty Susette! I’ll be so lonesome.”

      As the chorus died, the wolf gave a loud yelp and rushed out into the night. A terrible rage seized Antoine. He leaped from his furs and ran out after the wolf. She fled with a rapid, swinging trot over the scintillating snow toward the concourse of her people. The man fled after, slipping, falling, getting up, running, running, and ever the wolf widened the glittering stretch of snow between them. To Antoine, the ever-widening space of glinting coldness vaguely symbolised the barrier that seemed growing between him and his last companion.

      “Susette, O, Susette!” he cried at last, breathless and exhausted. His cry was dirge-like, even as the wolves’; thin and sharp and ice-like—the voice of the old world-ache.

      She had disappeared in the dusk of a ravine. Antoine, huddled in the snows with his face upon his knees, sobbed in the winter stillness. At last, with slow and faltering step, he returned to his lair; and for the first time in months he felt the throat-pang of the alien.

      He threw himself down upon the floor of the cave and cursed the world. Then he cursed Susette.

      “It’s some other wolf!” he hissed. “Some other grey dog that she’s gone to see. O, damn him! damn his grey hide! I’ll kill her when she comes back!”

      He took out his knife and began whetting it viciously upon his boot.

      “I’ll cut her into strips and eat ’em! Wasn’t I good to her? O, I’ll cut her into strips!”

      He whetted his knife for an hour, cursing the while through his set teeth. At last his anger grew into a foolish madness. He hurled himself upon the bunch of furs beside him and imagined that they were Susette. He set his teeth into the furs, he crushed them with his hands, he tore at them with his nails. Then in the impotence of his anger, he fell upon his face and sobbed himself to sleep.

      Strange visions passed before him. Again he killed Lecroix, and saw the dead face grinning at the stars. Again he sat in his mother’s lodge and wept because he was a stranger. Again he was fleeing, fleeing, fleeing from a leather noose that hung above him like a black cloud, and circled and lowered and raised and lowered until it swooped down upon him and closed about his neck.

      With a yell of fright he awoke from his nightmare. His head throbbed, his mouth was parched. At last day came in sneakingly through the opening—a dull, melancholy light; and with it came Susette, sniffing, with the bristles of her neck erect.

      “Susette! Susette!” cried the man joyfully.

      He no longer thought of killing her. He seized her in his arms; he kissed her frost-whitened muzzle; he caressed her; he called her a woman. She received his caresses with disdain. Whereat the man redoubled his acts of fondness. He fed her and petted her as she ate; whereat the bristles on her neck fell. She nosed him half fondly.

      And Antoine, man-like, was glad again. He contented himself with touching the frayed hem of the garment of Happiness.

      He ate none that day. He said to himself, “I won’t hunt till it’s all gone; she can have it all.” He was afraid to leave Susette. He was afraid to take her with him again into the land of her own people. Antoine was jealous.

      All day he was kind to her with the pitiful kindness of a doting lover for his unfaithful mistress.

      That night she consented to lie within his arms, and Antoine cried softly as he whispered into her ear: “Susette, I hain’t a goin’ to be jealous no more. You’ve been a bad girl, Susette. Don’t do it again. I won’t be mean less’n you let him come skulkin’ round here, damn his grey hide! But O, Susette”—his voice was like a spoken pang—“I wisht—I wisht I was that other wolf!”

      The next morning Antoine did not get up. He felt sore and exhausted. By evening his heart was beating like a hammer. His head ached and swam; his burning eyes saw strange, uncertain visions.

      “Susette,” he called, “I hain’t quite right; come here and let me touch you again.”

      Night was falling and Susette sat sullenly apart, listening for the call of her people. She did not go to him. All night the man tossed and raved. After a lingering age of delirious wanderings, dizzy flights from huge pitiless pursuers, he became conscious of the daylight. He raised his head feebly and looked about the den. Susette was gone. A fury of jealousy again seized Antoine. She had gone to that other wolf—he felt certain of that. He tried to arise, but the fever had weakened him so that he lay impotently, torn alternately with anger and longing.

      Suddenly a frost-whitened snout was thrust in at the opening. It was Susette. The man was too weak to cry out his joy, but his eyes filled with a soft light.

      Susette entered sniffing strangely, whining and switching her tail as she came. At her heels followed another grey wolf—a male, larger-boned, lanker, with a more powerful snout. He whined and moved his tail nervously at sight of the man.

      Antoine lay staring impotently upon the intruder. “So that’s him,” thought the man; “I wisht I could get up.”

      A delirious anger shook him; he struggled to arise, but could not. “O God,” he moaned; it was an unusual thing for this man to say the word so; “O God, please le’ me get up and fight!”

      A harsh growl stopped him. The grey intruder approached him with a rapid, sinuous movement of the tail. His jaws grinned hideously with long sharp teeth displayed. The rage of hunger was in his eyes fixed steadily upon the sick man.

      Antoine stared steadily into the glaring eyes of his wolfish rival, already crouching for the spring.

      On a sudden, a strange exhilaration came over the man. He seemed drinking in the essence of life from the pitiless stare of his adversary. His great limbs, seeming devitalised but a moment before, now tingled to their extremities with a sudden surging of the wine of life. His eyes, which the fever had burned into the СКАЧАТЬ