The Way of the Wild

Part 1

Produced by Al Haines

THE WAY OF THE WILD

F. ST. MARS

WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRY ROUNTREE

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND UNDER THE TITLE "PINION AND PAW"

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS

I GULO THE INDOMITABLE II BLACKIE AND CO. III UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG IV NINE POINTS OF THE LAW V PHARAOH VI THE CRIPPLE VII "SET A THIEF"---- VIII THE WHERE IS IT? IX LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE X THE KING'S SON XI THE HIGHWAYMAN OF THE MARSH XII THE FURTIVE FEUD XIII THE STORM PIRATE XIV WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD XV FATE AND THE FEARFUL XVI THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL XVII RATEL, V.C. XVIII THE DAY

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Jaws, monstrous and wet, grabbing at him in enraged confusion" . . . Frontispiece

"The owl had lost a foot on the turn

"A shrew-mouse, thirsting for blood, but who got poison instead"

"This one had simply streaked out of the night from nowhere"

"Landed full upon the dumbfounded water-vole--splash!"

"A 'silver tabby' floated among the twigs, looking for him"

"An angry eagle-owl"

"Turning over and over, in one long, sickening dive back to earth"

"That little black-headed fellow doing the stalking act upon that python was great"

"Shooting straight upwards on the top of what appeared to have been a submarine mine in a mild form"

"He clutched, and tore, and gulped, and gorged"

"All allowed that he was the pluckiest beast on earth"

THE WAY OF THE WILD

GULO THE INDOMITABLE

If his father had been a brown bear and his mother a badger, the result in outward appearance would have been Gulo, or something very much like him. But not all the crossing in the world could have accounted for his character; that came straight from the Devil, his master. Gulo, however, was not a cross. He was himself, Gulo, the wolverine, alias glutton, alias carcajou, alias quick-hatch, alias fjeldfras in the vernacular, or, officially, Gulo luscus. But, by whatever name you called him, he did not smell sweet; and his character, too, was of a bad odor. A great man once said that he was like a bear cub with a superadded tail; but that great man cannot have seen his face. If he had, he would have looked for his double among the fiends on the top of Notre Dame. There was, in fact, nothing like him on this earth, only in a very hot place not on the earth.

Part 2

He was, in short, a beast with brains that only man, and no beast, ought to be trusted with; and he had no soul. God alone knows if love, which softens most creatures, had ever come to Gulo; his behavior seemed to show that it had not. Perhaps love was afraid of him. And, upon my soul, I don't wonder.

It was not, however, a hot, but a very cold, place in the pine-forest where Gulo stood, and the unpitying moon cast a dainty tracery through the tasseled roof upon the new and glistening snow around him--the snow that comes early to those parts--and the north-east wind cut like several razors. But Gulo did not seem to care. Wrapped up in his ragged, long, untidy, uncleanly-looking, brown-black cloak--just his gray-sided, black fiend's face poking out--he seemed warm enough. When he lifted one paw to scratch, one saw that the murderous, scraping, long claws of him were nearly white; and as he set his lips in a devilish grin, his fangs glistened white in the moonlight, too.

Verily, this was no beast--he would have taped four feet and a quarter from tip to tip, if you had worn chain-mail and dared to measure him--no beast, I say, to handle with white-kid ball gloves. Things were possible from him, one felt, that were not possible of any other living creature--awful things.

Suddenly he looked up. The branches above him had stirred uneasily, as if an army were asleep there. And an army was--of wood-pigeons. Thousands upon thousands of wood-pigeons were asleep above his head, come from Heaven knows where, going to--who could tell in the end?

All at once one fell. Without apparent reason or cause, it fell. And the wolverine, with his quick, intelligent eyes, watched it fall, from branch to branch, turning over and over--oh! so softly--to the ground. When he had poked his way to it--walking flat-footed, like a bear or a railway porter--it was dead. Slain in a breath! Without a flutter, killed! By what? By disease--diphtheria. But not here would the terrible drama be worked out. This was but an isolated victim, first of the thousands that would presently succumb to the fell disease far, far over there, to the westward, hundreds of miles away, in England and Wales, perhaps, whither they were probably bound.

But the poor starved corpse, choked to death in the end maybe, was of no use to the wolverine. As he sniffed it he found that out. The thing was wasted to the bones even. And turning away from it--he suddenly "froze" in his tracks where he stood.

One of those little wandering eddies which seem to meander about a forest in an aimless sort of way, coming from and going now hither, as if the breeze itself were lost among the still aisles, had touched his wet muzzle; and its touch spelt--"Man!"

If it had been the taint of ten thousand deaths it could not have affected him more. He became a beast cast in old, old bronze, and as hard as bronze; and when he moved, it was stiffly, and all bristly, and on end.

Animals have no counting of time. In the wild, things happen as swiftly as a flash of light; or, perhaps, nothing happens at all for a night, or a day, or half a week. Therefore I do not know exactly how long that wolverine was encircling that scent, and pinning it down to a certain spot--himself unseen. All animals, almost, can do that, but none, not even the lynx or the wild cat, so well as the wolverine. He is the one mammal that, in the wild, is a name only--a name to conjure with.

He found, in the end, that there was no man; but there had been. He found--showing himself again now--that a man--a hunter, a trapper, one after fur--had made himself here a cache, a store under the earth; and--well, the wolverine's great, bear-like claws seemed made for digging.

He dug--and, be sure, if there had been any danger there he would have known it. He dug like a North-Country miner, with swiftness and precision, stopping every now and again to sit back on his haunches, and, with humped shoulders, stare--scowl, I mean--round in his lowering, low-browed fashion.

Once a bull-elk, nearly a six-footer, but he loomed large as an elephant, came clacking past between the ranked tree-boles, stopping a moment to straddle a sapling and browse; while the wolverine, sitting motionless and wide-legged, watched him. Once a lynx, with its eternal, set grin, floated by, half-seen, half-guessed, as if a wisp of wood mist had broken loose and was floating about. Once a fox, somewhere in the utter silence of the forest depths, barked a hoarse, sharp, malicious sound; and once, hoarser still and very hollowly, a great horned owl hooted with disconcerting suddenness. (The scream of a rabbit followed these two, but whether fox or owl had been in at that killing the wolverine never knew.) Twice a wood-hare turning now to match the whiteness of its surroundings, finicked up one of the still, silent forest lanes towards him, stopped, faced half-round, sat "frozen" for a fraction, and vanished as if it were a puff of wind-caught snow. (And, really, one had no idea till now that the always apparently lifeless forest could have been so full of life in the dark hours.)

But all these things made no difference to the wolverine, to Gulo, though he "froze" with habitual care to watch them--for your wild creature rarely takes chances. Details must never be overlooked in the wild. He dug on, and in digging came right to the cache, roofed and anchored all down, safe beyond any invasion, with tree-trunks. And--and, mark you, not being able to pull tree-trunks out of the ground, and being too large to squeeze between them, he gnawed through one! Gnawed through it, he did, and came down to the bazaar below.

So far, he had been only beast. Now we see why I said he had more brains than were good for any animal except man.

He bit through the canvas, or whatever it was that protected the cached articles. He got his head inside. He felt about purposefully, and backed out, dragging a trap with him. With it he removed into the inky shadows, and it was never found again.

He returned. He thrust his head in a second time, got hold of something, and backed out. It was another trap, and with it he vanished also; and it, too, was never found. He returned, and went, and a third trap went with him.

Continue reading The Way of the Wild free in the Wunder reader →