Descending into the ravine, Sam found the Indian’s pony in a thicket of scrub juniper. It was a fine horse. The twenty picked warriors had had their choice from large herds. Near the horse was a bedroll. Feeling over it, Sam could tell that inside were ammunition and a skin of pemmican. There was no saddle. After tying the roll across the pony Sam mounted the bay, and leading the pony climbed out of the ravine. The redman’s rifle he left by the stone where it had been fired.
He was hungry but his thoughts were on the Musselshell and back with the dead warrior. On his way to the Yellowstone he killed tive more warriors, three of whom, their horses and equipment said, belonged to the twenty. He was a little tired of killing these people; it was too much like knocking over fool hens. Two of those he killed were mere boys, with poor weapons, shaky trigger Hngers, and a childlike belief in magic. Perhaps he ought to go visit his father-in-law. He might find another Lotus there.
21
HE WAS THINKING of all this while riding across wolf country. During the deep winters in northern latitudes wolves roamed over the frozen world, looking for deer, elk, moose, even for mountain sheep and goat, that had become feeble from hunger and got stuck in the snow. When spring came, wolves looked for dead animals that had been buried by snowslides. The grizzly and other bears, ravenous with hunger after the long sleep, also searched along steep mountainsides, where the avalanches of melting snow swept down, uncovering the tender shoots of early plants, and animals that had died during the fall and winter. Sometimes wolf and bear met on these feeding grounds.
In the southern foothills of the Bighorns four big gray prairie wolves, the mother and father and two children, had found several deer that had been smothered by a snowslide. They had eaten and were making a cache of the remainder, at the base of a sheer ledge that rose above them, when with a movement as swift as any in the animal world the bitch turned, at the same time lifting her head and pulling her lips back to show her fangs. A deep warning growl came up her throat. The father wolf, alerted, looked over at his mate. The two youngsters also sounded a warning. Then all four, backs arched, ears forward, fangs clicking, looked off to the left, where an enormous male grizzly had risen to his hind feet, to have a better look around him. He had smelled the dead flesh. There he stood, a monster, his small eyes peering, his front furry paws hanging loosely. But for his sensitive sniffing nose he seemed to be in an attitude of prayer. Because the wolves were a hundred yards away it is possible that the bear did not see them, for like the buffalo’s, his eyesight was poor; but he smelled the meat and he thought he knew where it was. Sinking soundlessly to all four feet, he moved forward in an easy rolling gait of fat and fur. The wolves watched him come on and warned him with growls and snappings, and backs steadily arching higher. Even if the grizzly had seen the four of them he would not have paused. This male weighed eleven hundred pounds and was afraid of nothing on earth that he had ever seen, though he did try to keep sensibly out of sight when he smelled men and gunpowder. His only plan was to find the flesh and eat, and then stretch out for a siesta in the warm sun.
When sixty feet from the wolves he heard them and his dim eyes saw them. He then did what a grizzly bear usually did when faced by something whose nature and purpose he was not sure of. He rose to his hind legs, his front paws again in that curious attitude of prayer. He saw the four wolves—they now stood abreast, facing him, backs arched, mouths open, teeth snapping. He smelled the animal anger in them but he also smelled the flesh and he was too hungry to be prudent.
When the bear sank again and stood on his four enormous paws he seemed to consider his position for a few moments and then moved forward; and four wolves shot toward him like four gray lightning flashes. If a man’s eyes had been watching—and from the ledge above a man’s eyes were watching—they could not have followed the incredible speed and agility and grace of these four wild dogs. As the father wolf shot past on the bear’s right he snapped savagely at the sensitive nose; and on the other side the mother wolf snapped at it; and though the grizzly in a flash raised a paw and swept an area, long curved talons extended, the wolves not only were gone from his reach but had rushed past his flanks and turned and leapt to his back. Both mother and father had fangs over two inches long, and jaws so powerful they could crack the leg bones of an elk. Both nosed into the deep fur and sank their teeth in the upper flanks; and when the bear, astonished and burning with anger, made woofing sounds and awkwardly rose to his hind legs, the two wolves clung to him, fangs buried. The youngsters, obeying the knowledge that lay deep in their instincts, flashed forward the moment the bear reared, and tried to bite and tear through fur and hide to his ham tendons. The grizzly was covered over with tawny gray furies determined to kill him.
Most bears are by nature placid, good-natured, and friendly. if this grizzly had any power of thought in his small dark skull he must have wondered why he should be attacked merely because he wanted food. All the first sounds he made were of astonishment and wonder; then came exclamations of pain and anger; and when the parent wolves dropped from the back and gouged at the hams, eager to chew the tendons in two, the grizzly exploded with a roar of rage that shook the mountain, and sinking again to four feet, turned swiftly round and round, his front paws sweeping across great arcs but never touching his foes. It was now that the wolves showed their amazing agility and daring. Not a dog among them, not even the young ones, but knew that if the bear’s powerful paw struck them they would be ripped open from shoulder to ham. Yet with superlative courage they took their chances. The four of them were marvels of speed and light as they flashed in and struck, flashed out, burned in a lightning instant, and struck again. Never once was one found in the way of another. Time after time the bear’s long deadly claws came within an inch or less of striking dog flesh; but not once during the fight was wolf touched by fang or talon. The bear was so goaded, so out of his mind with fury and frustration, that he set up a bawling roar that became louder and louder, until the hills roundabout echoed it. For twenty minutes the savage fight continued, and not for a moment did any of the wolves pause in their lightning attack. The grizzly’s fur was too deep, his hide too thick and tough, for the dogs to be able to hamstring him. Besides, he kept turning, or standing up and coming down, or shaking himself like a monster in a great fur coat, or striking out with both front paws. Now and then the parents shifted their attack to his flanks or underbelly; and the father in an act of superb courage faced the monster and struck and furrowed the sensitive nose. This brought from the bear a cry that must have been heard for miles. The man on the ledge was wishing that a piece of great music could be played above this struggle—the tempest in the sonata in F minor, or—yes, indeed!—the choral in the Ninth.
As suddenly as it began it was all over. The bear had had enough. He turned back the way he had come and moved off in a rolling-gait lope, whimpering like a spanked child. After fifty yards he looked back across a shoulder. Then he did something that would have moved any heart but a wolf heart: he stopped and rose to his full height and looked back at his exhausted and snarling enemies, his small black eyes bright with wonder, red drops falling from his nose. After a few moments in which he saw little and learned nothing he came down soundlessly, and in his rolling gait went over the hills and out of sight.