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Then he threw up his head to the stars, and from his throat there rolled out over the wide plains the hunt-cry the wild and savage call for the pack. Never had he put the savagery in it that was there to-night.
All the cries were alike, filled with that first wailing grief, except that of the swelling throat which was sending forth the call to food. A few minutes, and another of the mournful howls changed into the fierce hunt-cry; then a second, a third, and a fourth, and the sound of the chase swept swiftly from the swamp to the mountain, up the mountain and down into the barrens.
Like ravenous dogs after having a few scraps of meat flung among them, the wolves were running about, nosing here and there, as if hoping to find a morsel that might have escaped discovery. Then one of them stopped on the trail and, throwing himself half on his haunches, with his head turned to the sky like a baying hound, started the hunt-cry. "There's two packs.
It was not the "call" that comes with the moonlit nights, and neither was it the hunt-cry, nor the she-wolf's yearning for matehood. It carried with it the lament of death. And after that one cry Gray Wolf slunk back to the fringe of bush over the river, and lay with her face turned to the stream. A strange terror fell upon her.
"A caribou!" cried Jan softly. "A caribou, and he is going into the barrens. There is no water, and he is lost!" He ran and leaned over beside the old tree, so that the great plain stretched out below him. Into the west turned the pack, the hunt-cry growing fainter until it almost died away.
He stood there, her hand still on his arm, and a second or two later caught the sound which she had previously heard. Faintly and thinned by long distance it came, a long curdling cry. "What " she broke off as the cry sounded afresh, and he answered the unfinished question. "The hunt-cry of a wolf calling up the pack. There is nothing to fear. It is miles away."
On swept the Herd on raced the pursuing Redskins, now joined by Eagle Shoe. An Indian rose like a specter behind the bush wall, and twanged a hoarse-singing arrow into the quivering flank of the Herd that was as one Buffalo. His Hunt-Cry of joy, fierce-voiced, was like the wail of an infant the roar of the troubled earth hushed it to nothing.
The fourth night he heard again the wailing hunt-cry of the wolves, and it held a wild and thrilling note for him. With Neewa, fat and good humour and contentment were all synonymous. As long as the meat held out there was no very great temptation for him beyond the dip and the slope.
What the hangman's noose is to the murderer, what the leveled rifles are to the condemned spy, that hunt-cry of the wolves is to the wounded animal of the forests. Instinct taught this to the old bull. His head dropped, his huge antlers leveled themselves with his shoulders, and he set off at a slow trot toward the east.
The other came an hour later, clear and distinct, that same wailing howl at the beginning but ending in a staccato of quick sharp yelps that stirred his blood at once into a fiery excitement that it had never known before. The same instinct told him that this was the call the hunt-cry. It urged him to come quickly.
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