 | "The Alien" |  |
5. V
DAYS passed, the winter deepened, the heavy snows came. Antoine nursed his bruised companion back to strength. Through the bitter nights he kept a fire burning in front of the hole.
The depth of the snow made it improbable that any would learn of his whereabouts; and the news must have spread from post to post that Antoine, the outlaw half-breed, had drowned himself in the ice-fissure in order to escape hanging.
The man had used all his ammunition, and his six-shooter had become useless. So, with the skill of an Indian, he wrought a bow and arrows. He made snow-shoes, and continued to hunt, keeping the wolf in meat until she grew strong and fat with the unaccustomed luxurious life. Also, she became very tame. During her weakness, the man had subdued her fierceness. When the snow crusted, the two went hunting together, Susette trotting at Antoine's heels like a dog.
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 dirgelike calls of the wolves, wandering inward from the vast night. Susette also listened, sitting upon her haunches beside the man, with her short 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, sending forth the long cry of kinship whenever she reached the mouth of the lair.
"Night's cold, Susette," said Antoine;
He caught the wolf, and by 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 into the stillness; whereat the answer of her kind floated back in doleful chorus.
"Don't go!" begged the man; "Susette, my pretty Susette! I'd be so lonesome."
Finally, as the chorus died, the wolf gave a loud yelp and rushed into the pale night.
A great passion 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, and ever the wolf widened the glittering stretch of snow between them.
To Antoine, the ever-widening space of glinting coldness vaguely typified the barrier that seemed growing between him and his last companion.
"Susette, oh, Susette!" he cried at last, breathless and exhausted. His cry was dirgelike, even as the wolves'; thin and sharp — the voice of the old world-ache.
She had disappeared in the dusk of a ravine. Antoine, huddled in the snow with his face upon his knees, sobbed unmanfully into the winter stillness.
| "The Alien" | |