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24 - Kazan by James Oliver Curwood · Kazan

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty four, alone in darkness. Never had the terror
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  Speaker 1: and loneliness of blindness fallen upon Gray Wolf as in
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  Speaker 1: the days that followed the shooting of Kazan and his
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  Speaker 1: capture by Sandy mc trigger. For hours after the shot,
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  Speaker 1: she crouched in the bush, back from the river, waiting
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  Speaker 1: for him to come to her. She had faith that
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  Speaker 1: he would come, as he had come a thousand times before,
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  Speaker 1: and she lay close on her belly, sniffing the air
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  Speaker 1: and whining when it brought no scent of her mate.
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  Speaker 1: Day and night were alike, an endless chaos, a darkness
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  Speaker 1: to her now, but she knew when the sun went
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  Speaker 1: down she sensed the first deepening shadows of evening, and
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  Speaker 1: she knew that the stars were out, and that the
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  Speaker 1: river lay in moonlight. It was a night to Rome,
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  Speaker 1: And after a time she moved restlessly about in a
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  Speaker 1: small circle on the plain and sent out her first
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  Speaker 1: in inquiring call for Kazan. Up from the river came
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  Speaker 1: the pungent odor of smoke, and instinctively she knew that
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  Speaker 1: it was this smoke and the nearness of man that
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  Speaker 1: was keeping Kazan from her. But she went no nearer
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  Speaker 1: than that first circle made by her padded feet. Blindness
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  Speaker 1: had taught her to wait since the day of the
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  Speaker 1: battle on the sun Rock, when the lynx had destroyed
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  Speaker 1: her eyes. Kazan had never failed her. Three times she
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  Speaker 1: called for him in the early night. Then she made
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  Speaker 1: herself a nest under a banskin shrub and waited until dawn.
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  Speaker 1: Just how she knew when night blotted out the last
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  Speaker 1: flaw of the sun, so without seeing, she knew when
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  Speaker 1: day came. Not until she felt the warmth of the
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  Speaker 1: sun on her back did her anxiety overcome her caution. Slowly,
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  Speaker 1: she moved toward the river, sniffing the air and whining.
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  Speaker 1: There was no longer unger the smell of smoke in
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  Speaker 1: the air, and she could not catch the scent of man.
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  Speaker 1: She followed her own trail back to the sand bar,
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  Speaker 1: and in the fringe of thick bush overhanging the white
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  Speaker 1: shore of the stream, she stopped and listened. After a
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  Speaker 1: little she scrambled down and went straight to the spot
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  Speaker 1: where she and Kazan were drinking When the shot came,
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  Speaker 1: and there her nose struck the sand, still wet and
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  Speaker 1: thick with Kazan's blood. She knew it was the blood
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  Speaker 1: of her mate, for the scent of him was all
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  Speaker 1: about her in the sand, mingled with the man smell
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  Speaker 1: of Sandy My trigger. She sniffed the trail of his
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  Speaker 1: body to the edge of the stream, where Sandy had
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  Speaker 1: dragged him to the canoe. She found the fallen tree
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  Speaker 1: to which he had been tied. And then she came
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  Speaker 1: upon one of the two clubs that Sandy had used
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  Speaker 1: to beat wounded Kazan into submissiveness. It was covered with
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  Speaker 1: blood and hair, and all at once. Gray Wolf lay
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  Speaker 1: back on her haunches and turned her blind face to
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  Speaker 1: the sky, and there rose from her throat a cry
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  Speaker 1: for Kazan that drifted for miles on the wings of
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  Speaker 1: the south wind. Never had gray Wolf given quite that
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  Speaker 1: cry before. It was not the call that comes with
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  Speaker 1: the moonlit nights, and neither was it the hunt cry,
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  Speaker 1: nor the she wolf's yearning for matehood. It carried with
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  Speaker 1: it the laments of death. And after that one cry,
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  Speaker 1: Gray Wolf slunk back to the fringe of bush over
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  Speaker 1: the river, and lay with her face turned to the stream.
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  Speaker 1: A strange terror fell upon her. She had grown accustomed
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  Speaker 1: to darkness, but never before had she been alone in
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  Speaker 1: that darkness. Always there had been the guardianship of Kazan's presence.
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  Speaker 1: She heard the clutting sound of a spruce hen in
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  Speaker 1: the bush a few yards away, and now that sound
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  Speaker 1: came to her as if from out of another A
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  Speaker 1: ground mouse rustled through the grass close to her forepaws,
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  Speaker 1: and she snapped at it and closed her teeth on
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  Speaker 1: a rock. The muscles of her shoulders twitched tremulously, and
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  Speaker 1: she shivered as if stricken by intense cold. She was
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  Speaker 1: terrified by the darkness that shut out the world from her,
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  Speaker 1: and she pawed at her closed eyes as if she
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  Speaker 1: might open them to light. Early in the afternoon, she
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  Speaker 1: wandered back on the plain. It was different. It frightened her,
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  Speaker 1: and soon she returned to the beach and snuggled down
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  Speaker 1: under the tree where Kazan had lain. She was not
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  Speaker 1: so frightened here. The smell of Kazan was strong about her.
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  Speaker 1: For an hour, she lay motionless with her head resting
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  Speaker 1: on the club clotted with his hair and blood. Night
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  Speaker 1: found her still there, and when the moon and the
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  Speaker 1: stars came out, she crawled back in to the pit
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  Speaker 1: in the white sand that Kazan's body had made under
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  Speaker 1: the tree. With dawn, she went down to the edge
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  Speaker 1: of the stream to drink. She could not see that
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  Speaker 1: the day was almost as dark as night, and that
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  Speaker 1: the gray, black sky was a chaos of slumbering storm,
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  Speaker 1: but she could smell the presence of it in the
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  Speaker 1: thick air, and could feel the forked flashes of lightning
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  Speaker 1: that rolled up with the dense pole from the south
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  Speaker 1: and west. The distant rumbling of thunder grew louder, and
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  Speaker 1: she huddled herself again under the tree for hours. The
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  Speaker 1: storm crashed over her, and the rain fell in a deluge.
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  Speaker 1: When it had finished, she slunk out from her shelter
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  Speaker 1: like a thing beaten. Vainly, she sought for one last
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  Speaker 1: scent of Kazan. The club was washed clean again, the
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  Speaker 1: sand was white, where Kazan's blood had reddened it. Even
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  Speaker 1: under the tree. There was no sign of him left
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  Speaker 1: until now. Only the terror of being alone in the
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  Speaker 1: pit of darkness that enveloped her had oppressed gray Wolf.
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  Speaker 1: With afternoon came hunger. It was this hunger that drew
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  Speaker 1: her from the sand bar, and she wandered back into
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  Speaker 1: the plain. A dozen times. She scent a game, and
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  Speaker 1: each time it evaded her. Even a ground mouse that
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  Speaker 1: she cornered under a root and dug out with her paws,
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  Speaker 1: escaped her fangs. Thirty six hours before this, Kazan and
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  Speaker 1: gray Wolf had left a half of their last kill
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  Speaker 1: a mile or two farther back on the plain. The
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  Speaker 1: kill was one of the big barren rabbits, and gray
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  Speaker 1: Wolf turned in its direction. She did not require sight
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  Speaker 1: to find it. In her was developed to its finest point,
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  Speaker 1: that sixth sense of the animal kingdom, the sense of orientation,
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  Speaker 1: And as straight as a pigeon might have winged its flight,
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  Speaker 1: she cut through the bush to the spot where they
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  Speaker 1: had cashed the rabbit. A white fox had been there
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  Speaker 1: ahead of her, and she found only scattered bits of
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  Speaker 1: hair and fur what the fox had left. The moose,
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  Speaker 1: birds and bush jays had carried away. Hungrily, Gray Wolf
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  Speaker 1: turned back to the river. That night, she slept again
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  Speaker 1: where Kazan had lain, and three times she called for
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  Speaker 1: him without answer. A heavy dew fell, and it drenched
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  Speaker 1: the last vestige of her mates sent out of the sand.
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  Speaker 1: But still through the day that followed and the day
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  Speaker 1: that followed, that blind gray Wolf clung to the narrow
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  Speaker 1: rim of white sand on the fourth day, her hunger
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  Speaker 1: reached a point where she gnawed the bark from willow bushes.
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  Speaker 1: It was on this day that she made a discovery.
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  Speaker 1: She was drinking when her sensitive nose touched something in
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  Speaker 1: the water's edge that was smooth and bore a faint
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  Speaker 1: odor of flesh. It was one of the big Northern
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  Speaker 1: River clams. She pawted ashore, sniffing at the hard shell.
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  Speaker 1: Then she crunched it between her teeth. She had never
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  Speaker 1: tasted sweeter meat than that which she found inside, and
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  Speaker 1: she began hunting for other clams. She found many of them,
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  Speaker 1: and ate until she was no longer hungry. For three
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  Speaker 1: days more she remained on the bar, and then one
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  Speaker 1: night the call came to her. It set her quivering
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  Speaker 1: with a strange new excitement, something that may have been
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  Speaker 1: a new hope. And in the moonlight, she trodden nervously
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  Speaker 1: up and down the shining strip of sand, facing now
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  Speaker 1: the north, and now the south, and then the east
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  Speaker 1: and the west. Her head flung up, listening as if
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  Speaker 1: in the soft wind of the night, she was trying
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  Speaker 1: to locate the whispering lure of a wonderful voice, and
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  Speaker 1: whatever it was that came to her, came from out
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  Speaker 1: of the south and east. Off there, across the barren,
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  Speaker 1: far beyond the outer edge of the northern timber line,
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  Speaker 1: was home, and off there, in her brute way, she
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  Speaker 1: reasoned that she must find Kazan. The call did not
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  Speaker 1: come from their old windfall home in the swamp. It
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  Speaker 1: came from beyond that, And in a flashing vision, there
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  Speaker 1: rose through her blindness a picture of the towering sun rock,
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  Speaker 1: of the winding trail that led to it, and the
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  Speaker 1: cabin on the plain. It was there that blindness had
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  Speaker 1: come to her. It was there that day had ended
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  Speaker 1: and eternal night had begun, And it was there that
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  Speaker 1: she had mothered her first born nature had registered these
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  Speaker 1: things so that they could never be wiped out of
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  Speaker 1: her memory. And when the call came, it was from
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  Speaker 1: the sunlit world, where she had last known light and life,
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  Speaker 1: and had last seen the moon and the stars in
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  Speaker 1: the blue night of the skies. And to that call
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  Speaker 1: she responded, leaving the river and its food behind her,
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  Speaker 1: straight out into the face of darkness and starvation, no
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  Speaker 1: longer fearing death or the emptiness of the world. She
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  Speaker 1: could not see, for ahead of her two hundred miles away.
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  Speaker 1: She could see the sun rock, the winding trail, the
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  Speaker 1: nest of her first born, between the two big rocks,
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  Speaker 1: and Kazan. End of Chapter twenty four of Kazan by
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  Speaker 1: James Oliver Kirkwood. Recording by Leonard Wilson of Springfield, Ohio.