"If that great brute had not obliged us to feed so hurriedly, _this_ wouldn't have happened!" a mother bandicoot thought, as she gazed out tremulously from her den under a rotten log upon the specks of hair and blood which marked the spot where, a few moments before, that fine strapping young fellow, her only son, had been busily chewing grubs.

For another three days Finn continued in his old hunting-ground, and during the whole of that time he had to content himself with a diet consisting exclusively of rabbit meat. Indeed, during the last couple of days he found that even the despised rabbit required a good deal of careful stalking, so deeply had the fear and hatred of the Wolfhound penetrated into the minds and hearts of that particular wild community. If it had not been for the rabbits'

incorrigible habit of forgetting caution during the hours of twilight and daybreak, Finn might have gone hungry altogether.

Apart from their hatred and resentment, the wild people of that range felt that the giant's madness might return to him at any moment, and that for this reason alone it would be unsafe to permit of any relaxation in their att.i.tude towards him.

On the fourth evening, with a rather sad heart, Finn turned his back on the familiar trails, and hunted west and by south from the little gully in which he slept, heading toward the back ranges and the stony foot of Mount Desolation, that is. For a mile or more, even in this direction, he found that his evil fame preceded him, and no good hunting came his way. But presently a flanking movement to the eastward was rewarded by a glimpse of a fat wallaby-hare, which Finn stalked with the most exquisite patience, till he was able to spring upon it with a snap of his great jaws that gave instantaneous and everlasting sleep. Finn carried this fat kill back to his den, and feasted right royally that night for the first time since he was expelled from the purlieus of the gunyah and the easy-going old life. These few days had changed the Wolfhound a good deal. He walked the trails now with far less of gracious pride and dignity, and more of eager, watchful stealth than he had been wont to use. He walked more silently, he stalked more carefully, and sprang more swiftly, and bit more fiercely. He was no longer the amateur of the wild life, but an actual part of it, and subject to all its laws and customs.

Thus it was that, in the afternoon of the day following that of his first hunt outside his own range, he leaped in a single instant from full sleep to fullest wakefulness in response to the sound of a tiny twig rolling down the side of his little gully. There, facing him from the western lip of the gully, with a rather eager, curious, inviting sort of look upon her intelligent face, stood a fine, upstanding, red-brown female dingo, or warrigal. The stranger stood fully twenty-three inches high at the shoulder, and was unusually long in the body for such a height--thirteen inches less than Finn's shoulder height it is true, but yet about the same measurement as a big foxhound and of greater proportionate length.

Her ruddy brown tail was bushy and handsome, and at this moment she was carrying it high and flirtatiously curled. Also, she wagged it encouragingly when Finn's eyes met her own, which were of a pale greenish hue. Her hind feet were planted well apart; she stood almost as a show cob stands, her tail twitching slightly, and her nostrils contracting and expanding in eloquent inquiry. She had heard of Finn some time since, this belle of the back ranges, but it was only on that day, when Nature recommended her to find a mate, that she had thought of coming in quest of the great Wolfhound. Now she eyed him, from her vantage-point, fearlessly, and with invitation in every line of her lissom form.

Finn sniffed hard, and began a conciliatory whine which terminated in a friendly bark, as he scrambled up the gully side, his own thirty-inch tail waving high above the level of his haunches.

Warrigal fled--for ten paces, wheeling round then, in kittenish fashion, and stooping till her muzzle touched the ground between her fore feet. But no sooner had Finn's nose touched hers than the wild coquette was off again, and this time a little farther into the bush. To and fro and back and forth the shining bushy-coated dingo played the great Wolfhound with even more of coquettishness than is ever displayed in human circles; and twilight had darkened into night when, at length, she yielded herself utterly to his masterful charms, and nominally surrendered to the suit she had actually won. As is always the case with the wild folk, the courtship was fiery and brief, but one would not say that it was the less pa.s.sionately earnest for that; and, at the time, Warrigal seemed to Finn the most gloriously handsome and eminently desirable of all her s.e.x.

When their relations had grown temperately fond and familiar they took to the western trail together, and presently Warrigal "pointed" a big bandicoot for Finn, and Finn, delighted to exhibit his prowess, stalked and slew the creature with a good deal of style. Then the two fed together, Finn politely yielding the hind-quarters to his inamorata. And then they lay and licked and nosed, and chatted amicably for an hour. After this, Warrigal rose and stretched her handsome figure to its full length--there was not a white hair about her, nor any other trace of cross-breeding--her nose pointing west and by south a little, for the back ranges, whence she came. When she trotted sedately off in that direction Finn followed her as a matter of course, though he had never been this way before. There were no longer any ties which bound him to his old hunting-ground. It was not in nature to spare a thought for lugubrious Koala or p.r.i.c.kly Echidna, when Warrigal waved her bushy tail and trotted on before. Finn had never before been appealed to by the scent of any of the wild people, but there was a subtle atmosphere about Warrigal's thick red-brown coat which drew him to her strongly.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XXV

MATED

Finn knew the life of his own range pretty well, and was more familiar with the life of the wild generally than any other hound of his race has been for very many generations. Yet, when he contentedly took up the back-blocks trail with Warrigal, after their supper together upon the bandicoot he had slain, Finn was absolutely and entirely ignorant of the life of the world in which the handsome dingo had spent her days and attained her high position as the acknowledged belle and beauty of her range. One hour afterwards, however, he knew quite a good deal about it.

Possibly from a sense of gallantry, or it may have been because the trail was a new one to him, Finn trotted slightly behind his mate, his muzzle about level with her flank. His great bulk was less noticeable now in relation to the size of his companion, partly by reason of the coquettish pride which puffed out Warrigal's fine coat and the lofty way in which she pranced along, and partly because Finn had now adopted his usual trailing deportment and exaggerated it a little, owing to his being on a strange trail. He went warily, with hind-quarters carried well under him ready for springing, and that suggestion of tenseness about his whole body which made it actually, as well as apparently, lower to the ground than when he stood erect. As for Warrigal, she trod a home trail, and one in which she was accustomed to meet with deferential treatment from all and sundry. The law of her race prevented a male dingo from attacking her, and no female in that countryside would have cared to face Warrigal in single combat.

The country grew wilder and more rugged as the newly-mated pair advanced, and as they drew near the foot-hills surrounding Mount Desolation, the bush thinned out, and the ground became stony, with here and there big lichen-covered boulders standing alone, like huge bowls upon a giants' green. Then came a patch of thin, starveling-looking trees, mere bones of trees, half of whose skin was missing. Suddenly Warrigal gave a hard, long sniff, and then a growl of warning to Finn. She would have barked if she had known how, but her race do not bark, though they can growl and snarl with the best, and, besides, have a peculiar cry of their own which is not easy to describe other than as something midway between a howl and a roar. Finn recognized the growl as warning clearly enough, and all his muscles were gathered together for action on the instant; but he had no idea what sort of danger to expect, or whether it was danger or merely the need of hunting care that his mate had in mind. He knew all about it some two seconds later, however.

The starveling trees, with the mean, wiry scrub that grew between them, had served as cover for two l.u.s.ty males of Warrigal's tribe-- cousins of hers they were, as a matter of fact, though she had never known the kinship--both of whom had waked that day to the fact that Warrigal was eminently desirable as a mate. Now, in one instant, they both flew at Finn, one from either side of the trail on which he trotted with Warrigal. Warrigal herself slid forward, a swiftly-moving shadow, her brush to the earth, her hind-quarters seeming to melt into nothingness, as the jaws of her cousins flashed behind her on either side of Finn's throat. Then, when there were a dozen paces between herself and her new mate, she wheeled and stopped, sitting erect on her haunches, a well-behaved and deeply interested spectator.

Finn suffered for his ignorance of what to expect, as in the wild all folk must suffer for ignorance. It is only in our part of the world that a series of protecting barriers has been erected between the individual and the natural penalties attaching to ignorance and wrong-doing. Some of these barriers are doubtless sources of justifiable pride, but in the wild the confirmed loafer, for example, the vicious and idle parasite, is an unknown inst.i.tution.

The same practically holds good even of humans, when they live close to Nature in a stern climate, as, for instance, on the Canadian prairie; but never in great cities, or other places from which Nature is largely shut out.

The penalty Finn paid was this, that he was cut to the bone upon his right and his left shoulders by the flashing teeth of his mate's stalwart young cousins. They had both aimed for the more deadly mark, the throat, but were not accustomed to foes of Finn's great height, and had not gauged his stature correctly as he trotted down the trail. Their own shoulder-bones were a good foot nearer the earth than Finn's, and his neck towered above the point their jaws reached when they sprang. Wolf-like, they leaped aside after the first blow, making no attempt to hold on to their prey. And now, before the keenly watchful eyes of Warrigal, there began the finest fight of her experience. Regarding her mate's good looks she had more than satisfied herself; here was her opportunity to judge of his prowess, in a world wherein all questions are submitted to the arbitrament of tooth and claw in physical combat.

And keenly the handsome dingo judged; watchfully she weighed the varying chances of the fray; not a single movement in all the dazzling swiftness of that fight but received her studious and calculating attention, her expert apprais.e.m.e.nt of its precise value. As the fight progressed from its marvellously sudden beginning, her unspoken comments ran somewhat after this fashion--

"He is not so quick as our kind--as yet. He is marvellously strong.

He is not smart enough in the retreat after biting. His jaws are like the men-folk's steel traps, when they do get home. He misses the leg-hold every time, and that is surely foolish, for he could cripple them there in an instant. My teeth and claws! but what a neck he must have! It is reckless the way he leaves his great legs unguarded. Save me from traps and gins! Saw dingo ever such a mighty leap!"

In the first moments of that fight the two dingoes were half drunk from pride. It seemed certain to them that they would easily overcome the giant stranger. Indeed, Black-tip, the bigger of the two, who had a black bush at the end of his fine tail, actually seized the opportunity of taking a lightning cut at one of the fore-legs of his cousin in the confusion of a rush in upon the Wolfhound, feeling that it was as well to get what start he could in dealing with the remaining claimant for Warrigal's hand. He counted the Wolfhound dead, and wanted to reduce his cousin's chances in the subsequent fight that he knew would be waged to secure possession of Warrigal. It was sharp practice, according to our standards in such matters, but perfectly justifiable according to the laws of the wild, where the one thing demanded is ultimate success--survival. But, though morally justified, Black-tip was actually at fault, and guilty of a grave error of judgment.

[Ill.u.s.tration: He was backing gradually towards a boulder beside the trail.]

Finn took much longer than one of Black-tip's kindred would have taken to realize the exact nature of his situation and to act accordingly; but, as against that, he was a terrible foe when once he did settle down to work, and, further, his mighty muscles and magnificent stature, though they could not justify either recklessness or slackness--which nothing ever can justify in the wild--did certainly enable him to take certain liberties in a fight which would have meant death for a lesser creature. But Finn had been learning a good deal lately, and now, once he had got into his stride, so to say, he fought a good deal more in wolf fashion than he would have done a few months earlier; and, in addition, he had his own old fashion and powers the dingoes knew not of in reserve.

At first, he snapped savagely upon one side only, leaving his unprotected side open to the swift lacerations of Black-tip's sharp fangs. But even then he was backing gradually towards a boulder beside the trail, and the moment he felt the friendly touch of the lichen-covered stone behind him his onslaught became double-edged and terrible as forked lightning.

He was kept too busy as yet to think of death-blows; both dingoes saw to that for him, their jaws being never far from one side or the other of his neck or his fore-legs. But though, as yet, he gave them nothing of his great weight, he was slashing them cruelly about the necks and shoulders, and once--when Warrigal swore by her teeth and claws it was--he managed to pluck Black-tip's cousin bodily from the earth and fling him by the neck clean over a low bush. A piece of the dingo's neck, by the way, remained in Finn's jaws, and spoiled half the effect of his next slash at Black-tip's shoulder. But from that moment Black-tip lost for good and all his illusion in the matter of the stranger being as good as dead.

When the sorely wounded dingo, who had been flung aside as if he were a rat, returned to the fray his eyes were like red coals, and his heart was as full of deadly venom as a death-adder's fangs. His neck was tolerably red, too; it was from there that his eyes drew their b.l.o.o.d.y glare. He crawled round the far side of the boulder, close to the ground, like a weasel, and, despairing of the throat-hold, fastened his fangs into one of Finn's thighs, with a view to ham-stringing, while the Wolfhound was occupied in feinting for a plunge at Black-tip's bristling neck. It was the death-hold that Finn aimed at, but the sudden grip of fire in his thigh was a matter claiming instant attention; and it was then that the Wolfhound achieved the amazing leap that made Warrigal swear by traps and gins. He leaped straight up into the air, with the sorely wounded cousin hanging to his thigh, and Black-tip snapping at his near fore-leg, and in mid-air he twisted his whole great body so that he descended to earth again in a coil, with his mighty jaws closed in the throat of Black-tip's cousin. His fangs met, he gave one terrible shake of his ma.s.sive neck and head, and when the dingo fell from his jaws this time, two clear yards away, its throat was open to the night air, and it had entered upon the sleep from which there is no awakening.

Finn was bleeding now from a dozen notable wounds, but it was not in nature that Black-tip single-handed should overcome him, and Black-tip knew it. The big dingo ceased now to think of killing, and concentrated his flagging energies solely upon two points-- getting away alive and putting up a fight which should not disgrace him in Warrigal's watchful eyes. He achieved his end, partly by virtue of his own pluck and dexterity, and partly because his smell reminded Finn of Warrigal, and so softened the killing l.u.s.t in the Wolfhound.

Finn could handle the one dingo with great ease, even wounded as he was, and, because of that smell, he had no particular desire to kill. Indeed, he rolled Black-tip over once, and could have torn the throat from him, but caught him by the loose skin and coat instead and flung him aside with a ferocious, growling snarl, in the tail-end of which there was a note which said plainly, "Begone, while you may!"

And Black-tip, with life before him and desire in his heart where Warrigal was concerned, was exceedingly glad of the chance to bound off into the scrub with a long, fierce snarl, which he hoped would place him well in Warrigal's esteem, though he was perfectly aware that it could not deceive Finn.

Then, when it was quite clear that Black-tip had really gone, having taken all the fight he could stand, Warrigal stepped forward mincingly and fell to licking Finn's wounds, with strongly approving tenderness and a.s.siduity. Her mate had fought valiantly and doughtily for Warrigal, and she was proud of him; proud, too, of her own perspicacity and allurements in having drawn him to herself. A savage creature was Warrigal and a brave and quite relentless enemy, the marks of whose fangs more than one fighting member of her race and more than one powerful kangaroo would carry always. But she was very feminine with it all, and the remarks she murmured to her great grey lord, while her solicitous tongue smoothed down the edges of his wounds were sweetly flattering and vastly stimulating to Finn's pa.s.sion and his pride.

And then, when between the two busy tongues every wound had received its share of healing attention and antiseptic dressing, Warrigal moved slowly off down the trail, throwing a winsome look of unqualified invitation over her right shoulder to Finn, so that the Wolfhound stepped grandly after her, with a.s.sumed unconsciousness of his many wounds, as who should say--

"It is nothing, my dear child; nothing at all, this trivial incident by the way. If there are any more champions of your tribe about, let them come on while I am in the vein for such sport."

But, as a matter of fact, though it was true he would cheerfully have fought all night at his mate's bidding, Finn was none the less glad now to have peace and rest, for the dingo champions' methods of attack were marvellously swift and telling, and the wounds they had inflicted, while not very serious, were certainly numerous and sore.

Immediately below the crest of a sharply rising spur of the great mountain they came upon the entrance to Warrigal's own den, which was masked and roofed-in by the spreading roots of a fallen tree.

The mouth of the den was narrow and very low for one of Finn's stature, but he bent his aching body gladly and followed his mate in, to find that the den itself was comparatively roomy and capable of accommodating half a dozen dingoes. As a matter of fact, it had been the den of Warrigal's mother, but it was more than a year now since that mother had fallen to a boundary-rider's gun. The father had gone off to another range with a second wife, and Warrigal's brothers and sisters had each been vanquished in turn and given to understand that this den was now the sole and exclusive property of their big sister.

Finn sniffed curiously all round the walls of the den and, finding them permeated with the scent of Warrigal and with that scent only, he lay down there restfully, stretching himself to the full extent of his great length, and sighing out his pleasure in being at ease.

Warrigal sat gravely erect beside him, admiring the vast spread of his limbs. From tip of nose to tip of tail he covered practically the whole width of the den, which was a shade over seven and one half feet. The dingo looked over her mate's wounds once more, giving an occasional lick here and there, and then, with a little grunt of gratified pride and content, she curled herself round, after circling three or four times, and went to sleep under the lee of Finn's mighty hind-quarters, her muzzle tucked under the spreading hair of her tail, and one eye, half opened, resting upon her lord.

Two hours later, Warrigal rose softly and went out to inspect the night. She found the world bathed in a shining glory of silken moonlight; bright as day, but infinitely more alluring and mysteriously beautiful. After gazing out at this wonderful panorama for a few minutes and drawing in information through her nostrils of the doings of the wild, Warrigal sat down on her haunches and raised her not very melodious voice in the curious dingo cry, which is a sort of growling howl. Next instant Finn was beside her, with lolling tongue and sensitively questioning nostrils. She gave him one sidelong look which seemed to say, "You here? Why, what an odd coincidence that you also should have waked and come out here! I wonder why you came!" Not but what, of course, she knew perfectly well what had brought the Wolfhound to her side. She had called of good set purpose, but, in her feminine way, she preferred to let it appear that Finn joined her of his own volition. It may be a.s.sumed that the remark she made to him at this point was a comment upon the fineness of the night and the undoubted beauty of that glamorous silvern sheen through which the pair of them gazed out at Tinnaburra.

In the next minute the two began to play together like young cats, there on the sandy ledge of moon-kissed stone that stretched for yards on either side of the den's mouth. Perhaps it was then, rather than in the afternoon hours which came earlier, that Finn courted Warrigal. The stinging of his wounds, caused by the rapid, sinuous movements with which he danced about his mate, seemed only to add zest to his love-making. They were, after all, no more than love-tokens, these fang-marks and scratches, and Finn rejoiced in them as such. He had fought for Warrigal, and was ready and willing to fight for her again. And this his mate was most sweet to him; so deft, so agile, and so swift; so strong and supple, and withal so instant in response to his gallantries. The night air was sweet, too, to headiness, and the moonlight seemed to run like quicksilver in Finn's veins. Certainly, he told himself, this new life in the wild, this life of matehood, was a good thing.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XXVI

THE PACK AND ITS MASTERS

When Finn took up his abode in the den of his mate, Warrigal, he entered what was to him an entirely new world, and this new world was in fact one of the most interesting corners of the wild in all Australia. For example--

When Finn and Warrigal tired of their play on the flat ledge outside their den, the moon had set, and in the eastern sky there was visible the first grey hint of coming dawn. In that strange, ghostly light, which gave a certain cloak of mystery even to such common objects as tree-stumps and boulders of rock, Finn saw two unfamiliar figures emerge from the scrub below the spur next that of Warrigal's den, and begin slowly to climb toward Mount Desolation itself. There was a deep, steep-sided gully between Finn and these strange figures, but even at that distance the Wolfhound was conscious of a strong sense of hostility toward the creatures he watched. Their scent had not reached him, because the spur they climbed was to leeward, yet his hackles rose as he gazed at the ghostly figures, whose shapes loomed huge and threatening against the violet-grey sky-line. The Wolfhound and his mate were just about to enter their den, and Finn touched Warrigal with his muzzle, "pointing" meaningly at the strangers. Warrigal looked, and though her shoulder hairs did not rise at all, her lips curled backward a little from white fangs as she indicated that these figures were perfectly well known to her.

The foremost of them was of great length and bulk, low to the ground, and a savage in every line of his ma.s.sive frame. His tail, carried without any curve in it, was smooth and tapering, like a rat's tail; his chest was of immense depth, and his truncated muzzle was carried high, jaws slightly parted, long, yellow tusks exposed. In general outline he was not unlike a hyaena, but with more of strength and fleetness in his general make-up, more, perhaps, of the suggestion of a great wolf, with an unusually savage-looking head, and an abnormally ma.s.sive shoulder. From spine to flank, on either side, the strange creature was striped like a zebra, the ground colour of his coat being a light yellowish grey and the stripes black.

This was old Tasman, the Zebra Wolf, who had been turned loose in that countryside six years before with a mate of his species, who had died during the first year of their life in the Tinnaburra.

Behind Tasman, burdened with the weight of a fat wallaby which he dragged over one shoulder, marched Lupus, his son, now almost four years old and the acknowledged master of Mount Desolation. Lupus had none of his sire's stripes, and his tail, though not so bushy as a dingo's, was well covered with hair. He was longer in the muzzle and more shapely in the loin than his father. Lupus, in fact, was a half-bred dingo, differing from other dingoes of the Mount Desolation pack only inasmuch as that he was greater than the rest, more ma.s.sive in trunk and shoulder, more terrible in tooth and claw. His feet were weapons almost as deadly as a bear's feet, by which I mean the feet of the northern and western bear, and not those of inoffensive Koala. His loins and thighs were those of a fleet runner, and his fore-part, in every hair of it, was that of a killer. Tasman was feared on that range rather as a tradition than as a killer; Lupus was feared and obeyed as an actual, living ruler.

It was many months since Warrigal had seen the old wolf Tasman, but Lupus was abroad every night of his life. Also, his eyes, unlike those of his terrible old sire, could face the daylight. All the wild folk knew that Tasman was like an owl by day; light actually hurt him. Lupus was not fond of the light, but he could endure well enough, and kill by it if need be, as was well known. He still shared with his savage old sire the den in which he had been born, deep in the heart of Mount Desolation, and it was stated among the wild folk that he had killed his own mother towards the end of his first year of life, and that he and Tasman had devoured her body during a season of drought and poor hunting. Be that as it may, her blood had given Lupus his rating in the Mount Desolation country as a dingo, and his own prowess and ferocity had given him his unquestioned rank as leader and master of the pack. He had never openly preyed upon the pack, but he had killed a round half-dozen of its members who dared to thwart him at different times, and the manner of their killing had been such as to form material for ghastly anecdotes with which the mothers of that range frightened their offspring into good and careful behaviour. It was supposed that Tasman did not hunt now, and that Lupus hunted for him, but venturesome creatures of the wild, who had dared to climb the upper slopes of Mount Desolation, claimed to have seen Tasman foraging there after insects and grubs; and as for Lupus, his hunting was sufficiently well known to all on the lower ground. And, in the meantime, though Tasman was credited with very great age, there was no creature in that countryside who would have dared to face the old wolf alone.