Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/The Elk of the Overhills
ALMAYNE saw Awi Agwa for the first A time one clear, cold autumn morning on Sani'gilagi, the highest of the Cowees. Almayne was a young man then. He was a wilderness hunter, a trader in peltries, an Indian fighter when the war drums throbbed in the Overhills; but not many years before, he had been a schoolboy in England, with a liking for books. From the great precipice of Sani'gilagi he had just watched a crimson September sunrise, and the glory of it had stirred him deeply.
That was why he did not kill Awi Agwa that first day. From his camp near the summit of the mountain he had walked a few hundred yards down the ridge in search of water. In a small level meadow on the crest of the ridge he came suddenly upon a giant elk, the largest elk that he had ever seen, standing on the very verge of the precipice, gazing out over the wide expanse of forested hills and valleys. Forty yards behind the elk, the long yellow form of a puma, stretched lazily upon a flat sunny rock, caught his eye.
Neither animal saw or scented the other. Neither was aware of the hunter. Almayne chose the elk as his target. Crouching behind a boulder at the meadow's upper end, he gazed along his rifle barrel at the superb stately figure sharply outlined against the sky. He had seen hundreds of elk, thousands of buffalo, perhaps tens of thousands of deer; but in five years in the wilderness he had seen nothing so magnificent as this huge, perfectly proportioned, nobly antlered elk bull posed like a majestic statue of golden-bronze on the brink of the abyss.
A sudden repugnance surged up in him. It seemed to him that the thing which he was about to do would be murder or worse. He did not stop to analyze the impulse or to argue against it. He swung the long rifle slowly to the right until his gray-blue eyes, sighting along the barrel, saw not the elk but the tawny shoulder of the puma. His finger touched the trigger gently. The puma bounded forward, stood rigid, toppled sideways and lay still.
Almayne scarcely glanced at the sprawling body of the big lion-like cat. At the roar of the long heavy rifle the elk whirled in his tracks so that he faced the hunter, head high, antlers laid back along his shaggy neck. For half a minute he stood motionless. Then he saw Almayne's head and shoulders thrust up above the boulder. Instantly the great bull whirled again, raced in a plunging gallop across the open and vanished amid the trees beyond.
Almayne, as he skinned the puma, wondered at himself. The hide of that huge elk would have been worth five times as much as the puma hide, which was rather a poor one. Moreover, if he had killed the elk, he could have had breakfast before starting his day's journey, whereas now he must wait until he could knock over a grouse or a rabbit on his way down the mountain. He was ashamed of his own foolishness. Nevertheless, a week later he told the story to Julah the Fox as they talked by a campfire beside the Great Path far down among the foothills.
The old Indian heard him through and sat silent for many minutes, staring into the fire with stony, expressionless face. At last his lips opened.
"My brother knows," he said in his own tongue, "that I am a shaman as well as a warrior. I will read the omen. My brother Almayne was foolish. He did a foolish thing. He camped on Sani'gilagi, the holy mountain. The Spirit was angered. He sent an elk and a puma. Klandaghi the puma is sacred. Awi Agwa the elk is proper game. The Spirit bewitched Almayne so that he killed Klandaghi and let Awi Agwa go unharmed."
Almayne suppressed a yawn.
"And what will come of it, Julah?" he asked gravely.
"I know not," replied the red man. "I am not of the Adawehi, the Great Wizards. But evil will come of it. There is a curse upon my brother Almayne. I cannot read the curse; but when Awi Agwa shows himself again, let Almayne kill him."
Julah the Fox went on his way at daylight. He was returning to his home in the Cherokee nation in the valley of Ocona Lufta under the eastern rampart of the Smokies. Almayne, on the other hand, was bound for Charles Town, having with him three pack ponies laden with beaver skins; and the two had met by chance on the Great Path, as the long wilderness trail from the mountains to the sea was known. Almayne, being in no hurry, slept late. The sun was two hours high when he resumed his journey.
Riding his sorrel Chicasaw mare behind the plodding pack ponies, he watched with indifferent yet observant eyes the familiar panorama of the forest's teeming life. The trail wound serpent-like amid the wooded hills—a narrow road but well trodden by the hoofs of the pack trains that now used it in increasing numbers and by the moccasined feet of Indians who had traveled it perhaps for centuries before the white men came. On either side lay the forest, virgin, untouched by the axe—a park-like forest of gigantic broad-leafed trees, oak, hickory, beech and many others, whose branches mingling overhead cast a shade too dense for undergrowth to subsist. Down the long shadowy vistas amid the column-like tree-trunks Almayne's gray eyes roamed restlessly, viewing many things.
Everywhere he saw deer. In this paradise of the foothills the whitetails still swarmed in incalculable numbers—in numbers which seemed not to have diminished at all since the first white hunters had pushed inland from the coast. Once, far away, at the farther end of a sun-dappled forest aisle, he saw a troop of nine buffalo traveling northward in single file behind a shaggy old bull; and once, when the forest opened to enclose one of those beautiful green meadows or forest-prairies which were scattered here and there through the primeval woods, he saw a much larger herd, fifty or sixty animals at least, standing shoulder-deep in lush maiden canes and wild pea vines. Ahead of him a lumbering black bear crossed the trail. A half-mile farther along, a lynx which had been lying along a beech limb almost overhanging the road, leaped lightly to the ground and bounded away into the forest.
Most of these Almayne viewed with languid interest. They were the common things of life, the everyday sights of the wilderness. The buffalo held his attention while they were within view, for they were less abundant here to the eastward of the Appalachians than in the almost unknown country beyond the mountain barrier; but he scarcely turned his head to look at the troops of deer. His thoughts were busy with other matters.
These were good times, he reflected, these times when the Great Path could be traveled in safety without fear of ambuscade. From Charles Town to Tellequo beyond the Overhills where Moytoy the red Emperor reigned, peace prevailed along the wilderness road. Cherokee, Choctaw, Muskogee and Catawba called the white man friend. How long this friendship would last no man could tell. It sufficed Almayne that for the present peace was secure.
A sharp, loud, whining, singing sound shrilled for a fraction of an instant in his ear. An arrow had whizzed above his right shoulder, missing his throat by an inch. Even as he wheeled his pony, he felt something touch the fringed sleeve of his buckskin shirt just above the elbow. A second shaft had grazed his arm, barely scratching the skin. Bending low on the sorrel mare's back, he dug his heels into her flanks and talked to her in the guttural tongue that she knew best.
"Faster, my little Martin-bird!" he whispered. "Faster, my little Tlutlu! Faster, faster, faster!"
Tlutlu the Martin-bird raced as she had seldom raced before. But she could not outrun the arrows. Another shaft whined past Almayne, another and yet another. He heard the crash of a rifle, the thud of a bullet against a tree-trunk ahead of him. Again a rifle roared behind him; the mare staggered and nearly fell. Almayne knew what had happened. A bullet had struck her right hind leg low down and had splintered the bone or cut a tendon. Gamely she struggled on; but Almayne, swinging his leg over her neck, leaped from the saddle, landing lightly as a cat. He struck the ground running.
"Good-bye, little Tlutlu," he cried. Lips tight, eyes blazing, his long rifle gripped in his right hand, he dashed into the forest to the right of the trail.
At his best speed he ran on and on through the woods, already fairly sure that he was safe. He had a good start and was fast on his feet, and from the slope of the land he judged that a creek or river lay ahead of him. Dense belts of cane bordered the foothill streams and in a canebrake a hundred Indians could not find him. He would be able, he thought, to gain the shelter of the canes, for he knew that his assailants were unmounted. A quick glance down the trail behind him just before the mare was struck had identified them instantly—a dozen or more Senecas, warriors of the Northern Iroquois, who had traveled far beyond their own boundaries to raid the Southern trading paths.
These raiders from the North traveled always on foot because they could the more easily lose themselves in the forest; and they would attempt no extended pursuit because they were in the country of their enemies. So Almayne reflected as he ran, glancing often over his shoulder, searching for shadowy brown figures leaping after him amid the shadowy trees. Once for an instant he thought he saw them, but the swift-moving forms which he glimpsed were a troop of deer, crossing his trail from the left, running fast, their white tails erect, as though something had frightened them. Almayne bore to the right and ran on without pause. A quarter of a mile more and he saw ahead of him down the wooded slope the dark green of the canes.
For an hour he lay in the canebrake, brooding over the blow that had fallen. Little Tlutlu was lost to him. The pack ponies were lost. Their rich cargo of beaver pelts, for which he had traveled to the country of the Chicasaws beyond the Blue Mountains, would be carried to the lodges of the Iroquois and bartered finally to the traders of Canada or New York. Presently he smiled a wry smile.
"Old Julah was right," he said to himself. "The evil came quickly."
When he judged it safe to move, he rose and for a mile followed a deer path winding through the canebrake parallel with the creek. Then he turned to the left along another deer path and, emerging from the canes, set off westward through the forest. It was perhaps three hours later when his quick eye caught a slight movement amid the tree trunks ahead. Next moment a huge yellow-brown bulk heaved upward from the ground, a giant bull elk with vast, wide-spreading antlers.
Almayne stood rigid with amazement. The thing seemed too strange to be true; yet he knew that it was true, for he did not believe that there was another elk like this one in the whole wilderness of America.
"Awi Agwa!" he murmured. "The bull of Sani' gilagi!"
It was a long shot, a very long shot for the rifle of those days, a marvelously accurate weapon but of comparatively short range. Almayne knew that the elk had seen him but that the animal, puzzled by his immobility, was not sure of what he was. He raised the rifle so slowly that the great bull watching him in the middle distance could not detect the movement. He aimed long and carefully, calculating the necessary elevation, figuring the force of the wind.
At the report the elk plunged forward, wheeled and galloped straight away from the hunter. Almayne had not followed the trail fifty yards when he found what he expected to find—a blotch of blood upon the fallen leaves.
That was a winter long remembered in the Cherokee mountain towns. Some named it the Winter of the Unending Snow; others recalled it as the Winter of the Wolves. With the first light snowfall in mid-autumn the wolf invasion began; such wolves and such wolf packs as had never before been known in the Overhills. All that white winter, that winter of pitiless Arctic cold, they harried the deer of the mountain woods, and more than once, when hunger had maddened them and the odds were in their favor, they took human prey. It was their fangs that tore the life out of Dagantu, that tall war captain of the Cherokees, who met his end in a dark gap of the mountains, known ever afterwards as the Defile of Waya, the Defile of the Wolves.
The first snow of that winter—or, rather, of that autumn, for it was early October—fell upon Awi Agwa, the great bull elk, not more than an hour after Almayne had wounded him. Awi Agwa was unaware of the falling flakes which melted as quickly as they fell. He was mad with the pain which had stabbed him suddenly in his right shoulder, the pain which now stabbed him at every stride. Almayne, plodding onward through the forest, three miles behind the elk, frowned as the light rain, which had been falling for half an hour, turned suddenly white. If the snowfall continued tracking would be impossible; and Almayne had set himself the task of tracking this elk down.
Outwardly he scoffed at Julah's warning of a curse, but like many of the frontier hunters he had a secret respect for the lore of the red shamans and conjurers. The evil which Julah had predicted had come with impressive swiftness: at one stroke Almayne had lost his horse, his pack ponies and his beaver pelts. Julah had seemed to expect that the giant elk would show himself again; and, most strangely, Almayne had encountered the animal at least sixty miles from Sani'gilagi where he had seen the great bull for the first time. This was an astonishing confirmation of the old Indian's prophecy. It would be as well, Almayne felt, to kill this elk, this Awi Agwa, as Julah had advised; and since the animal was wounded, the task might not be hard.
Awi Agwa traveled northwestward. Of all the deer kind, the elk when frightened is the swiftest, the most enduring. The roar of Almayne's rifle that first morning on Sani'gilagi had started the giant bull on a journey which lasted for hours and which brought him down from the mountains into the upper foothills. It was the season of mating. He had left his own cows on Sani'gilagi; so in search of other cows Awi Agwa had ranged far and wide through the foothills until a rifle had roared again and a bullet had plowed its way deep into his right shoulder. The mountains were his home, and now he turned back to them. Fleeing from this new danger, he struck northwestward once more.
All that afternoon he traveled. At first his gait was a Swinging trot faster than the trot of a horse. But at every step pain racked his wounded shoulder, and soon the trot became a walk. Yet, even walking, he traveled fast. Almayne, studying the tracks—the snowfall had lasted less than half an hour—saw that the elk had changed his gait and felt more confident than ever that the chase would not be a long one. He found no more blood on the trail, and abandoned hope of overtaking his quarry before nightfall. But Awi Agwa, he thought, would hardly travel throughout the night. Not knowing that he was pursued, sooner or later the elk would lie down to rest, and when he rose to continue his journey the wounded shoulder would have stiffened.
Well after nightfall he lay down. Before dawn he rose, staggered, stood swaying precariously. He had forgotten his wound, for the pain had all but vanished. But the moment he stood on his legs, it stabbed him again, and when he tried to walk he found that he could barely move his right foreleg.
Sudden panic seized him. Without stopping to feed, he set off northwestward. For a while he hobbled and stumbled as though his foreleg were broken, but gradually, although the stabs of pain continued with each stride, his pace became faster, his gait less labored. When, hours later, Almayne reached the spot where the elk had bedded and studied the tracks beyond it, the hunter read in those tracks the story of a long bitter struggle, a struggle with pain and with paralysis worse than pain, a struggle in which Awi Agwa had won.
It was early in the forenoon of the second day that Awi Agwa learned that he was pursued. From far behind him came a sound which he recognized at once—the dull boom of a distant rifle. Almayne, who had breakfasted only on some parched corn which he carried in a small bag attached to his belt, had shot a wild turkey to satisfy his appetite. The big bird, perched on an oak limb almost directly over his head, had tempted him irresistibly and he had killed it regardless of the possibility that the elk might hear the shot.
Awi Agwa heard and understood—knew that his enemy was on his trail. He had halted to graze on certain succulent weeds carpeting the ground in a grove of huge beeches. He had pulled scarcely a dozen mouthfuls when the far-off boom of the rifle reached him; and instantly his antlered head jerked upward and he lurched forward in the slashing gallop which is the elk's fastest gait.
It was a rash effort. At the first plunge intolerable pain shot through his wounded shoulder, his right foreleg doubled under him and he fell. He was up again in an instant, but the fall had reopened his wound and now a stream of blood trickled down his leg.
Again he settled to the stiff-legged walk which was the only gait allowed him by his injured shoulder. He had traveled perhaps three miles farther when he heard another sound behind him, the hunting cry of a wolf pack, a pack which had smelled blood. This time Awi Agwa failed to understand. He knew wolves and did not fear them; and neither instinct nor reason told him that the blood which these gray hunters scented was his own. Nor could he know that these wolves were of a kind that he had never seen before—the vanguard of that army of grim, gaunt, long-fanged killers who were to sweep down upon the Overhills that winter from the Northern forests already deep in ice and snow.
Nearer and nearer came the savage wailing chorus. Awi Agwa passed now through an empty forest, a forest which seemed lifeless and deserted because the deer which peopled it had disappeared. He saw no more herds of whitetails grazing in the forest glades; and he knew that the deer, smaller and far less formidable than himself, had scattered to right and left out of the path of the approaching pack. For half a mile he came upon no living thing except the common birds of the woods. Then, fifty yards ahead of him and to his left, he noticed a small black bear sitting on his haunches, his head cocked on one side, listening.
By now, the wolf chorus filled the woods. The bear ambled quickly to the foot of a young hickory and began to climb. Yet not until the danger was almost upon him did Awi Agwa realize that he faced a battle.
He faced it confidently. The wolves of the Overhills had never molested him seriously, and though he had never seen a wolf pack as large as this one, he did not expect a determined attack. It was fortunate for him that the crisis came when it did. He turned at bay in a narrow rock-bound pocket of a hillside where his rear was safe. He might have traveled twenty miles through the foothills without finding another spot so well adapted to his need; and he knew as he waited that with his wide-spreading antlers and flint-edged hoofs guarding his front and flanks, these wolves must be bold indeed to press the assault home.
He did not know or did not realize that a wolf's eye is marvelously quick to detect a wounded animal and to appraise the extent of its wound—that, as he stood at bay, his right foreleg dangled as though it were broken and that it was caked with blood. They paused in front of him for a moment; twenty-one gray, gaunt, shaggy brutes, grimly silent now, red tongues lolling between long white fangs. Then, at their leader's signal, they charged.
Luck was with Awi Agwa. A loose stone slipped under the hind foot of the foremost wolf, and his leap fell short. For a fraction of a second he reared on his hind legs directly in front of the elk's lowered head, and in that fraction of a second Awi Agwa's long forward-pointing pikes ripped into him behind the ribs and disembowelled him. In an instant the thing was done; and in another instant the elk's heavy many-spiked antlers swinging to right and left crashed down upon the wolves leaping at his throat from both sides.
In the swollen shaggy neck of the giant bull there was vast power. His huge antlers, six feet long, extraordinarily massive, bristling with polished sharp-pointed tines, would have seemed to the eye of a man unwieldy weapons; but in Awi Agwa there was strength enough to wield them, and he wielded them not only with strength but with instinctive skill. And again luck played a part. In that mad whirling mêlée he could not always aim his blows but struck more or less blindly; and it was mainly chance which brought the beam of a descending antler squarely down upon the back of a she-wolf's neck just behind the skull.
She staggered ten steps and stood swaying, legs wide apart. Suddenly she lifted her head and howled—a wild quavering cry of agony. In an instant the milling gray mob around Awi Agwa melted as every wolf leaped clear. For some seconds they stood watching the she-wolf, long white teeth gleaming in snarling jaws, eyes aglitter with savage expectation. Then, apparently for the first time, they saw the dying beast that Awi Agwa had disembowelled dragging himself across the ground fifteen feet to the right.
Three of them made a rush for him, but the rest still waited as though transfixed, their pitiless eyes fixed upon the she-wolf which had uttered that quavering howl. She stood motionless except for the slight swaying of her body; but suddenly she lurched forward and began to run in circles, her head bent sharply to one side. Round and round she ran, faster and faster, the fierce expectant eyes following her with strange intensity. Then down she went as though a shot had bowled her over, and in an instant a dozen sets of fangs were rending her carcass.
Awi Agwa, motionless in his tracks, watched the bloody orgy. Instinct kept him where he was, warned him not to leave his position of vantage in the shallow pocket of the hillside. For more than an hour after the feast was over he still stood there facing his foes, while they sat on their haunches in a semi-circle in front of him, unwilling to attack again now that their hunger was somewhat appeased, yet unwilling also to abandon their prey. Finally a troop of deer approaching from the windward quarter passed within fifty yards before scenting the waiting wolves. In this troop was a doe whose haunch had been badly raked and wrenched by a puma the day before. When the deer, scenting danger at last, wheeled and ran, this doe dropped a little behind.
The siege ended then. Here was game which could be caught after a short chase and which could be pulled down without a battle. Every wolf leaped away in pursuit, and they were scarcely out of sight when Awi Agwa resumed his journey. Even in the excitement of the combat with the pack he had not forgotten the more dreaded enemy before whom, in blind obedience to instinct, he was fleeing towards the mountains.
Almayne had halted to roast and eat some of the breast-meat of the gobbler which he had shot. It was afternoon when he reached the place where Awi Agwa had made his stand. The trampled ground, the blood-spattered litter of leaves, the mangled remnants of the two wolves which the rest of the pack had eaten told the hunter what had happened.
He examined the ground carefully and worked out to his own satisfaction the details of the battle which had raged there; but what interested him most at the moment was the freshness of Awi Agwa's tracks leading away from the place. Those tracks, he decided, were less than an hour old. With his crippled shoulder hampering his stride the elk could travel, Almayne believed, no faster than he himself could walk. Shouldering his rifle, the tall hunter strode onward, his thoughtful eyes studying the trail.
In the valley of Sequilla, in the shadow of Sani'gilagi, there was a village of the Cherokees. A chief lived there, one Nunda the Moon-Face, who had a roan horse which Almayne coveted. Nunda would sell this stallion if he could get his price; and now that Tlutlu the Martin-bird was lost to him, Almayne wished to bargain for Nunda's roan.
Yet he did not, as he had planned, go straight to Nunda's village. For fifty miles through the foothills Awi Agwa had led him in the direction of the Indian town; but by noon of the third day, when he was in the foothills no longer but well up among the spurs of the Cowees, Almayne realized that he must choose one of two paths. Down the ridge to the west was the way to Nunda's town. Up the ridge and due north went Awi Agwa's trail, heading evidently for the high humped shoulder of Sani'gilagi itself.
Almayne postponed his choice until he had come to the parting of the ways, debating the question in his mind; but in reality his decision was never in doubt. It was not so much old Julah's warning that now urged him on—though this, too, played a part—as it was his own pride, his self-esteem as a woodsman. This elk had fooled him; the chase had been much longer than he had anticipated. He was on his mettle now. He would follow this trail to its end no matter how far it might lead him; and he was sure that it would not lead him much farther.
He realized now that from the beginning of the chase the elk had been heading for Sani'gilagi, the mountain where Almayne had first seen him and which was evidently his home. Knowing the ways of elk, the hunter was confident that on Sani'gilagi Awi Agwa's flight would end. There the great bull would lie down at last to recoup his strength and give his wounded shoulder time to heal; and there Almayne's opportunity would come.
The hunter swung on up the ridge, his alert eyes searching the sun-speckled vistas ahead. Although he considered it almost certain that Awi Agwa would climb Sani'gilagi before he rested, it was possible that the elk would choose a bed on the lower slopes.
Almayne was right in regarding this as only a possibility. For more than three years Awi Agwa had found sanctuary on Sani'gilagi's summit. The Cherokees held the mountain sacred because it was a favorite seat of the lightning god and a resort of Tsulkalu, the Slant-Eye, the mythic Master of Game. There was no tribal law against it, yet they seldom hunted on the higher slopes. Hence 'throughout the summers and the early months of fall Awi Agwa had made Sani'gilagi his stronghold and, so long as he kept to the upper heights, had been unmolested by the red hunters.
It was this refuge which he was now seeking. Once, it was true, an enemy had invaded it, but only once; and a hundred times in the past, when Cherokee bowmen had picked up his trail in the lower valleys, he had found safety by heading for the mountain's summit. Instinct told him that he was pursued, that the enemy who had wounded him still followed his trail. He was tired, desperately tired, and his wounded shoulder throbbed and burned; but he knew that by swinging around the precipitous eastern face of the mountain and ascending the more gradual western slope, he could reach the lofty refuge which was his goal.
Nevertheless, the long climb taxed him sorely. On the steep ascents his shoulder ached intolerably and grew strangely stiff again. It was mid-afternoon when he reached the upper end of the tributary ridge and faced the short but still steeper climb to the little grassy plateau above the great precipice; and by that time Almayne was less than a mile behind him.
Yet as the danger behind grew more imminent, recollection of it dimmed in the giant bull's mind. Something else had happened to make him forget, or almost forget, the pursuer before whom he had fled for more than fifty miles.
Half way up the ridge he had crossed the trail of an elk herd. They were his own cows, he knew, the cows which he had abandoned temporarily when Almayne's rifle shot on that first day had sent him racing away in terror to the foothills. He had paused only a moment or two to sniff at the day old tracks, but he had learned, either by sight or scent, that among them was a track which should not have been there—the track of an interloper, a rival bull.
Sudden fury swelled up in him. Thenceforward it was not his fear of the hunter that drove him on. On the heights above him there was another enemy—a usurper to be met and punished.
Two hours before sunset Awi Agwa, toiling up the northern slope of the mountain, reached the high meadow on the main ridge of Sani'gilagi close to the summit. Before him opened a small grassy plateau, almost circular in shape. On three sides rocks and trees enclosed the place; but to the south the mountainside dropped almost sheer, forming the profoundest precipice of the Cowees. In this lofty pasture poised upon the brink of the vast cliff, Awi Agwa expected to find his cows; and there he found them.
They were there, all eight of them, five of them lying down near the middle of the meadow, the others cropping the grass nearby. Awi Agwa wasted only one glance upon them. At the farther edge of the plateau, on the very verge of the precipice, a wide-antlered bull elk stood gazing out over the panorama of purple hills and valleys spread below him.
Two hundred yards down the wooded western slope Almayne, following in his quarry's tracks, heard Awi Agwa's furious bugling challenge. The elk cows heard it and raised their heads eagerly, their big ears pricked forward. The stalwart bull that was now master of the herd—the usurper that stood in Awi Agwa's look-out place on the precipice's brow—heard it and whirled to meet the danger.
What he saw chilled his blood. The king had come back, the giant elk whose herd he had stolen, the huge bull that had lorded it over all the other bulls of the Cowees and whose mastery no other bull had dared dispute. He had come back to claim his own; and now he was striding across the open, jaws champing, antlers tossing, eyes red with the frenzy of battle. Panic gripped the usurper. He stood rigid, staring wildly. In another moment he would have turned to run.
In that moment something happened. Suddenly Awi Agwa staggered, halted, stood swaying uncertainly. The last stiff climb up the steep western slope to the plateau had all but exhausted the wounded bull, and now the world went black before him. Almost at once the faintness passed and his vision cleared. But the sharp eyes of the other bull had seen, his cunning brain had understood.
Almayne, half-striding, half-running up the steep mountain side, heard another bugle call above him, a challenge shriller than Awi Agwa's fierce blast but no less angry, no less defiant. A sudden light flared in the hunter's eager eyes. He knew that in the high meadow on the brow of the precipice he would find Awi Agwa in combat with a rival; and he knew that in the fury of battle his victim would be oblivious to all other dangers.
The long hunt was nearly over. The great bull elk of Sani'gilagi had reached his journey's end.
They met almost in the center of the little plateau, met with a resounding clash of antlers which startled the rabbits among the rocks along the meadow's rim. To an onlooker at that moment it would have seemed an unequal battle; for although the usurper was a bull of powerful build and more than normal stature, Awi Agwa was by far the taller and heavier, while his huge antlers dwarfed those of his opponent. Yet a keen-eyed observer would have perceived quickly that in this duel bulk of body and spread of horns were not the only factors.
Unwounded, his powers unimpaired, Awi Agwa would have borne his enemy off his feet in that first charge. As it was, the shock of collision brought triumph to neither side. With Awi Agwa rested the advantage, but it was not decisive.
The usurper was forced back upon his haunches; but he checked the other's onset, recovered himself quickly, held Awi Agwa's antlers in play so that the long prongs could not gore his flanks. Already the usurper knew that he had not ventured too rashly in giving battle to this half-crippled giant. The first shock had given him the measure of Awi Agwa's strength, and now he was not afraid.
Heads down, mouths lolling open and wickedly leering, antlers clashing and grinding, they strove with the fury of demons. For a time Awi Agwa forced his opponent slowly backward. The great muscles of his forelegs and of his sleek haunches bulged and writhed; in his injured shoulder the torn sinews throbbed with pain which lashed him to frenzy. More maddening even than the pain was the astounding, infuriating fact of failure, failure to overwhelm this rival in the first onset.
Not for years had any bull stood up so long against him. For the first time since the far away days of his youth Awi Agwa's colossal bulk and might had failed to conquer quickly.
It was this that drove him almost insane with rage. Into this first stage of the battle the giant elk threw all the strength he had. Hampered by his hurt shoulder, by the exhaustion resulting from his long journey, he could not overthrow his enemy; but for many minutes he forced the fighting, pushing his opponent backward, lunging and stabbing, twisting his hairy neck, swinging his huge antlers to right and left as he strove to get past his opponent's guard and deliver the swift ripping thrust in the flank which would have ended the fight.
Neither bull knew that the elk cows, which at first had watched the duel with excited interest, were watching it no longer; that suddenly one of them had lifted her head, sniffed the air and galloped off to the right, followed by all the rest. Neither bull was aware of the tall buckskin-clad shape which slipped from tree to tree at the northern edge of the meadow, then boldly darted across the open to an isolated rock scarcely thirty yards from the spot where the combat raged. Neither bull saw the black barrel of the long rifle which was presently thrust out from behind that rock.
Again and again Almayne drew his bead. The tide of battle had turned. Awi Agwa's strength was waning now. He forced the fighting no longer. He stood still, head down, legs braced, holding back his enemy by weight rather than muscle. Calmly, unhurriedly Almayne drew his bead again, lining his sights on the spot behind Awi Agwa's shoulder through which a bullet would plunge straight to the heart.
Yet for a little while longer the hunter delayed the fatal shot. This was a wilderness battle such as few men had ever witnessed. He was unwilling to end it before he must.
A minute the combatants stood motionless, head to head, their antlers interlaced. Then suddenly the usurper launched his attack. He had been glad to rest for a while to recover his wind. Now, knowing that his opponent was done, he would make an end. His swollen neck twisting and writhing, his antlers grinding against those of his adversary, his champing jaws dripping foam, he drove forward with all his strength.
Almayne, his finger crooked about the trigger, saw Awi Agwa's muscles bulge and strain, saw him rally his remaining strength for a supreme effort, saw that effort fail.
It was a heroic, a heart-breaking effort. Never before in all the years of his kingship had Awi Agwa given ground before a rival bull. He could not realize that he must give ground now. With all the strength that was left to him he struggled against fate.
But at last came the inevitable. For a longer time than Almayne had believed possible the wounded bull held his own; then slowly, foot by foot, he was forced back. More desperately than ever he strained and struggled, but he could not check his adversary's slow, relentless advance.
Almayne knew that now the end was near. Awi Agwa was too far spent to escape by flight. Within a few minutes the powerful twists and thrusts of his enemy's neck would throw him sideways to be gored to death by the merciless raking stabs of the usurper's horns.
Those horns, slashing and ripping Awi Agwa's flanks, would spoil the giant elk's hide—an elk hide which, because of its astonishing size, would help buy Nunda's stallion. Almayne realized that he could risk no further delay. Again he raised his rifle slowly to draw another bead. Again his sights were lined on the spot above Awi Agwa's heart.
The spot moved as Awi Agwa gave backward. Almayne no longer had a stationary target. Awi Agwa, head to head with his foe, was retreating more rapidly, moving steadily backward, keeping his opponent's antlers within the guard of his own, but no longer trying to hold his ground. The hunter shifted the rifle to readjust his aim, but now the giant elk had swung a little to the right and no vital spot was exposed.
Almayne, still holding the rifle at his shoulder, awaited his opportunity; and suddenly, as he waited, he understood.
Awi Agwa was beaten—beaten for the first time in his life—beaten because he had entered this battle crippled and weary, a mere shadow of himself. But his was not to be the ignominious fate of the defeated monarch. He would not die under the horns and hoofs of his conqueror, trampled to nothingness in the dust.
Perhaps, as Almayne believed, he made his choice deliberately. Perhaps he was too dazed and spent to know what he was doing. At any rate, he no longer circled the meadow as he gave ground before his enemy. Instead, he backed straight towards the precipice's rim.
Almayne leaped to his feet, flung the rifle again to his shoulder. There was no time now for a deliberate aim. Head to head, the two battling bulls moved towards the brink of the cliff, the usurper pushing his antagonist before him. Another minute and Awi Agwa would plunge backward over that brink to fall five hundred feet upon the jagged rocks below.
A golden eagle, circling above Sani'gilagi's summit, dodged in the air as the dull boom of the rifle came to him.
Almayne stood erect, a tall yellow-brown figure in his stained buckskins, the lowered rifle balanced in his left hand. Fifteen feet from the rim of the precipice lay the usurper's body. Almayne's bullet, ranging forward under the ribs, had pierced the animal's heart. Just beyond the carcass of his fallen rival, his back to the cliff's edge, stood Awi Agwa.
Legs wide apart, his huge bulk swaying from side to side, his head hanging low as though he no longer had strength to support his mighty antlers, the giant elk gazed dully at the hunter. If his ears had heard the rifle shot, it meant nothing to him in that moment of immeasurable weariness. He knew only that suddenly his enemy had fallen at his feet, that in the instant of disaster victory had come.
Presently he lurched forward and thrust weakly with his sharp brow prongs at the body of his foe. Then, with something of his old pride, he lifted his head again. His throat swelled with the bugle call of triumph; but so faint was the sound that Almayne could scarcely hear it.
Once more Awi Agwa thrust at his dead enemy. Then suddenly he seemed to become aware of the hunter standing in full view not thirty yards away. The giant bull turned and walked slowly across the meadow towards the woods beyond. He did not see Almayne raise his right hand above his head in the stately Cherokee gesture of farewell.