Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/174

166 the sound was coming toward her at an incredible pace,—something that ran behind her and cried out in beastial savagery.

A frantic flood of thoughts swept over her: blind hopes that the cool depths of her subconsciousness refused to accept. Perhaps the cries were of some wilderness hunter on the trail of deer,—a trail that closely coincided with her own. In a moment it would be just a thing to laugh at and forget. But even her own prayers, her own unquenchable spirit of optimism could not make the truth untrue. The grim fact slowly grew and strengthened that whatever ran behind her was on her own trail, that she was being remorselessly hunted through the still aisles of the forest.

The wild cries were louder now, evolving from vague and distant rumblings to prolonged and savage bays, ferocious as any wilderness cry she had ever heard. It sounded like a pack,—that terrible organization that knows no fear and against which not even the stately elk can stand. The cries had a strange exultant quality, a sense of power, and at the same time the hunting lust that can be discerned in the yell of the wolf pack in their first strength of autumn. Yet this was no autumn. The leaves were yet unfallen. The wolves were still mated, or else ran in pairs. And a great fear began to creep like a poison through her veins.

And ever the chorus grew louder, swelling into a veritable thunder that seemed to shudder, with