The Golden Snare by James Oliver Curwood
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page 4 of 191 (02%)
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quarter of a mile away from him. Bram merely set loose his wolves.
By a miracle Corporal Lee lived to drag himself to a half-breed's cabin, where he died a little later, and the half-breed brought the story to Fort Churchill. After this, Bram disappeared from the eyes of the world. What he lived in those four or five years that followed would well be worth his pardon if his experiences could be made to appear between the covers of a book. Bram--AND HIS WOLVES! Think of it. Alone. In all that time without a voice to talk to him. Not once appearing at a post for food. A loup-garou. An animal-man. A companion of wolves. By the end of the third year there was not a drop of dog-blood in his pack. It was wolf, all wolf. From whelps he brought the wolves up, until he had twenty in his pack. They were monsters, for the under-grown ones he killed. Perhaps he would have given them freedom in place of death, but these wolf- beasts of Bram's would not accept freedom. In him they recognized instinctively the super-beast, and they were his slaves. And Bram, monstrous and half animal himself, loved them. To him they were brother, sister, wife--all creation. He slept with them, and ate with them, and starved with them when food was scarce. They were comradeship and protection. When Bram wanted meat, and there was meat in the country, he would set his wolf-horde on the trail of a caribou or a moose, and if they drove half a dozen miles ahead of Bram himself there would always be plenty of meat left on the bones when he arrived. Four years of that! The Police would not believe it. They laughed at the occasional rumors that drifted in from the far places; rumors that Bram had been seen, and that his great voice had been heard rising above the howl of his pack on still winter nights, and that half-breeds and Indians had come |
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