Under one of the lower bunks was a steel chest, padlocked as well as being as thoroughly sealed with tape as the inner door had been. The lock yielded to the iron bar, however. Within, the first thing to catch Milo’s eye was a finely tooled leather case some four feet long.
With a shiver of presentiment, he lifted the case onto the bunk and unsnapped its catches, then raised the lid. Nestled into a fitted depression in the liner of impregnated sheepskin lay a scope-sighted sporting rifle, its dark-blue barrel, chrome bolt handle and stock of polished curly maple reflecting back the light of the lantern. Arrayed across the lower edge of the case were twelve brightly colored boxes, each of them labeled “REMINGTON .30-06 Sprgfld. 180 gr. pointed soft point, 20 cartridges.”
His hands shaking slightly. Milo took the beautiful weapon from it’s century-old bed and lifted, then pulled back the silvery bolt handle, The archaic Mauser action slid smoothly open and its ejector sent a glittering brass dummy cartridge clattering across the room. Under a light film of lubricants, the interior surfaces of the rifle gleamed every bit as brightly as did the exterior.
Milo slouched back against the door of the cabinet behind him, a grim smile on his lips. Twelve boxes of cartridges, twenty rounds the box, two hundred and forty rounds, then; even if it required one full box to reorient himself to firearms in general and this magnificent one in particular, that and to get it zeroed in properly, he’d still have far more than enough to seriously deplete the wolf population hereabouts; so now he and his companions were trapped here in these ruins only until the weather improved.
“But what,” he mused aloud to himself, “about those cats? Even with that big wolf pack wiped out, she’s going to be in a bad way. She won’t be able to hunt at all for at least a month, and she and those cubs will be white bones before then. True, the men and I, we can kill and butcher game and leave meat behind for her and the cubs. But how long before they ate it all or it got too ripe to eat?
“What other alternatives are there? Take them back to camp with us whenever we go? Well, for the three cubs, that would be easy of accomplishment, I guess: just strap one each on the backs of three men. But how in the devil are seven men supposed to get a two-hundred—and-some-pound injured cat down a bitch of an almost vertical hillside which also is coated with ice and full of loose rocks?
“Of course, what we really should do is just loll around in here until the big cat is mended, then give her the choice of coming with us or staying here, but if I should keep these men away that long, their clans will think they’re all dead and, most likely, move the camp to a luckier place. And that place to which they move would probably be in the opposite direction from that we’d go to look for them, too.
“Now if it only weren’t for that damned precipitous hillslope, we could easily fashion a sled or two and …”
Fil Linszee’s mindcall interrupted his musings.
“Uncle Milo, the big cat is waking up.”
When Milo strode into the den, Fil, Bili and Bahb were watching the great groggy beast, made clumsy by her bandaged forepaws, trying to get a hind claw under the strap still securing her jaws.
He moved to her side and sank onto his haunches, laying a hand on her head, because he had long ago learned that some form of physical contact always improved telepathic communication.
Then he mindspoke her, saying, “Sister, wait. I’ll take the snaps off. But you must promise not to tear off the bits of cloth covering your forepaws with your teeth. Will you promise?”
The blizzard blew for three days, but the howling winds began to slacken during the third night and died with the dawn. That fourth morning brought a full blaze of sun and all unclouded blue sky for its setting.
The fourth morning also brought back the wolves, who had wisely departed the dangerously exposed plateau during the blow. Bili and Bahb Linszee were atop the tower working on the frozen carcasses of the wolves Milo had sabered in the den with their skinning knives. As the vanguards of the pack returned to the plateau, they honored an earlier promise and mindcalled Milo.
Carrying the cased rifle and a folded tarp, Milo climbed back up onto the roof of the ruined tower. He had been classed an expert rifleman in every army in which he could recall serving, and during the long blizzard days and nights he had read and reread the booklet that the Browning Arms company had packed with the rifle, then stripped the piece. thoroughly cleaned and relubricated it with other contents of the steel chest, and dry-fired it until he thought that he knew all that he could learn of the weapon without actually putting live rounds through the minor-bright, chromed bore. He also had completely familiarized himself with the scope and its adjusting knobs, for the optic device would be useful to him long after the last round for the rifle had been expended.
Lacking the sandbags he recalled using to steady the piece or long-range shooting, he utilized the tarp-covered frozen carcass of an unskinned wolf, settled himself in the prone position behind it, opened a box of cartridges and filled the rifle’s magazine, then removed the lens covers from the scope. Everything now in readiness to give the wolves a rude and very deadly surprise, he relaxed in place, waiting until a maximum number of the predators had come within range of the rifle.
The pack must have not found much if any game during the days of the blizzard, for soon the most of them were gathered about the foot of the tower, engaged in a snapping, snarling battle royal over the skinned carcasses the Linszee twins tossed off the roof as soon as the pelts were off them. But a few wolves were still sitting or ambling at some distance from the ruins, so Milo set about sighting in the weapon.
Far down, near the distant edge of the plateau, sat two of the wolves, intently observing something in the forest below, Milo centered the cross hairs of the scope on the head of the nearer one and slowly squeezed off the first round. The rifle butt slammed his shoulder with a force and violence he had half forgotten. Below the tower, the wolf-pack members were streaming off in every direction—yelping, howling, barking, tails tucked between their legs, looking back as they ran from that awesome sound with wide and fear-filled eyes. But Milo did not notice the lupine exodus, so intent was he in checking the performance of the rifle, which he calculated had thrown a good ten feet short of his chosen target and well to the left.
The two distant wolves had looked around at the noise, but as they never had been hunted with firearms, they failed to connect that noise with danger or with the small something that had drilled its sizzling way through the frozen crust; they may not even have been aware of that something, since it had arrived somewhat ahead of the noise.
Milo chambered a fresh round, adjusted the scope and then settled himself behind the weapon, remembering this time to push the butt firmly against his shoulder. The second round whizzed out of the barrel. Through the scope, Milo saw the target animal suddenly duck down, then shake his head and raise his long muzzle skyward, looking around above him.
Three morn rounds were fired and three more adjustments of the telescopic sight made, but the sixth fired round sent the distant wolf leaping high into the air, to fall and lie jerking and twitching in the snow for a few moments before becoming very still. The other wolf was still sniffing at its mysteriously stricken packmate when a 180-grain softpoint bullet ended its curiosity forever.
Milo had had the tower top to himself for some time. The two Linszee boys had descended the rickety stairs shaking their ringing heads and wondering how even Uncle Milo could stand those incredibly loud noises.