Fritz. If we only had one end of her trail, who knows but with courage and perseverance—”
“As for her trail, don’t trouble about that; that’s my business.”
“Yours?”
“Yes, mine.”
“What do you know about following up a trail?”
“Why should not I?”
“Oh, if you are so sure of it, and you know more about it than I do, of course march on, and I’ll follow!”
It was easy to see that the old hunter was vexed that I should presume to trespass upon his special province; therefore, only laughing inwardly, I required no repetition of the request to lead on, and I turned sharply to the left, sure of coming across the old woman’s trail, who, after having left the count at the postern gate, must have crossed the plain to reach the mountain. Sperver rode behind me now, whistling rather contemptuously, and I could hear him now and then grumbling—
“What is the use of looking for the track of the she-wolf in the plain? Of course she went along the forest side just as usual. But it seems she has altered her habits, and now walks about with her hands in her pockets, like a respectable Fribourg tradesman out for a walk.”
I turned a deaf ear to his hints, but in a moment I heard him utter an exclamation of surprise; then, fixing a keen eye upon me, he said—
“Fritz, you know more than you choose to tell.”
“How so, Gideon?”
“The track that I should have been a week finding, you have got it at once. Come, that’s not all right!”
“Where do you see it, then?”
“Oh, don’t pretend to be looking at your feet.”
And pointing out to me at some distance a scarcely perceptible white streak in the snow—
“There she is!”
Immediately he galloped up to it; I followed in a couple of minutes; we had dismounted, and were examining the track of the Black Pest.
“I should like to know,” cried Sperver, “how that track came here?”
“Don’t let that trouble you,” I replied.
“You are right, Fritz; don’t mind what I say; sometimes I do speak rather at random. What we want now is to know where that track will lead us to.”
And now the huntsman knelt on the ground.
I was all ears; he was closely examining.
“It is a fresh track,” he pronounced, “last night’s. It is a strange thing, Fritz, during the count’s last attack that old witch was hanging about the castle.”
Then examining with greater care—
“She passed here between three and four o’clock this morning.”
“How can you tell that?”
“It is quite a fresh track; there is sleet all round it. Last night, about twelve, I came out to shut the doors; there was sleet falling then, there is none upon the footsteps, therefore she has passed since.”
“That is true enough, Sperver, but it may have been made much later; for instance, at eight or nine.”
“No, look, there is frost upon it! The fog that freezes on the snow only comes at daybreak. The creature passed here after the sleet and before the fog—that is, about three or four this morning.”
I was astonished at Sperver’s exactitude.
He rose from his knee, clapping his hands together to get rid of the snow, and looking at me thoughtfully, as if speaking to himself, said—
“It is twelve, is it not, Fritz?”
“A quarter to twelve.”
“Very well; then the old woman has got seven hours’ start of us. We must follow upon her trail step by step; on horseback we can do it in half the time, and, if she is still going, about seven or eight to-night we have got her, Fritz. Now then, we’re off.”
And we started afresh upon the track. It led us straight to the mountains.
Galloping away, Sperver said—
“If good luck only would have it that she had rested an hour or two in a hole in a rock, we might be up with her before the daylight is gone.”
“Let us hope so, Gideon.”
“Oh, don’t think of it. The old she-wolf is always moving; she never tires; she tramps along all the hollows in the Black Forest. We must not flatter ourselves with vain hopes. If, perhaps, she has stopped on her journey, so much the better for us; and if she still keeps going, we won’t let that discourage us. Come on at a gallop.”
It is a very strange feeling to be hunting down a fellow-creature; for, after all, that unhappy woman was of our own kind and nature; endowed like ourselves with an immortal soul to be saved, she felt, and thought, and reflected like ourselves. It is true that a strange perversion of human nature had brought her near to the nature of the wolf, and that some great mystery overshadowed her being. No doubt a wandering life had obliterated the moral sense in her, and even almost effaced the human character; but still nothing in the world can give one man a right to exercise over another the dominion of the man over the brute.
And yet a burning ardour hurried us on in pursuit; my blood was at fever heat; I was determined to stand at no obstacle in laying hold of this extraordinary being. A wolf-hunt or a boar-hunt would not have excited me near so much.
The snow was flying in our rear; sometimes splinters of ice, bitten off by the horse-shoes, like shavings of iron from machinery, whizzed past our ears.
Sperver, sometimes with his nose in the air and his red moustache floating in the wind, sometimes with his grey eyes intently following the track, reminded me of those famous Cossacks that I had seen pass through Germany when I was a boy; and his tall, lanky horse, muscular and full-maned, its body as slender as a greyhound’s, completed the illusion.
Lieverlé, in a high state of enthusiasm and excitement, took bounds sometimes as high as our horses’ backs, and I could not but tremble at the thought that when we came up at last with the Pest he might tear her in pieces before we could prevent him.
But the old woman gave us all the trouble she could; on every hill she doubled, at every hillock there was a false track.
“After all, it is easy here,” cried Sperver, “to what it will be in the wood. We shall have to keep our eyes open there! Do you see the accursed beast? Here she has confused the track! There she has been amusing herself sweeping the trail, and then from that height which is exposed to the wind she has slipped down to the stream, and has crept along through the cresses to get to the underwood. But for those two footsteps she would have sold us completely.”
We had just reached the edge of a pine-forest. In woods of this description the snow never reaches the ground except
