Chapter III: Part 3

He put down the fat pork he was eating, wiped his hand on his trousers, and took the letter as gingerly as if afraid it would burn his fingers.

The envelope bore some printed letters as distinct and black as those in the Prayer Book: “H. Braaten & Co., Drammen.” Below he read “Mr. Sjur Renden, Lower Valley.” But that was in pen-and-ink writing.

Gaupa opened the letter with his sheath knife much as he would cut open the skin of an elk’s belly. The rustling white paper in his hands for once brought home to his mind the fact that his hands were extremely dirty. The paper seemed too nice for them to touch. Even that bore the printed inscription “H. Braaten & Co., Drammen,” and below: “_Wholesale Hardware_,” which two words he did not understand in the least. The handwriting did not look like what he had learnt at school, round and readable. That before him was nothing but straight lines and broken ones crowded close together. And what a man he must be at handling a pen, he who wrote it! The words raced across the paper like gusts of wind, and below a whirling curl stood by itself; Gaupa guessed it was meant for “Braathe.” He went off at once to find the schoolmaster and have the letter read aloud. By himself he could only puzzle out a few words here and there, like “elk,” “Ré Valley,” “superstition,” and “Yours truly.”

H. Braaten & Co. was a man from Lower Valley who had turned genteel. He hailed from a croft called Vermin Camp, and left home as soon as he was out of school. He sat on a loaded trading cart when he left, and the whole outfit reeked of well-matured old cheese.

But when he returned!...

He arrived in a hired carriage with a hood on it, and he brought a wife whom they called Mrs. Braathe, and who talked town language. And there was so much gold in his teeth that when he laughed his mouth was like an entire sunrise.... That grand gentleman was Hans from Vermin Camp who left the district on a sledgeful of old cheese.

The schoolmaster first took two or three readings of the letter, his lips forming the words but not his tongue. Then he read aloud:

“MR. SJUR RENDEN,

“From my good friend up there I learn that there runs in the woods a remarkable elk, which no forest-men can manage to kill. Of course a great deal of superstition is connected with the animal, the dalesmen of Lower Valley being presumably as superstitious now as when I was a child. Lower Valley is on the outskirts of civilisation. But if you, who are, as I have heard, the greatest hunter in those parts, would consent to guide me on a trip after the mysterious elk, you would give great pleasure to an old acquaintance. I long for Ré Valley.

“Please send me an answer.

“With kind regards,

“Yours truly,

“H. BRAATHE.”

The schoolmaster folded up the letter looking as if he had accomplished a great deed, something that no one else in all the valley could manage.

“You’ll answer for me, won’t you?” said Gaupa. “You’ll say he can come?”

And going home to Lynx Hut he felt himself greater than before. A gentleman from Branæs had sent him a letter, saying it would be a pleasure to have his company. The last “Yours truly” sounded so full of respect and so courteous that one might think it had been written in mockery.

§ 16

One day Mr. Braathe knocked at the door of Lynx Hut. Gaupa was at home, but did not answer. What did that knocking mean? After another knock he went to open the door.

Mr. Braathe was a long lath of a man, who seemed to have been pulled too hard length-ways and grown too narrow. Everything about him hung loosely—his cheeks, shoulders, even his clothes. He was as shrivelled up as a bat.

“Please sit down on the bed,” said Gaupa; “there are no more lice there than the fleas have managed to eat.”

That was a joke he usually quoted to strangers, but this time he swore to himself the moment he had said it. The man before him hailed from Vermin Camp, and might think the words an allusion to his past.

But Mr. Braathe kept smiling, and asked Gaupa to call him plain Hans just as in the old days.

That same evening they stood on the slope above Tolleiv Mountain Farm in Ré Valley. Bjönn was not with them, because Hans did not want him, and in Gaupa’s opinion even a dog could not avail when he was hunting Rauten.

If Gaupa had nursed any ideas about the townsman being worth but little, he was mistaken. Gaupa walked quickly all day, but Hans kept up with him, and there was not a sign of perspiration about him. Once he took out from his bag a strange instrument, a short trumpet of birch-bark with a kind of mouthpiece at one end.

Hans was a much-travelled man. He once saw nothing for nights and days but sea and sky. He had smelt the smoke from Red Men’s camp fires. While he spoke, Gaupa grew silent and his eyes sought the far distance. He was not there in a boggy hollow on the Ré Valley slopes. He followed this tall man through endless woods on the other side of the earth, in a country which to Gaupa’s mind had always been more dream than reality. They seemed to be under a tree, and beside them crouched a copper-coloured Indian with burning eyes. He had a similar birch-bark trumpet in his hand. The wilds of Canada spread out under the clouds. It was early morning. Somewhere a beaver splashed into a calm pool. Farther away a duck was heard.

Then the Red Indian, their guide, moved his moccasins with infinite care, turned towards the rosy dawn over the earth in the east and lifted the birch-bark trumpet to his mouth. At first he only breathed into it as if to warm it. It was a cold autumn morning, as silent as death, except for the occasional splash of the beaver....

The Red Indian lowered his instrument, raised it again, and out of it floated the mating call of an elk, loud and living, luring and treacherous.

Hans arose, saying that that night they would lure the wizard elk. The birch-bark instrument had accompanied him in the wilds of Canada, and more than one crowned head had been turned by it. It would be a strange thing indeed if Rauten were not fooled also.... All that talk about the Ré Valley Swede was the most arrant nonsense, he declared.

Gaupa did not care to show himself superstitious to his companion, for superstition was old-fashioned amongst the genteel. Therefore he guessed that Rauten was an elk like other elks. He ate grass, mated with the cows in the autumn, and when he died he would die like a he goat. No restless spirit would fly out of his nostrils.

§ 17

It was the following night.

On the slopes of Black Mountain Rauten stood on a rock, listening, his ears waving alternately backwards and forwards. His beard hung stiff and awe-inspiring. He was listening for a cow. They usually can be heard at dusk during mating time.

The weather was not quite calm. A darkish cloud sailed slowly above Black Mountain. Just below him in the river there were mild rapids and the water bubbled incessantly against the rocks like a boiling kettle.

Farther up the slope Hans and Gaupa sat under a spruce tree, the lower branches of which touched the earth. They sat as if in a tent, on soft reindeer moss, hardly daring to move. Hans produced a flask, and Gaupa poured the golden brandy down his throat without a word. Little by little the forest grew veiled. Over the east mountains daylight faded away, the roar of Ré River seemed incessant and more wide awake than ever. The sound was uneven, which meant that there was movement in the air. That was bad luck.

Hans bent towards Gaupa. “I wonder if we shall have an answer to-night,” he whispered.

“This is the best elk ground in all Ré Valley,” Gaupa whispered back.

Then once more they sat as still as stones, and Gaupa felt the brandy on his tongue for a long time.

The night before they had tried the trumpet trick, but no bull answered them.

That afternoon they found Rauten’s spoor just below where they were then sitting. A young pine showed white spots on its bark and several branches were broken.

There the wizard elk had rubbed his antlers; the marks were so fresh, perhaps only made that day.

As darkness came on, Gaupa’s excitement grew. Hearing seemed to fill every part of his body. He was nothing but ears....

Hans regarded this strange being beside him. Gaupa’s face was so very short, with next to no chin, and that is rare, for surely energetic people generally have strong chins. Now and then he jerked his head sharply and suddenly, as if he heard something that made him jump every once in a while. Then Hans saw Gaupa smile, and a smile had not been seen on Gaupa’s face all that trip. He was smiling, a strange, stiff-lipped smile, and turning to Hans he asked:

“D’you hear him?”

Hans had not heard a sound. But Gaupa’s keen ear had caught a sound so faint as scarcely to be one at all—the mating cry of a bull elk. The sound seemed to come from below and from the north. Silence reigned around them once more. Gipsy Lake had a silvery streak along its eastern banks. It was the reflection of the northern sky.

Hans carefully pressed the birch-bark mouthpiece against his lips, stuck the other end out through the pine branches, and blew. The call of a cow elk rang out: “Come, come.”

Then all was silence.

A quarter of an hour later Hans once more lifted his instrument.... He stopped, startled.

Immediately to the north, silhouetted against the bright sky in the opening of the valley, an elk bull stood on a mountain ridge. Hans could see the sky between its legs and also two ears and enormous, shovel-shaped antlers.

The elk did not move, and stood out like a statue against the sky above the valley.

Gaupa cocked his gun. “Rauten,” he whispered, and it sounded like a sob. He had seen the mutilated ear. At that moment the bull stepped down from the ridge, straight towards them, and darkness hid him from their view.

Then they heard “Örrke—örrk,” a kind of nasal grunt, approaching nearer and nearer. A dry twig cracked, and in the clearing a pine stump shimmered with a greyish gleam. The roar from Ré River seemed far distant, as if withdrawn, but suddenly it sounded close again, the forest gave a sigh, and Gaupa saw a lichen tuft move slightly just above Hans’s head.

Then the noise of the elk ceased as if suddenly cut off. There was not a sound. The minutes crawled past. There was still silence.

Gaupa turned.

“Weathered!” he whispered.

But Rauten trotted northwards along the edge of the long Ré marshes hour after hour. He had heard the luring call of a cow, went to meet her, and found man. What a strange thing to happen!... And Rauten ran on. It is bad to be where man is.

§ 18

It was the same autumn, later on in September, one night at Lynx Hut.

Bjönn was asleep on the bed. “The Tempest” hung on the wall. A wooden box, converted, formed Gaupa’s cobbler’s workshop. A tiny paraffin lamp gave him a sleepy light for the work he had in hand, mending a shoe. On the box awls, plugs, tacks, waxed thread, and heel irons were heaped together, for Gaupa was very far from being a tidy man.

The patch finished, he pulled out from under the bed a violin case, took out his instrument and turned it round in his hands as softly as if caressing it. Then he lifted it to his chin and made a stroke to test the tuning, but when he touched the tenor and bass strings the violin sang so sadly, sweetly, and wildly at the same time, just the tune that will sometimes rise up out of black, hidden river-filled gullies. The violin was tuned for magic.

A lively country dance leaped from the strings. Bjönn woke up and opened his eyes, but shut them again. A few dying embers glowed red through the draught-hole in the stove, and when Gaupa had finished and sat in deep reflection the sound of a watch ticking filled the silence. It was getting on for one o’clock in the morning, but that was Gaupa’s most wide-awake hour.

Steps were heard outside, and Bjönn barked. “Whisht,” said Gaupa. There was a knock, Gaupa unlocked his door, which as it happened he had locked that night.

“Evening,” said somebody in the dark.

“Evening,” Gaupa replied; “are you out walking so late?”

Hans Holmen stood outside, exactly in the line between darkness and the yellow lamplight from within. His coat was unbuttoned and a nickel watchchain gleamed across his waistcoat. He carried a fishing-rod over one shoulder, and Gaupa saw the white top move softly in the dark.

“Oh,” said Hans Holmen again, “it’s early rather than late. It is just about one o’clock.”

Gaupa waited. Full well he knew that Hans must have a very special reason for coming in the night like that.

Then Hans began to relate how he was fishing along the river. There was a dense thicket of bushes growing along the bank and he was well hidden. While he was baiting his hook an enormous animal came out of the undergrowth just to the south of him. At first he thought it was a horse, and wondered why it had no bell, and besides it was not quite the shape of a horse either. When the animal waded out into the river he saw it against the sky-line and recognised it as an elk of unusual size.

Hans Holmen went close up to Gaupa. He lowered his voice as if telling a secret.

“‘Twas the wizard elk I saw,” he said; “I saw the mark of your knife.”

He waited.

“Well,” he summed up the situation, “I thought I’d better tell you, when I saw the light in your window. That elk waded across the river and went up the other side, so now you know where to find his spoor.”

Hans Holmen left, and Gaupa closed the door. He remained for some seconds staring down on the floor, standing in his shirt and trousers.

But out on the high road Hans Holmen went straight homewards and not towards the river.

In Lynx Hut the petroleum lamp was still burning. Gaupa went to and fro slowly, busy as usual. He baked potato flap-jacks on his stove, filled the wooden butter cup, and made ready for a tramp with his knapsack, Bjönn, and “The Tempest.”

About three o’clock he went to the corner cupboard, and after some fumbling produced an old-fashioned leather purse. Out of it he took a slightly flattened lead bullet, as big as a small potato, dirty, knobby, and rough.

That bullet had a name, for it was called the Swede’s Bullet. Gaupa’s father was a soldier at Matrand in 1814, and he shot a Swede who was standing against a tree-trunk. The bullet went straight through him and into the bole of the tree. Afterwards his father picked out that bullet, and ever since the family had regarded it as a priceless possession.

It could heal wounds and cure illness as well as any doctor. Gaupa never forgot the old crofter who had an ulcer in his leg. Gaupa went to him with the Swede’s Bullet and stroked the leg with it in a circle round the ulcer. From that day the ulcer stopped spreading; it could not pass outside the circle where the Swede’s bullet had touched the skin.

But then Gaupa reflected whether he should sacrifice the priceless lump of lead and melt it into a bullet for Rauten.

Rauten, being no ordinary elk, could probably not be killed by ordinary bullets. All the old people believed that there are many animals which demand a special ammunition if you want to shoot them.

But should he really give up the Swede’s bullet?

If it could assist him to kill the wizard elk, the whole district would look upon him as a great man. He would be famous in the valley, and the fact would not easily be forgotten that he was the man who killed Rauten.

For many years he had avoided the beast. For to be quite honest he had to admit that bad luck followed the one who hunted it. Why was he so ill when he shot at the wizard elk at Morsæter? They saw the spoor and knew what animal it was which he saw like a vision in the moonlight.

But while he was conscious of his childish fear of Rauten, he always felt a tantalising desire to see the end of him, to kill him, and cart that enormous body down into the Lower Valley, to exhibit it to the dalesmen and listen to their comments.

Oh what a day that would be! The small boys would gaze at him and Bjönn in deep admiration not unmingled with fear, and the old women would shake their heads knowingly and predict disaster to him....

The Swede’s bullet weighed heavily in his hand, heavier than ordinary lead. Unknown forces were imprisoned in the metal, and it must not go out of the family’s possession. But Gaupa had no relatives in the Valley. He was an only child, his parents were dead, all his other kinsmen had gone away across the Blue Atlantic. When he died the Swede’s bullet would be homeless, so to speak, and that ought not to happen.

Gaupa decided to melt down the Swede’s Bullet.

He made a big fire in the stove under a kind of small pan in which he usually melted his lead. He gazed very earnestly at the Swede’s bullet as it lost form and flattened down until at last it was one big drop of lead in the pan, glittering like a flame, as mysterious as a mountain lake under the moon.

Suddenly Bjönn, who lay upon the bed, grew restless. He looked up at his master, whimpering softly. What on earth was the matter with the dog? “Quiet!” said Gaupa.

Bjönn rolled himself up again, head under tail. But when Gaupa poured the molten lead into the bullet mould, the dog once more raised his head and whined.

How strange! Was the dog ill? Perhaps it was rheumatism. For Bjönn was growing old. He had the pale-blue eyes and the dimmed pupils which indicate age. But he was fairly brisk as yet. What was it he carried on like that for?

Gaupa went up to the dog and stroked his head. Bjönn flattened his ears as a sign of content and calmed down.

The lead had cooled, and Gaupa took out the bullet, fresh and shiny. But it was not like other bullets. It had killed once; it knew its way, and wherever this bullet hit the elk’s body, death would radiate from it as if from a poisoned arrow. Heaven have mercy upon Rauten!

Bjönn again raised his head, whimpering, when Gaupa placed the bullet in the cartridge.

It was four o’clock in the morning. He extinguished the lamp and crept to bed beside Bjönn. Now and then he opened his eyes to look for dawn through the window.

§ 19

That morning an elk bull lay quietly at the upper end of Owl Glen. It was Rauten. He had come from the other side of the valley from the eastern mountains. A dog with a terrible voice in his throat had chased him for half a day, and at last Rauten had swum across Lower Valley River.

But he wanted to go back to Ré Valley, for that was his home. There for months peace reigned in the woods until it entered his own shaggy body and made him at one with the deep silence of the mountains.

Peace was the depth of his nature. He wanted to see, unseen. He liked to stand at the edge of the bogs, looking at the capercailzie hen with all her brood. He liked to see the ever-frightened hare nibbling the grass undisturbed. That was peace, and each day offered fresh joys, however old—a feed of juicy grass not yet withered in some marshy place, a few waterlilies in a mountain lakelet. For him life was food, sleep, and rest, and then feeding again. Life was light and darkness, sun and rain, heat and cold.

He slept at all times of day and night, but as lightly as if even in his sleep all the tiny sounds of the wilderness reached his consciousness. They floated about his ears, and the least unusual crackling let them all into his brain at once, and he was wide awake.

Rauten lived on his instinct—that is, on the experiences accumulated by countless generations through all ages and in all countries. Experiences had glided into him as murmuring brooklets run into the sea.

When he ran towards the wind, and not before it, it was because he had to do so. When he ran away from the scent of man, elks long since dead whispered soundless warnings in his ears. The fear of man was a seed which had been growing since the first arrow flew twirling and singing into the shoulder of an elk and caused life to ebb out of it.

Rauten was lying in Owl Glen this grey morning, with the sleepy murmur from Lower River before him, and a tiny trickle of water over the rocks beside him. That little trickle was a tiny life. A drop fell, and there was an attentive silence, then another drop splashed. Higher up in the glen an owl sat immovable, big sprouts of feather sprouting from the head, yellow eyes staring blindly at the daylight, her beak still bloody after the night’s hunting.

Far below Gaupa was following an elk’s spoor, breathing heavily. He held Bjönn on the leash, and the dog nosed the earth as if seeking something. Once in a while he would snort and tug hard, straight into the mountain, into Owl Glen.

The glen was narrow, with walls of rock on either side, the mountain ash glowing in autumnal glory, and the bracken turning gold. A hawk flew out with a cry, and the sound echoed backwards and forwards from rock to rock, growing into a strong volume of sound, like a loud call in empty space.

The man and the dog crawled upwards. Suddenly Bjönn threw up his head. He had caught the open scent, and Gaupa unfastened the dog’s collar, quietly and carefully.

When the foresters lie in their huts on long winter evenings they often tell of Gaupa and Bjönn and the wizard elk.

The old men amongst them still remember from their boyhood the wild chase which began that morning in Owl Glen, and lasted one day, two days, three days. The end came on the night of the third day.

Rauten lay peacefully in Owl Glen, his ears on the alert, one cocked forwards and the other backwards.

Then he started up from his lair, and ran. The wakeful conscience of the woods had been disturbed. A small pebble loosened and fell clattering downwards, a black deer-hound with a grey nose and grey legs ran out from amongst the scrub, the elk bull turned tail, and strode westwards on his long legs. That was the beginning. Down in Lower Valley the parlour clocks struck seven, and the chimneys gave forth light smoke into the grey morning.

A little later a man stood where the two had left, staring into the west.

He opened his mouth as if to inhale something from the air. He placed his hand behind his ear, inclining his head, his mouth always open. His eyes were far away from the world about him. They looked at the earth, but in the far distance.

The hills swam westwards towards the naked bulk of Ré Mountain, wave upon wave in long, easy swell.

Two animals were running towards Ré Mountain, a big one in front, a smaller one after. They were fighting over the distance between them, at times increasing and then again diminishing. The elk ploughed through the undergrowth with his long, heavy body, his antlers swishing through the green pine needles, his legs clip-clapping evenly and surely. When he lifted them his hoofs touched with a sound like dry sticks beating each other. Once in a while an antler would bang heavily against a tree-trunk.

Rauten kept up a steady, even trot; his flight was unhurried and unafraid, as was in keeping with the greatest beast in the forest, the strongest and wildest of elks, between valley and mountain. He ran because somehow it seemed wise, not because he was afraid. His nozzle was raised almost horizontally and his antlers lay along his back.

Bjönn ran after him. His tongue had grown too long—protruding out of his mouth, his eyes were wild, and the earth burnt his paws, which barely touched the ground only to fly up again. He divided up the distance in lightning leaps. Pine needles clung to his fur, and the shaggy body of the dog flew along like some enormous insect.

Gaupa was forgotten in the dog’s mind, all men were forgotten. He went back thousands of years when the wolves howled along elk spoors in Ré Valley. He was one of them, a dog which no man’s hand had caressed, and no man’s eyes had subdued.

Those grey, fleeting elk legs in front of him called up a bloodthirsty song in his sinews. Passion howled within him, and off and on when he gained on the elk his throat howled out. It was not Bjönn from Lynx Hut, it was the voice of dead wolves returning.

His nose no longer sought the earth, he ran through a thick reek of scent. Every breath filled his nostrils with the maddening smell of game, and everything about him seemed to run. Red pine trunks ran to meet him and Rauten, spruce trees crawled forward, jumping across the marshes. They were left behind, but fresh ones came again and again and again.

Gaupa lifted his head. His eyes returned from the far distance and sought a certain point on the western slopes, a spruce-clad hillock where the silver birches blazed like a flame, and there his gazed fixed. From that hillock came a sound, sudden and unexpected, like a spark from a fire of thorns.

“Wow!” It was a dog’s voice, clear and strained, let out of a throat which had quite enough to do with mere breathing.

The voice on the hillock spoke no more.

Gaupa remained in Owl Glen. He did not hurry. He wanted to be quite sure where Rauten was going, and from his post he could hear half a league away.

A short time afterwards Bjönn barked from the same place, deep-voiced and growling, as a watch-dog barks at strangers. Rauten was at bay!

“Wow! Wow! Wow!”

Then Gaupa began to run, his gun in his hand, its muzzle glaring black, and inside there was a cartridge with the Swede’s Bullet.

Gaupa was hidden in the forest, but appeared again on a hillock farther on, stopped listening as he pushed back his lucky cap. Then he was submerged in the greenery once more.

The dog’s voice to the west was the only token of life on the slopes, breaking the silence incessantly at short, regular intervals like the ticking of a grandfather’s clock.

Bjönn was barking at some close-grown spruce copse. It looked as if he were talking to it, again and again without receiving any answer.

In there amongst the spruce bushes some thin, grey tree trunks seemed to move once in a while. They were the elk’s legs. Some rough boughs with brown bark, just like a small bush, moved amongst the spruce needles. They were the elk’s antlers.

Rauten stood there. Apparently he was not very much concerned about the dog. He turned his head here and there, as if he had a suspicion of something intangible yet dangerous in the forest around him.

Whenever Rauten met that tiny, shaggy, barking animal, which smelt of man, the forest seemed to become unsafe for him, wherever he went. Perhaps it was a reminiscence from that autumn when his mother fell north of Black Mountain, when she blew a golden dust out of her nostrils and moved no more. Ever since that day he had the same feeling when he met a dog. Something alive was close to him, something he could not see, but which he knew was there all the same. From every tree, from every copse something spied upon him; fear threatened from them all....

He felt it then, as he drew his breath after the long run from Owl Glen. He did not catch the scent of Gaupa over there, or he would not have stopped so soon.

“Wow! Wow!”

At each bark Bjönn threw up his nozzle, half closing his eyes, his ears flattened backwards and teeth gleaming. Then he looked at Rauten a little and barked a little again, somewhat quietly, as if to convince Rauten that he was not dangerous at all. He was only out for a friendly chat....

Suddenly the spruce copse vomited a long grey figure, and Rauten’s fore-feet stood where Bjönn had been but was no longer, for Bjönn knew his business and needed no time to get out of the way.

“Wow! Wow!”

Once more there was nothing but those restless grey tree trunks and those brownish-grey living branches in the undergrowth.

But then Bjönn was once more the dog he really was, the dog from Lynx Hut, a beast who took his food from Gaupa’s hand.

As he regarded the elk’s rough throat until he imagined it between his own teeth, he remembered the throats of other elks, which Gaupa used to cut open so that Bjönn could drink the blood. That happened quite often when the deer were standing still among the copses, and the idea made Bjönn look round expectantly. Gaupa ought to come and make thunder about him, the elk ought to stagger, fall on one side, and remain on the earth. “Wow! Wow!”

But Rauten had come to the conclusion that the thing which disconcerted him was something very real, which made dry twigs crackle, and so he ran on again. Bjönn whimpered with disappointment and followed him. The steady barking ceased.

Beads of sweat appeared on Gaupa’s bald head as he ran. When he heard how the elk had broken away he swore softly, being wholly and entirely out of breath.

§ 20

It was late in the day when the snow began to fall.

The first snowflake came alone, thin and light as down.

The flake could not keep its equilibrium, but flew here and there aimlessly, and took its own time about settling down on earth. It had been on earth before, swimming in the white marsh mist one raw morning in the autumn. Afterwards it had lived where the clouds live, but now it came down again and settled on an aspen leaf, white on red, the first snow of winter.

Little by little the air filled with innumerable white butterflies, floating down from the heavens, a gift from God to earth and man, falling, falling.

On the Tolleivsæter Mountain which falls off steeply towards Ré Valley two animals were crawling, one larger, the other small. The first was Rauten, the other was Bjönn.

They followed a narrow gully in the mountain, a chasm which meandered downwards first to the north, then southwards, and then north again. It was no more than a narrow ledge in the mountain where the animals walked. They were hanging at the edge of an abyss and far below the bottom of the valley made a dark shadow in the white whirl.

Rauten led the way, and there was no longer anything long and clumsy about him now. His feet felt each step, carefully seeking a foothold. The knee-joints bent with a little noise, once in a while his hoofs slid a little and scraped the grey reindeer moss.

After him went Bjönn, crouching and frightened, without a sound. They were climbing between earth and heaven, but the snowflakes danced past them into the abyss, and Ré River was heard faintly somewhere far below.

Thus the elk and the dog went on, slowly, slowly. Once they passed some large black holes among the rocks, and then both Rauten and Bjönn felt very uncomfortable. Rauten stopped, his nostrils dilated and eyes ablaze, Bjönn lowered his tail and sniffed towards the rocks, his muzzle quivering, for the animal after which he was named had been in there recently to seek for a winter lair.

After a long time the elk and the dog reached the foot of the mountain. Rauten tore through the birch bushes, and the dog’s voice woke up again. They came to a deep gully—two rocky precipices and between them water boiling into foam far below.... Rauten leapt twice his own length. He flew through the air before he reached earth once more, and ran on. Bjönn made a detour, found a short cut, and when Rauten sprang into Ré River he was not alone. Two splashes were heard from the river, one for the elk and one for the dog, and they ran on straight up the western slope, Bjönn now and then giving vent to short barks.

After a while Gaupa reached the eastern slope. He was like a well-wrung rag. His cap was in his pocket now, his hair was plastered to his skull, his eyes were red and strained, like those of one who has kept awake many nights. His mouth was gaping open, the muscles of his jaws being too tired to keep it shut.

He stopped to regain his breath. What time could it be? Nearly two. He thought as much. Six, seven hours had passed since Bjönn had begun driving the wizard elk. Gaupa had heard the song from the dog’s throat many times that day, east and west. He had been north and south, God only knows exactly where he had been, running and walking. He had stopped at all the well-known elk stations, but Rauten had passed them all, for he did not run like other elks. And now it was two hours since Gaupa had last heard Bjönn.

Gaupa laid his hand behind his ear as he had done that morning in Owl Glen. He tried to hold his breath so that it should not drown the slightest sound in the silence of Ré Valley. He seemed to listen for a message from the snowflakes, but the flakes bore no message. They were like a whirling swarm of silent butterflies. Only when he turned his back to the weather, the flying atoms battered on his knapsack with a barely audible sound as from elfin artillery.

He sat down. The mountains about him were changing their colour, growing white. The weather lightened a little and the earth was revealed, far, far away. He saw Gipsy Lake straight below, pitch black amongst the whiteness.

Hark!

Out of the north-west came a sound, the bark of an almost exhausted dog, a slight break in the silence. Gaupa lifted his head; his entire face, framed in dark beard, stiffened with excitement.

Was that Bjönn? Yes it was! He saw the mountain ridges west of the valley and followed their outlines northwards, as they rose and sank, wave upon wave towards the sky. And farthest north two specks grew out of their white slopes, one larger than the other. First they grew in size, then they rapidly diminished, and at last they vanished altogether.

Bjönn and Rauten had gone into the western mountains. Well, Gaupa had better follow them.

He found a descent not far from where he stood, and went at a jog-trot across the marshes around Gipsy Lake.

Then came the western slope, a sky-high precipice difficult to ascend. The minutes crawled slowly, as evening shadows pass over the fields. And Gaupa crept slowly upwards.

Once or twice he lay down on his back, face upturned. A few snowflakes settled on his skin. They felt like a wet tongue licking him, pleasantly cool. He gathered a little snow from the heather about him, placing it against his hot head, enjoying the coolness of it.

Then he rose and went on his way. A dry branch hooked on to his trousers and made a big rent in them. He heard the brooks grow strangely mute; their voices were no longer natural, and when close at hand they sounded far off. And in his ears there rang a song, thin and high like the buzzing of a gnat.

Oh to lie down and rest, rest a long, long time.... Nonsense, Bjönn and Rauten had gone westwards, and Gaupa had better follow them.

In an hour he reached the barren mountain, the naked bulk of which stretched before him. About a league to the west was another valley, Three Valley. Gaupa knew that an elk would occasionally go there when fleeing from a hound. It had happened often to himself and Bjönn. Probably Rauten had gone that way too.

But he had to rest before descending. He took out food from his knapsack and tried to eat, only his mouth was so dry that it was like biting sawdust. There seemed to be no moisture left in his mouth.

Ever since the chase began Gaupa had not rightly considered the fact that Bjönn was following no ordinary elk. Mystical ideas do not generally go with laboured running in broad daylight.

Then his brain was so strangely empty and weak. He felt as if the power of reasoning had been sweated out of him. His head seemed full of mist, out of which the ideas could not find their way. They worked at the things nearest and immediate, with the spoors and the chase.

But he knew that Rauten would have great difficulty in leaving Bjönn that day. Bjönn was well-rested, his paws hardened and muscles as tough as pemmican—very devil of a rugged deer-hound ready to follow an elk to Hallingdal—or even to the valley beyond that.

Gaupa jogged along west once more. He felt better after his rest, and he began to think. The people of the valley had given him a nickname, Gaupa, the Lynx, although by rights his name was Sjur Renden, as could be seen on his baptismal certificate as well as on his assessment—and they called his hut Lynx Hut, although the correct name was “Elvely” (River Shelter). Christened so by the parson who happened to pass by when they were building it.

But if they had given him a nickname like that, by hell, they should be made to respect it and to recognise the fact that he did honour to the name, for he would show them that he was a Lynx who could go on when other men failed. He would chase him into hottest hell, that elk with the enormous antlers and the restless soul of the Swede. And when he, Gaupa, returned to Lower Valley, clothes in rags and hands bloody, the news would spread like wildfire that Rauten was killed, shot somewhere in the western mountains towards Hallingdal—driven out of Owl Glen at seven in the morning—and the man who shot him was no other than Gaupa—of course.

And even the papers would print the fact: “The well-known hunter Sjur Renden....”

Thoughts slipped away again, as fatigue filled his body once more after the rest his brain held nothing but mist, mist. But somewhere in his consciousness one thing remained hard and fast, the thing that said, “Run, run, for God’s sake run.” Such was the will of Gaupa, the slayer of elks.

§ 21

In the Three Valley a dog had opened full cry, a glorious cry, for his quarry was standing still.

Rauten stood still because he was so tired that he had to. During the last run earth seemed unstable beneath him, and wherever he went he saw a lair before him, full of peace and quiet; he might go to rest under that spruce, or there—and there. Only he could not get rid of that eternal worrying by a big black fox that followed him like his own meaningless shadow. He had tried everything—climbing mountains, jumping across gullies, but the dog followed him with an endless succession of angry barks.

In the course of all those hours those barks had become no more than a habit to the ear; they did not feel like real terror any more, only a slight fear, a subconsciousness of danger. But Rauten was at length compelled to rest now, standing in a spruce copse in Three Valley.

Bjönn was there, lying down. The dog also was nearly spent. His legs seemed to have disappeared of late, and when they ran it was from innate habit.

Several times he had crossed the spoors of Gaupa. The earth threw up the familiar scent into his nostrils, like a message from his master to say that he was there, only “Go on!” And Bjönn went on, he was going for ever now.

His hair was soaking wet; both he and the elk were steaming like fast-running horses in cold weather. The snow lay on the heather like white wool, a frozen bilberry stood up from it, a reminiscence of summer in the midst of winter. Two pine trunks rose tall, straight, and copper-red behind both the animals.

“Wow! Wow!” said Bjönn. There was an interval between each bark, and his voice was so hoarse as hardly to be recognised. He snatched a mouthful of snow now and then, for his thirst. “Wow!”

Both animals felt themselves stiffening after they stopped. Rauten had a broad gash across one of his thighs made by a dry branch. There was reproach in his eyes as they regarded the little animal before him, whom he had never hurt and who would not let him be in peace. But rest, rest, that was all, the only thing.... Rauten stood still.

In the meanwhile Gaupa was hurrying westwards towards Three Valley. His footfall made no sound in the snow, as if he were running on soft moss. He jogged along, walked at times, eating snow.

He found the spoors of the dog and elk, indistinct but unmistakable: long lines across a tuft of wiregrass from the elk hoofs, and close by them clear marks of Bjönn’s paws. He followed the spoors with childish joy, lost them, found them again, and made straight for Three Valley.

All idea of time had long since left him. Only the mountain seemed endless. The snow continued to fall, and the ever-falling white flakes made him dizzy. At last he saw a tall, narrow rock on a ridge before him, a rock exactly like a tall chimney, that he knew to be on the slope towards Three Valley.

He was soon there. The earth sank before him, the valley could be seen—thin forest on the slopes, long marshes with a sleepy river, a large lake, a white summer pasture with a couple of dark houses, far away near the bend of the valley.

A pang of joy rang through Gaupa, vivifying and exciting, for a dog’s bark floated out in the grey air straight below him from the slope.

More barks followed; the whole valley filled with the song of it. Gaupa wondered at the sound. “Poor old dog, he has gone hoarse,” thought he. But what a dog! He was an animal without blemish, no dog like him. He would soon have assistance, warm drink, a taste of warm meat....

Gaupa slipped down the wooded slopes quickly and carefully. Just down there, just down there, he thought time after time. Ten minutes, five minutes more, and the Swede’s Bullet should fly unseen from the muzzle of “The Tempest.”

The next day he would return to Lower Valley, clothes in rags, with bloody hands. And Martin Lyhus would have to take his pipe out of his mouth to ask, staring in astonishment:

“What is it you say? Have you shot him?”

Gaupa stopped to make sure of the movement of the air.... He was in luck, it was straight against him. He could see it in the flying snow. But it would soon clear up. The flakes were restless, flying about like gnats, not falling quietly. That was a sure sign of approaching clear weather.

Gaupa followed a small spruce-grown gully in the slope, and just in front of him, very close now, stood Bjönn holding the wizard elk in check. To Gaupa stealing downwards, the forest grew alive, every tree listened for the dog’s barking, he felt as if on the point of discovering a wonderful secret.

He could not see the animals and heard only one, though he knew there were two. He stopped to look round for cover, and observed something strange about his hands. He stood petrified looking at them, he did not recognise them as his own. They were trembling now, however much he willed them not to do—trembling in spite of himself.

Then he felt a slight shiver in his whole body, something he could not control—and a cool feeling across the lower part of his body. The hunter’s shivers! he thought.

“Wow!” was heard from below, and then a sudden silence. Gaupa held his breath, waiting for the next bark. Surely he could not have frightened him? The wind could not have turned, taking his scent with it to those sensitive nostrils?... Then the barking started again, Rauten was still standing—like a rock.

Gaupa could not rid himself of this inexplicable trembling, and he could not shoot while it lasted. He was no longer the master of his own body, he was not the real Gaupa any more. The real Gaupa had never shivered before an elk—the devil he hadn’t!

Now he really had to be calm. For ten hours dog and man had been hard at work. At last they were at their goal, nearly near enough to touch it, and his hand trembled; he might make a false movement, and the goal might once more dart away to unknown distances.

He knelt down, filled his hands with snow and held it to his skull. It cooled first, then felt too cold.

Bjönn suddenly gave the angry bark which tokened that his prey was escaping, the bark so well known to Gaupa that the sound of it raised anger within him....

Escaped again!

Gaupa stayed kneeling while the thawing snow ran in big drops down his head. His dark-blue eyes changed colour. They were lighter and glazed. His lucky cap was white with snow; his gun lay in the hollow of his arm, held tight to his breast—lay as if listening like Gaupa himself.

Silence. Dead silence. Running water somewhere in Three Valley gave an echo of life.

Gaupa rose. Silence. No barking then.

He ran out of the hollow up to a bare ridge. Then he heard Bjönn again and he understood that the dog was running beside the elk, even in front of him now and then. He could even see the two animals on the long marshes at the bottom of the valley. Rauten ran his jogging even trot, long and tall, forever turning his head from one side or the other as if listening. “A hopeless range,” thought Gaupa. Distance was simply mocking him. At such a range he would not dare to risk the Swede’s Bullet.

The elk crossed Three River and his legs raised white arches of water. Bjönn swam and was on the other side as soon as Rauten. They disappeared, but were seen again, Rauten heading straight for Three Lake.

Gaupa threw back his rifle, breathed deeply and went down the slope.

* * * * *

Rauten and Bjönn came to Three Lake, which lay black and still as night. A waterlily leaf was riding on the surface at rest. The whole lake was all peace, and the green heart-shaped leaf in conjunction with the two animals, the hunted and the hunter, formed as it were a picture of the very life of the wilderness, eternal peace of eternal time, painful efforts of the moment, life or death.

Rauten went straight into the lake, making openings in its smooth surface with his hoofs, cutting it with his thin legs where he waded out quickly, the water rising along his shoulders and flanks. A startled trout ran out from under the bank like a shadow across the white sand into the dark depths. Beside the elk was Bjönn, swimming.

The water gurgled higher and higher about Rauten; at last he swam, his snout so low that he ploughed through the water like a boat’s keel. Bjönn scraped the elk’s back with one paw, found no hold, and tried again. Then he caught the mane with his teeth and soon stood on the back of the wizard elk who was swimming across Three Lake.

The dog did not feel worn out then. He was tasting the fiercest joy. Under him he heard the laboured breath of Rauten, felt the entire huge body trembling with effort, muscles hardening and slackening as the elk trod the water. It was Bjönn from Lynx Hut, sailing! The elderly elk hunter from Lower Valley who never gave up from dawn to dusk—even to another dawn.

Then he poured out his joy from his hoarse, dry throat, and mingling with his song of conquest came the groans from Rauten, who was swimming, wild-eyed. He steered towards a pine top on the farther side of the lake. Terror sat on his back as he swam for his life. Once he felt teeth in his back, and the same icy shiver ran through him as ran through his forefathers when they broke down in the snow with the wolves swarming fiercely over them.

Bjönn bent down and tugged a big tuft of hair out of the elk’s back he dropped it on the water, where it remained floating.

“Wow! Wow!”

He plucked out another tuft.

One might say a raft was sailing along the water, with Rauten’s horns for rowlocks.

Bjönn noticed a tall tree-stump moving across the marshes. It was Gaupa, his master, and his pride knew no bounds. He could conquer every elk from one mountain to the other, if they were many times his own size. He could drive them, bark exhaustion into them, until at last he would drink his fill out of their throats. “Wow! Wow! Wow!”

Gaupa crouched on the marshes north of Three Lake.

He was in pain. The elk’s head and Bjönn floated away farther and farther, and if he were to shoot there was an even chance that he might shoot his dog as easily as the elk. But when Rauten went ashore he would try a shot, howover hopeless.

The Swede’s Bullet could not be risked at such uncertain range, and therefore he changed cartridges quickly. Then he crouched in position for shooting, left elbow on left knee. His cheek caressed the gun. He sat immovable, a huntsman stiffened in the last decisive movement of the hunt.

He trembled no more, although the tension burnt in him like a hidden fire. He saw out of the water a large body grow through the falling snow.

And one of Gaupa’s eyes shut as if sleepy. The other, however, was open, and icy cold. He did not breathe, his whole body was taut calm. “The Tempest” roared, shooting out its breath with a white handful of smoke, and for a moment Gaupa’s ears were plugged up with sound.

But Rauten, who was wading ashore, heard something like a woodpecker hammering at a tree on the shore. Then came the roar of the shot, behind him, and he stretched himself off into the forest, a rain of waterdrops about him. Bjönn followed.

§ 22

Gaupa pursued the chase once more.

Dusk was falling. He did not hear Bjönn any longer, but he had the spoor.

The weather cleared up towards evening. The sky seemed to absorb the snowflakes, making them light and dry. The heavens became fixed and formed a pale-yellow dome over the earth.

The silence increased after the shot and the barking. A man followed a spoor in the new snow, but Sjur Renden did not run any more. He walked!

His face showed signs of utter exhaustion. The cheek, chin, and eyelids were hanging down. His mouth, too, hung open, although he did not breathe heavily. The corners of his mouth were drawn into a grimace of contempt.

The marshes were white, but the ground under the trees was not covered with snow. The woods had assumed an air of solemn grandeur which was not diminished by the oncoming dusk.