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Page 49
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.
Lieverl�, 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 in the open spaces
between the trees, the dense foliage intercepting it in its fall. This
was a difficult part of our enterprise. Sperver dismounted to see our way
better, and placed me on his left so as not to be hindered by my shadow.
Here were large spaces covered with dead leaves and the needles and cones
of the fir-trees, which retain no footprint. It was, therefore, only in
the open patches where the snow had fallen on the ground that Sperver
found the track again.
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