Suddenly, once again the wolf-cry burst out, this time reechoed from another and another savage throat, wailing and plaintive and full of frightful portent.
So much nearer now it seemed that Beatrice and Allan both stopped short. Panting with their labors, they stood still, fear-smitten.
"They can't be much farther off now than Thirty-Fifth Street," the man exclaimed under his breath. "And we're hardly past Second Avenue yet--and look at the infernal thickets and brush we've got to beat through to reach the river! Here, I'd better get my revolver ready and hold it in my free hand. Will you change over? I can take the bag in my left. I've got to have the right to shoot with!"
"Why not drop everything and run for the banca?"
"And desert the job? Leave all we came for? And maybe not be able to get any of the things for Heaven knows how long? I guess not!"
"But, Allan--"
"No, no! What? Abandon all our plans because of a few wolves? Let 'em come! We'll show 'em a thing or two!"
"Give me the revolver, then--you can have the rifle!"
"That's right--here!"
Each now with a firearm in the free hand, they started forward again. On and on they lunged, they wallowed through the forest, half carrying, half dragging the sack which now seemed to have grown ten times heavier and which at every moment caught on bushes, on limbs and among the dense undergrowth.
"Oh, look--look there!" cried Beatrice. She stopped short again, pointing the revolver, her finger on the trigger.
Allan saw a lean, gray form, furtive and sneaking, slide across a dim open space off toward the left, a space where once First Avenue had cut through the city from south to north.
"There's another!" he whispered, a strange, choked feeling all around his heart. "And look--three more! They're working in ahead of us. Here, I'll have a shot at 'em, for luck!"
A howl followed the second spurt of flame in the dusk. One of the gray, gaunt portents of death licked, yapping, at his flank.
"Got you, all right!" gibed Stern. "The kind o' game you're after isn't as easy as you think, you devils!"
But now from the other side, and from behind them, the slinking creatures gathered. Their eyes glowed, gleamed, burned softly yellow through the dusk of the great wilderness that once had been the city's heart. The two last humans in the world could even catch the flick of ivory fangs, the lolling wet redness of tongues--could hear the soughing breath through those infernal jaws.
Stern raised the rifle again, then lowered it.