CHAPTER V
Hugh Gaylord had never known a more mysterious hour than that in which the darkness fell over the sheep camp. At the end of it he felt as if he had lost himself in a dim and eerie dream and only the eternal reality of the sheep, bedding down and bleating in the falling shadows, made it credible to him. But the mystery did not lie in the qualities of the scene itself. Rather it was in his own attitude toward them: a feeling of familiarity and long acquaintance that he could not understand.
It all seemed so natural and real. Even the dim twilight and the glow of the dying fire seemed something vividly remembered from long ago. Yet there was nothing here of the world he knew, the world of cities and gaieties and throngs. There was nothing in his past life to explain the intimacy he felt. At the edge of the little meadow the dusk deepened between the trees. The strong profiles of the pines dimmed and blurred, the distant peaks receded—with a curious effect of actual motion—into the further recesses of the twilight. Here and there the stars were pushing through, and he suddenly regarded them with some wonder. He couldn’t ever remember noticing them in particular before. Perhaps the smoke that ever hung over his city mostly obscured them; possibly he had never had occasion to think about them. Now he was startled by the same curious sense of familiarity,—as if he had lain beneath them a thousand-thousand years and they were old friends come back to talk to him again.
They grew inexpressively bright. Their numbers increased, they filled the sky, they grouped themselves in geometrical patterns and designs, dropping down as if on invisible threads to the spires of the distant pines. For one little instant, as he raised his eyes aloft, he was an astrologer of old, and a knowledge of the ages was upon him. He felt stirred to the depths of his being.
He dropped his eyes to regard the sheep. The outline of the separate animals was altogether lost by now: they were just a dim, white mass in the faint glow of the fire. It was the same as always: they had all bedded down for the night. He saw the light spring up in the herder’s tent as the guide lighted a candle, and this was familiar too.
The Indian came out and with strong, steady strokes began to break wood for the fire. The swarthy face looked unusually dusky in the red glow of the coals. As yet the two men had not discussed the grim find in the tent. There had been scarcely nothing to say in regard to it. Hugh felt no especial excitement or awe: he had been almost as cold and impassive in regard to the tragedy as Pete himself.
Such an attitude might have been expected in the guide, but it caused some self-wonder to see it in himself. Pete was a wilderness man, and if there is one lesson to be learned in the primeval forest it is the reality and the inevitability of death. He was used to death. He had seen it every day. All night long the ancient war of the wilderness waged on, and many were its casualties. The night shuddered with them: the agony of the deer in the cougar’s claws; the crunch of fangs when the wolves tracked down their game; even the shrill, terrible death-cry of the birds when the climbing marten overtook them on their perches. Not for nothing does the buzzard watch all day from the clouds.He knows; and whoever listens to the wilderness voices knows too. The wild, despairing song of the pack, the wail of the coyote, even the murmur of the pines is a song of death, immutable and dark, at the end of their little days. But what did Hugh know of these things? He had always lived a sheltered life. Yet now he felt no horror, no excitement, only the realization that he was face to face with reality at last.
The guide had heaped fuel on the fire and it threw a bright glare over the whole camp. Hugh could even make out the dark border of the forest at the extremities of its glow. Then the Indian turning back into the tent, Hugh entered also.
“Then the shot we heard was the one that killed this man?” he asked.
“Yes. Pistol killed dog. Maybe we too far to hear shot.”
“And you haven’t any idea—what could have been the motive, the reason for killing him.”
“Yes——” The Indian paused and stared down at the still form.
“What do you think it was?” Hugh spoke very quietly.
“Big fight—over the range,” Pete explained with difficulty. “This big cattle country—cattlemen always try to keep out sheep. Maybe other reasons too, but that began it. Always shooting—cattlemen and sheepmen. This first flock anywhere near—first in this part of Smoky Land.”
“Then it was just cold-blooded murder.”
“Yes. No signs of a fight. Maybe shot him through tent door, then tried to kill dogs. Killed one, wounded other. Now I cook supper.”
The Indian, wholly without emotion, began to take stores from the dead herder’s grub-box. He noted that the man’s supplies seemed almost gone, only a few potatoes, a small piece of bacon in an oiled paper, and a little flour remaining. The guide saw his look of question and made explanation.
“Camp-tender come soon,” he said.
“And who is the camp-tender?”
“Each sheep camp has two men. One herder. The other packs in supplies—food for herder, salt for sheep. Come every two weeks, maybe sooner, and camp-tender due here pretty soon. But he’ll find—plenty sheep dead.”
For once Hugh did not have to ask questions. The guide’s last few words explained, in a measure, the motive for the murder. Without a herder and with only one dog left to care for the flocks, the beasts of prey would find easy hunting. “But we’ll stop that game,” Hugh said decidedly. “To-morrow morning—to-night, if you think we can make the trail, we’ll go in and take this man’s body to the coroner. Then the sheep owner can send up another herder.”
Hugh looked up to find an odd, grim little smile at the guide’s lips. It was a thing to notice: this dark savage was not given to smiling. “You don’t know sheep,” he explained. “You don’t know Running Feet—what he can do in one night.”
By intuition more than by actual interpretation of the words Hugh understood. He studied his guide with growing wonder. For the second time that day Pete had dropped back into his own speech. True, in this case the language itself was Hugh’s own, but the idiom was, beyond all denial, savage. He had revealed for an instant something of the strange poetry of the Indian, as well as the Indian’s imaginative interpretation of the wilderness. Running Feet, past all doubt, referred to some of the predatory animals that habitually preyed on the sheep.
“In other words—if we hadn’t discovered this murder, the flock would be practically wiped out by the time the camp-tender got here?”
“Maybe all gone.”
“Even if they send up a man right away there will be some losses.”
“We start to-morrow,” Pete explained laboriously. “To-morrow sunset before we reach tel—tel—talk-over-wire? Another sunset, maybe another sunrise, before herder can come all long way. Plenty likely can’t get no one. Cattlemen rich—mighty—many. Maybe no one want the job.”
“And we can’t start to-night?”
“Trail too dark. Maybe couldn’t catch the horse. Run fast in the dark.”
Hugh turned quickly. “What horse do you mean?”
Pete smiled again, very dimly. “Eyes maybe half blind. Horse grazing just inside the forest, just outside meadow. Herders always have one horse, maybe two.”
Hugh had not noticed: his eyes were not trained to penetrate the thickets as those of the Indian. And at once he made up his mind as to the morning’s work. After all, it was only decent to get word to the owner of the flock as soon as possible. He would not permit his own hunting trip to stand in the way. It was true that he had been looking for a good excuse to return to civilization, and now he had it; but it was not without some unexpected regrets. He had received a new point of view in this visit to the camp, and he felt that he would enjoy a few more days in the evergreen forest. But even the Old Colonel would understand why it was necessary that he change his plans. In the morning they would catch the horse, place the herder’s body upon it, and go down with their story to the settlements. He wondered if there would be a bereaved family to face; he hoped that this, at least, would be spared him. The murdered man looked like a South-European, evidently of the class of shiftless and uneducated men from which most flock owners have to recruit their herders.
His mind flew back to the Old Colonel, sitting in the Greenwood Club. Some way, the memory of the old man was more clear than any time since he had come. It seemed to him that he could remember, word for word, all that the old sportsman had told him. Curiously he had not remembered being so impressed at the time. In some dim under-consciousness he realized that there would be further instructions for him now; but just what they were he did not permit himself to guess. He was eager to return,—go back to God’s country.
After the simple meal, the guide prepared to go back to the camp after some of the more valuable of the camp supplies and Hugh’s bedding. “And where do you expect to sleep yourself?” Hugh asked.
The Indian pointed to the herder’s bed, as if that explained the matter completely. And, after all, why not? This was no time for nonsense and hysteria. For once in his life, there in that far sheep camp, Hugh felt that he was down to facts.
He heard the departing footsteps of the Indian fading slowly to a dim whisper infinitely distant. He was alone. He awoke with a start to the fact that he was really alone for the first time in his life. At this hour, in his own city, he would be either at his club or at dinner, in each case surrounded by his fellow human beings. Servants slept within a few doors of his room at his own house; his pleasures had always been of a sociable nature. On previous nights in the wild he had his guide: what loneliness he might have felt was forgotten in the fumes of strong drink. For the first time in his life, it seemed to him, Hugh had a chance to become acquainted with himself.
His thoughts were singularly clear as he sat beside the camp fire. He looked back over his past life, and it seemed to him that he was looking for something in it that he could not find. He didn’t know quite what it was. He wasn’t sure why he felt such a sudden, overpowering need for it. Perhaps the name of it wasjustification,—and yet he could not have told what was the high offense he wanted to justify. There beside the sleeping flock new knowledge came to him, a realization of the great themes and purposes of existence never known before. He felt vaguely uneasy about his wasted days, wishing that he could see some destination, some height, some star to which they were pointing. He had an obscure feeling that all his life he had shirked responsibility; and stranger still,—that in the deep realms of his spirit he was shirking it now.
The great shepherd dog came and crouched beside him, and the man held the soft head in his hands. His thought went back to the pedigreed, savage, characterless dog that he himself owned, and unconsciously he compared the animals. The thought returned to him again and again, try as he might to repel it. It haunted and disturbed him, and he didn’t know why. His own dog had won numerous ribbons at the dog shows, he had been bought at a fabulous price, and his pedigree went back many generations. Yet by what fairness could the two animals be named in the same breath? One was a slacker: the other a brave and faithful servant of a great cause. One was an ornament in a dog show: the other guarded—with his life if necessary—the grazing flocks. From dawn till dark he was at his toil, through the blasting heat of summer and the bitter winter cold, watching through the night and running through the day. Hugh was not blind to the fact of his present fidelity: that although his master lay murdered and he himself had been slightly wounded, the brave animal still kept his watch over the sheep. He had been busy at it when the two men had come, and even now his intelligent eyes studied the shadows of the encroaching forest. Hugh felt a sudden glow in his heart. His hands pressed tighter at the soft ears.
A word came to Hugh’s lips and he spoke it in the silence. “Service,” he said softly. “Old fellow, you giveservice.” Suddenly he knew that this was the great debt that all living things owed: service in the great cause of existence that no man fully understands. He tried to remember what service he himself had given. Dim regrets swept over him.
He rose to throw more wood upon the fire; then stood listening to the voices of the forest. They were so faint and obscure that he had to strain to hear them. It was strange that he had been deaf to them before. They came whispering through the mighty silences, and they filled him with haunting memories. At first the crackle of the fire had obscured them, but as he waited the separate tones became more distinct and permitted some measure of interpretation. He heard the rustling of the thickets, the noise of flicking leaves dim as eyelids winking against a pillow, the sad murmur of the pine limbs, scraping together. Behind them all was the faint murmur of the wind,—a little wind that had sprung up in the snow fields and was making a secret march down through the thickets.
Something of the same sense of familiarity that had come to him on first observing the sheep returned to him now. It seemed wholly natural that he should be sitting here in the silence, beside the flocks.—Throughout the ages men of his breed had sat the same way, the firelight playing on them, the faithful dog beside them. The wind whispered and stirred in the wilderness just the same, the white sheep slept. Watching the flocks,—the phrase was as old as the mountains themselves.
Yet for a moment he found it hard to believe in the dangers of which the guide had spoken: dangers that would soon exterminate the flock except for the protection of herders and dogs. No scene could be more peaceful: the dark forest so lightly stirred by the wind, the river singing past, the soft firelight, the stars in the sky. The breath of the night was sweet and cool; surely there would be no hurry about notifying the flock owner of the herder’s death. He turned again to the dog. “You can take care of them, can’t you, boy?” he asked.
He glanced down, then stiffened with excitement. For once the dog did not seem to hear him. The animal had got up and now was standing braced, every nerve and muscle alert, gazing into the shadows beyond the river. Hugh’s hand fell on the shaggy neck, but the animal didn’t start. And the hair stood stiff like quills at the shoulders.
“What is it, boy?” Hugh asked.
The dog made no answer. Instead, a strange and terrible reply came from the wilderness. It was a dreadful, a commanding voice, and it seemed to freeze the whole forest world with horror. It obliterated the wind and silenced all the little voices to which Hugh had listened with such delight a moment before. It was a long, wild scream, beginning low in the scale and rising to an incredible height.
For innumerable seconds, it seemed to Hugh, the same crescendo note was maintained. The air seemed to shudder. Then, with great soaring leaps, the scream dropped away into a long, singsong whine. Slowly this faded, growing dim and more dim, until it was just a dying whimper in the air. Hugh couldn’t tell exactly when the voice ceased. He had a strange impression that it still continued, only so dim and fine that human ears were not tuned to receive it. Then the wilderness silence closed down again.
The dog leaped forward, barking, and Hugh found himself erect, with his rifle in his hands. In his own heart he knew this wilderness voice. If he did not know the breed that uttered it, at least he realized its savagery, its age-old menace. There is no utterance that pen can describe more wild and weird than some of the twilight cries of the coyotes; yet Hugh was inclined to think that another, more deadly animal had spoken in this case. On a few occasions he had heard members of his club—back from hunting trips in the West—describe the cries of the cougars or pumas: one of the most distinctive and awe-inspiring of all the wilderness voices. It is not heard often. Many men have lived years in the forest without ever hearing it at all. But once heard it is never forgotten. Hugh believed that he had heard it now.
And it had meant more to him than the mere night cry of an animal. It typified to him the very spirit of the wilderness. It was the voice not alone of a hungry creature, stalking in the shadows, but—in his thought—it expressed all the ancient terror of the darkness, the primeval forces that war with man.
Nothing had changed. Still the sheep slept in the meadow and a great beast of prey menaced them from the shadowed forest. The long conflicts against the powers of the wilderness had not yet been won: the shepherds of Judea might have known the same cry. The fire burned low, and it seemed to Hugh that the shadows gathered menacingly about the sheep.
Perhaps Broken Fang himself had spoken. Besides its menace and savagery the voice had been also a living expression of power and pride that only one of the greatest of wilderness creatures would possess. No craven coyote, he believed, could utter such a ringing challenge. The dog raced around the flock, seemingly ready to protect them with his life. No wilderness voice was so terrible as to frighten him from his watch.
And then, at the most wonderful thought of all, Hugh’s heart gave a great leap in his breast. Watching the flock! That was it,—he was watching the flock himself. True, the dog was still on guard, fearless and constant in his vigil, but he could not claim all the guardianship of the sheep. It was his own presence as much as the growlings of the dog that kept the puma at a distance. Except for him, white fangs even now would be tearing at the throats of the lambs.
For the first time in his life he wasserving. Was not his gun resting in his hands? For once in his life he was bearing arms in the oldest war that mankind knows,—the war against the menace of the wild. The blood leaped and sang in his veins.
CHAPTER VI
In the hour before Pete, the guide, returned with camp supplies to the sheep camp, Hugh had a chance to observe various things about this mountain land of which he had never been aware before. He sensed, for really the first time, the mystery of the forest in the darkness. The domain of man, it seemed to him, extended just to the limits of the little meadow where the sheep were bedded: beyond that lay the Kingdom of the Wild. He saw, with an inner gladness and stir, the long outline of the high range against the pale western sky,—the one part of the firmament the darkness had not yet completely over-spread. The peaks seemed to rise to the upper reaches of the heavens; between them he could see the sweeping concave line, rough-edged, of the pine forests. He learned certain things concerning the way the firelight leaps into the shadow and the darkness comes racing back. He heard the various overtones, known only to a woodsman, in the crackle of the fire. At the end of the hour he beheld an even greater mystery.
At first it was just a smear of silver, suddenly catching his eye, in the darkness of the east. It grew, it extended; clouds were ensilvered by it and broken apart; it gleamed with indescribable beauty, and in a moment it evolved into the moon. The orb rose higher, the beams slanted down.
But the enchantment of the forest only seemed to deepen beneath it. Only at intervals could the beams penetrate between the trees, and the silver patches that came, now and then, between the trunks only mystified the eyes. And it soon became an indisputable fact that these patches were not motionless and unvarying in outline as Hugh might have expected. Sometimes they blended and moved; and once or twice a swift shadow flicked across them. There was only one explanation. Living creatures—beasts of prey such as always linger about the sheep flocks—hovered at the border of darkness ready to swoop forth.
Pete returned soon after and began upon the simple tasks of the night. He went to the edge of the forest, returning with a bundle of fir boughs for Hugh’s bed. He chopped more fuel, and once he mystified the Eastern man by some hurried business in the dead herder’s tent. He seemed to be making a frenzied search for something that he needed very badly.
He found it at last, and a moment of drama resulted when he came forth into the firelight. A dark bottle was clutched in each of his hands. Hugh glanced at them, then looked with even greater interest at the deep lines in the guide’s face.
“I’ve found ’em,” the Indian told him eagerly. “Knew sure he had ’em somewhere. Fire water.”
The blood leaped once in Hugh’s veins, and a great desire seemed to set fire to his brain. For a moment it seemed to cost him all power of thought. His hand started to reach forward. Then, almost as if the gesture had been inadvertent, he drew it slowly back.
He smiled; and his eyes gave no sign of the vision that was before them. The Indian’s sight was keen, but he had no realization of the grim and terrible battle that was being waged in the man’s own soul. There was no outward indication of the convulsive wrench that had been necessary to draw his hand back to his side. Even in that mountain silence, voiceless as the interstellar spaces, the Indian could not hear the voice of demons, shrieking within the man.
The truth was that Hugh had just been given a glimpse into his own soul: a sight that he had never really had before. He did not know from whence such power of vision came. It was something the wilderness had taught him in the hour that he had watched the sheep. He had always been ready to deny that strong drink had any hold upon him whatsoever. He believed that he had always drunk heavily because there had been no reason for doing otherwise. That such a hold could exist upon any one of the self-reliant, aristocratic circle in which he moved was simply one admission that would never be made, but had rather been linked with the offensive sentimentality that has constituted so much of the hue and cry of over-officious prohibitionists. Yet in one single vivid second of introspection he knew the truth. In this hour when all his best instincts warned him to abstain, the craving was almost too terrible to resist.
But he won that fight at last. He would have been ashamed to admit it, but little, icy sweat-drops had come out upon his forehead. And the victory left him curiously sobered. For the first time in his life, it seemed to him, he knew Hugh Gaylord as he really was.
The guide still stood waiting. Hugh’s eyes swept to the flock. The two of them were on guard to-night, and this was no time to blur the senses with heady liquor. A hard task awaited them on the morrow. Besides—it was dead man’s drink.
“Put it back,” Hugh directed quietly.
The Indian stiffened, and his dark face grew sullen. Hugh watched him coldly. It looked like mutiny, and Hugh might have wondered at his own composure, his confidence in his own ability to win this battle, too.
“I don’t put ’em back,” the guide retorted. “He—won’t need ’em now. Why put ’em back?”
“The reason why,” Hugh explained in a passionless voice, “is because I said so. I remember—I’d forgotten it until now—that there’s a national law against giving whisky to Indians. Besides—you’ve got work to do to-morrow, and I want you to be fresh.”
It was the first time since his arrival in Smoky Land that he had mentioned the man’s race. He knew that he ran the risk of wakening savage anger in the Indian’s breast. Yet he was willing to take that risk.
“What you got to say about it?” the Indian responded insolently. “We go back to-morrow. Job’s over. You ain’t given it to me. I found it. Come on—maybe take a little drink together.”
At that instant Hugh remembered that he was of a dominant race, and the familiarity of the remark grated somewhat unpleasantly upon him. He got up rather leisurely. He felt that in case of emergencies he preferred to be upon his feet. “Put the bottles back,” he said again. “I happen to be in command of this expedition. If you don’t obey, I’ll fire you right here—and you know what that would mean as far as ever getting a job as guide again. Put ’em back and put ’em back quick.”
The Indian’s expression changed. The sullenness gave way to surprise; then—to some measure, at least—to respect. He turned and walked back to the tent. Then Hugh heard his powerful strokes as he cut more fuel for the fire.
Hugh went to bed soon after this, and the night hours began their stealthy march, one after one, across the spaces of the wilderness. The two men had only a few more sentences of conversation. The silence and the mystery had seemingly taken out of Hugh all desire to talk.
“You told the truth, Pete, when you said this job was almost over,” Hugh remarked from his blankets. “And I’ve been thinking of something. If you’d help me load it on, I might be able to pack that poor devil down to the settlements by myself. You could stay here, and I could hunt up the flock owner and get him to give you a steady job as herder. He’d be grateful enough to you for staying to watch his sheep so that he’ll gladly do it. How would you like that?”
The Indian grunted. “Me no sheep herder,” he said distinctly.
Hugh marked the tone with some surprise. Its inference could not well be mistaken. Evidently Pete felt himself much above such an occupation.
“I thought you might like to be,” Hugh responded pleasantly.
“No. Only dagoes and Mexicans sheep herders. I’m a guide. Other herder got shot. Maybe I get shot too.”
Hugh didn’t pursue the subject further. After all, he couldn’t blame the man. By the code of the West it was degrading work; besides, the war with the cattlemen made it as perilous an occupation as could well be imagined. The glimpse of the still form that the guide had rolled in a blanket and which now lay outside the tent door was evidence in plenty of this fact.
He lay on the buoyant, fragrant fir boughs, watching the dancing shadows. The wilderness stirred and whispered with life. The sheep slept. The moon that had looked upon many shepherds shone on his face.
This same moon meant good hunting to the wild creatures that ranged the forest about the little meadow. It was hard for them to work in the utter darkness. And one can only imagine—because no naturalist has ever yet been able to know in full the inner natures of animals—the thrill and the exultation that had passed from border to border through the wilderness world when the great white disk first rose above the mountains.
“The hunting hour” was the word that passed—in the secret ways of the forest—from mouth to mouth. The wind seemed to carry it, and the whole wilderness thrilled and pulsed with it. Wild, hot blood leaped in savage veins; strange terrible lights sprang up in fierce eyes. “It is time to start forth,” the whisper passed: and the whole wild-life kingdom seemed to go mad.
It was a rapturous, an exultant thing, and human beings—jaded with too many centuries of repression that men call civilization—find it hard to understand. Only those who have stood in a duck blind watching a flock of mallard swing down toward the decoys, only those who have lain pressed to the slide rock and seen the mountain sheep, the incomparable Bighorn, in a long file against the snow, or those who have beheld the waters break and explode as the steelhead strikes can comprehend this wilderness ecstasy at all. The smells on the winds, the little hushed noises in the thickets, the startled waverings of shadows all added their influence; and the blood-lust came upon the beasts of prey.
It was their long-awaited hour. It was their time of triumph: stealth and strength, fang and claw, the stalk in the shadows, the leap, the blow, the feasting in the moonlight. The she-wolf came creeping from her lair, her cubs behind her, and all of their eyes were just so many twin circles of green light in the darkness. Were not the deer feeding on the ridges? The coyotes skulked in the shadows about the sheep camp; the lynx went stealing toward the perches of the mountain grouse. The hunting fever spares none of the flesh-eaters, and from the smallest to the great—from the little, deadly, white-fanged mink following a rabbit’s trail beside the river to the mighty grizzly, stalking a cow elk in the thicket—they felt in their veins the age-old stir that is ever new.
But there was one resident of Smoky Land that felt it more than any of his neighbors. In the first place he was a feline,—and that means that he was just a bundle of singing, vibrant, hair-trigger nerves. For sheer sensuality there are no creatures on earth to equal the cats,—and he was king and monarch of all the breed. The animal that catches his prey by an exhausting run, a simple test of wind and limb, cannot from the nature of things feel the wild rapture and suppressed excitement of one that stalks and leaps from ambush; and the cats are the foremost exponents of this latter method of hunting.
There were certain private reasons, too. Part of the hunting fever is due to pride, a sense of power and might. A lowly skunk, trotting along looking for fledglings, must have a hard time persuading himself he is very great and powerful, but this oversized monarch of the cat family had no difficulty whatever. In his time—and his years were rather more than is best in the wilderness—he had seen the bull elk turn from his path, andthatis a sight to pass down to one’s cubs. Even the old black bear, the honey-grubber who is, after all, the most lovable spirit in the forest, had been known to speak politely when the two of them met on the trail. Those who know Growl-in-the-throat can appreciate what a triumph this was,—because he rarely goes to any particular trouble to be polite to any one. This didn’t mean, however, that even in his best days the great cat cared to engage him in a fair fight. Growl-in-the-throat was a honey-robber and an eater of fat grubs; he was forgetful and awkward and given to long weeks of sleeping; but he was living, forked, chain lightning in a hand-to-hand fight. No, it was rather a good thing to keep at peace with Woof.
But the coyotes, the lesser felines, even the wolves—making perfectly good meals off one another when they got the chance—were all fair prey to this tawny forest monarch. It made hunting pleasant. He didn’t always have to be careful to see that he was not being hunted himself. It gave him a certain complacency and arrogance, and he expressed it from time to time in a long, wild, triumphant scream that lesser members of his family were ordinarily afraid to utter, lest it should call their enemies down upon them.
Just as the dark came down he had uttered the cry, and he had tingled with savage ecstasy as it echoed back to him. He had seen the first glint of the moon, and the green glare played in his terrible eyes as he started out upon his hunting. The moonlight showed him vaguely, huge and sinuous and graceful past all words, as he stole through the forest on the way to the game trails of the ridge.
He flattered himself that not even the wild creatures, dreading or waiting for just this moment, had ears keen enough to hear him. A perfect stalk had been his pride, in his younger days, and he still assumed that he possessed it. Time was when his stealing feet—in which his terrible talons were even now encased ready to thrust forth—fell soft as pine needles on the trail. If indeed he were past his prime, at this hour at least—just as the moon rose—he would not admit it.
He opened his savage mouth, and for an instant the moonlight gleamed on the white teeth. The forest people could not have mistaken his identity thereafter. One of the great dog-fangs had been broken sharply off in some stress of years before.
He was the great Broken Fang, the monarch of the cougars. Was not the trail cleared, for long distances ahead, of all the lesser hunters? And yet this triumph brought no pleasure, for it led to the undeniable inference that his feet had spoken loudly, rather than whispered, on the narrow path.
CHAPTER VII
Of the three that lay beside the sheep that night, Hugh slept lightest of all. He missed the effects of strong drink. Night after night—more of them than he liked to remember—he had gone to bed half-torpid from the after-effects of the poison in his veins; but to-night he was singularly alert and watchful. The mountain air got to him for the first time since he had come to Smoky Land, and it invigorated him. Besides, perhaps his mind was too busy with thoughts to yield quickly to slumber.
The Indian came of a race that ordinarily sleeps lightly as the wild creatures—a habit learned by uncounted generations in the wild. It is good—wilderness people know—to be able to spring out of a dream and be instantly alert and ready for any crisis. But to-night he neglected the fire. And of course the late sheep herder slept soundest of all. Loud must be the alarm to waken him.
The night hours passed, and Hugh stirred and muttered in his half-sleep. He was troubled with curious dreams; and even on wakening he didn’t know quite what they were. It seemed to him that some one had been trying to tell him something to which he did not want to listen. He kept trying to shut his ears, yet the words got through. They were accusing words, damning him for shirking a great responsibility that had been put upon him. He could see the scorn in the accuser’s face. He was facing some sort of a test, and he broke beneath it.
He would rouse himself, listen to the mysterious sounds of the night, then drop back to sleep. He couldn’t get away from a recurring dream that some terrible Foe was lurking in the shadows just beyond his vision, ready to swoop down on one who was very weak and helpless; yet he wouldn’t stay to fight it off.
Once or twice he got up to mind the fire, and at such times the night noises reached him with startling vividness. Dawn was nearing; the sheep were stirring and uneasy. Once more he went to sleep. For a little while all his dreams departed. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Get up,” a voice said in his ear. “We got start now—make it down by night.”
He opened his eyes. The forest world was still lost in darkness. True, a faint grayness had spread over the east, but the moon still rode vividly in the sky. And, yes, the sheep had got up and were feeding in the grass.
Hugh leaped to his feet. The guide had already rebuilt the fire; and the two of them went about the tasks that were necessary before departure. Pete caught the horse, Hugh himself completed the cooking of breakfast that the guide had already started. He watched with an extraordinary fascination the grim, certain motions of the Indian as he prepared the herder’s body for the day’s journey. The animal was saddled, the stiffening form tied on. Hugh helped put out the fire—the last act of a real woodsman when he breaks camp—and laid out food for the dog. A few moments more and they were ready to go.
“You’re sure you won’t stay—and take a job as sheep herder?” Hugh asked.
“Not me,” the Indian replied. “Herder shot—me shot next.”
“There’s no reason for thinking you would be shot.”
“You don’t know cattlemen—Landy Fargo—José Mertos—Besides—Pete got other work to do.”
Perhaps it was true. The guide had other work to do. Hugh glanced toward the flock. The animals were not bunched so closely now, and some of the lambs were feeding at the very margin of the river. Their numbers, now that they were widely spread, seemed greater than ever.
The shepherd dog came running to him, and Hugh bent to caress him for the last time. He held the head in his hands and looked into the brown eyes. The dog’s gaze did not flinch as is usual when his majesty, man, looks into the eyes of one of the lower creatures. Instead, Hugh couldn’t get away from a haunting idea that the dog’s expression was one of pathetic appeal. It was almost as if the animal had spoken in words, and Hugh could not laugh at his own discomfort. “Aid me,” the dog seemed to say. “Help me keep my trust. The odds are long against me, so give me your aid.”
The dog leaped from his arms; then ran forward a little way, barking, toward the sheep. But Hugh laughed and called him back again.
“Good-by, old fellow,” he said. “Mind the sheep!”
The dog whined softly, and Hugh tried not to understand.
“There’ll be a herder up here in a day or two, if the owner can procure one. And I’ve left out food for you. Good-by again, for the last time.”
But the concluding words of that farewell the animal did not seem to hear. Hugh felt him stiffen in his arms and saw that the intelligent eyes were gazing away, over the flock toward the river. Hugh followed the line of sight, but all he could see was the shadows, bleached here and there by the bodies of the sheep. Then the dog leaped frantically from his arms.
Hugh watched him till the shadows hid him, saw him encircle the wing of the flock, and race at top speed toward the river. It was as if a message had come to him to which Hugh was deaf, that the dog’s eyes had discerned some occurrence on the distant river bank that Hugh himself could not see, and, obedient to a great law within himself, true to a deathless trust that had been bestowed upon him, had dashed forth to give aid.
And the miracle was no less than Hugh thought. The doghadgone to give aid, and no man may say by what avenue of sense, by what inscrutable means he knew that aid was needed. The distance seemed too far for eyesight. There was no actual voice in the air that Hugh could hear. On the green bank of the river one of the ewes raced up and down, bleating pitifully, evidently in great distress. Hundreds of sheep were bleating at the same time, and it seemed hard to believe that the dog could have distinguished a note of distress, unheard in the others, in her voice. She seemed to be gazing in frantic terror down into the wild and seething cataract.
Far across the meadow Hugh did not hear and he did not heed. He turned to the guide, waiting at the horse’s head. “Lead the way,” he ordered. “There’s no use of our waiting any longer.”
Broken Fang, the cougar, had had a discouraging night. Never in his long years could he remember a time of darkness when the hunting had been so barren of results. Now the dawn was coming out, and not even a rabbit had been caught to appease the gnawing hunger within him.
He wouldn’t have liked to admit the true explanation: that he had seen his best days. The cougar shares with all living things a resistless propensity to grow old, and already his years were many. He had had his day. The deer that had died in his talons, even the elk that he had laid low with one lightning, terrible bite to the throat would make a number not pleasing to contemplate by lovers of the wild game. It is to be remembered that an ordinary cougar will kill two deer a week, year on year, until the buzzards come to feed upon him. Broken Fang was no ordinary cougar: for more years than the swan could remember he had ranged through Smoky Land, killing as he went. He had felled the horned cattle; in one starving winter he had fought Cry-in-the-night, the wolf, and had mastered him; he had taken the old tusked boar gone wild in the underbrush. He knew the hunting craft to the last wile, and time had been when a cat-tail plume, falling on the reeds, made more noise than his own step. But he was old: his unusual size proved that fact. By the same token was revealed his past prowess: only an animal that had surpassed in all the wiles of hunting and self-preservation could live to attain such a growth. But to-night—the deer had fled from him before he ever got within leaping range.
The wind had been right, the thickets had hidden his advance, the magic and the thrill of the hunting hour had been upon him. No human ear could have discerned his approach on the winding trail. But the difficulty lay in the fact that the deer have not human ears, but rather marvelous receivers as sensitive as the antennæ of a wireless outfit. Broken Fang was growing old; some of his marvelous muscle-control was breaking; and no longer could he accomplish a successful stalk.
The triumph that he had felt the first hour of the hunt was quite dead in him now. He would have welcomed any kind of prey. Just before dawn he had come upon a porcupine; but even this unprepossessing game had escaped him. It didn’t make a story that he would care to tell to his cubs. There is a certain legend, in the forest, regarding those who cannot catch a porcupine.
“When Quill-back escapes the hunter,” the saying goes, “the buzzards will be full-fed to-morrow.”
The meaning is wholly simple to one who knows porcupines and buzzards. There is no more awkward, stupid, guileless creature in the woods than Quill-back, and the only reason why the beasts of prey haven’t wiped out his breed centuries ago is because he is so fiendishly awkward to kill and eat. One spine in the nose means days of agony, a few in the mouth is apt to bring on slow starvation. And when one hunts porcupines, and they escape him, it means simply that the hunter is getting so old and so stiff that the scavengers may dine upon him very soon. In this case Quill-back crept up a tree and crawled out to the end of a limb where Broken Fang couldn’t get him.
There was no more magnificent slayer in the whole woods than this huge puma, yet he had gone for a full day without food. And it was not to be wondered at that—just before dawn—the blood leaped in his veins anew when he caught the smell of the sheep flock on the wind.
He had killed sheep in plenty in his time, only on the far eastern border of his range. He hadn’t known that any were to be found in this part of Smoky Land. They were an easy game to kill, dying at one little touch to the head or shoulder, and offering no sport at all to a bold hunter of deer. Yet to-night he was in no mood to be discriminating. And it was wholly possible that the smell of that flock seemed to grant a new lease of life.
To linger at the outskirts of the band, to kill when he chose, perhaps even to know that most terrible of all wilderness lusts,—the feast of death. All forest creatures know this feast: they have an inborn passion for it that simply must almost tear them in twain. In all the world of carnage and wickedness there is no debauch that is half so terrible, and the first laws of the forest have decreed against it. For the death-feast is not the rational, honest killing of the hunt. Rather it is the thing that sheepmen dread above all things else: a perfect orgy of slaying, not for food but from desire, the tearing-out of a hundred throats in so many seconds. Yet was not Broken Fang the monarch of the forest? What laws were there to restrain him?
His long tail began to lash back and forth; his fangs caught the dim light of the encroaching dawn as he crept like a serpent through the thickets. The smell became even more plain, the fierce blood leaped even more wildly in his veins. There was nothing here to fear: no leaping camp fire to fill him with the age-old awe, no tall form of the herder on constant guard. He could kill, kill, kill—as much as he wanted—until the savagery in his heart was satiated. It was true that human beings had recently been on guard, but their smell was dim, and even now they were starting away, into the forest.
He paused, taking full stock of the situation. Usually at camps such as this there were, besides the herder with his death-stick, two dogs that would die before they would permit him to touch the sheep. He knew something about the fighting spirit of the shepherd dogs. He knew their blind courage, their terrible ferocity, and he knew only one fighting spirit to compare with theirs,—that with which the she-wolf guards her whelps. Such dogs always seemed to partake of man’s own unconquerable spirit and they were terrible to face. But to-night only one of the dogs was on guard, and he could find killing in plenty before they should come to grips.
Then he drew up short, scarcely able to restrain a yowl of disappointment. He was on the wrong side of the river. A veritable torrent, deep and swift, flowed between. He came of a breed that has no love for water. Of course he could cross in time, he could wander up and down the bank until he found a dead tree stretching the full way over, but he was in no mood for delays. There was a log here, true, slanting down from his own shore, but it thrust down into water but a few feet from the bank and offered no crossing. And his passion almost consumed him at the sight of a ewe and lamb, just out of leaping range,—feeding at the very margin of the river on the opposite bank.
He shivered all over with excitement. He knew already the taste of the red ecstasy in their veins. He knew—in his dark beast-fancy—the feel of their soft flesh beneath his own terrible talons. He lay still, watching greedily.
But the forest gods were good to him, after all. He couldn’t see just what happened. The whole tragedy had occupied but a miniature fraction of a second. Perhaps the bank gave way, possibly the sure little feet missed their hold, or a rock rolled and struck from behind. No matter the cause, the result was the same: the ewe stood alone on the margin. The lamb—a white, dainty creature whose flesh was soft and warm as a bird’s—had fallen into that raging torrent, had been swept down the stream, and as if by a miracle had been hurled into a thatch of dead sticks and driftwood that had been wedged between some of the great bowlders of the river bed.
The glaring eyes beheld its struggles and his own triumph. It was as if the forest gods had planned the whole disaster for his especial benefit. The barrier of the river was an advantage now: such guardians as kept watch over the flock could not cross those frightful waters to fight him off. He had only to steal down the log that slanted into the water, stretch out a paw to the white struggling figure half-submerged in the raft of driftwood, and snatch it up to his own remorseless fangs.