CHAPTER VIII
For the first dozen paces up the trail Hugh tried to shut his ears to the frenzied barking of the dog. He found it hard to believe that the animal was merely rounding up the sheep, keeping them in a compact herd as he had been trained to do. It wasn’t the same cry that he had listened to before. It had an angry, warning quality, a threatening note as if it were trying to intimidate some enemy of the sheep. Then Hugh began to believe that his own fancy was carrying him away. For it seemed to him that the animal’s voice had an actual undertone addressed to himself,—an appeal for aid before it was too late.
But, after all, he was not responsible for the flock. They were not his sheep. He had not been employed by the flock owner to care for them; and the idea of Hugh Gaylord, member of the Greenwood Club, acting as sheep herder was simply laughable. It was not his war,—that in which the herder had been struck down. He was anxious to go back to his own kind, to take up anew his old carefree life in his home city.
The dog’s bark rose to a veritable clamor. Then he came racing back toward Hugh.
He approached within twenty feet of him, barking, then started back toward the river. Still Hugh did not follow. The dog rushed forward again and again turned. He didn’t seem to be able to understand. Always before the men that he knew hurried to his aid at a time like this. Hugh felt a sudden rush of blood to his face.
“Good Lord, Pete,” he exclaimed. “I’ve got to see what’s the matter with that dog.”
He caught up his rifle, then followed the dog to the water’s edge. The river itself was a thing to stir the fancies. The dawn had not yet broken and in the dim, eerie grayness the stream had lost all quality of reality, all semblance to the sheet of sparkling water flowing between green banks that Hugh had beheld the previous night. He felt a sense of deepening awe. Rather, it seemed like some river of a Beyond, a sinister and terrible cataract in a twilight land of souls, a Lethe flowing darkly at the edge of a Hereafter. To a poet it might have seemed the River of Life itself, deep, fretful, full of peril and tragedy, and flowing from the beginning of the world to its end.
When the waters struck the great bowlders of the river bed the foam gleamed a curious, pale white in the twilight,—otherwise the waters would have seemed like a dark void. The dog raced up and down the bank in excitement, then half-entered the water. Hugh saw his difficulty at once. He could not make headway in that raging torrent, and was trusting to Hugh for aid.
“What is it, old man?” he asked quietly, just loud enough to be heard above the noise of the waters. “What do you want me to do?”
The old ewe brushed close to him, as if she too looked to him for aid. If the light had been better, he could have seen the despair and agony in her quiet eyes. He studied closely the white patches on the river. He did not have the feline’s eyes, to see plain in the half-dark, and the dog’s were better able to penetrate the gloom than his. But slowly he grew accustomed to the half-darkness, and he knew the truth.
The lamb still struggled in the driftwood. And for one fraction of a second he thought that he saw something else.
It seemed to him that two strange, sinister lights suddenly glowed from the thickets on the opposite bank; then went out. They were close together, and they were round, and they were just alike. They were not twinkling lights: but rather were a strange blue-green like the flame that plays about an alcohol burner. No human being could have seen those dreadful blue disks and ignored them: their terror went too deep for that. Man knows the terror of lightning, the dread (as well as the love) of fire, the fear of flooding waters, but he knows those two twin circles best of all. They carry him back to the first great Terror; they waken memories from the depths of the germ plasm; they recall the sight of other such fiery spheres, gleaming in the darkness at the mouth of the cave. Hugh’s heart seemed to pump an icy stream through his veins.
But he forced his growing terror from him and made a swift study of the currents. The lamb seemed doomed. There was no wading that frightful stream. A log sloped down into the water from the opposite bank, but there was no way to cross. The only hope lay in hurling himself into the torrent, fighting his way to the middle of the stream, seizing the lamb, and swimming with it to safety.
The dog could not give aid. The river was a succession of great rocks and treacherous whirlpools, the water was icy cold, and in the darkness a swimmer might easily be swept downstream to his death. Hugh saw all these things plainly. In his own heart he sensed an equal menace in some dim form that waited on the opposite bank to combat him for those few pounds of living flesh. And in that dim light he saw that only a few seconds remained in which to attempt a rescue. The wild waters broke against the rocks between which the lamb lay; and in a few seconds more it would cease its struggles.
It was only an animal, a baby sheep that was one of three thousand, a little armful of warm flesh that would never be missed. To rescue it would tax the last ounce of strength in Hugh’s body. It might very easily cost him his life. It wasn’t worth it. By all the dictates of good sense, the thing to do was to turn back, to leave the dog barking at the water’s edge and the ewe mourning on the shore. There were no human spectators to praise him for the deed or condemn him for its omission. He knew that even if he were put on trial no sensible man on the broad earth would hold it against him if he left the lamb to its fate.
Yet in that moment of inner trial a great and a serene knowledge came to him. He knew—in one instant of vision—that it did not lay with the shepherd to consider abstract issues of life and death. It was not for him to try to balance the value of a lamb’s life with his own. His business was to watch the flock. His work was to guard the sheep. Nothing could come between.
All the voices of prudence and good sense were stilled before the voice of his own soul. He was afraid, but his fear could not come between the shepherd and his work. He wanted to turn away; but a power greater than his own will made him stand fast. The laws of his own being had given their decree,—and they could not be denied.
“All right, old fellow,” he said simply to the dog. “We’ll get the little devil.”
The dog plunged in. It was the voice he had awaited. The man dropped his coat, his gun, and the small pack that he wore on his back, then ran a short distance up the stream. And the muscles of his body seemed to shiver and vibrate with strength as he plunged into the dark waters.
Broken Fang, the cougar, had seen the dog and the man on the opposite bank, and at first he had been afraid. He retained enough of his natural caution not to wish to reveal himself at once. “Most of all, fear men,” was one of the first of the long scroll of forest laws, and time had been when he had shivered and skulked with fear at just the human smell on the wind. But to-night he was very hungry. And the game was almost in his claws.
He hadn’t forgotten that he was the master of the forest, who had felled even the horned steer. What were these slight figures to stand against him? Many of the forest laws he had already broken; he might even yet break the law that forbade the death-feast,—and why should he obey now? A slow, terrible anger began to overcome him.
He had missed his kill too many times that night. He felt a blind desire not to run away but to stay and fight. He crept down nearer the water’s edge, his glaring eyes on the two figures on the opposite bank. At that instant he saw both of them plunge into the torrent.
This was the action of the deer when the wolves pressed them close,—to jump into the river to escape. These creatures were like the deer, a breed known to him of old. Little Death the mink had done the same thing, the night he had been so hungry and in which the miniature slayer had slipped between his talons. The river was always a place of refuge for those that were afraid. Thus it was plain that if the dog and the man feared him there was no further cause for him to be afraid of them. He crept out boldly, a magnificent, tawny figure in the dim light, on to the log that led down into the water. His eyes shone with blue fire.
Perhaps the dog saw him first. He swam with wide-open eyes. He had jumped in almost opposite the little pile of driftwood where the lamb lay and was immediately swept downstream. Hugh, however, had leaped in farther up, and he had had a chance to work into the middle of the current as he was carried down.
He had always been a strong swimmer, and he needed that strength now. The water was icy cold; it gripped him with resistless strength. He fought it with powerful strokes, but it seemed to him that he was tossed about like a straw. Even he headed upstream and out, not hoping to make headway but only to offset, in some degree, the incredible power of the current. He had never done such swimming as this before. Silver Creek was not at all like the swimming tank in his athletic club. He gave his whole strength; and it seemed to him that he was fighting for his life.
His plan was to seize the log that extended down into the water, brace himself while he rescued the lamb, and either climb up the log or be carried on down and swim to the bank. He didn’t know that the log was already occupied: that a great forest creature had come down to contest the lamb’s life with him. He was full in the middle of the current, by now; and then, with a powerful lunge of his body, his arms swept about the log.
He braced himself, then turned in order to reach the lamb. He reached for a hold higher on the log. Something brown, with extended talons, rested upon the rough bark within a few inches of his hand, and at first he did not understand. Then the spray cleared from his eyes, and he knew the truth.
It was not a thing to forget: that wilderness scene in mid-stream in which Broken Fang and this man of cities came face to face for the first time. It made a grim and moving picture: the magnificent outline of the great cat in silhouette against the slowly brightening eastern sky; the lamb, struggling in the little patch of driftwood; the watching forest, the dark river with its ivory foam; and the gray half-light of dawn casting dimness over all. Yet there was no such folly as mistaking its reality. The form on the log was not just a shadow, an image, a drunken fancy. It was as real as the icy touch of the river and so near that he could see the creature’s ears, lying flat against the savage head.
Hugh’s head, shoulders and one arm were clear of the water: a few inches distant gleamed the white fangs of the puma. The fight for the life of the lamb was at close quarters at last. And Broken Fang had all the advantage. He was above and had room in plenty to strike; he had only to tap down with his paw or lash out with his deadly fangs. Hugh, on the other hand, had braced himself against the log and had only one arm free.
It came to Hugh that he might give up his attempt to save the lamb, slip back into the water, and be carried down out of the reach of the rending fangs. But even before the thought went fully home he had taken the opposite course. Perhaps it was because he was the shepherd—for the moment at least forgetting and ignoring all things but his guardianship of the sheep—and Broken Fang was an ancient enemy. Perhaps he instinctively realized that if he turned even for an instant those terrible talons would lash down at him. His instincts came sure and true, and he knew he must make no sudden motions. He began to pull himself upward toward the great cat.
He knew one single moment of blighting terror when he thought that the cougar was going to stand its ground. The animal crouched, his lips drew in a snarl, he raised one foot with extended claws. He was the great Broken Fang; and this creature that rose up from the waters was but a fawn in strength compared to him. The lamb was almost in his grasp. His sinuous tail twitched at the tip.
It was the most terrible moment in Hugh’s life, a moment of test in which the basic metal within the man was tried in the fire. He could not turn back now. He shouted with the full power of his lungs; but on the might of his own eye and will, on the old elemental superiority of man over the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air rested life or death. He was of the dominant breed, and if he forgot that fact for one instant—in this moment of stress—those white fangs would lash out.
For the first time in his life Hugh Gaylord had to rely on his own manhood for success or failure. His wealth, his influential social connections, breeding and birth and class could not aid him here. It was simply the trial of man against beast, the power of man’s will against resistless physical might. If he flinched, if he turned for an instant, all was lost.
His face was white as white foam, the lines cut deep like brands, the heart of the man was like ice. Yet the eyes didn’t flinch. They burned steady and straight,—into the glowing twin circles of blue fire just above him.
There was a long, strange moment of silence in which it seemed that the river flowed like a soft wind. All the power and strength of his being was at test. And slowly—snarling at every step—the puma began to back away up the log into the thickets.
Still Hugh held firm. He waited until the great cougar was ten feet distant, then his arm shot out like a serpent’s head toward the lamb. He seized it in a strong grasp, released the log, and yielded himself to the full force of the current. As he swept down he saw the cougar—his courage come back to him now that the masterful eyes no longer glared into his—spring out with a savage snarl to the end of the log. But he was out of reach now, and safe, struggling once more against the might of the current.
He fought with all his strength and slowly worked his way into the shore. The guide came running toward him: the dog—fifty feet farther down—pulled himself up, dripping and exhausted, on the rocky margin. Hugh caught at the overhanging bushes and slowly he gained the bank. And with a queer, dim smile he set the lamb down beside the ewe.
It seemed endless moments before he felt able to speak. His breath seemed gone, he felt weak as a child, his muscles ached and his wet clothes chilled him, yet he felt strangely, deeply happy. He didn’t know why. He was too tired for introspection. He only knew a great, unfamiliar joy, an inner peace.
“Don’t wait any longer for me,” he said at last when he got his breath. Pete looked down at him in amazement. Hugh smiled into his dark eyes.
“What you mean?” Pete asked in bewilderment.
Hugh smiled again but felt too tired to explain. There was no use of explanations: he didn’t know that he could find words for them. For the moment he had lost faith in words: only deeds mattered now. He didn’t seem to be able to tell why Hugh Gaylord, the son of wealth and of cities, should yield himself to such folly. The body of the dead herder still lay across the horse’s back: the fact that another week might find himself in the same position could not matter either.
“You’re to go on alone,” he explained quite clearly. “I’m going to stay here—until some one comes up and takes my place—and watch the sheep.”
For Hugh knew the truth at last. A new power, a greater strength had risen within him. His eyes saw clear at last. In that wild moment in the heart of the stream he had given service, he had risked all for a cause. None of his old, soft delights had yielded one part of the pleasure that had been his as his strong strokes braved the current; no false flattery had ever been so satisfying as his victory over Broken Fang. It was service, it was conquest, it was manhood at last.
He had no sense of self-sacrifice as he made his decision to stay with the sheep. The joy of strong deeds does not lie in self-pity. Rather it was an inner knowledge that he had found happiness—at least the beginnings of it—and only a fool would throw it away. He had no wish to forego the first pleasure that life had ever given him.
He started away into the forest with his sheep.
CHAPTER IX
As the dawn broke over Smoky Land, the sheep fed farther and farther out from the camp,—a long, white column like a moving snow field against the deep dusk of the forest. The light grew, the last stars faded, the gloom of the underbrush evolved into distinct browns and greens; most of the beasts of prey returned to their lairs. Unlike Hugh they had no love for these daylight hours. Dawn meant the end of their reign.
For the night has always been the time of triumph to the hunting creatures. It is the hour of glory when fang and talon and strength and stealth come into their own. Now the deer had left their feeding ground and had gone into the heavy brush through which even a cougar could not creep without being heard. The birds had left their perches, the little underground people had retired to their burrows. In the nighttime the dim, sinuous movements of the hunters’ bodies could hardly be distinguished from the wavering shadows, but the deer made no such mistake in the hours of daylight. Many of the flesh-eaters had not yet killed, and those that had been successful found no pleasure in leaving their warm, dripping feasts to the buzzards in the sky. Only the coyotes and such low-caste people remained to hunt; and they didn’t stay from choice. With them it was a simple matter of hunting all the time, of seeking tirelessly with never a rest, that kept them fed at all.
The reason went back to a curse that Manitou put upon the coyotes in the young days of the earth. No one knows just what their offense was—whether they were once dogs who betrayed men, or the fathers of dogs that betrayed the wild by selling their sons into the bondage of men—but not even a tenderfoot can doubt the severity of their punishment and the depths of their remorse. Many of the voices of the forest are dim and small, many of them are inaudible except to those who give their lives and their souls to the wild, but the curse upon Running Feet the coyote is usually made clear in one night at the twilight hour. For the coyotes do not keep their afflictions to themselves. Their voice suddenly shudders out of the half-darkness, a long wail broken by half-sobs,—infinitely despairing and sad.
Very few of the wilderness voices are joyful. Even the whistling of the birds—close observers find out at last—have a plaintive note that seems never entirely absent. No man can doubt the sadness in the wailing cries of the passing geese,—telling of the bleak, glooming marshes where they live and die. The winter song of the pack, the little shrieking of pikas on the sliderock, even the murmur of the pines are filled with the ancient sadness of existence, the old complaint of the pain of living with only Fear and Death at the end. But none of these voices contain the utter despair, the incomprehensible sadness of the twilight cries of the coyotes. Thus wise men know that they—because of some offense of long ago—have been accursed among beasts.
They have been exiled to the rocky hills, they are afflicted with madness in Indian summer, their pride has been taken from them, and all of the greater forest creatures treat them with contempt. They are driven from the game trails, and thus they have to do their hunting at any time that offers, early or late. All of the larger beasts of prey had now gone to their lairs and to sleep, but these gray skulkers still lingered about the flock.
Once Hugh caught a glimpse of a gray figure in a distant thicket; but it was too far to shoot. An expert marksman would have felled him in an instant; and Hugh began to regret that he had not—by taking to the hunting trails in some of his wasted days—learned this art. Try as he might he couldn’t see that he was in the least equipped for taking care of the flocks until another herder could be secured. And for the first hour he was deeply troubled as to the success of his undertaking.
No man, he considered—not even the Innuits of the Arctic—knew less concerning the white grazers than he himself. He had read no books about them, and except for the fact that he had bought various all-wool fabrics for his clothes and had eaten many a lamb chop, he had had no dealings with them whatsoever. He hadn’t the least idea how to control or care for the vast flock, when to water them and when to feed them salt, at what hours they should bed down and what orders to give his one faithful assistant, the dog. This animal, he concluded, knew worlds more about the business than he himself. In his new humbleness he seriously regretted that the barrier of speech prevented him from taking orders from the dog.
Fortunately Hugh was blessed with a sense of humor, and soon it came to his aid. After the first doleful hour he found considerable amusement in his own predicament,—a clubman with three thousand sheep suddenly thrust upon his hands. He had read stories of men who had been given the care of one or more babies,—and he laughed when he thought how his own experiences had put them out of the running. Fifteen hundred babies, and as many helpless mothers, all of them wholly in his care. He was tickled all over, and after that he had no place in his mind for worry and doubt about the outcome.
And the fact that he regained his poise was the best thing that ever happened for the sheep. Realizing his own ignorance he made no attempt to herd or guide them. He was not in the least nervous or excited himself, and thus there was no contagion of alarm to carry to the flock. “After all,” he thought, “these brutes know what’s best for ’em better than I know myself. Let nature take its course. Let ’em do what they want and I’ll follow along and keep off the cougars; and of course, get ’em back to the camp at night.”
The wisest herdsman on earth could not have given him better advice. He didn’t hurry the sheep. But it was not because he had heard that old Hebrew maxim,—that a lame herder takes the best care of sheep. The idea is, of course, that a lame man does not walk fast and hurry his animals. By letting them follow their own ways, he avoided the usual mistake of an inexperienced herder in trying to keep his flock too close together. They were Rambouillets—a breed in which the gregarious instinct is highly developed—and they hung close enough together for general purposes. They grazed slowly: Hugh had time to see the sky and the pines and all the miracle and magic of the wonderland about him.
Never, he thought, had there been a more sudden change in human fortunes. Two little weeks before his own sphere of life had been restricted by a few blocks of an eastern metropolis; he had been a clubman, possibly—and he thought upon the phrase with a strange derision—a social favorite. He had been what men call—without greatly bothering to discriminate—a gentleman. He had lived the life that men of his class were expected to live, drinking rather more than was good for him, wasting time, and being frightfully and immeasurably bored. Now—by the exigencies of the hour, by a single prank of fate—he was simply a herder of sheep. He was giving all he possessed of time and skill to a job that as a rule only Mexicans and uneducated foreigners deigned to accept. He suddenly laughed when he remembered that—although the flock owner and himself had not yet agreed on terms—he would probably secure wages for the time spent. Two dollars a day, perhaps,—such a sum as he ordinarily spent for cigarettes. Thinking of cigarettes he delved into his pocket, searching for a new pipe that on the advice of the Old Colonel at his club he had brought with him to Smoky Land and which had not yet been tried.
It had cost, he remembered, something less than a dollar. The Old Colonel himself had passed upon it, explaining certain virtues in regard to it that Hugh had since forgotten. “You’ll like a pipe,” the old gentleman had said, “if you ever get into a real outdoor-man’s mood. Cigarettes are all right, of course—probably don’t give you the nicotine kick that a pipe does—but a pipe has been the woodsman’s smoke from Sir Walter Raleigh and the Indians down.”
He found the pipe and meditatively filled it with fragrant tobacco. It was new, the taste of burning varnish was not wholly absent, yet he couldn’t remember that his expensive cigarettes had ever given him the same delight. It was a herdsman’s smoke, he thought, and for the time being at least he was a herdsman. And the thought of refusing the meager wage that the flock owner would be willing to pay for his inexperienced services didn’t even occur to him. He wasn’t, he remembered, devoting his time for nothing. And he was somewhat startled by the thought that for the first time in his life his—Hugh Gaylord’s—time was actually worth somebody’s good money.
There would be a satisfaction in that little wage that he had never received from the handsome checks that he got monthly from his trust company. The clinking dollars would be worth showing to the boys at his club,—trophies greater than the cups he had occasionally won at golf and tennis. A herder of sheep,—that was the title and degree of Hugh Gaylord, late of the Greenwood Club. The whole idea amused him more than he could tell.
The best of it was that no one would mistake his calling. He looked the part. He hadn’t shaved—he remembered by the sudden feel of scratchy whiskers on his chin—for three days, and he had the disreputable look that usually results from such an omission. His outing clothes were torn, drenched, soiled, and dust-covered. At first he had felt somewhat uncomfortable in his unsightly togs; he had regretted the departure of his usual well-groomed appearance, but now he actually rejoiced in his disreputability. He wouldn’t have any trouble convincing the camp-tender—when that mysterious gentleman should reveal himself—that sheep-herding was his fitting station in life. He would make, he thought with a laugh, a fairly plausible tramp.
He had been greatly fatigued by his hard swim in Silver Creek, but now he felt refreshed. And he found himself wondering at the ease with which laughter came to his lips. It wasn’t the usual thing with Hugh Gaylord at all. He found to his surprise that life was full of things to laugh at: the incongruity of his position, the awkward antics of the lambs, the grandmotherly concern of the ewes, the whole irresistible joke of existence. Before, Hugh had laughed in really but two ways—one at wit (usually the forced wit of a professional comedian) and the other in scorn. One of these two ways, it seemed to him, had wholly left him now. The ability to be really scornful of anything in the wide world had seemingly passed away. The vision of himself watching the flocks had brought a new tolerance, a new breadth of view toward all the world. Never in his life, so far as he could remember, had he laughed from the simple joy of life, the laugh of sheer delight. Somehow, he had never learned to know delight in its true sense.
Then Hugh came to a curious conclusion. He denied it a long time, but slowly the facts to support it became too many to resist. It was simply that in his past life—the life between which mighty mountains now raised a formidable barrier—he had grown old before his time. Nor was it kindly and wholesome old age that had come to him: the ripened wisdom of venerable years. It was a false age, and it had given him a wholly false outlook on life. Two weeks ago he had felt infinitely old and tired, and now he had been born again.
His vision hadn’t been quite straight. He had taken his own little sphere of life to represent the whole magnificent sphere in which the continents rise above the sea. Unlike all truly great people, unlike the most worthy even among his own set, he had adopted an attitude of what he flattered himself was sophistication. But he had not been a true Sophist, one who could immutably separate the gold from the dross, one who knew the infinite good humor as well as the remorseless travail of life. He had thought that everything was dross. He had lost faith in the world, conceiving virtue as the exception rather than the rule, doubting the compensation of clean living, the sanctity of homes, the solace of religion, the pride of good work, the purity of womanhood, the immortality of ideals. And most of all he doubted happiness. He didn’t believe that it existed.
Yet all at once he had found it: a quiet, healthy happiness that was constant as his own breathing. It lay, not in stimulation or in pleasures between which the mood drops down, but in a clear, sweet level of contentment, of personal worth, of time well spent, of existence justified and destiny fulfilled. There behind that flock, tired of muscle but still on duty, guarding with watchful eye and ready weapon, Hugh Gaylord felt content for the first time in his life.
If there was one blessing in particular that his false sophistication had cost him it was that of simple faith,—the faith of children, faith in the redemption of the race and the high constancy of the stars. It meant, clearest of all perhaps, that he had lost faith in miracles. Yet he now found a miraculous quality in this very happiness that had come upon him. He had self-wonder no less amazing at the curious familiarity and boundless peace with which he fell into the spirit of the sheep.
He felt at peace. There was no other word. Could it be that he had come into his own at last? All his life, it had seemed to him, he had carried in the deepest realms of his spirit a vision that had now come true: just the feeding flocks in the deep shade of the forest. He had the strange feelings of one who—exiled in babyhood—catches the far gleam of his homeland at last.
It seemed wholly natural that he should be walking here—behind the flocks—in silent vigil as the sun climbed up over the far, white peaks. He had a sense of having returned, after long and futile wanderings, to his own home. Always there had been blind, little-understood gropings in his own soul, a reaching outward; and had he found his destiny at last?
Up Silver Creek came the salmon, returning to their home waters for their last days. Four years had they dwelt in the dark bewilderment of the sea, but they came back to their own places in the end. Did they, all through those four years of their exile, carry in the deepest recesses of their beings a vision of their Lost Land to which they would return to die? Did they know a vague bewilderment, blind gropings in their fishy souls, an unfamiliarity with the gray wastes and the incessant waves that was not to end until they could know again the shallows and cataracts and waterfalls of their native river? Did peace come to them then? It was repatriation,—and Hugh felt that he had repatriated too. Only the exile had not been confined to his own little life. Instead of four years it was—more likely—four generations, even four centuries. He had been an alien in those far, tumultuous cities, but he had come home to the open places at last.
“You are an Anglo-Saxon,” the Old Colonel had said, and that had meant that for as many years as could be counted in a day his people had been tillers of the soil. The Anglo-Saxon was never one to gather into cities. He knew the meadows, the forests, the feel of the earth through the handles of his plow, the sheep feeding on the hillside. When his land became too heavy with people—so that he could no longer see the sun breaking forth in glory to the east because of city spires that rose between—he was likely to set sail for the far places of the earth, still to watch the sheep as they fed at the edge of the forest. His was a people of the soil: before they learned to plow, their flocks fed in the downs. The love of the soil had been bred into his race, warp and woof, and the little generations of exile in cities could not take his heritage away from him.
The flock fed for about two hours, then bedded down to chew their cud. Hugh was perplexed at first. He was somewhat fearful that a sudden illness had come upon the entire flock. The dog, however, seemed to understand. He came back to his master’s side and the two of them had a little chat as the morning advanced. After a short rest the sheep got up and started to feed again.
There was really not much work for Hugh to do. Occasionally he would see a small band of the sheep browsing off in a different direction from the course of the main flock, but at such times the dog knew the exact course of action. He would circle around the straying animals, cut off their escape, and they were always glad to head back into the main flock. It became increasingly evident, however, how difficult it was to keep track of the entire band. Only the gregarious instinct of the animals maintained their formation at all: in the dense woods he could see only a small part of the flock at one time. He had no way of knowing if various detachments had not already wandered away from the main band. Of course he didn’t know the methods by which most herders guard against this danger: by an approximate count achieved by keeping track of the black sheep, or markers. It seemed to him also that the wolves and other predatory animals had every opportunity in the world to lurk about the flanks of the flock and steal the lambs. The truth was that losses were sustained in this manner every day, and his presence alone prevented a wholesale slaughter.
About ten he decided it was time to turn the sheep. They had been moving since before dawn: he wanted to give them time in plenty to get back to the camp before night. He didn’t know how many rests they would wish to take in the afternoon.
He made a big circle about the flock, turning back at its head. He supposed that he could make the animals wheel straight about in a to-the-rear march, permitting those at the rear of the main band to get first chance at the feed on the way home. The way of sheep, however, is different. They executed what was more nearly a squads right, keeping the same leaders. The great advantage of the scheme lay in the fact that circling, they made the return trip on fresh feeding grounds.
He felt increasingly thankful for the aid of his dog. He seemed to interpret Hugh’s every wish. And when at the head of the main band, the man got his first glimpse of Spot.
CHAPTER X
No observer could make any mistake about Spot’s position in the flock. Through all the maneuvers of the great band he kept the foremost place; and the other sheep followed him without question. The young and inexperienced herdsman thought at first that he was the old “bellwether” of the flock.
But in a very few moments he had to reconstruct some of his ideas. In the first place Spot was not old, and in the second he was obviously not a wether. He was not wrinkled and withered like the old ewes: sheep that had yielded their wool for many seasons. To Hugh’s eyes he looked like a yearling ram; and rather amazing horns had begun to curve from his bold, rugged head.
Hugh was considerably puzzled. He was not a sheepman, but for the simple reason that there were no other yearling rams in the flock he believed that most of the previous season’s crop of male lambs had been sold as wethers to the markets. The mature lambs were obviously kept apart until the breeding season in late fall or winter. Some exception had thus been made in the case of Spot. And Hugh found himself watching the sturdy sheep with a singular interest.
In the first place the animal lacked the uniform color of the other sheep. His basic color was neither white nor black, but a decided dark brown with white at the backs of the legs and the rump. This variation of color immediately won him his name. He was the only sheep in the flock with horns, and in some vague way the man realized that the outline of his figure was entirely different from that of the ewes.
Although he was massively and boldly built, there was an actual grace about his motions not to be seen in the ewes. His form looked lean and hard, for all its massive development, and he stood several good inches above the tallest ewe in the flock. Hugh found it hard to believe, however, that he was some imported, high-bred yearling ram that would later be used to help build up the standard of the flock. In spite of his exceptional height and strength, his trim body probably weighed less than some of the fat ewes, his wool was not unusual, and certainly one of his rugged, agile form would not yield tender mutton. The man found it increasingly difficult to explain his presence in the flock.
Hugh tried to head him off, only to find that he was surprisingly quick on his feet. Only because his flock were unable to follow him and the young ram whipped back to join them was Hugh able to round him up at all. And when he darted off in a half-circle the whole band came pell-mell after him as if, young as he was, they were afraid to trust themselves without his guidance.
The longer Hugh looked at him, the more he was marked from all the other sheep in the flock. Of course it was possible that the mere fact that he was a male of the species was enough thus to distinguish him; yet ignorant though he was of the ways of sheep, Hugh found this explanation insufficient. In the first place Spot was just a yearling and evidently not yet mature. He could not imagine some of those strong-minded old ewes trusting their lives and fortunes to any ordinary immature ram. But this creature had a carriage not to be seen in the others, seemingly a spirit and pride and self-reliance that didn’t quite fit in with the nature of domestic sheep. His very stride revealed a bold, fearless, domineering disposition.
He did not graze easily, as did most of his followers. He skipped about across the whole front of the flock, now perching upon some lofty crag, now scampering up a narrow trail where the flock could scarcely follow. But in the hot, still late afternoon, as the sheep were beginning to stir after a long rest in the forest shade, Spot gave him even further cause to wonder.
To Hugh, it seemed the hottest hour of the day. His human sense, however, misled him: in reality, the highest point had been reached, and the cool winds from off the snow fields were on their way to bring relief. The sheep were still resting in a compact band: Spot, at the extreme front rank of the flock, had climbed upon a little rocky eminence on the hillside. It was such a promontory as is to be seen often in the high Rockies, an outcropping of the rocky skeleton of the hill emerging—like the end of a broken bone through the flesh—from the brown earth of the hillside. It was such a place as the wolf chooses for her lair, and the poison people—the gray speckled rattlesnakes whose bite is death—like to stretch out upon through the long, still afternoons. Because it overlooked the whole glen and was at the edge of the stony hillside where he had been doomed to live, Running Feet, the coyote, found it a convenient place to look for game.
Why Spot had chosen such a place for his rest Hugh could not guess. It was not shaded and comfortable like the glen beneath. Nor did he lie down like the ewes below him, but stood alert, head up, nostrils open to receive any message that the wind might bring. Hugh found himself watching him with fascinated interest. It seemed to him that the animal was on guard over the flock, even as he himself and the dog,—a watchful sentinel for any danger that might threaten them.
If it were true, he had a right to his wonder. The domestic animals do not ordinarily appoint one of their number as a sentinel. They have depended on the protection of men for so many generations that this habit has died from the breeds. The wild creatures, however, still retain it. If indeed the ram should detect danger for the flock, there was no conceivable refuge for them, so there could have been no conscious intelligence behind the act. It was obviously a long-remembered instinct. Any of the fleet-footed hunters of the wild could overtake them, and the slaying was easy even for a little lynx, biting sure and true.
No one knew this fact any better than Running Feet, the coyote, emerging from the brushy thickets of the hillside in late afternoon. His second name was Coward—cowardice was part of the curse that Manitou had put upon him—but even a seasonal fawn would be brave enough to attack a sheep. It might be, approaching in the shelter of the thickets, he could get close enough to the flock to steal a lamb or ewe from its flanks.
It was not that he had forgotten the shepherd dogs that kept watch, or the herder with his gun. Running Feet was never able to forget things like these. Part of his curse was a far-reaching and calculating intelligence almost equal to that of a dog, a trait that would have been a tremendous advantage if he had been blessed with courage to go with it, but which to a coward meant only realization of a thousand dangers to make life a torment. He understood perfectly what displeasing treatment would be his if the dogs came upon him at the killing. Not even Broken Fang, the puma, can always protect himself against the onslaught of the Barking One on guard over the flocks. He is fast as lightning and as terrible as the she-wolves at the lair mouth. And Running Feet knew quite well the deadly qualities of the glittering stick that the herder carried in the hollow of his arm.
To-day, however, there was only one dog, and he worked on the far side of the flock. The herder rested under a tree; if Running Feet kept to the shelter of the brush, there was nothing to fear from him. True, he would be obliged to dip out into the open to seize one of the lambs, but if fortune only permitted them to lie close enough to the edge of the thicket, he could do it without danger. Fortune wasn’t usually good to Running Feet; but to-day perhaps his luck had turned. And at that point in his wolfine thoughts he made out the figure of Spot, in tireless vigil on the highest point of the rock pile.
It was too good to be true. The distance was full two hundred yards from the herder; the dog was equally distant. The brush went clear to the base of the rocks; one or two little leaps into the open would put him within killing range. Then one or two slashing bites with his white fangs,—andthatwould complete a perfect afternoon.
Running Feet looked the ground over carefully. He didn’t want to make any avoidable mistakes. It might be that the young ram would dash down and into the flock at the first sight of him, and although he could overtake any domestic sheep in a short run, it might necessitate a chase into the clearing and some danger from the herder’s rifle. The wise course was to circle about the promontory, keeping as close as possible to the shadow of the thicket, and advance up the trail between Spot and his flock.
The wind was right, the shadows were long and strange, and even Running Feet the coward could see no chance of failure. He crept slowly from the thicket, a gray shadow few wilderness eyes were keen enough to see. His white fangs gleamed, the blood leaped in his veins. He made the stalk with complete success: Hugh had not been able to tell what living form had stirred the thicket at the base of Spot’s lookout. And then the gray killer came bounding up the rocky trail.
Hugh saw him then. It was only a gray glimpse: by no possible chance could he have found a target for his rifle. The distance was far, the coyote’s body half-obscured. He had only one thought: that Spot was doomed beyond any power of his to save him. Already, it seemed to him, he had developed a real affection for the self-reliant, spirited ram; and he had a sense of acute personal loss as he read its doom. To lose the brave leader of the flock in his first day of service! No event in his life had ever caused more regret.
No instruments may measure the speed of the human mind in a second of crisis. The glimpse of the charging coyote was of infinitesimal duration, yet Hugh had time in plenty for an overpowering wave of regret and rage. The time he lacked, however, was that for muscular response. There was none whatever to raise his rifle and take aim.
And at that instant his regrets were cut short. He suddenly shouted with delight. Spot was not to die so tamely,—in the fangs of Running Feet. All at once the young ram snapped about in the trail, making no attempt whatever to flee into the thickets on the other side of the rock pile. And he lowered his head in a posture of defense.
For long seconds he stood motionless, statuesque, his horns ready for the coyote’s onslaught. There was something masterful, noble about the posture, not at all to be expected in the timid and defenseless domestic sheep. And the coyote drew up short in the trail.
The other sheep had sprung up, by now, and were crowding away from the rock pile: the dog sprang forward, barking, at the other side of the flock. Hugh stood waiting for a chance to aim his weapon. And still the tableau on the rocks remained unchanged: the young ram with lowered head, the coyote—his blood turning to milk inside of him—on the trail.
Hugh’s astonishment was nothing compared to the coyote’s own. He had expected flight, panic,—anything on earth except an actual attitude of self-defense. Just for a moment he stood motionless, snarling, trying to find courage to attack. But not for nothing had Manitou put his curse upon him.
All at once it came to him that he had made a mistake. There was something familiar about the sturdy figure, the lowered head, the curling horns. He remembered certain passes in the High Rockies,—and various trim, horned creatures that might occasionally be met there. Even Broken Fang did not care to meet these people on a narrow trail,—and Running Feet remembered with some haste that he had an appointment on the other side of the hill.
At that instant Hugh shot. The distance was far; the bullet whizzed hot along Running Feet’s shoulder. He didn’t wait for a second shot. He turned and fled at the fastest pace he knew. And with the air whizzing past him he wholly missed the curious words that the herder uttered,—the strange remark that he made to Spot, still standing defiantly with lowered horns on the trail.
“Good Lord, Spot,” he cried, “you’re not just a sheep. Sure as I live, you’re a——” But he didn’t finish telling what Spot was. Perhaps he didn’t know; and the ideas that were glowing dimly in his brain did not yet take the form of a concrete thought. But more likely his attention was merely called away. For at that instant he saw his camp-tender advancing slowly up the trail.