CHAPTER XIX
Beyond all other joys and compensations for these three months in Smoky Land, there remained—a subject for humble thanks to the skies—the comradeship of Alice. Every day it made the struggle more worth while, his happiness more complete.
She made periodical trips to his camps, bringing food for himself and salt for his sheep, and assisting him as he moved the flock from range to range. He counted the days of her absence, and the nights that she sat beside his fire simply opened a new world to him. They had a thousand things to tell each other: Hugh’s little victories over coyotes and cougars, the new tricks of Spot the flock leader, some little faithfulness on the part of Shep, the dog, and their exultation at the passing of the days. For if they passed the present month in safety, if Fargo and his gang did not rout them before October first, the victory was won.
She cooked his meals and mended some of the holes in his soiled clothing, and her laugh rang with the bells of fairyland over their silent camp. They had serious moments in which—with far-reaching intimacy—they told each other their own secret thoughts and philosophies of life—sober talk such as was never heard in the rooms of the Greenwood Club. For the first time in his life Hugh had really known self-expression. The inmost springs of his nature flowed forth. And he was constantly amazed and delighted by the girl’s ideas and points of view. There was nothing particularly modern about them. In fact, Hugh thought that they had passed from the earth in his grandmother’s time. Of course they were trite, perhaps they could have been proven ridiculous by the logic of a realist, and the only reason she had for them was the impulse of her own conscience; yet Hugh found himself staring at her as if she were a being from another planet. But Hugh’s amazement was due to his own lack of knowledge of the heart of humanity. He would have been surprised to know that ninety out of every hundred girls, east and west and south and north, had the same illogical conscience, the same high heart, the same ideals. Although he would have tumbled over backward if any one had told him so, Hugh just hadn’t been around. He had known but one little circle, and heretofore he hadn’t been able to see outside it.
Alice was girlish, spontaneous, unaffected to the last degree. Sometimes they romped and raced like children about their camp fire. They exulted over their meals, they told high secrets, they tingled and thrilled in the mystery of the nights. She had a businesslike, matter-of-fact way in going about her tasks that delighted the man past words. She was as clean and sweet and unspoiled as the mountain flowers that grew about her,—but wholly able to take care of herself. As she camped beside the flocks her pistol was always in reach of her hand. And the very ideas that Hugh so loved in her simply filled his nights with horror.
Of course it was ridiculous,—but the thoughts of lovers often are. And he did love her, with all the earnestness of his wakened being, with a growing, breathless love that seemed natural as living. The point was passed, long ago, wherein he could doubt that fact. And now he didn’t even have self-wonder that he should have come to these mountain realms and loved a mountain girl. It seemed simply his own inevitable destiny.
And he was humble and fearful as a callow boy about the whole thing. Nothing of his herdsman’s life would have been so amusing to the members of the Greenwood Club as this. For Hugh had known women in plenty; he had been an eligible in a circle where eligibles were scarce, and these clubmen thought that his last delusion in regard to them was gone. He had been husband-hunted,—and the deer that has been stalked by a cougar no longer sees beauty in the lights of its eyes! But now his old arrogance and sophistication had fallen away from him. He searched frantically and in vain for qualities within himself by which he might hope to deserve this girl’s love.
Had he not been a waster, a slacker from the works of men? Had he anything in general or particular because of which he might expect a girl to love him? The things on which he used to pride himself had been suddenly revealed as so much dust in his hands—inherited wealth, social distinction, an influential ancestry. Here, he rightly concluded, these three things were not worth the powder to blow them up. He did remember, with some pride, that he had a certain amount of physical strength. Already that had been of use to Alice, and the time might come wherein it would be of use again. He was a fairly able sheepman, and he had already earned over a hundred dollars. But he felt like a peasant, offering his heart to the queen of the realm. It got down to a serious matter that as yet he did not feel that he had justified his own existence, that he had established himself in the great world of men and toil, and that he had not yet been purged by the fires of trial and stress, and redeemed in battle.
He mourned her when she left to bring supplies, and welcomed her with the abandon of a child when she came back to him. In the early nights, in the fire’s glow, dreams of her were ever with him, filling him with strange, happy glowings and warm little quivers of delight. But his love for her did not make him forget his sheep. The great test by which his metal was tried lay in his degree of success as herder of the flocks.
Never did he get away from a haunting feeling that here—beside the white sheep—he was face to face with life at last. Here, not in his cities, were the realities, the essentials of life: the feeding flock, the shelter, the circle of firelight into which the powers of the wilderness dared not stalk. Fresh and fresh he felt the age-old appeal of the soil, the love of the throbbing earth, the inner warmth, an undying and wondrous communion with nature. He waged his war against the forces of the wild, and the sense of destiny fulfilled was ever with him. And why not,—for were men strangers to the sheep? Could their ancient acquaintance be forgotten in a few little centuries of exile in cities? Had they not been out—through the long course of the ages—under the same stars, felt the same winds, endured the same dangers? In the first dawn of civilization, dim and far away through the mists of the past, the herdsman cared for his sheep in the green pastures,—and it was in the blood.
Sometimes this old acquaintance was recalled to Hugh in dreams. There was one dream in particular that came to him night after night. It never seemed to vary, and its spell always endured a few moments after wakening. So real it was, so vivid, it was almost as if it had been some actual experience in his own life, rather than a remembered vista from the immeasurable past. He always seemed to be sitting, half-dozing, before a fire,—a fire not greatly different from that which burned before him in reality. It was always so red, so cheering, that the love of it seemed to shiver his heart to pieces. The forest always stretched about him, silent, mysterious, sinister past all words. And there were always the sheep.
Always, in his dream, he guarded the sheep. It was a matter of life itself. And Death was always waiting for him the instant he relaxed his vigilance. It was not an easy passing, a swift crossing to a happy, bright, quiet land from which he might return and whisper in the night. It was always darkness and cold and pain, and most of all it was fear. The sheep were white in the same moon, the same stars were in the sky. But the tent was absent. Such a thing was without his bourn of thought. In the darkness he dared not leave the fire to seek shelter from the rain. And as he dozed he sat in a somewhat different position,—usually leaning forward, his hands locked behind his head. And in the summer nights the hair on his arms drained off the rain.
Shep was still beside him, and the communion between them was even more close than in life. They seemed almost like brothers, rather than master and servant. A peace that was almost rapture abided in their companionship. And it was necessary that Shep remain awake while he himself dozed. But the dog’s outline was vaguely different. The ears were always pointed and erect, the tail was not so lifted, and sometimes when Hugh caught a sudden glimpse of him out of the corner of his eye, a swift wave of icy terror swept over him. The dog was like Cry-in-the-night,—that was it! He was gray and white-fanged just like the wolves themselves.
Even the wind—the air—was different. It was full of smells that stirred the flesh, and hushed little sounds to freeze the blood with dread. It was vibrant and shuddering and alive, and the world had not yet begun to grow old. And he always felt an overwhelming pride in his own strength. His arms—curiously long and quite black with hair—could crush the ribs of Cry-in-the-night like an eggshell. His chest was huge, his legs were knotted and gigantic, and when he saw his reflection in the water of the spring, the hairy growth was long and matted about his throat. And clearest of all the dream was the ring of deadly shadows that ever encroached upon the space of firelight, and the strange twin lights that ever glowed from their depths.
Two and two, everywhere he looked. They always glowed hungrily, and their watch was never done. Curious blue-green and yellow disks of fire, close together and glowing ever in the darkness. Sometimes he would open his lips and shout,—and for an instant they would draw back. They were afraid of that wild cry of his, but they were more afraid of the flint dagger that lay at his side. Ah, they died quickly—with a scream and a howl—when the Death Flint went into them. It was a good thing to see, but it also filled the heart with fear. He laughed and exulted when he remembered how it was even quicker in its stroke than the leap of a wolf.—But most of all the watchful circle feared the camp fire. They could not rub the wood and strike the flame: in this he was master, ruler and monarch of the earth! Cry-in-the-night might kill him in a fair fight, but still he could not build a fire. The dreamer always felt a great wave of exultation.
One night he dreamed that the fire burned almost down, and the circle drew close. He wakened from his doze and shouted at them none too soon. And a strange, wild cry from his own lips wakened Hugh, in the sheep camp of the twentieth century, from his dream. He had cried out in his sleep,—a hoarse, wild, savage cry that left him curiously awed. And the coyote that had crept close to the flank of the flock slipped quickly back into the forest.
Hugh got up, stood a moment in the gleam of the late September moon, then piled more wood upon the fire. The circle of twin lights was a reality to-night. The days of drought had brought ever more of the wild hunters about his flock, and almost anywhere he looked he saw their luminous eyes, two by two, as they waited in the darkness. He glanced down—but a rifle, not a dagger of flint, lay at his side. He looked out over the flock, instinctively counting up his markers. Most of the sheep were asleep, but one—the greatest of them all—stood erect, with lowered horns, as if on guard. It was Spot the yearling ram, and his horns looked oddly large in the soft light of the moon.
“Spot, old boy,” the man said, “I believe you’ve got memories too. I believe you’ve been dreaming—just as I have.”
CHAPTER XX
Dreams, dreams! Spot, the young ram, waking or sleeping, never escaped from them. They came to him through the long, still hours of night, they disturbed his sleep in the mid-afternoon rest when the flock sought the deep shade, he knew them even in the hours of grazing. They were so plain, so real that they seemed more like memories,—events that had transpired before he came to lead Crowson’s flock.
Yet his damming was not the least in doubt. Crowson himself knew Spot’s full record as far as his own immediate life was concerned. He had been born in the lower foothills,—the first lamb of the season. And his mother had died to give him birth.
Such casualties do not happen often among the domestic sheep. There were a few such losses each year, usually due to an unnatural delivery, but in this case there was a simpler explanation. Little Spot was oversized; in a remote way that Crowson could not quite identify, he differed in outline from any other lamb in the flock. The same divergence could still be noticed now as Spot reached his second autumn.
“Good Lord,” Crowson had said, when he marked the lamb’s coloring and size. “Here’s a little devil that would be worth watching if his ewe were just alive to keep him fed. I’d like to see just what kind of a ram he’d grow to be.”
He supposed that Spot would die; a motherless lamb in western flocks can’t be counted on to survive. But in this case Spot obviously had other plans. Before the end of his first day he had attached himself—with an instinct that was seemingly miraculous—to the largest, strongest ewe in the flock, one whose own lamb had died. Crowson himself fastened the skin of the dead lamb on his back until the ewe gave him her breast.
It was as if he already knew his destiny and needed full-feeding and rich milk to attain it. Spot grew fast. And in the castration and docking season little Spot was spared,—just to see what kind of a white-rumped, miscolored, heavy-headed ram he would grow to be.
And almost from the first day he had had those strange, haunting dreams. Mostly they were thrilling, breath-taking, joyous dreams, but sometimes they were simply nightmares. The earliest one of all, perhaps, concerned some sort of a terrible enemy that always seemed to be menacing him from above. It was something that could drop with the speed of a waterfall leaping down a cliff, or the morning light chasing the shadows down a snow-capped peak as the sun came up. Spot knew that it had cruel talons that could lift him in the air and carry him to a fearful land of cold and darkness whence he would never return. The sheep do not ordinarily watch the skies—the range of their eyes is downward—and thus the only way to mark Swift Wing’s approach was to see his shadow on the crags. And once when the shadow of a lazy buzzard flicked across the meadow—a sight unnoticed by the other lambs—Spot’s little heart choked with terror, and he tried to squirm under the ewe’s body.
Cliffs, waterfalls, snow-capped peaks! What did little Spot know of them? He was born on the lower foothills, and from the highest camp where Hugh drove the flock the peaks were still far aloft, glittering in the sun. Yet Spot knew them. In his dreams he knew exactly how the waters broke, gleamed, and roared as they dropped from ledge to ledge; he knew the feel of the firm snow under his hoofs, the glory of the sun from the topmost spire of the highest peak, the touch of the cold crags as he lay in the sun.
His dreams were ever so much more real to him than his realities: the band of patient ewes, the firelight of the herder, the slow grazing over the wide stretches of green grass. In fact, Spot put no trust in camp fires and herders. The herder, he felt in the depths of his heart, should be eyed with suspicion. This strange, forked breed was no companion of his. He couldn’t get away from a feeling of strangeness and unfamiliarity with the scenes of his birth, as if he had wandered away from home and didn’t know the way back. He was lost and lonesome and unhappy, and he had been cheated from some glorious heritage that was rightly his.
He couldn’t get used to the slow movements of the ewes and the other lambs. His muscles seemed to itch and burn when he was idle. He wanted to run, to dash up the rocky cliffs; and yet he dared not leave the flock. The gregarious instinct among sheep is too well ingenerated for that. Once weaned, he spent his surplus energies in running back and forth across the front of the band, ever longing for the lost land from which he had strayed.
In his dreams he always left the meadows far behind him. Even the forest itself was left too, and he was set free and joyful in a more familiar land: a place of jagged cliffs and sliderock, narrow passes and steep precipices, great rock crevices and snow-capped peaks. It was true that some of his band accompanied him. But they were all taller, all stronger, all active as himself. And a great blood-brother—whose word was immutable law in the pass—was always in the lead. It seemed, dim and deeply hidden from him, that he himself was ordained—when his full strength was upon him—to lead that band in their wild adventures over the cliffs and stretch his own irrevocable law over the ranges. But that was far off. In his dreams he was merely one of the dark-colored band, marked with white even as himself; and the leader had tremendous, curling horns of which even Lurk-in-the-trail, the cougar, could rightly be afraid.
Such games they had in his dreams, such breath-taking adventures and wild leapings from crevice to crevice, from ledge to ledge. Sometimes it seemed to him that he would climb and climb, as a star climbs in the sky, to the loftiest pinnacle of the highest peak from which the whole mountain world would spread in glory below him, and the setting sun would throw its red glow over him. The longing for his lost land was with him every waking moment. He loved his dreams: his reality seemed absent of all delight. He was always sorry to waken. Deep, insatiable longings and vague unhappiness filled his days.
It was a perfectly natural development that in his second year—even although he had not yet reached full maturity—he should obtain the leadership of the flock. The other sheep sensed his self-reliance even though they could not share in it, and even the old ewes followed him with entire simplicity and trust. He seemed to have had the advantage of some stern sort of an education that they did not have, and almost unaided by the herder he led them to the choicest feeding grounds. He was brave when they were afraid; he sensed danger when they were blind and deaf; and most of all he had the spirit of kings. But they could not follow where he would have liked to lead them. And because of the eternal instinct toward gregariousness, he had to stay back with them. It would have been easy for him to whip past the dog, gaining quickly the high passes where such beasts as Cry-in-the-night could scarcely follow. But the others could not keep pace.
The dreams were always real and lifelike, but one night in late September they swept him with unutterable vividness. The flock had bedded down at the highest camp in the range: Crowson’s holdings ended in the fringe of timber immediately above them. And all at once he leaped straight out of his dream into wakefulness.
He was trembling all over with excitement; his blood simply racing in his veins. The night throbbed, his heart swelled as if it would burst. At first he only saw the moonlight, fragile and silvery, over the sleeping sheep. He raised his head.
One of the wilderness traits that even the domestic sheep have not altogether lost is the ability to stand absolutely motionless until human eyes get tired of watching. Not a hair twitched on the young ram. It was such a posture as his followers had often seen in him when the flock was menaced by some approaching beast of prey; yet Spot was not thinking of enemies now. And all at once a wild flood of ecstasy passed through his frame.
Out of the darkness of the ridge certain living forms came stealing one by one, as silently as stealing shadows. A wonderful and noble monarch—to whom even the wolf made obeisance—was first in the file,—just as Spot had known. Others, even smaller than himself, brought up the rear. And then Spot knew the truth.
He knew that his dream was coming true.
CHAPTER XXI
All the dreams by which Spot knew of his lost heritage were realities to old Argali, leader of a band of wild mountain sheep, or bighorn, that had their craggy home in the high ranges of the Upper Salmon Mountains. The winged danger that fell from the clouds to menace the young lambs was not a memory to him: it was just an unavoidable detail of his life. Perhaps it was more familiar to the ewes, whose lambs were the lights of their souls, but old Argali had become rather indifferent to it years before. For the winged death was simply the great golden eagle who had his eyrie on a high ledge.
He had known in his own life the joys that Spot had dreamed about and missed: the wild runs, the leaping from ledge to ledge, the rough games, the glory of the sunset on the high peaks. In his own time he had stood on the high pinnacles and let the last red glow of the sun fall over him. He had known the strife, the danger, the exultation, and his flock would follow him wherever he chose to go.
There was no more magnificent creature in the whole mountain world than he. To Hugh, who had never seen a mountain sheep, his coloring would have recalled but one creature on earth,—Spot himself. He had massive horns that could strike with resistless might, sturdy legs and little clinging hoofs that could scale the face of a precipice. A lone wolf wouldn’t have cared to meet old Argali on a narrow trail. Only Broken Fang himself had prowess enough to conquer him in a fair fight,—and Broken Fang usually hunted in the woods far, far below Argali’s range.
But the bighorn ram had memories also; and it was because of them that he took the narrow trail down into the valleys this mid-September night. The wind—a soft little breath that had stolen up from the hills where the flock fled—had brought him a message; and it carried him back to an autumn night of two seasons before, recalling certain stirring events that had occurred upon a distant mountain side.
It was wholly possible that Bill Elkins, a herder who the following spring had gone over to Fargo and his gang, could remember that night also. But he had no real knowledge of the strange mountain drama that had taken place. His only recollection of it concerned a long and weary climb after a little band of strays that had wandered from the main band of domestic sheep and which a wolf had chased far into the distant mountains.
He did not know of the dramatic meeting that had taken place on a far-away crag that was the lower limit of Argali’s range. It was the last days of the rut,—the season that was just now beginning. The old ram had been down from his high places looking for salt, and at first he had been just a little alarmed by the sight of the little band of all-white ewes fleeing so madly toward him. But understanding had come soon. He realized that these ewes were his own people,—cousins far remote and yet females of his own breed. They were sheep, even as he himself. Their wool was full of alien smells, they were awkward and slow and helpless, their bodies were fat where they should have been trim, yet they were his own kind.
The fact that he had considerable of a harem already did not matter here: for the old ram—like all of his brethren—was an incorrigible polygamist. Were not the fall days almost done? It was the autumnal madness, and a wilderness mating had come to pass before the moon had set.
And Spot had been the child of that union,—conceived in the far ranges that were his native land. But the strong ewe that was his mother did not follow her lord into his high trails, after all. Bill Elkins had come, Argali and his band had fled, and by driving the runaway sheep back to the flock the little bighorn—born the following spring—was to be cheated of his heritage.
All these memories swept the old flock leader as he came stealing through the forest shadows in response to that stirring message in the wind. He came out into the moonlit meadow; he lifted high his magnificent horns. And the wilderness gods—kind at last to this man of cities who had given his heart to the wilderness—wakened Hugh in time to behold the sight.
It was such a scene that the memory ever cherishes, a mystery and a delight through all of life. In all that breadth of forest there was no picture more wonderful, no forest drama that went more deeply into the mysteries of the wild. He felt as if the mountains had opened their secret heart to him at last. He scarcely moved in his blankets lest the charm should break.
He didn’t know why he was so awed. It was as if the centuries had rolled back and had given him a glimpse of the young world,—when the holy communion of men and nature still endured. He sensed the immutable enforcement of great laws,—perhaps one instant’s half-darkened glimpse of the whole, unfathomable scheme of existence. And he was moved to the depths of his being by the sheer beauty and wonder of the scene.
The moonlight was a miracle in itself. It enchanted the meadows, it filled the open forest with gliding ghosts, it turned to snow the great, sleeping flock. The brush thickets were a mystery, a darkness that passed understanding. And at the edge of the forest stood the bighorns, forms in marble, noble past all words.
Yet it could endure but a moment more. Even now the great ram had begun to grow suspicious. The firelight cast a faint red glamor, and Argali eyed it with suspicion. There were unfamiliar smells in the air too: one that remotely suggested Cry-in-the-night and the other that he had experienced when Bill Elkins had come to drive back his ewes. He turned silently, starting to slip away.
But at that instant Spot—the yearling ram that had led the domestic flock—leaped forward as a meteor leaps in the sky. He knew this breed that had come down from the fastnesses. They were of his lost land, and even now they were turning back to the crags of which he had dreamed. Hugh saw the motion, gasped once in the depths of wonder, and sprang to his feet. The dog barked and raced about the flank of the flock.
Hugh cried out. Swept with wonder and tingling in every nerve, he couldn’t suppress the utterance. He saw old Argali pause with lowered horns as Spot raced toward him. His little flock stood statuesque for a single instant, as if they were waiting for him to join them. These were Spot’s people: in the moonlight there was no difference between them and the other bighorn yearlings. Hugh understood now why Spot had differed from the domestic sheep. And Shep raced—jealous as ever for the integrity of the flock—to cut off Spot’s flight.
And for the first time in his career with the sheep Hugh broke his trust. His business, too, was to keep the flock together, to help the dog round up the truants and the strays. Yet the promptings of his own spirit bade otherwise. He had repatriated himself, he had come to his lost land, and was such a right to be denied the bighorn that had led the flock? Spot’s place was in the rough crags and the high trails, snow sweep and precipice and the ruddy glow of sunset, not feeding with the domestic sheep. He knew that Alice would understand.
“Come back, Shep,” he called into the stillness. The dog turned, hesitated, then, faithful servant that he was, came trotting back. Spot overtook the flock and the forest closed behind him. The bighorn ram had come into his heritage.
CHAPTER XXII
José Mertos, when he came at Fargo’s bidding, looked exactly the same as always. He seemed to have partaken of the changeless quality of the desert where he was born. His lips were thin, his face impassive, his dark eyes somber as ever. Fargo himself, however, had undergone certain transformations. He was not quite so boastful as usual, nor so arrogant. He looked as if some especially effective medicine had been administered to him. It was plain, however, that the dose had not been entirely to his liking. There were little angry glowings in his eyes that seemed never entirely to fade out.
Anger had always come quickly to Fargo, but it isn’t good for the spirit to have it remain indefinitely. It cuts deep lines in the face and fills the eyeballs with ugly little blood vessels, and it makes the hands shake and the heart burn. It also swells the little sacks under the eyes, a thing that is never pleasant to see. It was plain that certain events had recently occurred that Fargo had not yet forgotten, but which had incited a strange hunger within himself that must be satiated with something quite different from bread. And as the days glided past the more fierce the hunger became.
It was true that he remembered only Hugh’s first blow,—that which had stretched him flat upon his back. The feel of the earth throughout one’s length has a tremendous medicinal value in itself to some men, and in others it wakens a madness that is considerably worse than that which comes upon Broken Fang at the fall of darkness. And there had been at least two other blows when he was stretched out unconscious. One of them had temporarily closed his eye. The other had left a purple bruise about his lips. This was enough in itself. Men did not strike Landy Fargo down and have many months to boast of it. At least that was what he told himself time after time, in the long nights that he sat alone. The meeting with Hugh in which his horse had been returned to him had been scarcely less odious.
Fargo remembered how Hugh—with his bleeding arm—had motioned for him to go, and how at the same time his hard, bright eyes had been watching for any offensive motion on the part of Fargo. But courage to attack simply would not come to him. And in the morning light, burning with hatred and passion, he had ridden back to his home.
The affair in regard to the flocks was no longer merely a business proposition. It had its personal side now. It seemed to him that its completion was the only desire he had left. He hated the browsing sheep, he hated Crowson and Crowson’s daughter, but most of all he hated Hugh. There was the man who had defeated all his plans. It was Hugh’s fists that had knocked him to the earth and that had lashed into his face as he lay unconscious. Night after night, week after week, he had sat—savage as one of his own hounds—staring into the fire. The flames had leaped: and he knew that some time in their lurid glow they would show him his course of action. His only wish was to make payment.
The time in which he might strike was almost up. October—when the detachment of forest rangers would take over the district and protect such lawful industries as Crowson’s—was almost at hand. The thought seemed to drive him insane. And one night, when September was almost done, inspiration came to him.
A cowman had come in, complaining of the drought. The streams where his cattle fed were drying up. “Never seen the woods so dry in all my days,” the man had said. “Just like tinder. And already most of the cattle have crossed over Eagle Ridge into the Bear Canyon country.”
It was enough. He had given Fargo his hint. Certain orders had been dispatched: to drive all the remaining herds into the same region,—a district far from Crowson’s range in Smoky Land. And then he had sent for José.
The Mexican was the one man on whom Fargo felt he might rely. José had no ridiculous limits as to conduct, no notch of brutality and crime above which he would not go. The cowboys who worked for him, however, weren’t of the same metal. They were faithful enough in a good open-and-shut fight, fair warfare between the cattlemen and sheepmen. They were willing to take any decent risk, and their rancor against the “woollies” was bitter enough for general purposes. Partly it was a matter of mob psychology, partly because they thought their own jobs and prospects depended upon the range being kept open for the cattle herds. But these cowmen were rather inclined to play too fair; and cold and premeditated murder was not, among them, being done. The deadly desert man, however, had no such compunctions. He had been the logical man to send for after that last talk with Dan the herder. And he was the logical man now.
Fargo had already drawn his maps. In his own broken handwriting he indicated the various ranges and the larger streams that flowed between them. Fargo knew the passes of Smoky Land. And the two men went over them with singular care as to detail, with infinite patience such as they had never given to any of their lesser projects. They discussed the directions of the prevailing winds, the “lay” of the canyons, even the location of the most impassable thickets. It took the whole night and many glasses of burning liquor to perfect their plans.
“It must start, you see, in the Bear Canyon country,” Fargo said at last. “And nothing in the world that I see—considering how long it will take to send word—can stop it.”
José agreed. “Just you and I do the work?” he asked.
“Yes. The others can’t be trusted. But remember—I’m paying you the limit—a whole year’s pay for a night’s work. A thousand dollars—don’t forget.”
José’s eyes showed that he had not forgotten. “It’ll take fast horses,” he said. “We don’t want to get caught ourselves.”
“No danger of that; but there’ll be plenty of riding to do, as you say. It’s a straight-out course—and to-morrow night we go.”
To-morrow night! To Hugh and Alice, in the distant sheep camp, it meant almost the end of Fargo’s menace. Another day and another night thereafter, and September would be gone: the forest rangers would come riding into Smoky Land to establish their headquarters. The days of lawlessness would be over. And the man and the girl were exultant as two children as the fire’s glow spread its glamor over them.
“We’re going to win, Hugh,” she told him. “They’ve had weeks to strike, and they haven’t struck, and I think we’re safe. And it means so much.”
But Hugh shook his head. “It’s true that they haven’t struck,” he agreed, “and yet I can’t believe we’re safe. You didn’t see Fargo’s face as he turned to go that night. I don’t think he could forget. But if they just hold off a few days more——”
If he had owned the flocks himself, Hugh couldn’t have been happier at the thoughts of victory. There had been nothing easy or soft about the project of the sheep. He had given his own nerve and sinew, he had fought a tireless battle, and nothing in his life had ever mattered so much. It was the first real test and undertaking of his manhood: besides, it was all for Alice. Victory was at hand; and surely fate would not cheat them now. They had already started the flocks downward, following one of the tributaries of Silver Creek where there was still enough water for the flock. Early in October he would take them to a certain well-watered pasture on the lower slopes. In the meantime the rangers would come to his aid.
Suddenly he reached out and took her little, hard, brown hand in his. It yielded to his palm, and just for an instant he touched it to his cheek. Yet he didn’t look into her eyes. He was fearful—to the depths of his being—of the expression that might be read in them.
“Alice, it’s been a good fight,” he said simply. “And ever since the world began—when a good fight has been fought—it’s the soldier’s right to make certain requests—that he never had the right or the courage to make before.”
She nodded, and slowly he released her hand.
“No matter if he’s just a humble peasant,” the man went on, “if he’s given all that he has to give, he has a right to make those requests. And although the queen laughs in scorn, at least she can’t resent them—or order him beheaded.”
“I don’t think she could be scornful—if the peasant has given—everything he has.”
“I don’t think it would be quite fair either—although, of course, he might ask for things that she couldn’t grant. And that, perhaps, will be the way it is with me.”
She looked up, a strange mist and glory in her eyes. “What do you mean, Hugh?”
He heard the crackle of the fire, the stir of the wind behind her, the soft complaint of the sheep, stirring in their sleep, but most of all he discerned the music, the unutterable loveliness in her tones. “I mean that when this fight is won—I’m going to put my petitions to the queen.”
CHAPTER XXIII
In the still midday, desperate and half-mad with hunger, Broken Fang, the cougar, came stealing along a narrow pass in the high ranges of Smoky Land. He hadn’t had a great deal of success with the mountain creatures. The previous day he had caught a little pika on the sliderock; once a mountain grouse had failed to detect him lying like a tawny piece of crag beside a pass, but the great bighorn themselves had mostly been able to keep out of his way.
In the first place he was under the great disadvantage of fighting in the enemy’s country. The cougars are never quite at home in the high mountains. They are essentially a lowland people, and they have no love for the fields of glittering snow. They need trees in which to hide, brush thickets to wait in till the deer graze near by. The narrow passes, the rugged precipices, and the high knife-edge trails were the natural habitats of the wild sheep, but Broken Fang liked better walking. Besides, he didn’t know the country.
If any one supposes that animals do not have to learn the geographical nature of a hunting ground before they are really adept in it, it is wholly plain that he has never followed the tracks of a pack of strange wolves in a new land. By knowing all the trails, the bighorn were able to avoid the traps that Broken Fang so laboriously set. More than once, after a weary half-day’s wait, he would find to his chagrin that the sure-footed sheep had been watching him—chuckling no doubt among themselves—from a nearby promontory. They knew how to see him before he saw them, and in a fair chase he was simply out of the running. If his luck didn’t change soon, it seemed very likely that the buzzards would have a large heap of poorly upholstered bones to pick clean.
But to-night—as September days rolled to their mellow end—he had fresh hopes. For the wind had come and brought him good news. The flock was feeding on a little grass slope just in front.
Broken Fang felt that it was almost his last chance, and he intended to make the most of it. But desperate as he was, he kept his hunting cunning. This would indicate that certain of the beasts have even better nerve control than their superiors, human beings,—for a starving man would have been unlikely to go about his hunting with the same stealth and caution. He crept slowly forward, his nerves singing wild melodies within him. And stealing from above, he soon caught sight of the flock.
Some of them were feeding; Argali, Spot, and one or two of the other young rams were lying down. Broken Fang’s glaring eyes encompassed the whole scene, and with the swiftness and accuracy of a general, he mapped out his plan of attack. No naturalist explains by what swift avenues of intelligence he made his plans. Animals cannot reason. Instinct alone is severely taxed to account for all the wiles and astuteness of the wild creatures. But if this were instinct, it served him even better than intelligence.
It was true that his prey was out of leaping range of his trail. Yet for all that his heart throbbed with rapture. A jagged cliff approached within a few feet of them from the opposite side, and one détour would bring him close enough to strike. Best of all, he could leap at them from above.
The wind was right, the animals were not suspecting danger. He crept slowly about to the shelter of the opposite pass, then began to creep stealthily toward the sheep.
He didn’t see how he could miss, particularly the yearling ram that lay nearest the cliff. He was a newcomer in the band, and he wouldn’t be so wary as the others. It was a simple matter of stealing quietly over a ledge of rock, where there were no dry twigs to break beneath his feet, then to spring down with outstretched talons and open jaws. Already he was within a hundred feet. Their pungent smell was a madness in his nerves. Nearer—ever nearer—and now they were just below him. He had sunk so low against the crag that he looked more like a great tawny serpent than a feline. His tail twitched at its very tip as he crept on,—a few feet more. The whole realm was hung with that tense silence of the high mountains, a stillness wherein not even a wind whispers and the heart pounds like a drum in the breast.
This was not a coyote to be frightened away by an attitude of defense. If once the great puma launched forth in his spring, no power on earth could save the young ram. It seemed as if Spot were to lose his heritage already.
Broken Fang knew this crag. He had made a kill of one of its little people a day or two before. He had always had only scorn for these lesser folk,—the scurrying gophers, the timid rabbits, and the furry pikas in the rocks. Yet at that instant he was to receive a taste of their might. A shrill shriek suddenly split open the silence,—just in front of his head.
After all it was only a miniature sound, really little more than a high-pitched squeak. Yet in that unfathomable silence it cracked like a rifle. In one second of thought Broken Fang would have identified the sound, would have kept his poise, and a moment later would have sprung with fatal power into the flock of sheep. Yet that second of thought did not come in time. The impulse to his muscles, the sudden explosion of his tightly drawn nerves had the speed of light itself.
It was only a little pika—a rock rabbit, as the mountaineers call them,—such as the puma had killed the day before. It would have been surpassing poetic justice for it to have been the mate of the small, gray creature that had died so recently in his talons, squealing for the mother of his litter to come back to him. And his sharp squeal was just enough, and no more, to put high explosives under the sheep hunt.
The cougar’s nerves had been pitched to the highest key, and the muscular reaction to that shrill sound could not be restrained. His paw lashed out: the little rodent leaped from beneath it. And at the same instant he snarled.
Few living creatures can strike in silence. One of them is the mighty elephant, most intellectual and, of course, majestic of all the beasts. This jungle king can lunge out with a resistless force and still keep the tremendous silence of the sphinx. But the stallion screams when he strikes with his lashing hoofs. The elk bellows, and even the venerable, dignified old bear has a savage growl at his lips as he slashes his terrible paws at his foe. The pent-up passions do not find sufficient escape in the blow itself, and a vocal utterance usually accompanies it. As Broken Fang struck at the rodent, his short, terrible snarl rang through the still air.
The sheep needed no further warning. They sprang forward as if the sound had been a great hand that hurled them, without an instant’s delay. Broken Fang caught himself then, snarled and sprang among them; but he was a mere fraction of an instant too late.
The flock was divided—Argali and some of the ewes and immature rams circled about and dashed up the rocks at one side. The others—Spot and two young ewes—were cut off from this avenue of escape, and headed down the steep wall of the mountain. The way of the bighorn is the climbing trail—to flee to the heights where the ordinary run of hunters cannot follow. But Spot was obliged to take another course.
Broken Fang leaped after him. At first he ran only in anger and frenzy, for his instincts told him plainly and surely that it is usually the height of folly for a cougar to attempt to overtake the hoofed creatures in an open chase. But he had been cheated too many times; and his self-control had fallen further from him than the bottom of the gorge. The sheep raced on lightly, easily, and Broken Fang filled the canyons with his snarls.
But in a moment of vain pursuit a certain knowledge came to him. These sheep were headed down into his own country,—into the land of forest and thicket where he could hunt to an advantage. The thing to do was to continue the chase, prevent them from circling back, and who knows what glory might be his in the still, tree-clad ridges below him.
The chase of Spot and his bighorn ewes down into the greenwood was not the only stir of life in the midday silence of Smoky Land. At the same hour the hoofbeats of a running horse carried far through the dusky thickets of a certain great ridge to the east,—a place that divided Crowson’s range from the old Bear Canyon country. A man rode lightly in the saddle: and his dark skin revealed him as an alien in this northern land. José Mertos was riding on orders, and he came swiftly. There was work for him to-day.
He seemed to know just what to do. From time to time he scanned the horizon as if searching for a landmark. Then he turned off the trail through the heavy timber. The forest constantly grew more brushy, his advance ever more difficult. And at last he came to the mouth of a great, still canyon.
Very swiftly he went to work. And if it had not been for the curious intentness of his eyes, an unexplainable nervousness in his motions, one would have thought that he was merely making a camp. He collected a little pile of dry bark and pushed a few brown pine needles under it. Then he broke off some of the brittle branches of the underbrush. These were piled on too; and a match flashed in his hand.
Just a moment he stood, waiting until the flame—a yellow hungry little tongue that a slap of the hand could extinguish—crept like a serpent into the little heap of dead bark. He saw it grow and climb till, with a sudden leap, it sprang into the dry branches that he had broken off. And from there it was only one leap to the brittle brush of the shrubbery of the thicket.
José smiled then, a little, dim curling of his thin lips over his gleaming teeth. And he did not smile often. An event had to be very cruel and hurt some one very badly to waken mirth in him. And now there was no answering echo of simple pleasure in his dark eyes. Rather the fire that he had ignited had crept into them also: the pupils were oddly contracted and bright as points of steel. He seemed somewhat breathless, too, stirred to the depths with a madness unknown even to the wild creatures.
There is no more wholesome emotion on earth than the love for the open fire. It was the first friend, and its comradeship and protection are remembered from the immeasurable past. And there is no madness that is so devastating and terrible as that of incendiarism. José was not, ordinarily, a man given to excesses. But the fire madness was upon him now.
A fiendish light was in his eyes, a ghastly drawing distorted his features. His motions were less careful and patient. He laughed harshly, then swung on to his horse. He headed up the canyon, swooped off his horse’s back, and lighted another fire. The crackle of the first conflagration had already grown to a menacing roar behind him.
A quarter of a mile farther he lighted the third fire, and then the fourth. It was not to be just a sporadic brush fire, with open lanes between. It was to be a veritable wall of flame. It was the forest fire in its full sense, sweeping swiftly and immutably over hill and valley, through thicket and open forest, and leaving only ugly sticks and black ashes in its wake. The flame pounced upon the trees. The dusky branches caught, the red demon mounted higher, and already the spaces between his first few starting fires were closing up.
But still José did not cease. For five miles across the canyons he rode—in a great crescent—stopping ever to light his fires. And when that ride was done, he turned his mount back through Smoky Land, toward a certain canyon that was a gateway out of the region to high mountains where the fire could not go. He had other work to do.