CHAPTER XXIX
Almost in a breath Shep’s ferocity passed away. He eyed the still form for a sign of life, but quickly the fierce yellow lights died from his eyes. The avenger, the remorseless slayer was gone, and just the shepherd, rare comrade and fellow guardian of the flocks, remained. His tail wagged in friendship, the stiff hairs began to lie down at the animal’s shoulders. And he looked up in inarticulate appeal to the girl’s face.
“It’s no use, old boy,” the girl told him. “I’m tied fast and I can’t go with you. And—yes—the fire is coming.”
She told the truth. It had still a long way to go before it encompassed the floor of the draw, but it was steadily, remorselessly drawing nearer. The dog whined softly.
The girl shook her head. “I can’t go, old boy,” she repeated. “We’re lost—you and I and your master, too. You’ve helped us all you can.”
The animal seemed to understand. A great, brooding sorrow came into his intelligent eyes. Here was the third of them that had given his all for the sheep, one who had stayed for his work when his swift legs and sure instincts could have saved him from the fire; and when all is said and done, mostly for the same reason that Hugh had stayed with his sheep,—because it was the inner law of the breed from which he sprung. He was the shepherd dog, and he had fulfilled his obligation even to the death. Many of his breed before him had done as much. Many would come after—humble, unlauded—and obey to the inevitable end the same laws. The high schemes of the Universe were dimly before her eyes.
The dog barked again, then encircled the tree and licked softly at her hands. It occurred to the girl that she might try to make her position plain to the dog, urging him to bring his master to her aid. Yet she couldn’t gesture with her pinioned arms, and the understanding of Shep did not go out to words alone. She couldn’t write a note to fasten to the dog’s collar. “Help me, Shep,” she pleaded. “Go and get help.” The dog whined again, and she felt his warm tongue at her palm. “Can you hear me, Shep? Can’t you understand?”
As if in obedience, the dog turned and sped away. But in this last fearful hour she could not make herself accept even this shadow of a hope. Besides, Hugh was probably already dead or hemmed in by the two converging crescents of fire. She found herself wishing that the dog had stayed. He would be company for her in that last awful moment just before the shadow would drop down for good and all. She found herself dreaming that if he had only stayed, perhaps his kindly fangs would play—just one little time—at her throat, saving her from the final agony. He had always understood so well: perhaps he would have helped her cheat those stealing tongues of red that ever crept nearer. She couldn’t reach the pistol at her waist to cheat them herself. At least, she might have partaken of Shep’s own great spirit of strength.
She was alone and afraid at the dark frontier of death. There was no help, no mercy from the flames: the shadows hovered close. She wished she had stayed with Hugh. Death and its agony would not seem so fearful then, in the shelter of his arms. Now his kiss was cold upon her lips; but with their love to sustain them they could have faced bravely their remorseless doom. Smoke drifted around her. Most of it was carried up and away, yet perhaps it would bring merciful unconsciousness before the flames should creep up to her.
Running at top speed, Shep circled around the flock to Hugh’s side. The man was standing up to receive him. He had seen his speeding form a long way off through the dim clouds of smoke: the only creature that moved in the whole breadth of the forest. The sheep themselves were making no further effort to flee from the flames. Far or near, the wall had encircled them; and they stood as if stricken dead, heads close to the ground.
“Great God, Shep!” the man cried. “Have you come back to see it through with me?”
And a light that had no kinship with the dreadful glare of the fire flashed to the man’s face. Shep was returning to his flocks. He had kept faith, after all. He was only a dog, yet to Hugh his fidelity was a clear, bright shaft of light in an impenetrable darkness. No scales of earth could measure the difference that it made to him.
Yet Shep did not come to nestle in his strong arms. Memories were flashing over him, and he remembered a morning, months ago, when one of his wards had been in danger and he himself had been powerless to save. A lamb had fallen into the torrent, and his master had gone quickly to his aid. When he was within a few feet of Hugh he paused, barking, then ran a little way back.
“What is it, Shep?” the man asked. “What do you want me to do?”
The dog barked louder, running forward again and pausing to see if his master followed. Hugh gazed at him with widening eyes. At first it did not even occur to him that Alice was in distress. He supposed that she had fled to safety long since. Yet the dog was frenzied in his eagerness, just as in times past when some beast of prey had menaced one of the sheep. And Hugh remembered that never once had the dog urged him forward without cause.
“What is it, old man?” he cried. “There’s no way out. Let’s stay with the sheep—and see it through.”
But still the animal entreated. The fire raged and roared, burning slowly on the descents, leaping with incredible fury as it mounted the ridges, advancing steadily down the floor of the valley. East, west, south and north,—everywhere a wall of flame. There was no way out. Yet he could not doubt the urgency of this appeal. And all at once the instinct came to answer it.
Perhaps it was because of his abiding faith in the animal’s intelligence, perhaps just that in this final hour he knew that any miracle might come to pass. He sprang up, and he didn’t try to keep up with the dog at a walking pace. He ran from the first step.
The dead logs across the trail, the hills and steeps, the narrow passes between the walls of brush did not check his pace at all. The air surged into his lungs in great sobs, his muscles ached and burned as if the flames had already reached them. He knew—by token of a clear voice within himself—that he was running for alife—one that was very dear to him and must be saved at all cost.
Her arms still pinioned, Alice sat waiting for the end. It was hard to be brave in the ever-nearing presence of the flames. If there had been a cheering word from one she loved, one touch of a friendly hand, the moments would not seem so terrible and long. But she was helpless and alone, and all hope of aid was gone.
The way out of the fire trap was irremediably closed. True, there was a territory of large extent behind her not yet burned over, and she knew that if Hugh and his flock still lived they were in that space. In all directions raged the fire, and now the flames had stretched their terrible barrier clear across the little canyon in which she was a prisoner. Even if by some miracle her arms should be freed she could not escape. No human being could pass that flaming wall in front and yet live. Because she was in the deepest part of the canyon, its shadowed mouth where it met the broader canyon of Silver Creek, the fire had not yet burned down to her, but by no thousandth chance could this last little space of forest be spared. A few moments or many: the issue was unmistakable in the end. If the fire continued its present slow advance, perhaps the fevered cycle of her blood might be repeated many times; but at any instant a falling pine top from the flaming forest above might catch the tree against which she was bound and bring the end. There was only one thing left to pray for, now. There was still the fond wish that by some miracle the passing might come swiftly, that her soul might wing its way swift and free, not struggling from a pain-racked body, out of this dreadful land of glaring sky and glaring fire. Perhaps the out trail might be level and easy, after all.
Her thoughts no longer held quite true. Strange fancies swept her; and back of them was the clear, rational, unconfused voice of hope that perhaps these portended an unconsciousness that would spare her the cruelty of the end. The night must be far advanced by now, she thought. Uncounted centuries had come and dragged away since Hugh had pressed his lips to hers and she had ridden into the greenwood. The heat of the fire above her grew steadily fiercer, and she saw with a strange sorrow that the little mountain flowers—hardy, lovely things that had weathered the drought—were withered and dying. The smoke poured in billowing storms across the mouth of the canyon. The bark of the tree felt scorching hot against her bare arms. And still the frightful glare of the sky lighted up, as if in dreadful enchantment, the little space of unburned forest where she was confined.
And now the jaws of the flame were closing behind her. Only a little island was left, and any instant the faint night wind would blow the red tongues into the thicket beside her. It was the end. Perhaps the smoke—rarely unbearably dense, rangers know, even at the very edge of the forest fire—might bring unconsciousness after all. She felt herself drifting.
Sobbing words were at her lips. “Be merciful,” she pleaded to the Powers of whom mercy is the eternal spirit. “Don’t make it last any longer! Let me go to sleep——” Yet no ear, it seemed to her, could hear her above the frightful roar of the fire. And even her arms were bound so that she could not stretch them up in supplication.
And it was as if her prayer had been heard. At least she was not to endure the end in loneliness. A sharp, high bark pierced through the angry crackle and roar of the fire, and Shep leaped to her side. Only a narrow path remained between the two converging walls of flame behind her: a dreadful place of blasting heat and blinding smoke and darting flame tongues, yet the dog had sprung through like a winged creature. Behind him, still brave and strong and enduring, came his master.
He also sprang bravely through the closing barrier of flame. A great spirit of undying strength was on him, and the red arms reached for him in vain. He swung to her side, a dim, strange figure that at first seemed only a figment of fancy born in her prayers. He did not speak to her. Only strangled sobs were at his lips. His white-bladed hunting knife flashed at her bonds.
He snatched off his coat, wrapping it in one motion about her head and shoulders. He knew how those fire tongues he had just passed through would receive her tresses. And then she felt muscular arms go around her. As lightly and as strongly as if on the wings of Death itself he lifted her to his breast. He sprang forward with all his strength. And the three of them fought their way back—through the gates of peril—to the last remaining island in the sea of flame.
CHAPTER XXX
It was more than a reprieve,—the little hour that they would have together before their own island was submerged. They were three shepherds, and in their united strength they were not so fearful of such stars as would be borne into their sky. Here was comradeship instead of loneliness, courage instead of terror, and the deathless joy of love instead of despair.
They went, the three of them, back to the motionless flock. In the first place the sheep were fairly in the center of the space of unburned forest—a brushy hollow where the smoke was least—moving just enough to keep halfway between the steadily advancing fire up-wind and the slow-creeping backfire in the opposite direction. Besides, they were shepherds, and in their own hearts they felt a blind but undeniable satisfaction in being with the flocks at the end.
José and his employer had done their work well. In any direction their victims chose to look the forest was swept with fire. And in the ruby glare the resistless march of the flames was a strange and awful thing to watch. Sweeping fast up the ridges, creeping with almost imperceptible progress down the glades, leaping with indescribable ferocity through the green branches of the ancient trees, slashing through a brush wall and crossing in one pounce the streams and the trails. This last hour was one of weird and terrible beauty, at least. The three of them stood beside the silent flocks, quietly waiting for their fate.
There was no use in trying to drive the sheep. There was no place for them to go. True, to the right and left of the flock the flame-wall was slightly more distant than to the front and rear, but it was as impassable one place as another. Besides, the sheep themselves refused to be driven. They too were quietly waiting for the end.
“One more hour,” Hugh whispered. His arms went about her, silently and strongly, as if to shelter her. “It can’t be over an hour more. And then we go—some place—together.”
The girl shivered in his arms. “I wish it would come soon. It hurts—to breathe.”
It was so. The heated air tortured the lungs. There was none of the cool delight that usually precedes the hour of dawn in the mountain realms. Above them the pines stood in their dark watch: silent, somber, noble sentries of the wilderness. But for all their venerable years and their great strength, they could not stand against the enemy that menaced them now. The red tongues would sweep through them, they would shudder and fall, and only black trunks, dismal and ugly, would remain when the red scourge had passed.
The girl suddenly turned entreating eyes to his. There was only the dark shadow of fear in them now, none of the mad panic they had had in the nearby canyon. “Listen, Hugh,” she whispered, just in his ear. “I have one thing to ask—the hardest thing of all.”
Hugh flinched—ever so slightly—and an immeasurable dread came into his face. “Tell me what it is. I think I know.”
“It’s going to be hard because—you love me. And you do, don’t you? I can’t be brave if you don’t. I want to keep remembering it——”
He nodded, gravely. No words were needed to assure her. This strong shepherd could only speak truth at a time like this.
“But we’re mountain people—and you know it will be the best. And it’s because you love me—that I know you’ll do it for me. To spare me—and then yourself. I’d have done it back there if my hands hadn’t been tied.”
He understood. Her hand stole around him and touched the butt of his pistol. For a long breath he waged an inward battle, and he called on all the powers of his spirit to give him strength. But it was true that they were of the mountains; and they saw issues straight. This was no hour for emotionalism and folly. The flames swept nearer; but with one press of his finger on the revolver trigger he could save this girl he loved the final horror of a fiery death. One shock, one sweep through the darkness, and then peace: not the slow agony of the enfolding flames. He could not do better service. He was the shepherd still.
“Yes,” he promised. “I’ll do it—at the end of the hour. And the dog too.”
It was only fair to include the dog. He was one of the triumvirate. He had kept faith, he had stood the test. The moments were born, passed and died. The tall trees caught, flamed, and fell. The smoke clouds gathered, enfolded the three of them, and passed on.
They were nearly blind from the wood smoke, the heat had become almost too much for living flesh to bear. There was no need of waiting longer, perhaps to fall into unconsciousness from the smoke and then to waken to feel the flames licking at the flesh. The wall of fire was still nearly a mile distant to the west, but its march was swift. Hugh’s terror had gone, and he found himself longing for such cool peace as would follow the third revolver shot.
The girl’s lips pressed his. She knew the progress of his thoughts. “There’s no use of waiting any longer,” she said unwaveringly. “Let me be the first.”
“The dog first,” he told her. He couldn’t get away from an all-engrossing desire to keep her with him to the end, and to spring out of life with his hands in hers. Perhaps it would be kinder to spare her the sight of Shep’s death—yet his spirit lacked the strength.
“The dog first,” the girl repeated. “And don’t—wait—any more.”
The dog’s appealing eyes were upon them. Their own spirit—that of immortality itself which only men seem to possess—had pervaded him, and the dark eyes seemed unafraid. To the beasts, death is a darkness and a fear; but Shep knew that these two masters would have only mercy and kindness for him. Hugh’s hand reached back for the revolver.
But the forest gods had not written that Shep should die so soon. The drama of the flaming forest was not yet over. An interlude strange and startling past all words; three figures—vivid in outline and bathed in the fire’s glow—came speeding toward them from the thickets to the east. A gasp of wonder fell from Hugh’s lips as he beheld them.
Two of the forms were unfamiliar, but one of them was known and beloved of old. Hugh couldn’t mistake the trim figure, the curved undeveloped horns of the first of the three. No break appeared in the fiery wall toward the east, yet Spot—his own unmistakable form and his wool unsinged—ran steadily toward them in plain sight of all three. It was as if he had returned from the shadow world, a ghostly savior in the hour when his old followers hovered at the gulf of death. A great wave of hope swept the man’s frame.
But in an instant he saw the explanation. Spot and his ewes had not come unaccompanied. A tawny form loped swiftly behind them. It was Broken Fang, the monarch of the cougars, and he had simply driven the three bighorn down into his own hunting ground at last.
“If there’s a way in, there must be a way out,” Hugh spoke sharply. “Stand still, so the cougar’ll come in range.”
Suddenly he seemed to know that in some invisible and secret way that he could not trace, the whole issue of life and death had centered down to his war with Broken Fang. He couldn’t have told why. Dimly he knew that after days and hours of desperate pursuit, following still the ancient herd-instinct and perhaps impelled by the memories of certain crises, when he had run with the domestic sheep, Spot had come here for protection from the tawny creature that threatened him. After that desperate foe was conquered, he would pay his debt to Hugh,—not through conscious impulse but by the mandates of some great law of the wilderness and life that no man may name or read. Hugh drew his revolver, but its bullet was not for Shep. And the three of them crouched low, waiting for the cat to come in range.
He gave no thought to the fact that a pistol is usually a futile weapon indeed against such a mighty, strong-lived animal as a great cougar. He knew by the animal’s frantic leaps that he was desperate with hunger, stark mad from the long chase that had never seemed to end, and frenzied, perhaps, by the fire. The felines do not often chase their game in open pursuit; but in his madness he had forgotten his hunting cunning. He saw the motionless flock and came at a charge.
Spot hurried around the flank of the flock and, watching the cougar’s advance, Hugh was wholly blind to the fact that every one of those three thousand sheep lifted their lowered heads. The cougar came almost straight toward him, as fast as an African lion in the charge. He had emerged from the brush only a little more than a hundred yards distant, and half of the space between had already been crossed. But still Hugh held his fire. He knew that only at a point-blank range would the little pistol bullet stop that wild charge.
And the calm, sure strength of the wilderness itself came down and sustained him during the stress and fury of the attack. His face was impassive, his hands steady as bars of steel, his eyes were narrow and bright and clear. He raised the revolver. He glanced coolly down its sights. And he fired for the first time when the great cat was hardly forty feet away.
The bullet sped true, inflicting a mortal wound, and the great beast recoiled. But the shocking power of the lead was not enough to destroy wholly the mighty engine of life in Broken Fang’s body. He snarled once in fury and sprang forward again. But it was not the hunting charge now. It was the blind, savage rush of a wounded animal, ready to fight to the death.
Again Hugh shot with amazing accuracy, and again the cat went down. But the impetus of his fury could not be overcome. He leaped forward, and the third bullet was a complete miss. The fourth, following quickly upon it, inflicted a flesh wound but halted him not at all. And he crashed down once more at the fifth.
But even then the vital, surging life in the creature still lingered. He came creeping forward, fangs gleaming, long talons bared. An instant more Hugh waited, standing straight and motionless. Only one bullet remained, and no risks must be taken with that. Shep—who had rushed about the flock at Spot’s approach—came charging to his master’s aid.
One long second dragged away, with a curious effect of silence and immeasurable suspense. It was such a picture that might never be effaced from the memory: the suddenly awakened sheep, the approaching forest fire, the motionless figures, the snarling, creeping feline, and the red glow as of the abyss over all. The creature paused—scarcely ten feet distant—and gathered himself for a final spring. Hugh fired his last bullet.
There was one strange instant more in which the bunched muscles relaxed and the great body wilted in the pine needles. The dog leaped upon it, but it was already impotent. A strength such as but rarely comes to man had held Hugh’s hand steady; and the shot had made a clean passage through the creature’s brain.
Broken Fang’s trail of rapine and carnage had come to an end at last. He typified all that was most deadly and terrible in the wilderness, and he had fallen in fair battle with the breed whose strength—in such regions where they venture—has conquered the wilderness. He was a forest monarch; but his foe was the shepherd. Talon and fang and supple strength had not been availing.
He would linger no more about the white flocks, and the Little People along the game trails had seen him steal by for the last time. No more would the deer know his long, shuddering scream as the night came down. He lay as if fallen in battle against the flocks,—a token of man’s dominance of the wild.
Hugh turned from him to find a strange stir and excitement among the sheep. It seemed to him that in those invisible ways no man may trace, a knowledge and a message was being passed from one to another; and a new hope and spirit was sweeping the flock. There was no concerted movement as yet. Still the sheep stood motionless, but their heads were raised. The only moving forms were those of Spot and his ewes, running along the flank of the flock. And suddenly Spot turned back in the direction that he had come.
And every animal in that flock of three thousand leaped after him in pursuit. The whole expanse of white lurched forward like an avalanche starting from the high peaks. Hugh cried out in irrepressible wonder, and thrill after thrill coursed like electricity through his frame. An unspeakable rapture flooded his being; and he whirled about to find a white flame—no less miraculous than this sudden sweeping-forward of the flocks—mounting in Alice’s face. The dog raced forward, barking.
By instinct rather than reason the shepherds understood. Their old leader had for the moment at least returned to the sheep; they rallied as instinctively as soldiers at the sight of their beloved general, and they were ready to follow him even into the flame. It made no difference that he was leading straight toward the flaming wall to the east, a dreadful region where the fire raged fiercely and whence without his leadership they would have been afraid to go. They ran as if with renewed spirit.
Perhaps they remembered him of old and gave him their trust. Perhaps he brought them word of some new hope that lay even in the jaws of death. Swiftly the flock fell into its old formation, the strongest in front, every black marker in its place. They swept like a foam-covered sheet of water into the red dusk of the distant forest.
“Come!” Hugh shouted. “Spot’s showing us the way.”
CHAPTER XXXI
“The Little People show the way,” was the saying of a more credulous race in an older West; and Hugh knew its truth at last. This was no blind lead,—the westward course of the bighorn ram in the van of the sheep flock. He led them straight to a pass that only the wild creatures knew, a course already taken by such of the animals as had been trapped between the converging walls of flame and through which Broken Fang had pursued him. The instincts of the lesser folk had served when Hugh’s own conscious intelligence and knowledge had failed.
After a half-mile’s wild run Spot turned into a narrow-mouthed canyon, leading in a long course clear to the high peaks. A creek had flowed through it in some past age and carved its banks, but through some geological catastrophe its waters were diverted and only a dry bed of stones remained. Half-hidden by heavy brush thickets, neither Fargo nor Alice had ever dreamed of its existence: it was just one of many unknown gorges in the unlimited mountain spaces of the American West. Spot—perhaps wholly unaware of the fire—had sped down it before the pursuit of Broken Fang, and now that his enemy was slain he was simply taking the same course back to his own people in the mountains.
The flame had not yet crept down its rocky, barren walls. It was such a place as the rattlesnakes love, but not a feeding ground for sheep; and the little herbage that grew between its bowlders had not offered a swift passage for the fire. The flames raged above them on each side, but the fiery walls had not yet converged and made the impassable barrier on which Fargo had counted. And Spot’s whole flock sped behind him into its sheltering depths.
They were none too soon. Within a few minutes the advancing tide of flame would have covered its mouth if indeed it had not crept down over the steep walls into the canyon floor itself. But the straight road to safety was open at last. Far beyond, leading him like a star, Spot could see the glorious white peaks of his home. The domestic sheep could not follow him all the distance, yet the way was clear and safe for them completely beyond the outer reaches of the fire. And all that Hugh and Alice had to do—with Shep running and barking with joy beside them—was to follow the white flocks.
The lesser folk had shown the way,—just as many times before in the long roll of the ages. No man could have followed Spot out from the terror of the fire that night and still thought—in monstrous arrogance—that the wild things of the world were created only for his own blood-lust and his own pleasure. The comradeship of men and beasts is of ancient origin, and its utility is not yet gone. The bighorn ram—exiled by birth among strangers and lost to his brethren once more because of the cougar’s hunting—was headed back to his own snow-capped peaks—and Hugh and Alice and the surging flocks had simply followed his lead. And the way he had shown was that of life and safety when all other paths were closed.
Just before the dawn broke, Hugh and Alice stood behind the flock, safe and far from the ravages of the fire. Already Spot and his two ewes had sped up a precipitate trail—where, because of the steep rocks and the interference of Shep, the domestic sheep could not follow—and now all three thousand of them were quietly grazing at the very foot of the high mountains. And no man may say whether or not—like the lame child of Hamlin town—they gazed with wistful eyes toward the misty mountain realms where their leader had gone. They had been of the mountains too, when the world was young, and perhaps they found themselves longing for the steep ways and the hard days and the fierce delights that constitute the lives of those mountain monarchs, the bighorn sheep.
The dawn grew in the east. The white peaks glowed and gleamed. And the girl’s brown hand crept into Hugh’s.
“Did you know,” she asked him, whispering, “that we’ve won? That we’re safe, after all? The rangers are probably already on the way to fight the fire, and we’ve nothing more to fear.”
He turned to her, and they had a moment of laughter in which they rejoiced at each other’s appearance. Their clothes were torn and half burned away; the man’s eyebrows and lashes were singed; and their skins were smudged with soot. But the perils and the stress had left no weight upon their spirits. They were blistered, hungry, desperately fatigued, but they were gloriously happy and triumphant.
“We’ve won,” he echoed. “A few fatalities—but not enough to count.” He had engaged in much folly in his time, but it was to be said of Hugh that he wasted no emotion or maudlin words over the dead body of José in the burning brush behind. “And we can get Fargo too—on a charge of arson, at least. There will be some way to handle him. And the only thing left to talk about is you and I.”
“Shep, too,” she reminded him soberly.
The man glanced down into the loving brown eyes of the shepherd dog. He also was dirty and disheveled,—a shocking thing to be seen in a drawing-room but beloved past all utterance here. “Heaven forgive me, Shep, for forgetting you,” the man cried, dropping to his knees. He was quite sober as he held the dog a long moment in his strong arms. His bronzed face was intent. It was enough reward for Shep. His master released him, and he circled round the two of them, barking in mad joy.
And after all they attended to Shep’s destinies very swiftly. No wealth on earth could take him from them. And because their thought was clear and their understanding great, they did not even consider banishing him to a life of ease,—a chimney corner where he might doze away the days. Shep was of the world of toil; until his noble spirit departed from his body he would still have his guard of honor over the sheep. He would still know the hard labor, the long grinding hours, the nervous sleep in the firelight beloved of long ago, and perhaps—for reward—a plain meal and a caress at the end of the day.
“And if you’re going to stay with Shep,” the girl went on, her eyes averted, “it means—that you’re going to stay with the sheep?”
He smiled strangely. “Could I ever leave them, Alice?” He groped for words, but none had ever been invented that could reveal the sudden, moving impulses of his soul. “I can’t tell you how much it has all meant—how much it will mean in the future. Don’t you see, Alice—that this is my rightful place? With the sheep? In the wilderness? I couldn’t go—even if you sent me away, I’d have to go into the sheep business on my own account.”
“That’s right—you could. You could raise money——”
He suddenly laughed,—in sheer delight. His wealth—forgotten in the great vaults in an Eastern city—would be of use to him, after all. In a few breathless sentences he told her of his past life, his wasted days, and his regeneration. They would fill the hills with the feeding flocks, these two. Still they would know the comradeship of the camp fire, the night wind whispering through the secret places. It was their heritage, and they would not forego it. They were the shepherds, and this was their destiny.
“And if we’re both going to have old Shep, and both follow the flocks—there’s another consideration, too,” Hugh went on. “Maybe it’s too much to ask. But the soldier has seensomeservice; and he can’t restrain himself any longer. We’ve got to have each other, too.”
A strong man’s love looked out to her from his eyes, and his face was sober and wistful with entreaty. There was just one instant in which the whole world hung suspended over a pit of darkness. And then, with a glad little cry, she stole into his arms.
“Each other—always,” she told him. “Oh, shepherd of my heart!”
And perhaps the spirit of the Old Colonel—sitting in the Greenwood Club and dreaming of the mountain realms he loved—came wandering over peak and plain and saw these two, their arms about each other and their eyes lighted with fond dreams—and swiftly stole back to make its report to its master. And thereupon the old man smiled in his half-doze, wondering at the mighty ways of worlds and men,—and the calm spirit of the flocks, grazing in the forest.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes:
Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected without note. Where multiple spellings were found, majority use has been employed.
[End ofShepherds of the Wildby Edison Marshall]