Treve noted the single sheep’s flight. It outraged all his native prowess as a herder that he should be held ignominiously by the scruff of the neck while such a thing went on. Twisting suddenly, he wrenched free from Toni’s careless grip; and rushed back into the field after the stray. Toni snatched belatedly at the golden swirl of fur that flashed past him. So did Joel Fenno.
The sheep, hearing his pursuer behind him, veered to the left; making for a right-angle niche that indented one edge of the side fence, perhaps a hundred yards from the gap;—a sort ofalcove; where cattle had formerly been herded in bunches of two or three, to pass on through a gate whose place had since been taken by the high barrier of wire.
With Treve not three feet behind him, the sheep reached this cul-de-sac; discovered that it led nowhere; and turned to get out of it. At his first shambling step he rolled heels over head in a somersault; a .45 bullet drilling him clean.
Chris Hibben had gone into action. As soon as the hard-ridden pony had brought him within range, he had opened fire. His first bullet found its mark; but—as he himself knew—more by luck than by skill. For, only in motion pictures and in Buffalo Bill shows can a man hope to take any sort of accurate aim from the back of a jerkily running pony.
Moreover, this pinto of Hibben’s was but half-broke. At sound of the shot, the pony swerved, spun about on the pivot of his own bunched hindlegs; and then sought to get the bit between his teeth and run away. Failing, he resented curb and spur by a really brilliant exhibition of bucking.
Enraged, and by no means intending that his prey should escape or that the wizened old Fenno should complete his rheumatic run across the corner of the field in time to save the collie,Hibben sprang to earth, flinging the reins over his pinto’s head.
A trained cow-pony will stand for hours if the rein is thus flung. But the pinto was not yet well trained. Also, he had been bewildered by the shot and by the spurring, into a forgetfulness of all he had learned. He set off at a panicky canter, the loose rein catching in his forefoot and snapping.
Unheeding, Chris Hibben ran forward to the niche where Treve was standing in grieved amaze above the body of the slain sheep. Halting just within the outer opening of the alcove, Hibben leveled his gun, using his left forearm as a rest; and pulled the trigger.
He was not twenty feet from the motionless dog; and he was a good shot. Yet he missed Treve by at least six feet. This by reason of a fragile old body that hurled itself against him from behind.
Joel Fenno had made the last few rods of the distance between the gap and the indented niche in something like record time; his stiff muscles stirred to incredible power by the imminent danger of his chum. The others from the Dos Hermanos ranch, Royce Mack among them, were still standing stupefied and inert. Joel struck up the pistol arm and in the same move banged his own full weight against the broad back of thecattleman. The result was a lamentable miss; and the saving of the collie’s life.
The impact and the heavy-caliber pistol’s own recoil, knocked the gun from Hibben’s hand. Chris turned, cursing. His left elbow caught Fenno in the chest and knocked the little old rancher flat. Then Hibben stooped to regain the pistol.
But he was met and driven backward by a flamingly wrathful mass of fur and whalebone strength that smote him amidships, in an effort to seize his throat. Treve, seeing his loved master knocked down, had left his post beside the dead sheep and launched himself like a vengeful avalanche upon Joel’s assailant. Here lay his first duty; and he wasted no time in fulfilling it.
Hibben staggered backward, clawing at the furious brute which sought to rend his throat. In the same instant, a scream of mortal terror from Joel Fenno was taken up by the far-off group at the gap. At the sound, Treve forsook his prey and spun about to face the slowly rising Joel. Hibben, too, forgot his own danger, in the stress of that shriek; and turned to look.
The drouth and the eternal smell of smoke had gotten on the nerves of the three hundred cattle pastured in the field. To-day, the inrush of the strange and repellent-smelling grayish creatures upon their territory had agonized those rawnerves to frenzy. On top of all this, the scent of fresh-spilled blood had the effect that so often it has on overwrought range cattle.
Something like fifty white-fronted Hereford steers suddenly lowered their horns and, by common consent, charged that blood-reek. In other words, Joel Fenno, in trying to get up, had seen coming toward the alcove-space a tumble of lowered heads and express-train red bodies. Though he was a sheepman, he knew what a cattle charge meant. And he screamed horrified warning to his fellow-human in that death-trap.
Old cattleman though he was, Chris Hibben stood frozen to stone at the sight. Then he glanced toward the alcove fence behind them. Seven feet of close-meshed barbed wire—coyote-proof, bull-tight, horse-high. No man might hope to scale so bristling a stockade. Hibben himself had ordained that fence in the days when this end of the range had been given up to calves, and when wolves and rustlers abounded.
Subconsciously, the two men stood close beside each other, as they faced the thundrous charge. Their hands met in a moment’s tight grip. Treve did nothing so professionally melodramatic. He saw the peril quite as clearly as did Joel or Hibben. But his duty was to avert it; not to stand supine or to make stagey gestures. In thewink of an eye, he was off on his gay dash toward the on-thundering bunch of blood-crazed steers.
Treve had had no experience in driving cattle. But his wolf ancestors had known crafty ways of their own, in dealing with wild cows. Into their descendant’s wise brain their spirits whispered the secret, now; even as Treve’s collie ancestors had told him, from the first, how sheep must be herded.
Tearing along toward the galloping phalanx of horned and lowered heads, the collie burst into a harrowing fanfare of barks. Straight at the mad steers he ran; barking in a way to rouse the ire of the most placid bovine. Nor did he check his flying run, until he was almost under the hoofs of the foremost steer—a mighty Hereford which ran well in advance of his crowding companions.
To the lowered nose of this leader, Treve lunged; slashing the sensitive nostril; and then, by miraculous dexterity, dodging aside from the hammering hoofs. Not once did he abate that nerve-jarring bark.
The hurt steer swerved slightly, in an effort to pin the elusive collie to earth. The dog swerved, too—barely out of reach of the horns. As he dodged, he slashed the bleeding nostril afresh.
It was pretty work, this close-quarters flirting with destruction. The fearless dog was enjoying the gay thrill and novelty of it as seldom had he enjoyed anything.
Under the repeated onslaught, the steer definitely abandoned his former course; and set about to demolish the dog. But Treve, always a bare inch or two out of reach, refused to be demolished. Indeed, he ducked under the lumberingly chasing body and flew at the two nearest steers that pressed on behind their leader. The nose of one of these he slashed deeply. The second steer of the two was too close upon him for such treatment. Treve leaped high in air, landing on the back of the plunging animal, and nipping him acutely in the flank before jumping off to continue his nagging tactics.
That was quite enough. The steers had some definite object, now, in their charge. Following their three affronted leaders, the whole battalion of them bore down upon the flying collie. Forgotten was their vague intent to charge the alcove space and trample the blood-soaked earth around the dead sheep. There was a more worthy object now for their rage.
Treve noted his own success in deflecting the rush. Blithely he fled from before his bellowing foes. But he fled at an increasing angle from the direction in which first they had been going.The steers hammered on in his wake. He kept scarcely five feet of space between himself and their front rank. Head high, plumed tail flying, he galloped merrily along, barking impudent insult over his shoulder; and leading the chase noisily down the field.
Treve was having a beautiful time.
Nearly a mile farther on, he tired of the sport. His ruse had succeeded. Putting on all speed, he drew away easily from the wearying cattle; made a wide detour and trotted back to his master. The winded steers had had quite enough. Finding at length that the dog had swiftness they could not hope to equal, they shambled to a halt. One by one they stopped staring sulkily after their tormentor; and fell to cropping grass. Steers are philosophers, in their way.
Treve found Joel and Hibben standing with the herdsmen at the fence gap. They were waiting only for his return to lift the broken-posted panel to place again, as best they could.
“If you’re still honin’ to shoot him, Mister Hibben—” began Fenno, sourly, as Treve came up.
“I—I left my gun back yonder,” muttered Hibben, in reply, his tall body still shaking as with a chill. “And, anyhow— Say, put a price on that collie of yours! Don’t haggle! Put aprice on him. If I c’n help it, no such grand dog is going to have to live with a passel of sheepmen, no longer. He—”
“This here’s only a dog,” gravely interrupted Fenno, “a no-’count dog, for the most part. But we-all don’t aim to humiliate him by makin’ him ’sociate with cowboys an’ steers and suchlike trash. He ain’t wuthless enough for that. So long, neighbor! We’ll be on our way, now. Any time you want to reform an’ buy a nice bunch of sheep, jes’ give us a call. C’m’on Trevy!”
When Treve saved Chris Hibben from a peculiarly hideous death under the hoofs of Chris’s own Triple Bar steers, he did more to patch up a truce between the Dos Hermanos and the Triple Bar outfits than could a score of peace conferences.
From the beginning, throughout the West, sheepmen and cattlemen have been mortal enemies. Seldom has this eternal feud blazed hotter than between Chris Hibben’s cattle ranch and the nearby Dos Hermanos sheep ranch of Joel Fenno and Royce Mack.
Ever there had been a grim understanding that a sheep or sheepdog straying over the line into the Triple Bar range was a sheep or sheepdog killed. More than once this understanding had been justified.
Then, too, a year before, a bunch of six yearling beef cattle had strayed through a fence gap and down the coulée into Number Six camp of the Dos Hermanos. There all trace of them was wiped out;—except that Toni and the other Dos Hermanos herdsmen varied their drearyfare of tinned goods and tough mutton by a prolonged fresh-beef debauch.
Then had come the day when Treve unwittingly played the rôle of Dove of Peace by turning a cattle stampede and saving the dismounted Hibben from being trampled into the next world. After which Chris gave terse command to his cowboys that the pesky Dos Hermanos sheep could come along and chew the barbs off the wire of the Triple Bar home corral if they chose to; and if need be they were to be escorted back in safety and in cotton wool.
Nor did Hibben stop there. From that one briefly terrific moment of the turned stampede, he had seen what a collie could accomplish with cattle. He saw more. He saw that two or three well-trained collies could do the work of a dozen cowboys. Yes, and they could and would do it on board wages and without threats of going on strike or complaints about the grub. Nor would they vanish on pay-day and show up a week later with delirium tremens. It would be a tremendous saving. Anyhow, the experiment was worth trying.
It was not Hibben’s custom to do anything rashly. Thus he planned to begin in a small way; by the purchase of a single collie. If that first dog should do the work satisfactorily it would be time to buy more. With this in viewhe surprised the Dos Hermanos partners, one evening, by riding across to their ranch-house. Mack and Fenno were sitting on the handkerchief-sized porch, smoking a before-bedtime pipe. At Royce’s feet lay Treve.
On sound of Hibben’s approach, the big collie was awake and alert. Down the path he dashed, to meet, and if need be stop, the intruder. Then, recognizing the man he had rescued, the collie drew aside and let Chris proceed up the path to the porch.
“Evening,” said Hibben, stiffly uncertain of his welcome.
“Evening,” replied Mack, with cold civility, while old Joel Fenno sat still and scowled mute query.
“Have you eaten?” went on Royce, in the time-honored local phrase of hospitality.
“Yep,” said Chris; adding: “Not cawed mutton, neither.”
He caught himself up, belatedly recalling that he was at peace with these sheepmen; and he hurried on to ask:
“Will you boys set a price on that collie of yours? Nope, I’m not joshing. I don’t know how such critters run in price. But I’ve got a couple of hundred dollars in my jeans, here, that I’ll swap for him.”
“Treve’s not for sale,” was Royce Mack’s curtretort. “We told you that, the day he kept your steers out of your hair. He—”
“Hold on!” purred Joel, smitten with one of his rare and beautiful ideas. “Hold on, Friend Hibben. Trevy ain’t for sale. Just like my partner says. Not that he’s wuth any man’s money—not even a cattleman’s. But we’ve got kind of used to his wuthless ways and we aim to keep him. But if you’re honin’ for a collie, I c’n tell you where to get one. Always s’posin’ you’re willin’ to pay fair for a high-grade article. I c’n give you theaddress of the feller who used to own Treve.”
“That’s good enough for me,” returned Chris. “The feller that bred this dog of yours sure knew how to breed the best. I’ll hand him that much. And it’s the best I want. Who is he and where does he hang out?”
“Wait,” said Fenno, with amazing politeness, as he heaved his rheumatic frame up from his chair and pottered away into the house. “I’ve got hisaddress in here. I’ll write it down for you.”
With as near an approach to a grin as his surly leathern mask could achieve he made his way to his own cubbyhole room. There he dug out the battered gray catalog of the Dos Hermanos dogshow to which he had taken Treve. Riffling its pages, he came to the list ofexhibitors’ names at the back. One of these he jotted down with a pencil stump on a dirty envelope and returned with it to the porch.
The name he had found and scribbled was “Fraser Colt.” After it he had copied the man’s address, from the catalog.
It seemed to Joel the acme of refined humor to steer this once-hostile cowpuncher up against the man of all others who seemed most likely to cheat him. Judging from his own experience with Colt, he felt reasonably certain the dog-breeder could be relied on to whipsaw any trusting customer; especially when that customer was so far distant as to make it necessary to buy, sight unseen.
Royce Mack gave a low whistle of amaze as Fenno showed the name and address to him, on the way across the porch to hand it to Hibben. Then Mack choked back a half-born expostulation. He remembered the loss of sheep after sheep at the hands of the Triple Bar outfit. He saw no reason to spoil his partner’s joke.
A week later, in response to a letter of inquiry, Chris received word from Fraser Colt that the latter had no full-grown and trained cattle-herding collies in stock, just then; but that he had an unusually promising thoroughbred female collie puppy which could readily be taughtto work cattle, since both her parents had been natural cattle workers.
As Mr. Fraser Colt was closing out his kennels and moving East, Mr. C. Hibben was at liberty to avail himself of this really remarkable chance for a bargain, by purchasing the puppy in question (“Cirenhaven Nellie”) at the ridiculously low price of seventy-five dollars; payable in advance. If this generous proposition interested Mr. C. Hibben, would Mr. C. Hibben kindly forward his check (certified) for the above sum; along with shipping directions? If, on the contrary, Mr. C. Hibben was a mere “shopper” or was inclined to haggle, this letter required no answer.
Now Chris Hibben could no more have been cheated or overcharged on a consignment of beef cattle than could a bank cashier be hoaxed by a leaden half-dollar. But, on the subject of dogs he was woefully ignorant. Moreover, there was a curtly self-assured and businesslike tang to the letter, which impressed him. Besides, hadn’t the Dos Hermanos outfit a wonder-dog, acquired from the same man? Surely it was worth the gamble.
Chris sent the certified check, as soon as he could get it from the Santa Carlotta bank.
A week later arrived a matchwood crate, containing the collie pup. Hibben himself motoredacross to Santa Carlotta to bring home his purchase. His homeward road led past the Dos Hermanos ranch. He saw the two partners washing up, on the steps, preparatory to supper. Beside them stood Treve; mildly tired and more than mildly hungry after a long day on the range.
Chris turned in at the gate and hailed Fenno and Mack, pointing with pride to the crate.
“Oh, you got her, hey?” said Joel, with much interest. “I’ll come out and have a look at the pup. Fraser Colt sure knows a collie. Pretty near as intimate as a vivisector is due to know the smell of brimstone. This dog will be a treat to see.”
“I’ll save you the trouble of comin’ out here,” called back Hibben, lifting the crate and its light burden out of the truck. “I’ll fetch her up there, onto your stoop. I haven’t even had a chance to look at her yet. We’ll have an inspection bee. I want your opinion of her.”
As he talked, he was carrying the crate along the path. Joel astounded Royce Mack by going out to meet him and by carrying one end of the box up the steps. Joel was not wont to lend an unasked hand.
On the porch floor the crate was set. Hibben undid its crazy catch and opened its door.
Slowly, uncertainly, a half-grown collie pup stepped out and stood before them.
Hibben nodded appreciatively. He was no dog judge. But he could see that this was a really handsome puppy. Her coat was dense and long. It was a rich mahogany in hue; save for the snowy chest and paws and tailtip. An expert might have found the pretty head too broad and the ears too large and low for show-purposes or even for a show brood-matron’s career. But the newcomer was decidedly good-looking. She seemed not only intelligent but strong.
Joel puckered his forehead. The unaccustomed smirk fled from his leathern face. The joke was turning out to be no joke at all. This strikingly handsome youngster appeared to be well worth seventy-five dollars.
Mack was loud in his praise. But, like Fenno, he could not reconcile the pup’s excellent value with his own theories of Colt.
“Yep,” pursued Hibben, “that’s Cirenhaven Nellie. A beauty, ain’t she? I’m sure your debtor for sickin’ me onto that Colt chap. I wish now I’d ordered a couple more of ’em.”
Treve had watched with keen interest the opening of the crate. Now he came forward eagerly and touched noses with the bewildered pup. His plumed tail was wagging in friendly welcome.
“He won’t bite Nellie, will he?” asked Hibben, a trifle anxiously.
“No,” answered Royce Mack. “Man is about the only animal that mistreats the female of his race. Treve’s making friends with her. See, Joel? He’s making more friends with her than ever he’s made with any of the range collies. He acts like he knew she was helpless and that he had to protect her. He—”
Mack broke off in his lecture. The new puppy had begun to move about, on the porch, with a queer wariness. Now, coming to its edge, she did not observe that there was a two-foot drop to the yard below; and she was stepping out into space when a quick intervention of Treve’s shaggy shoulder turned her back to confused safety.
“Hold on!” exclaimed Joel, suddenly. “I knew there was a catch in it, somewheres. An’ her eyes have a funny look, too! Watch me.”
He struck a match and held it scarcely an inch from the puppy’s wide eyes; twitching the flame back and forth in the windless air, so close to her unflinching pupils that the lashes were all but singed. Nellie did not so much as blink.
“Blind!” diagnosed Joel, with grim satisfaction. “Stone blind. I knew there was suthin’ queer. There was bound to be. Been blind always, most likely, if she’s only six months old. Hibben, you’re stung all the way acrost the board. Your Cirenhaven Nellie couldn’t ever be learnedto herd anything—without it was the three blind mice the feller writ the song about. You’re seventy-five dollars in the hole!”
The poor blind pup seemed to sense the ridicule in his tone. She shrank back a little in her groping approach toward the speaker. Instantly, Treve licked her face reassuringly, as though he were comforting a scared child. The big dog had known instinctively that this newcomer was afflicted and unable to look after herself. And his great heart had gone out to her in loving protectiveness.
Now, before Joel had fairly stopped speaking, the sensitive Nellie shrank even more appealingly against Treve’s shaggy side. For Chris Hibben was waking the echoes with a salvo of profanity that shook the house. Fenno listened with real interest to the outburst. He had the air of one who is acquiring many new and valuable words. As Chris paused for breath, Joel said sanctimoniously to Treve:
“Best run indoors, Trevy. You’re learnin’ language that won’t do you no reel good. You’ve been brought up by a couple of God-fearin’ sheep men. This blasphemious cattle talk is new to you. Best run away till he—”
A sharp gesture from Hibben interrupted him. The cattleman whipped out his heavy pistol and leveled it at the hapless little female collie as shecrouched shivering and frightened before him.
Nellie had had bruisingly terrible experience with Fraser Colt’s brutal rages. To her, the sound of an angry voice meant a fast-ensuing kick—a kick her blind eyes could not tell her how to avoid.
Treve, too, understood Chris Hibben’s volley of fury; and he understood the deadly gesture which was its climax. In an instant he was ready for what might follow.
“Stand clear!” bawled Hibben, dropping his pistol muzzle to cover the quivering Nellie’s head. “You boys tolled me into gettin’ this cur. Now you boys c’n have the job of buryin’ her an’ of mopping up your stoop. Stand clear, I said! And haul Treve out of the way; unless you want me to drill him, too.”
For the tawny gold collie had stepped quietly between Chris and the puppy. Steadfastly, his mighty body guarding the cowed little Nellie, he was gazing at the furious cattleman.
Hibben took a stride nearer his victim. With his free hand and one booted foot, he thrust Treve sharply from between him and Nellie; leveling the pistol afresh as he did so.
Now, it was not on the free list to lay menacing hands upon Treve; to say nothing of booting him. The thing had never before been done. Added to his natural resentment was his keenurge to save Nellie from the fate he fore-read in Hibben’s glance and in the leveled pistol. Once before had he seen the man fire that pistol; and he had seen a Dos Hermanos sheep fall dead from its bullet.
Before Chris could shoot, a furry thunderbolt launched itself on him; lethal as a flung spear; silent with concentrated wrath.
Under that fierce impact the unprepared Hibben reeled back; his finger spasmodically pressing the trigger as he threw both arms up to shield his menaced throat.
The bullet rent a splintering hole in the porch roof. The marksman, in his staggering retreat, slipped off the edge of the top step and bumped backward to earth; with a thud that knocked the breath out of him.
Scarce had his lean shoulders touched ground when Treve was on him; ravening for his throat.
Mack watched, dumbfounded. Joel, quicker-witted, yelled to the dog. Reluctantly, Treve quitted his prey; and in a bound was back at Joel’s side; while Royce Mack with profuse apologies was helping the sputteringly infuriated Hibben to his feet.
Joel surreptitiously picked up the fallen pistol from the floor and pocketed it. Then he turned to look at Treve, who had left his side and had moved across to Nellie.
The puppy, frightened out of all self-control, had bolted. Her blundering rush had brought her up against the house door with a force that knocked her down. Now, shaking all over and moaning softly, she crouched with her head hidden in the angle of porch and door.
Above her stood Treve; his eyes fixed on Hibben in cold menace. The big dog knew well that it was not permissible to attack a human; least of all a human who was the guest of his two masters. Perhaps swift death might be the punishment for his deed. But he did not falter.
His body shielding the wretched puppy, he stood there, tensely ready for Hibben’s next assault. Joel Fenno read the dog’s purpose and his thoughts; as he might have read those of a fellowman. The collie was playing with possible death, to guard something that could not defend itself. Fenno’s gnarled old heart gave a queer twist.
“Trevy!” he breathed, under cover of Hibben’s loudly truculent return to the porch.
At sound of Joel’s voice, Treve shifted his stern gaze from Chris to the old man. And in the collie’s sorrowful dark eyes, now, was an agony of appeal. So might the eyes of a mother be raised to the doctor who alone could save her sick child.
Joel Fenno’s thin lips set tightly. His oldeyes were slits. He was about to do the foolishest thing of his career. The saner half of him told him so and reviled him scathingly for it. But sanity went by the board, in face of that awful pleading in his belovèd dog’s eyes.
“Hold on, friend!” he interposed, as the cursing Hibben peered murderously about the floor for his lost pistol. “You’ll stop temptin’ Providence to swat this shack with lightin’, as a punishment for that string of hellfire words you’re bellerin’; and you’ll listen to me. You paid seventy-five dollars for this poor sick puppy you’re tryin’ to kill. Well, I’m buyin’ her off’n you, for seventy-five dollars. Get that?I’m buyin’ her!Now shut up an’ stand quiet-like, while I traipse indoors and git the cash for you.... I’m doin’ this out’n my own pocket!” he snarled at the thunderstruck Royce. “Not out of the partnership funds. Josh me all you like. I don’t care a hoot for your blattin’. I’ve—I’ve took a sort of fancy to the pup.”
Five minutes later Hibben was driving away; grumbling but appeased. Joel, awkward and shamefaced, was guiding Nellie’s questing nose to a saucer of bread and milk. Royce Mack was looking on, bereft of speech and incredulous. Treve, too, was looking on; a glint of utter contentment in his deepset eyes. Joel addressed his blank-faced partner, glumly:
“Now I s’pose you’ll be makin’ my life rotten by hect’rin’ me ’bout this! Well, I done it to show you there c’n be another dog on this ranch as wuthless as your mis’ble Treve. At that, I doubt if she’s as wuthless as what he is. She ain’t lived so long on the same ranch withyou.”
Followed the first peaceful, not to say beautifully happy, time that Nellie had ever known. From the moment Fraser Colt had discovered her blindness—and thus her absolute uselessness—she had been kicked and maltreated and made to feel that her only use in life was to serve as a vent for her breeder’s ill-temper.
Colt had continued to feed and lodge her, only in the well-founded hope of cheating some one into buying her. He and his kennels had been permanently disqualified by the American Kennel Club for crooked dealings. So, as he was forced to go out of the dog business, anyway, he had no fear of reprisal, in selling the blind puppy to some novice.
Under decent treatment now, Nellie’s brain and spirits bloomed forth. Swift to learn and coming from a breed that has more than normal intelligence, her progress was amazing. Ever beside her, to fend off trouble and to show her the way, was Treve. With unfailing patience Treve watched over her and trained her. Joellooked on with secret admiration and patiently contributed his own quota to the wise training.
Nellie could never hope to see. But, with almost miraculous intuition she learned to find her way about. A collie’s ears and nose are more to him than are his eyes. Nellie’s absence of sight intensified tenfold her power of scent and of hearing.
She could track either of the partners for miles, nose to earth; nearly always forewarned in some occult manner to avoid obstacles in her path. She was even, in a small way, of help to Treve in rounding up sheep. And ever that strange instinct—a sort of sixth sense—developed more and more, as her brain and experience developed.
Around the house she was the sweetest and most loving of pets; though her real adoration and slavish worship were lavished on Treve alone. She was his shadow. And to her he accorded a tender friendliness which he had refrained haughtily from bestowing on the splay-footed little black range collies.
It was nearly six months after the coming of Nellie that the blizzard struck the Dos Hermanos region.
In that southerly and semi-arid stretch, snow was a rarity. Heavy snows were practically unknown in the lowlands. Storms, whichwhitened the Dos Hermanos peaks and slopes, fell usually as rain in the valley. But now, in mid-February, came a genuine blizzard.
It caught the ranch totally by surprise. The various bunches of sheep were grazing wide; as usual at that rain-flecked time of year. Out of a softly blue sky came a softer grayish haze. Two hours later the blizzard was roaring in full spectacular fury.
Every man and every dog was pressed into service. Floundering knee-deep through drifts, the partners and their herdsmen and Sing Lee, the new Chinese cook, sought puffingly to drive the scattered and snow-whipped sheep to places of shelter.
The dogs, half-submerged in the floury snow, staggered and fought their way in the teeth of the blast and the stabbing cold. Their pads were tight-packed with painful snow-lumps. There was no time to stop and gnaw these torments out. The dogs drove on, limping, unresting.
It was a madly busy three or four hours. Men and dogs alike were blinded by the whirling tons of snow. There was no such thing as following a scent, with any accuracy, through that smother. Nor could a voice be heard, fifty feet away, in the screech of the gale.
Spent, dizzy, numb, the partners came back at last to their snow-piled home. The storm hadceased as suddenly as it had begun. Already a watery sunshine was beginning to glisten on the ocean of snow that spread everywhere.
“All safe except the bunch on Six Range,” reported Royce breathlessly as he and Fenno met, near the gate. “It was touch-and-go, with the whole lot. But those got tangled up somehow in the blizzard and bolted. Treve and I worked for two hours to find them. But it was no good. They’ve stampeded over the rock wall of the coulée or else over the cliff into the river. Either way, they’re goners. In a storm like that they—”
He stopped short. The dazzling white snow around the house was darkened by a shifting and huddling mass of dirty gray. The partners squinted their snow-blurred eyes to see what the phenomenon might mean.
There, encircling the house and pressing against it for warmth in a world of pitiless cold, swarmed something like three hundred sheep.
On the porch—worn out and panting, her pink tongue lolling—slumped Cirenhaven Nellie.
Nellie had followed Treve, as ever, into the welter of blizzard, in pursuit of the stampeded Number Six flock. Presently she had caught the scent on her own account; and had held it. When Treve had been lured aside in quest of ahandful of strays that had turned back from the main stampede, Nellie had plodded heavily on.
The scent of the main body of sheep had by this time become too badly obliterated by snow-swirl and cross-winds, for even Treve to pick it up. He could not scent Nellie’s own tracks through that hurricane of whizzing snow which blotted out each footstep as fast as it was made.
But to Nellie the elusive scent was still strong enough for her preternaturally keen nose to follow it more or less correctly. When this was at times impossible, her uncanny instinct—the instinct of the trained blind—carried her on. Slowly, wearily, yet unfaltering, she kept up the quest.
She came staggeringly upon the sheep, at last, as they wavered on the precipice edge of the coulée—as they waited for some leader to be insane enough to fling himself over the brink; so that they might follow. Nellie ran nimbly along the slippery cliff-edge; forcing them back with bark and nip; just as one panicky wether was gathering himself for the downward leap.
Back she drove them, huddled and bleating and milling; rounding up the exhausted beasts and heading them away from the coulée. She had no faintest idea where they belonged; or whither to guide them. All she knew was that she was sick and suffering and that she stood in direneed of getting home. Her Hour was close upon her. So homeward she drove the flock; unaware that she had achieved a bit of tracking that no normal-eyed sheepdog could have hoped to copy.
Next morning, Chris Hibben started for Santa Carlotta, to direct the unloading of freight for the Triple Bar. The snow was too deep for a car to get through it. So Hibben rode his strongest cow-pony;—a pony that made heavy enough going of it through the drifts. As Chris neared the Dos Hermanos ranch house, a man came running out of the kitchen and hailed him excitedly.
The man was Joel Fenno. Never before had Hibben seen the old chap excited. Fearing something might be amiss in the house, the rider dismounted, tossed the bridle over his pony’s head and waded up the walk.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded, as he came face to face with Joel.
“Nuthin’s wrong,” Fenno assured him, his mouth twisted in an effort to grin. “Ev’rything’s grand—and ‘ev’rything’ incloods a bunch of three hundred sheep that Nellie yanked out’n the blizzard yest’d’y, for us. That dog sure paid her board yest’d’y. She—”
“Say!” interposed Chris, none too graciously. “Did you stop me, when I was in a hurry, justto tell me Nellie had been wastin’ her time by roundin’ up a lot of mangy sheep? I’m gladder’n ever that I sold her to you, if that’s all she’s fit for. Now if it’d been a bunch of good cattle—”
“She’s fit for suthin’ else,” returned Fenno. “That wa’n’t why I high-signed you. I wanted to show you the suthin’ else she’s fit for. C’m’on in.”
He led the way into the kitchen. There, behind the stove, was a big box, half full of soft rags. In the box lay Cirenhaven Nellie, reclining comfortably on her side. At sound of Joel’s step her tail gave a lazy wag or two, by way of welcome. But at sound and scent of the stranger behind him, her tail ceased to wave, and her lip curled in menace. For Nellie was on guard again.
This time she was not guarding silly sheep. She was guarding eight squirming gray-brown atoms, that nuzzled close against her furry body.
The baby collies were no larger than plump rats. But the way they wriggled and drank proved them none the worse for their mother’s gallant exploits of the preceding day.
At a gentle word from Royce Mack, the collie mother dropped her tired head back on the bed of rags and suffered the outsider to draw near and gaze. Hibben stood looking curiously at thesnuggling family in the box. Treve crossed the kitchen and stood beside Mack, his head on one side, gazing down at his babies. It was Joel who broke the silence.
“Eight of ’em!” he proclaimed. “An’ they take after their ma. For ev’ry one of ’em is as blind as a cowman’s int’llects. But in another nine days the hull eight of ’em is due to git their eyes wide open. That’s when they’ll commence to take after their pa an’ be a credit to a sheep ranch. How many of ’em d’you want us to save out for you—at seventy-five dollars per?”
Three miles to eastward of the Dos Hermanos ranch runs the Black Angel Trail. Far to northward it has its beginning. It cuts the state from top to bottom, like a jaggèd swordstroke. Up above the Peixoto Range it starts; and it runs almost due south across the Mexican border.
Nearly a century ago this trail was blazed. Of old it was the chief artery between the north counties and Mexico. The state roads and the railways have long since taken its place; and have diverted from it the bulk of traffic. Bumps and dips and narrow cuts between canyonsides render it impassable to motor car or to other modern vehicle.
But in spite of all this, the grass does not grow over-thick in the Black Angel Trail. No longer a main highway, it is a mighty convenient byway. Burro trains still traverse it. So do cattle drovers and shepherds. So do less reputable forms of traffic. It has great advantages over the thronged and town-fringed state roads, for the driving of livestock as well as for the transporting of goods which are best moved with noundue publicity. Sojourners of the Black Angel Trail have a way of minding their own business. The law seldom patrols the backwater route or takes cognizance of it.
Along this trail, from southward, one day in earliest spring, fared a bee caravan, five wagons strong. Each wagon carried full complement of hives.
The only noteworthy detail of the procession was that it numbered several more grown men than can usually find time to accompany such a caravan. The chief work of the bee route can be done by women and boys; leaving most of the men of the family or community to attend to the crops at home.
Every year, these bee caravans are loaded with hives, as soon as the fruit blossoms in the southernmost corner of the state have been despoiled of their honey-making possibilities. Northward move the caravans; following the various blossom seasons; and camping in likely spots along the way, to let their bees ravage whatever blooms happen to be most plentiful at that place and at that time.
There is a regularly marked-out rotation of blossom-ripening, in one section of the state after the other. And this rotation the beekeepers follow; thus gathering the choicest honey everywhere and all season long.
The five-wagon caravan halted and pitched camp in a sheltered arroyo, a few miles from the borders of the Dos Hermanos ranch. It was the first year a bee outfit had done such a thing. But then it was the first year the new almond orchard of the Goldring ranch, a mile to east of the arroyo, had put forth any profusion of blossoms. Thus there was nothing remarkable about the occurrence.
Indeed when Royce Mack rode back from collecting the mail at Santa Carlotta, and told his partner about their temporary neighbors, old Joel Fenno did not deem the news worth so much as a grunt of comment.
Instead, he glared dourly at Treve, who had trotted homeward alongside Royce’s mustang.
“That cur,” he railed, “is gettin’ wuthlesser an’ wuthlesser ev’ry day of his life. Here I go an’ train poor little blind Nellie to work sheep with him; an’ this morning I took her along to help me shift that Number Four bunch to Number Five. It was a two-dog job; ’count of the twist by the coulée an’ ’count of some of the bunch bein’ new. I took her and Zit. What d’ye s’pose? She wouldn’t work with him! Acted like she didn’t know how. An’ no more she did, I reckon; her havin’ worked only with Treve and only knowin’ his ways, an’ all that. I couldn’t do a thing with her. Only that she’sblind an’ that she was most likely doin’ her best, I’d ’a’ whaled the daylights out’n her. An’ where was Treve, all that time? Wherewashe, I’m askin’ you? He was pirooting over to Santa Carlotta, along ofyou; pleasurin’ himself an’ holiday-makin’, while there was work to do;—the measly slacker!”
“It wasn’t Treve’s fault,” rejoined Mack, wearily. “I took him along for comp’ny. I didn’t know you were aiming to shift that bunch till to-morrow. You said—”
“Took him ’long for comp’ny?” gibed Fenno. “Comp’ny, hey? You got plenty of comp’ny here, without no useless dog traipsin’ after you. Ain’tI‘comp’ny,’ if comp’ny’s what you’re honin’ after. Ain’t I?”
“Yes,” said Mack, briefly. “That’s why I took Treve.”
Leaving his glum partner to digest this cryptic speech, Royce stamped off to the back steps to wash up for dinner. Left alone with Treve, the elder partner lost his disgusted glower. Glancing furtively after Mack, he drew something from his pocket.
“Trevy!” he called under his breath.
The big collie had been following Royce out of the room. At the whisper of his name he halted and turned quickly back. Tail wagging and eyes full of eager friendliness to the old manwho had just been denouncing him so harshly, he came up to Joel and sniffed interestedly at the hand extended to him. In the palm was a crumby and none-too-clean fragment of cake.
It was the final morsel left from a surreptitious visit to the bakery, the last time Joel had gone to Santa Carlotta. Guiltily, the old man had bought a whole pound of stale jumbles. He had bought them for Treve’s sole benefit; and he had been doling them out, secretly, to the delighted collie ever since. It was the first present of any sort he had purchased for anybody or anything, in all his sixty-odd crabbèd years.
“Here you are, Trevy!” said Joel hospitably, as the collie made a single dainty mouthful of the offering. “An’ when we go to town, next time, I’ll see can I git you some pound cake. Pound cake is dretful good. You’ll sure relish it a whole lot, Trevy. Mighty few millionaires’ dogs gits to eat pound cake, I reckon. Then—Say, Royce,” he broke off, snarlingly, as he caught the sound of his partner’s return, “call this durn cuss out onto the stoop with you. He’s tromplin’ dust all over the clean floor. Dogs don’t b’long in the house, anyhow. You’ve got him pampered till he’s no good to no one. He thinks he’s folks. Take him outside!”
“I forgot to tell you,” said Royce, cominginto the room, red and shining from his wash, “I met up with Chris Hibben, over at Santa Carlotta. He was coming out of the sheriff’s office; and he was mad as hops. He says thirty of his beef cattle were run off the Triple Bar last night. Three of his cow-ponies were lifted right out of the home corral, too, he says.”
“Strayed, most likely,” suggested Joel, with no sign of interest in his neighbor’s mishap.
“Chris says not,” denied Royce. “He says they were lifted. Says it’s rustlers.”
At the ominous word, Joel Fenno’s crooked brows twitched. Nobody in the sheep-and-cattle country, in those days, could hear the name “rustlers” without a twinge. In spite of watchfulness and in defiance of all law, livestock thieves had not yet been stamped out. They worked, as a rule, in gangs and with consummate cleverness. Their system of theft might vary, as occasion demanded. But whatever the system chanced to be, it had a way of circumventing the best efforts of ranchers.
It was easy for crafty and organized bands to lift large or small bunches of livestock from a vast range; to drive it to the nearest safe hiding place; and thence run it across the border or sell it to some dishonest wholesale butcher’s agent. There was much money in such an enterprise;—much money and occasional death. Forthe captured rustler expected and received short shrift. The Black Angel Trail was the local livestock thief’s route to wealth.
Long and disputatiously the Dos Hermanos partners talked over the news; Fenno as usual discrediting its truth and Royce increasingly impressed by it. The conference ended with an arrangement to send word to every herder on the Dos Hermanos ranch to keep strict guard for a night or two, and to carry a shotgun.
“Treve,” said Royce, at bedtime, as the collie prepared to stretch himself as usual on the rag mat at the foot of his master’s bunk, “you’ve got to do guard duty to-night. It’s outdoors for yours. There are too many sheep in the home fold, just now, for us to take any chances. The other dogs are out on the range; and they’ve got to stay there while this scare lasts. All but Nellie. She’s no good, Joel says, except when you can work with her. It’s up to you to keep an eye on the fold. Outside, son!Watch!”
Treve did not catch the meaning of one-tenth of his master’s harangue. But he understood enough of it to know, past doubt, that he was expected to stay away from his cherished rag mat that night, and stand guard over the house and the stable-buildings and the adjoining fold. He sighed discontent at his banishment. Then obediently he went outdoors and lay down witha little thump on the corner of the porch;—a post whence he could see or hear or scent anything going on in the clutter of outbuildings and yards in the hollow directly below.
His little blind mate, Nellie, came forward from the door-mat which was her usual bed and walked across the porch to him. Mincingly she came; her mahogany coat fluffing in the faint breeze. She touched noses affectionately with the big golden dog. Then, crouching, she danced her white forepaws on the boards, excitedly, tempting Treve to a romp.
But Treve was on duty, and he knew it. He resisted the temptation for a scamper and a mock battle in the soft dust. He lay still, merely wagging his plumed tail in recognition of the inviting dance. Failing to lure her mate into a frolic, Nellie lay soberly down beside him, her graceful body curled against his mighty shoulder.
She loved to romp with Treve. Always he was as gentle in his play with her as with a weak child. With her, alone of the ranch dogs, would he unbend from his benign dignity. But since he would not play to-night, it was next best to cuddle close to him and to join in his vigil.
The long nights were a stupid and lonely time to Nellie, out there by herself on the porch. It made her happy, now, to have Treve’s companionship in the hours of dark.
The two collies dozed. Yet they dozed as only a trained watch-dog knows how to; with every sense subconsciously alert. A little after midnight both their heads were lifted in unison, and both sets of ears were pricked to listen.
Along the road beyond the ranch-house gate came the pad-pad-pad of a slow-ridden horse that wore no shoes.
This, by itself, was not a matter for excitement. Both collies knew the ill-kept road was public, and that passersby were not to be molested. Thus, they did not give tongue, nor do more than look up and listen as the horse padded by.
The night was close-clouded; though there was a moon behind the banks of gray vapor. There was light enough for even a human to detect dimly any objects moving at a reasonable distance. To Treve’s night-accustomed eyes there was no difficulty in making out the figures of horse and rider as they passed the gate.
The man was sitting carelessly in the saddle. His face was turned toward the house, on whose porch-edge the two silent collies were wholly visible to him. He watched them a moment or so, and they returned his gaze.
Then gradually his horse carried him past and on a line paralleling the outbuildings. Treve’s eyes followed him, but only in the mildestinterest, as an incident of a quiet night. Nellie’s uncannily keen nostrils sniffed the rider’s unfamiliar scent, as the breeze bore it to her.
Then, of a sudden, Treve got to his feet; his hackles bristling. Dutifully, Nellie followed his example.
The rider had jogged on for more than a hundred yards. But at the far end of the outbuildings he had halted his horse. Dismounting, he took a hesitant step toward the palings which separated the ranch from the road. Instantly, both dogs were in motion. Running shoulder to shoulder, they bore down upon the man to resent the threat of intrusion.
Now “Greaser” Todd was anything but a fool. Hence the deservedly high place he occupied in his chosen trade. He knew dogs. A man in his line of business must know them and know them well. Of these two dogs he had gained casual knowledge, not only on an earlier ride past the ranch, but from chat with one of the herders whom he had managed to engage in idle talk that day. Thus, he was not silly enough to suppose he could hope to climb the paling undeterred.
But he had no desire to climb it just then. His plan was to get the dogs down here, well away from the house and from any possibly wakeful occupant thereof. Moreover, their dashwould unquestionably bring forth any other of the ranch dogs which might be quartered around the fold.
As Treve and Nellie ran silently toward him, Todd sprang to the saddle again and set his mount in motion. The two collies came alongside, just inside the paling, as Greaser touched heel to his horse. He was grateful that they had advanced in silence, instead of barking in a way to disturb weary sleepers’ rest. He was a most considerate man, was Greaser Todd.
As he cantered off, he drew from his saddlebags two objects, each about half the size of a man’s fist, and tossed them over the paling at the angrily dancing collies.
The two flung objects were hunks of cooked meat; savory and alluring. One of them, on its downward flight, would have hit Treve in the head had not he flashed aside from the strange missile. It struck against a sloping stone and bounced back again through the gap between two palings into the dust of the road. There it lay, out of his reach; unless he should care to go all the way around to the gate and retrieve the tempting food. There Fenno found it next day.
The second bit of well-aimed meat fell to earth directly in front of Nellie’s quivering nostrils. Lightly fed and perpetually hungry,she pounced upon the titbit; guided by her powers of scent. One gulp and she had swallowed it.
Treve was of two minds as to the advisability of waking the echoes with a salvo of barking by way of farewell insult to the intruder, or to go around and get the delicious-smelling meat that had rolled so provokingly out of his reach. The man was gone. His horse’s light hoofbeats were dying away, up the coulée. The logical thing to do now was to get that generously-given meat and devour it.
Already, Nellie was beside the palings, thrusting her slender nose through the gap, in quest of the food she could smell but could not get. Being blind, she could not know, as did Treve, the futility of pushing her nose through one paling-gap after another in the hope of finding a space wide enough to let her jaws close on the meat.
But as Treve set off, along the inner side of the fence, on his errand of retrieving the fragment of cooked food, she seemed to understand his purpose. For she trotted eagerly alongside him; her shoulder as ever touching his, in order to guide her steps.
Treve had not gone twenty feet when he felt her swing away from him, in a lurch that almost upset her. Halting to let her catch up with himafter her supposed stumble, he saw Nellie stagger sideways a step or two, then curl back her lips from her teeth and come to a shivering stop. She moaned once in stifled agony; then collapsed in a furry heap on the ground.
Full of keen solicitude, Treve ran over to where she lay. As he gazed worriedly down upon the pitifully still little body, a trembling shook him from crown to toes. Not for the first time was the great collie looking upon Death.
His adored little mate was dead;—stone dead. How or why she had been stricken down so suddenly—she who just now had been so full of life and of pretty, loving ways—was beyond his knowledge. But grief smote him to the depths of his soul.
Long he stood there above her; now and then touching her still little body or face with his nose, as if entreating her to come back to him. Then, whimpering as no physical pain could have made him whimper, he turned and fled to the house.
Even as man in dire distress turns to his God for aid, so did the heartbroken collie turn now to his two human gods.
Bounding up on the porch, he scratched imperiously at the locked door; whining and sobbing in stark anguish of heart. Perhaps thesehumans could bring back to life the dear mate who had meant so much to him.
Fiercely impatient in his grief, he scratched the harder at the door panel; crying under his breath and quivering as in a death-chill.
After an eternity came a slumbrous and cross voice from Royce Mack’s room.
“Shut up there, Treve!” commanded Royce, angry at being wakened. “Shut up, you fool! No, you can’t come in! You’re spoiled—pampered—just as Joel said. You’ll stay outside, as I told you to. Shut up!”
Mack rolled over, as he finished shouting his peevish order, and sank again into slumber, worn out by his long day in the open.
Treve shrank back from the door as though his master’s angry reproof had been a blow. Hesitant, he crouched there. He had turned to his god in his moment of heartbreak. And his god had refused to come to his aid.
Then, an instant later, the collie’s ears were raised in new eagerness. A soft, if stumpy, footfall was crossing the kitchen floor. Joel Fenno opened the door and slipped out onto the porch, in sketchy attire, closing the door behind him.
“What’s the matter, Trevy?” he whispered. “What’s wrong, old sonny? Hey?”
Treve caught him by the hem of hisabbreviated nightshirt and tugged at the garment, frantically; backing off the steps and seeking to drag Fenno after him. Joel gave one sharp look at the quivering dog; then nodded.
“I’ll take your tip, Trevy,” he whispered, disengaging his shirt from the hauling jaws. “Wait!”
He tiptoed indoors. But Treve was content. He knew the man would rejoin him.
In less than a minute Joel came back. He had yanked on his trousers and had stuck his feet into a ragged pair of carpet slippers. Under his arm he carried a loaded shotgun. In a trouser pocket were stuck four buckshot cartridges and a flashlight.
“Now, then,” he bade the dog, “come on!”
Treve waited for no second bidding. He wheeled and made for the outbuildings. At every few rods, he would pause and look back to make sure Fenno was following.
“All right!” grumbled Joel, as if to a human companion. “All right! I’m a-comin’, Trevy. I heard Royce call you a fool, jes’ now. Maybe it’s me that’s the fool for trailin’ along with you. And then ag’in, maybe not. You ain’t given to actin’ like this. Besides, with all this rustler-talk—”
He stopped short. Treve was no longer leading him on. The dog had halted at the fenceedge, and was standing there, looking downward in drooping misery at something small and dark that lay at his feet. Joel pressed his flashlight button.
Almost instantly he released the pressure. But not before he had seen Nellie’s lifeless body and had taken cognizance of her writhen lips. Her attitude and her convulsed mouth told their own story.
“Pizen!” muttered Joel, aghast.
His first sharp thought was for Treve. He went over to the disconsolate collie and felt his head and jaws.
“Nope,” he said. “She was the only one that got it. If it was strong enough to git her as quick as that, it’d ’a’ got you, too, before now. An’—an’, Trevy, I’m thankin’ Gawd it didn’t! I’m a-thankin’ Him, reel rev’rent!”
The old brain was working and working fast. Now that the Dos Hermanos ranch was at peace with the Triple Bar outfit, there was no neighbor who would poison any of the collies. The only person to do such a damnable thing must be some one who desired to get the ranch guards out of the way in order to rob the place.
Rustlers!
Joel listened. Except for an occasional bleat or stir in the nearby fold, no sound broke the awesome stillness of the early spring night. Thecollie stood statuelike above his dead mate, his sorrowful dark eyes fixed on Joel in dumb appeal.
“We can’t bring her back, Trevy,” said Fenno, gently, caressing the bowed silken head with rough tenderness. “Only the good Gawd c’d do that. An’ in His wisdom, He don’t ever do it no more—nowadays....Heknows why.Idon’t. We ain’t so lucky as them folks in Bible times.... But maybe we c’n git the swine that killed her, Trevy!”
There was a fiery thread of menace in the old voice, a note that made the collie lift his drooping head and turn toward the rancher. Just then, blurred and from far off, came a scent and a sound. They were indistinguishable to gross human senses. But Treve read them aright.
The sound was of three cautiously-ridden horses. The scent was of men;—one of them the man who had loitered beside the fence and flung the meat that had killed Treve’s mate.
The dog stiffened. His teeth bared. Deep down in his throat a growl was born. He remembered; and now he understood.
This was the man who had somehow done Nellie to death. It was directly after he stopped there, on the far side of the fence, that she had died. Red rage flamed in the dog’s heart and eyes.
“Quiet, Trevy!” breathed Joel, at the sound ofthe low growl. “Hear suthin’, do you? Quiet, then, an’ wait!... Huh! Royce Mack called you a fool, did he? Calledyoua fool! In the mornin’—”
He fell silent. To his own straining ears now came the faint beat of muffle-hoofed horses. Nearer they came and nearer. Joel gripped his shotgun and peered through the high fence palings.
Presently, in the dim light, he was aware of three mounted men and two more men on foot, coming toward him from the direction of the coulée.
At the same moment one of the three riders spurred forward from the rest. Drawing his horse alongside the high fence, he vaulted lightly from the saddle, coming to earth on the inner side of the palings.
As his feet touched ground, something hairy and terrible whizzed at him through the darkness; awful in its murderous silence. Before Greaser Todd could get his hand to his knife or shove back his mysterious assailant, Treve’s mighty jaws had found their goal in his unshaven throat.
The rustler crashed to earth, the mutely homicidal collie atop him; the curved white eyeteeth grinding toward the jugular.
“What’s the matter, Greaser?” queried therider behind him, hearing his leader stumble and fall. “Bootsoles too slippery?”
As he spoke, he, too, vaulted the palings and dropped to his feet in the yard. One of the unmounted men was climbing the fence in more leisurely fashion, his head appearing now over the top.
As calmly as though he were shooting quail, Fenno went into action.
One barrel of his shotgun was fired point-blank at the rustler who had just landed in the yard. Wheeling, he emptied the left barrel into the head of the climber.
There was a panic yell from the road; then pell-mell a scurry of hoofs and of running feet. Slipping two new cartridges into the breech, Joel Fenno climbed halfway up the fence and fired both barrels down the road into the muddled dust-cloud that was dashing toward the coulée.
Royce Mack, still drunk with sleep, came staggering and shouting down from the ranch house, his flashlight playing in every direction. At the edge of the outbuildings he slithered to a dumbfounded halt.
The arc of white radiance from his flashlight illumed a truly hideous and incredible scene. Athwart the fence top, like a shot squirrel, sprawled an all-but headless man. On theground, just inside the palings, lay another slumped figure.
Somewhat nearer to Mack knelt Joel Fenno, his gun on the earth beside him. He was stanching the blood of a third man—a man whose throat was that of a jungle beast’s victim.
Beside him, tense and raging, and held in check only by Joel’s crooning voice, towered the huge gold-white Treve.
“I reckon we c’n save this one of ’em, Royce, long ’nough for the sheriff to git his c’nfession,” airily observed Joel, continuing his first-aid work. “I pried Trevy loose before he got to the jug’l’r. With Trevy standin’ by, to prompt him like, the feller’s due to talk all the sheriff wants him to. Me an’ Trevy will see to that. As f’r them other two—”
“What—what the—?” sputtered Mack, stupid with horror.
“Trevy’s a ‘fool,’ all right!” scoffed Joel. “Jes’ like I heard you call him, awhile back. He tries to be more like you all the time. Likewise he s’cceeds. Now run an’ phone for the sheriff. Me an’ Trevy has had a busy night. It’s up toyouto do the rest of the chores.”