A man, working over a dog on the adjoining bench, glanced up at sound of Gladden’s ejaculation. He noticed the reporter and the horror-petrified old ranchman. He addressed them, impersonally; though keeping a wary eye on Joel, as though fearing a fresh outbreak of assault and battery on the part of the newly released prisoner.
“He’s gone,” announced the man. “Kept lunging and tugging at his chain all the time the cop was taking you out. Kept it up afterward, too. All at once, the collar bust; and he was off after you, quicker’n scat. I made a grab for him as he went past me. But I missed him. I thought it’d be kind of neighborly to catch him for you. When I got to the front door, though, he wasn’t anywheres in sight. The doorman told me the dog had gone whizzing out into the street, like greased lightning. No sign of him anywheres. That must ’a’ been—le’s see—that must ’a’ been about three or four minutes after you was took away by the cop. Er—I’m glad to see you back,” he ended politely, as Fenno did not cease from staring in blank despair at the empty bench and the riven collar.
Gladden made as though to speak. But he had no time to form the well-meaning words he was groping for. With a galvanic start, Joel wheeled and headed for the armory doorway. Gladden made after him, once more taxing his own young speed to keep close to the oldster.
At the front steps, he overhauled the ranchman.
“I’ll phone the pound and then send word to the police to keep their eyes open for him,” said the reporter, genuinely touched by the ghastly face of his companion. “And we’ll advertise,too. Oh, we’ll find him, all right! You mustn’t worry.”
Joel did not answer. Joel did not hear. All his days, he had lived in the open spaces and far from the peopled haunts of life. To him there was terror in the sight of such crowds as now moved past the armory. There was double terror in the spectacle of the thick-built city which harbored the crowds. He had a born and reared countryman’s distrust and dislike for populous streets. To him they held mystery—sinister mystery.
Somewhere in these unfriendly and confusing and perilous streets his beautiful collie chum was wandering in search of the master who was responsible for his misfortune;—was seeking Fenno, wistfully and in vain, amid a million dangers.
A score of whizzing automobiles, flashing in and out, in front of Joel—the clang of trolley cars and the onrush of a passing fire-engine—all these were possible instruments of death to the ranch-raised collie who was straying out yonder, perplexed and aimless, hunting for the man who was his god.
Treve had crowded into two brief minutes more agonizing excitement and drama than had been his in the past two years.
He had met and attacked his olden tyrant. He had seen his master in life-and-death battle with that tyrant. Fifty-fold worse than all else, he had seen that cherished master overpowered and dragged away; and had had no power to fly to his assistance.
Small wonder the frenzied dog had hurled himself with all his might against the collar that held him back from battling for his master’s release! Then, at last, the collar had broken; leaving Treve free to follow and to rescue the captured man. Down the aisle he tore; and out through the gateway and down the steps. It was in this direction they had taken Fenno. Treve had seen him go. And he ran by eye and not by scent.
But, when he reached the sidewalk and saw no trace of Joel, he reverted to first principles; and dropped his muzzle earthward.
Hundreds of people had traversed that stone pavement during the past minutes. But through the welter of scents Treve’s keen nostrils had scant difficulty in picking up Joel Fenno’s long-familiar trail. Rapidly he followed it;—but only for a yard or so. It led to the curb. There the policeman had bundled Joel into the car that was to bear him to the mile-off station. There, of course, the trail ceased. And there the dog paused, wholly checkmated.
After the fashion of his kind, he wasted no time in standing nonplussed. Instantly, he set off at a hand-gallop, nose to ground, running in a wide circle; in the hope that some arc of that circle might intersect Fenno’s lost trail. It was a ruse he had employed a hundred times in seeking for strayed sheep. But always his questing nostrils, at such times, had inhaled the good clean smell of earth and herb. Now they were filled with the stench of spilled gasoline and of grease. They were baffled by the passing of countless feet and by the numberless and nameless reeks of the city streets.
Undeterred by the sickening strange odors, he continued his hunt; galloping in the broad circle he had begun. Head down, all his senses concentrated on the finding of the trail he sought, he was completing the circle when his nerves were jarred by a yelling voice just above him. There were menace and vexation in the voice. It was accompanied by a deafening blare. Instinctively, Treve shrank aside as he looked up to discern the dual noise’s origin.
The sidewise move saved him from a hideous and too-common form of death. For, as he shifted his direction, a fast-going limousine’s fender grazed his flank with such force as to send him rolling over and over in the filth of the asphalt roadway. The chauffeur, who hadshouted and honked at him, yelled back a mouthful of oaths. But Treve did not hear them. Scrambling to his feet, jarred and muddied and breathless, he was barely in time to dart out of the way of a motor-truck that was bearing heavily down upon him.
The wide street was alive with these engines of destruction, all seemingly bent upon his death. Bewilderment swept the luckless dog’s brain. For an instant he stood, glancing pitiably to left and right; trying to find a pathway of escape from among the tangle of vehicles.
Then the ever-ready wit of a trained collie came to his aid. This mid-street, assuredly, was no place for him. The sidewalk offered shelter, with no worse perils than the stream of passing pedestrians. Toward the sidewalk he made his way.
It is in such safety-seeking efforts that the average dog, in like conditions, becomes confused and is run over. Treve was not confused. With the skill and dexterity of a timber wolf he sped in and out of the traffic, timing his every step to a nicety; enacting prodigies of time-and-distance gauging.
In another few seconds he was on the sidewalk; nearly a block distant from the armory.
The collie was panting; but not from fatigue. He was panting through excitement andnervousness. Light froth gathered on his lips and tongue. His rich coat was one smear of muck and mud. He was collarless. His aspect was ferocious and disreputable. People made plenty of room for him as he swung on down the sidewalk, nose to ground, still seeking Fenno’s lost trail.
His dangerous circling of mid-street had failed to locate that trail. Collie-like, he knew there was no use in casting back over the same ground again. Henceforth, he must hunt on mere chance and with nothing to guide him. It was not a hopeful prospect. Fenno had left the armory. That much Treve’s eyes and nose had told him. Fenno had walked as far as the curbstone. There his trail had ended.
Gallantly, the collie kept on, along his aimless route, still sniffing the ground; pedestrians giving him the widest possible berth and turning to look back apprehensively at him.
A man came briskly out of a store. So suddenly did he debouch onto the pavement that the dog had no room to avoid him. The man felt something collide glancingly with his knee; and peered down. He beheld a huge collie; mud-coated and bleeding from a graze on the flank.
Panic possessed the newcomer as he recalled the impact at his knee. By every law of fiction,this was a mad dog. The dog, of course, had bitten or at least tried to bite him, in passing—which was also the way of fictional mad dogs.
The man, like most of the world, was actuated by what he had read, rather than by what he had learned, or should have learned, from real life experience. Hence, he did the one regulation thing that was to be done, under the circumstances. He screeched at the top of his lungs:
“Mad dog! MAD DOG!”
A hundred persons stopped and stared apprehensively around them. They saw a chalk-faced man clutching at his left knee with one hand while with the other he pointed dramatically at the harmlessly-trotting Treve. Again and again he waked the echoes with that imbecile bellow of “Mad Dog!”
Only a few times did he have a chance to warble the fool-cry as a solo. In a moment or so, voices from everywhere had caught up the shriek. The street reëchoed to the multiple howl. People ahead turned in fright as they heard it. Then they saw the mud-streaked and bloody collie trotting in their direction; and they scattered squawkingly to the refuge of shop doors or parked cars. (Two local newspapers, next day, printed strong editorials on the menace of allowing dogs to roam, unmuzzled, in the city.)
Treve was unaware of the furor he wascreating. For all he knew, this sort of bedlam might be an ordinary phase of street life. In any event, it was no concern of his. And he padded unconcernedly on; still sniffing in vain for his lost master’s footsteps.
His progress received a rude check, as a sharper note mingled with the looser volume of his pursuer’s yells. Some born idiot had drawn a pistol and had opened fire on him. A bullet spatted the stone pavement just in front of him; a pin-tip of the scattered lead stinging his sensitive nose. Treve stopped, and looked back, in mild wonder.
Then, for the first time, he realized that everybody in the world was racing along at his heels; waving umbrellas or canes or any other weapon. One youth had even snatched up a half-full tin ash-can and was brandishing it above his head; while a halo of blown ashes sifted lovingly down upon him and blew into the eyes of those nearest him.
The pistol-wielder, luckily for Treve, chanced just then to be nearest the can-brandisher. He halted and took aim at the momentarily moveless dog. Providence sent an eddying breeze from heaven which gathered up a spoonful of ashes from the tilted can and whirled them blindingly into the marksman’s eye. The bullet sped skyward.
A policeman, then another, appeared from nowhere and joined the chase.
It dawned on Treve, belatedly, that itwasa chase; and that he was its quarry. With no fear, but with a strong determination not to let these people catch him and thus prevent him from continuing his search for Fenno, the dog quickened his swinging wolf-trot into a hand-gallop.
One of the policemen was stopping at every third jump to rap for reënforcements. In response to these raps and to the clamor of the pursuit, a bluecoat rounded a corner, on the run, just in front of Treve. He made a noteworthy effort to brain the collie with his club. Treve saw the blow coming and he dodged it with perfect ease. Then, diving between the policeman’s threateningly outstretched legs, and upsetting him, the dog continued on his way; though at a faster pace. Passersby, in front, gave him a world of room.
Pausing only at street crossings, to avoid passing motors, he fled at a mile-eating run; leaving the chase far behind. He was hot and worried and cruelly thirsty. Yet the sound of pursuit warned him not to slacken pace.
At last, this sound grew fainter. For no running men can hope to keep within hailing distance of a running collie.
Treve slackened speed. He glanced aroundhim. The houses had grown few and straggling. He was on the compact little city’s outskirts. Ahead of him arose green foothills. Toward them he bent his pavement-bruised feet.
Assuredly there was no sense in trying to find Joel Fenno in that hell of unfriendly humans behind him. There was no trace of the old man. And Treve did what the wisest of lost collies usually do. He headed for home.
On he went, until he had breasted the nearest green slope of the ridge which divided the fertile valley from the desert beyond. Almost at the summit, he found a little trickle of water, from a hilltop-spring not yet dried by the approaching summer. There he paused; and drank long and greedily. His thirst assuaged, he stretched himself and clambered to the crest of the ridge.
Pausing again, he lifted aloft his dainty muzzle; and sniffed. For perhaps two minutes he stood thus, testing the breeze with quick, comprehensive intakes of breath. From side to side he moved his head and forequarters; until presently he stood still; verifying the hint the air had brought him.
Then, without a shadow of indecision in mind or in gait, he set off down the desertward side of the ridge. He knew the course he must take.
(If perhaps this action of Treve’s be scoffedat, as nature-faking, there are a dozen authentic cases of the sort. How a collie can get his direction in the way just described, is past human knowledge. But that such directionisgotten in that way cannot be denied.)
Thus it was that the great dog began his hundred-mile homeward journey, across unknown land and guided solely by his mysterious sixth sense. Down the hill he went, never breaking that deceptively rapid choppy wolf-trot of his. In another half hour his feet had left the springy turf and ridges of the hill and were pattering across the prickling gray sands of the desert.
On he went; while the sun dipped past the meridian; on into sweltering afternoon. Here was no chance for thirst-quenching; no chance for adequate shade; no chance for anything but grim endurance. The collie’s pink tongue lolled far out. His eyes were bloodshot from sand and from heat. The mud on his coat had caked and dried; as had the blood from the graze on his flank. He was suffering from thirst, from fatigue, from reaction. But he kept on.
At sunset, he had his first alleviation of discomfort. Trotting exhaustedly over the top of a gray sand dune he saw at its base, in front of him, a black and white animal, about the size of a cat. The animal saw and heard him. Yet itmade no hurry to get out of his way. Skunks know from experience that few larger animals willingly take a chance of attacking them.
But Treve was as hungry as he was thirsty. All day he had been on the move; and he had eaten nothing. With express train speed he dashed downward, at this possible dinner. The skunk wheeled, bracing its four feet firmly in the sand; tail aloft.
But this was not the collie’s first encounter with such opponents. Ten feet from the tensely waiting skunk, Treve leaped high in the air and far to the left. Then, before the skunk could get opportunity to brace itself a second time, he veered as rapidly to the right; and slashed as he sprang. The skunk lay lifeless at his feet, its back broken. And Treve feasted in luxurious comfort.
An hour later he came to the railroad track. Here, it seemed, was surcease for his aching pads, from the teasing desert sands. Gladly he trotted along the ties, in the exact middle of the track. But after the first mile, the bite of cinders on his sore feet grew more unbearable than were the sand-grains. And he shifted from track to right-of-way.
Not five minutes later, the Limited came thundering past, shaking the earth and almost knocking him down by the suction of its nearbypassage. Truly, those foot-cutting cinders had done Treve a good turn, by driving him from between the steel rails and out of the path of annihilation.
It was wolf instinct that guarded him from his next mortal danger.
In early dusk he was padding wearily along the sage sprinkled gray plain when something buzzed like fifty windblown telegraph wires, from beneath a sagebush directly in front of him. There was no time to dodge. Without stopping to plan his own action, he gathered his tired muscles and leaped; clearing the two-foot bush with several inches to spare. So instant-quick had been the move that the rattlesnake beneath the bush missed him by a clean six inches as it struck at his approaching bulk.
The great white desert stars came out in a black velvet sky. The torrid heat of day merged into a dampish chill which helped to assuage the collie’s burning thirst. On he stumbled. Then his wornout frame took a new brace. From far off, the night wind brought him the craved scent of running water—the Dos Hermanos River.
It was two nights later when Joel Fenno came home to the ranch, after raking the city of La Cerra, hysterically, with a fine-tooth comb, for his lost dog;—after posting deliriouslyexorbitant rewards whose payment would have bankrupted him.
He halted the wheezy car at the gate and stumped up the walk. The dazed old man’s spirit was dead within him. He hoped Royce Mack might not yet have gotten back from Omaha. He himself wanted to gather up some money and some clean clothes, before returning to La Cerra to continue the hopeless hunt.
As he started up the walk, something furry and cyclonic burst out of the house;—dashed limpingly down the walk to meet him and flung itself at his breast, barking ecstatic welcome to the wanderer.
“Treve!” gasped the unbelieving Fenno, chokingly. “Oh—oh,Trevy!”
That was all. But he gathered the gayly dancing collie into his arms in a bear hug that well-nigh crushed the victim’s ribs.
The man’s heart seemed likely to burst, from sheer joy and relief. He wanted to dance; or else to pray. He was not sure which. Then, of a sudden, he straightened himself and drew a long breath. Out onto the porch, from the living room, his partner, Royce Mack, was sauntering.
“Hello!” hailed Royce. “You’ve been to Santa Clara, Toni says. Treve must have gone on a rampage while we were both away. When I gotback, this morning, he was lying at the door, all in. Cut and muddy and lame and—”
“Don’t waste breath, gassin’ about the measly cur!” rasped Fenno, with all his wonted grouchiness, as he fended off Treve’s welcoming advances in much show of disgust. “Get busy an’ tell me what prices you got for them sheep, down to Omaha. A business man’s got no time to jabber dogtalk, when there’s prices to be quoted.”
“Say!” retorted Royce, nettled. “If I hated anything as much as you hate that grand collie of ours, I’d just bite myself and die of hydrophobia. Isn’t there any heart in you for a dog like that?”
“No!” grunted Joel. “There ain’t. Dogs is pests. An’ this dog is the peskiest of the lot.”
But in the darkness, he was furtively drawing a hoarded lump of sugar from his pocket and slipping it to the playfully eager Treve.
“That cat of yours,” commented Royce Mack,—as he paused beside the adobe shelf on his way into the kitchen of the Dos Hermanos ranch house, and addressed the slant-eyed Chang, who served him and Fenno as cook and handy man,—“that cat of yours must have more suction power than a three-horse-power gas pump. She draws up milk the way the sun draws up water. And what the skinny brute does with it all, is more than I can figure out.”
As the young rancher spoke, he nodded critically toward a pinkish-grayish-white cat that crouched in morbid indolence on the edge of the high adobe shelf, alongside an empty tin dish. She was a forlorn and gloomy thing, of scrawny ludicrousness and nasty temper. Chang loved her, beyond words.
The Chinaman wiggled apologetically, as always he did when either of the partners said more than he could understand. His slitted eyes strayed protectingly toward his beloved cat. She looked like the kind of a cat a Chinaman like Chang might be expected to own and cherish.Royce went on, in banter that his servitor took as solemn earnest:
“Twice to-day I’ve happened to see you fill that dish with milk. There must have been a quart of it, each time. It’s barely noon and the dish has been emptied again. That makes half a gallon of new milk your rainbow-colored cat has absorbed, since breakfast. Why, man, that bag of bones couldn’tholdhalf a gallon of milk! She must cart it off somewhere and sell it. Lucky for you that both our milch cows happen to be ‘fresh,’ just now. Or lucky for Mr. Fenno and me. Otherwise, we’d be drinking our coffee straight; and all the milk’d go to that miserable cat.”
“She good cat,” expostulated Chang, in his high voice. “Vel good catty. Catch mice. Catch lats. Keep house flee of ’em. Gland cat. Can’t get um fat; no matt’ how much eat. Not built fat. Just like Mist’ Fenno.”
A grunt of disgust from behind him made Chang spin about in apprehensive haste.
Old Joel Fenno had come padding up to the house for dinner, from one of the sheep pastures. He arrived at the kitchen stoop in time to hear his spare figure compared by the Chinaman to that of the scarecrow cat.
Though without normal vanity, Joel was not pleased. And the grunt would have beenfollowed by more vehement expressions of distaste had not Chang scuttled nervously into the kitchen, tucking the multicolored cat under his yellow arm as he ran. Presently, out through the doorway issued the sound of many pans clattering. Dinner was in active preparation.
Joel poured water from a pail into a tin basin on the stoop-floor; and began to scrub his dirty hands with a lump of smelly yellow soap. Royce had washed; and was starting into the house when a scamper of galloping feet announced the arrival of Treve.
The dog had been helping Toni, the chief shepherd, and the latter’s squat black collie, Zit, in No. 3 pasture, that morning with the management of a new and fractious bunch of merinos. But—as ever, unless he had orders to the contrary—the big dog had trotted home, promptly at lunch-time. Always he lay on the floor, at Royce Mack’s left side, during meals; and occasionally a scrap of food from his master’s plate rewarded his presence.
Royce stooped to pat the dog, as Treve pattered to the porch. The collie looked past his master, up at the narrow adobe shelf which stood fully four feet above the level of the floor. He seemed keenly interested in that shelf. There was a glint of mischief in his dark eyes. Joel Fenno, gouging the soapy water out of his owneyes, caught the dog’s expression. Following the collie’s quizzical gaze, Joel noted that the edge of the tin dish projected an inch or so over the edge of the shelf. In picking up the cat, Chang unconsciously had joggled it forward.
While Fenno still watched, Treve arose upon his hindlegs, his white forepaws resting lightly against the wall. Taking the edge of the tin dish daintily between his jaws he dropped to earth again; depositing the dish on the floor in front of him. Then, after a single disappointed glance at the empty receptacle, Treve walked away.
Royce Mack looked after him, with speculative amusement. Then an idea dawned on him. He picked up the dish and turned to the open doorway.
“Chang!” he called. “Fill this.”
The Chinaman, delighted that his adored cat was apparently arousing so much interest in Royce, hastened to fill the dish to the brim and replace it on the high shelf. After which he returned to the kitchen to find the cat and bring her out to feast. Meantime, Joel Fenno snorted contempt at his partner’s prodigal waste of milk and at his interest in a mere cat.
“Lord!” he exclaimed. “Ain’t it enough for you to pamper that measly collie all the time, without dry-nursin’ Chang’s cat, too? Don’tyou know, the more good milk she drinks the fewer rats she’ll bother to catch? She ain’t wuth her salt, now. You’ll make her wuth even less’n that if—”
He stopped abruptly his flow of chronic complaint. Treve had seen the Chinaman place the refilled dish on the shelf. Instantly, and with no hint of concealment or of snooping, the collie trotted over to the wall, upreared himself again and once more caught the edge of the dish in his teeth. A second time he lowered it carefully to the floor, not spilling a drop. Then he proceeded to lap appreciatively at its contents, his pink tongue busily emptying the dish as fast as possible.
The dog had an inordinate fondness for milk. Indeed, it was because of this fondness and to insure his cat from loss of her meals that Chang had formed the habit of placing the milk dish on the shelf, presumably well out of the dog’s reach. Finding it, empty, but upright, on the porch floor, several times, the Chinaman supposed the cat had knocked it thither in jumping on or off the shelf.
Chang appeared now, in the kitchen doorway, a fatuous smile on his yellow face and with the cat in his arms. He arrived just in time to see Treve lift down the dish to the floor and begin to drink.
The Chinaman’s little eyes bulged. His nerveless arms let the cat slump to the ground. To him, the simple spectacle he was witnessing had all the earmarks of black magic.
This was not the first time he had suspected Treve to be a devil in guise of a furry dog.
He had thought it when the collie learned to manipulate the kitchen door latch with his forepaw and let himself into the house. He had thought it when Treve had sniffed disdainfully at a bit of tempting looking meat the Chinaman had drenched in carbolic acid solution with the idea of getting rid of him. The dog had sniffed, then stared coldly from the meat to its giver, and had walked off in icy contempt. (Not knowing it was the rank smell of the acid which revolted the dog, Chang had supposed Treve realized the meat was poisoned and that he knew who had poisoned it. Wherefore he forbore to try to poison him again; deeming such efforts useless.)
Chang had been even more assured the dog was a demon when once he chanced to see Joel Fenno—who blatantly and eternally professed dislike for the collie—surreptitiously slip Treve the choicest meat morsels from his own plate; and pat his head.
Now the Chinaman’s last doubts were removed. It was not in nature that a dog couldreach up, forty-eight inches, and lift down from a shelf a full dish of milk; setting it unspattered on the floor. It didn’t make sense. The dog was a devil. It was not well to abide in the house with a devil. Yet the ranch job was one that Chang did not like to lose. Something must be thought up. Something must be done! Meantime, Chang retired into his kitchen.
Royce Mack was laughing loudly at his canine chum’s exploit. Joel glowered at the placidly drinking dog.
“Gee, but that was clever!” Mack declared. “It took a lot of thinking out, too. Treve, you’ve sure got brains! So that’s where all the cat-milk has been going! I wondered—”
“Clever, nuthin’!” grumbled Joel. “Any fool would have sense enough to steal food when he’s hungry. He’s stoopid. An’ he’s lazy, too. If I had my way—”
To shut off his partner’s eternal invective against the dog, Mack passed on into the house, leaving Joel in mid-swing of his diatribe. Chang happened to glance apprehensively out of the window, a second later. He saw Joel bend over the lapping dog, a silly grin of admiration on his wizened face, and pat the collie’s head in approving friendliness.
“Trevy,” the old man was whispering, “itwasclever of you. One of the plumb cleverestthings I ever seen you do. An’ I’ve seen you do a passel of slick things. You know more’n ten humans an’ a Chink, Trevy.”
Treve wagged his tail vigorously at the praise and caress. He even paused in his stolen meal long enough to lick milkily the petting hand. Joel, grinned, resentless of the milk spattered on his sleeve. Then, catching sight of Chang’s bobbing head, through the window, the old man favored Treve with a glare of utter detestation; and stumped into the house and slammed the door.
When the partners had bolted dinner and, with Treve at their heels, had gone back to work, Chang repaired to his own cubbyhole room under the roof. There, in front of his bash-nosed Joss, he proceeded to burn a flight of faintly perfumed prayer-papers, accompanying the process with certain pious “setting-up exercises” before the idol.
To his Joss and to the spirits of his innumerable ancestors, Chang offered orisons for the instant vanishing of that devil collie.
The dog’s size and buoyantly noisy ways had jarred him, from the first. Then the collie had taken sinful pleasure in treeing Chang’s dear cat; and in making playful little rushes at her, even when she sought refuge on her master’s thin shoulder. The uncanny wisdom of the doghad long ago completed the wreck of Chang’s nerves. The big beast, assuredly, was a devil; and might in time be expected to wreak awesome torments upon the Chinaman himself.
Not a week earlier, on ironing day, Chang had burned a hole in the arm of Royce Mack’s only silk shirt. To hide his fault, he had taken the ruined shirt out back of the stables and had buried it. Then he had gone smugly to his kitchen, prepared to deny with innocent smiles that he had ever set eyes on the garment.
Indeed, an hour later, he was in the midst of that convincing denial, when Treve frisked up to the credulous Royce, shaking merrily between his jaws the muddy and burnt shirt he had exhumed. Nothing short of a demon could have done that!
Yes, Treve must go. And Chang prayed fervently and burned many scented papers. Then, hoping, yet doubting, the efficacy of his devotions, he went down again to his kitchen.
Seldom is such immediate and complete answer vouchsafed to prayer-papers and Joss-genuflections as was granted to Chang.
Scarcely had he been puttering around the kitchen for three minutes, when a car stopped at the gate and a fat man in fine raiment came striding up the walk. Chang was alone in the house. Neither of the partners could beexpected to return until supper-time. The Chinaman desisted from his task of dishwashing; wiped his wet yellow arms on a drying flannel shirt of Joel’s, and shuffled forward to meet the stranger.
Fraser Colt had come three hundred miles, to claim his collie.
Recovering from his rough treatment at the hands of Fenno and at the teeth of Treve, at the Dos Hermanos dogshow, he had returned to the show, next day, only to learn that collie and rancher had departed.
To trace them had been a simple enough matter. In the back of every show catalog are the names and addresses of the exhibitors. Thus, to locate the owner of Treve was the work of a minute. “J. Fenno, c/o Dos Hermanos Ranch, Dos Hermanos County.” That was the line at the back of the book. And a score of people at La Cerra knew the exact location of the partners’ ranch.
A telegram had called home the bitten and bruised Colt, on the second day of the show. And the business involved therein had kept him occupied for the next few months. But in the first lull of work, he prepared to get back the collie whose cash value would make worth while any trouble involved in the quest.
By law, Treve belonged to Fraser Colt. Colt held the bill of sale whereby he had bought the dog, as an eight-month pup. He had lost him; and now had found him again. Any law-court on earth would uphold his claim to the collie’s ownership.
So, with no fear of successful opposition he had come to the wilderness to recover his property. If Fenno should refuse, he could take the case to court and make the rancher not only give up the dog but pay trial costs. Several folk could swear to Treve’s identity as the collie bought by Colt.
Then, when at last he should have the costly animal safe in his own kennel—well, it would be time to pay a little personal bill of his. At the thought, Colt was wont to glance at his bite-mangled hand and then swing his arm viciously; as though it already wielded a blood-flecked rawhide. Yes, there would be a sweet little hour of revenge for the way the dog had attacked him.
“I want to see Fenno,” announced Colt, as the smiling Chang confronted him at the ranch house door.
“Not in,” cooed the Chinaman. “And Mist’ Loyce Mack not in. Not in till sup’ time he come.”
Colt did not reply at once. But neither didhe depart. Instead, he stood surveying the Chinaman’s face, from between thoughtfully squinted lids.
Fraser Colt was a good deal of a scoundrel. He was a good deal of a brute. But his worst foe never doubted his queer power of reading human nature. Especially, could he read crookedness in the face of his fellow-man. He had an unerring eye for that quality—long possession of it having made him expert.
So now he was reading Chang as though the Celestial’s usually inscrutable visage had been a printed page. Colt’s alert brain was working fast.
He had come hither prepared for a scene of possible violence; perhaps for a long legal delay to follow it. And now appeared the chance for a short cut out of all that. If he could secure the dog without giving Treve’s owners a chance to protest, then so much the better. Back at home he could register the collie under another name. If, in future, Joel should chance to recognize Treve at some show, there would be no redress for the rancher. The dog was Colt’s. Chang was to be the means to this easy end.
As the Chinaman still wiggled nervously from one felt-slippered foot to the other, under the silent appraisal of Colt’s eyes, the fat man drew forth a lump of bills; and began to riffle them.Chang’s eyes beamed admiration on the handful of money.
“Listen, Chink!” said Colt, at last. “There’s a collie dog lives here. He’s mine. And I want him. Get that?”
“Tleve?” quavered Chang, wonderingly.
“Yep. Treve. That’s his name in the catalog. It wasn’t his name when I had him. And it won’t be when I get him back. He—”
“You want—you want take Tleve away—to take him away, so he not be heah no longeh, at all?” demanded Chang, dizzy with the speed wherewith his prayer-papers were paying double dividends.
“That’s it,” assented Colt. “And you’re the man to help me. It’s worth just—just fifty dollars to me to get that cur, without any fuss being made. To get him, quiet, and get himaway, quiet. Want to earn that fifty, Chink? Nobody’ll ever know.”
Now, Chang was a man of much finesse. But this delirious prospect of having his prayer answered and of getting fifty whole dollars, to boot, drove him for once to simple directness.
“Yes-s-s,” he simmered, ecstatically; his claw-hand outstretched for the money.
Into his moist palm, Fraser Colt laid a ten-dollar bill. The rest of the roll he pocketed.
“You get the other forty when I get my dog,” said he. “Where is he, now? In the shack?”
“Nope. He out with Mist’ Loyce Mack, Tleve is,” replied Chang. “Not back till sup’ time. At lanch house allee night, though,” he added, consolingly.
“Good!” resumed Colt. “Now, let’s you and me go into executive session. This thing ought to be easy to fix up. Do you get a chance at the dog, alone, any time;—when the others aren’t likely to horn in?”
At supper, that evening, Treve lay as usual on the floor beside Royce’s chair. He was more or less tired from a hard workday on the range, and he looked forward with joy to his own approaching supper.
Apart from such stray tidbits as Mack might happen to toss to him at the table, Treve had but one daily meal;—one big meal a day being ample for any grown dog and far better for his health and condition than is more frequent feeding. This one meal was always served to Treve on the kitchen hearth, by Chang, when the partners’ supper was ended.
To-night, when Joel and Royce pushed back their chairs and lighted their pipes and Chang began to clear the table, Treve as usual arose and made his way to the kitchen. As a rule, hissupper was awaiting him on the hearth. But to-night Chang had not placed it there.
As the dog turned toward the adjoining room in surprise at the omission, Chang came scuttling into the kitchen, laden with dishes. These dishes he set down, then tiptoed back to the door and shut it. From a cupboard he took Treve’s heaped supper plate and set it on the hearth bricks.
The dog wagged his tail in appreciation and followed the Chinaman to the hearth; his white paws beating out an anticipatory little dance on the puncheon floor. He neither liked nor disliked this shuffling and queer-smelling Celestial. But always he was keenly interested in the plate of table-scraps Chang gave him at night.
Hungrily, now, he set to work on his supper. Eating with odd daintiness, yet with egregious speed, the dog became oblivious to everything around him.
Chang stepped back to the cupboard and drew therefrom a huge canvas bag and a length of thin rope. Then, with an apprehensive glance at the door of the adjoining room, he set ajar the outer kitchen door and stole over to where the collie was eating. Holding the bag and rope ready, he came up behind Treve.
There were several prayer-papers and three anti-devil charms in the bag. In one lightningmove, Chang slipped the sack over the unsuspecting dog’s head and forequarters; jamming a double handful of the loose canvas, gag-wise, into the protestingly parted jaws of the victim.
Swiftly and dextrously the man trussed up his prisoner; pinioning his indignant struggles with wily twists of the rope. Then, in the same scared haste, and murmuring Chinese spells, he heaved the squirming burden over his shoulder; and ran staggeringly from the house.
Across the dooryard he ran and out into the road. There, though the load was heavy and restless, he continued at as rapid speed as he could, through the darkness, until he came to the bend of the road, a furlong beyond; where the coulée began.
Just beyond the bend waited a car with dimmed lights; a bulky man crouching beside it. With an exclamation of joy, Fraser Colt hurried forward to meet the burden-bearer.
Eagerly, he snatched from Chang the indignantly tossing bag, and heaved it into the tonneau. Jumping to the driver-seat, he pressed the self-starter.
“Hey!” squealed Chang, as the machine woke into motion. “Hey, Mist’! Fo’ty doll’ I get, now. Gimme!”
He caught hold of the door, as he spoke, lifting himself to the running board.
“Sure!” pleasantly assented Colt. “You get what’s coming to you, Chinkie.”
As he spoke, he slugged his plump right fist to the point of the unsuspecting Chinaman’s jaw; and at the same time stepped on the accelerator. The car lurched forward. The Chinaman lurched back.
On into the night sped the automobile, at as fast a pace as Colt dared to drive it along that bumpy twisting road, at the coulée-edge. Chang slumped, half-senseless, into a wayside clump of manzanita.
Colt had taken no foolish chances when he gave the Chinaman a fist-punch instead of the promised forty dollars. He was thrifty, was Fraser Colt. He was averse to unnecessary expense. He knew Chang would not dare betray him to Fenno or to Royce; and thus confess his own share in the kidnaping. With a smile of pure happiness, he drove on, not troubling to look back at his dupe.
Now, Treve was anything but a fool. When frantic struggles availed only to enmesh him the tighter and to exhaust what little air could still seep into the close-woven canvas sack—when his growls of wrath were smothered in the almost sound-proof bag—he sought the next expedient for escape.
By the time he had reached the gate, onChang’s shoulders, the dog had rid his mouth of the stuffed folds of cloth which had been thrust therein as a gag. The first use he made of this freedom of teeth was to seize the nearest fold of canvas between his scissors-sharp incisors; and begin to gnaw.
Any one who has watched a mischievous puppy gnaw holes in a mat can imagine the power exerted by the skilled and mighty jaws of a grown collie; if put to such infantile use. By the time he was flung into the tonneau, Treve had worked a hole in the canvas, wide enough to permit his protruding nose to escape.
Wasting no time in vain howls, he wrought furiously and deftly on such portions of bag and rope as seemed to bind him most tightly. When it came to severing the twined rope, he resorted again to gnawing tactics. But with the rest of the bag, his curved tusks as well were brought into play.
Twice he heaved himself upright, only to find some part of him was still fast to the bag. Both times, he whirled about and bit fiercely into the trammeling folds or rope. He worked now with added zest of fury. For his nostrils had caught the hated scent of Fraser Colt, the man he detested above all the world. The man who had maltreated him and had fought with Joel Fenno,—the only unfriendly human the dog had known!And he saw and smelt that his mortal enemy was in the seat just in front of him.
Too wise to risk attack until he should be free, he continued to rend loose his bonds. The car was jolting and bumping and rattling at first speed over the bad bit of climb in the trail-like road; rendering its driver deaf to the muffled sounds behind him.
Then, as Colt bent forward over the wheel, to negotiate a particularly tricky twist of the climbing road, something silent and terrible launched itself upon him from behind.
Sixty-odd pounds of furry muscular weight crashed against his fat shoulders. A double set of razor-teeth sheared like red-hot iron into the back of his fat neck.
With a yell, Colt threw back both clawing hands, instinctively, to fend off this unseen and agonizing Horror.
It is not well to abandon the wheel of a light touring car, just as one is driving around a right-angle pitch in an uneven road, by night;—the less so if the gully-sides of a steep coulée are within six inches of one’s left wheel.
The left tire struck glancingly against a wayside bowlder. The impact twisted both front wheels sharply to the left. There was no hand at the wheel to correct the wrenching shift of direction.
Obliquely, the machine shot over the edge of the coulée and down its abrupt side. Ten feet farther on, the fender smote a scrub-tree. The tree was smashed. The speeding car turned turtle.
Before Fraser Colt was well aware of what had happened, the down-plunging car came to a jarring stop, then rose in air and fell on him, pinioning him beneath it. Treve was flung clear of the car and landed in a scratchy mass of greasewood. Beyond a bruise or so, both he and Colt were unhurt.
The man had been caught in the front seat-well of the topless little car; alongside and under the steering wheel. One side-door was jammed irremediably shut. The other had been knocked clean off. Through the aperture thus left, Colt began to squeeze his rotund bulk, to reach firm ground and to get free of the imprisoning car. But, as his head protruded, turtle-like, from its shell, something whizzed at it through the darkness; and two sets of teeth raked the fat face in a laudable effort to tear it off.
Back shrank Fraser Colt, screeching. Blocking the outlet as best he could with the torn seat cushion, he cowered in his tiny prison; while outside ravened and snarled the great dog who hated him.
Colt fumbled for his pistol. Somehow, in thecourse of the wholesale spill, it had fallen out of his pocket. Once he reached out a tentatively feeling hand from behind the leathern barrier of cushion. Swiftly as he yanked it back, Treve’s raking teeth were a fraction of a second swifter.
Around and around his barricaded foe whirled the roaring collie. Then, failing to get at or dislodge the man, Treve accepted the situation. He lay down at full length, alongside the car, as close as possible to the blocked aperture behind which the cramped and bleeding Colt was huddled.
Joel Fenno was awake at grayest dawn. He woke with a vague memory of unpleasantness. Then he located the cause.
Treve had strayed away after supper, the night before; and had not showed up as usual at bedtime. This was not the dog’s habit. Always he was in the house and on his mat beside Royce Mack’s bunk, before the partners went to sleep.
Royce had asked Chang if he knew what had become of their collie. Chang said he had given Treve his supper and that the dog had then strolled out of the kitchen, into the yard; and had not returned. Fenno had sneered ostentatiously at his partner’s solicitude over the beast. But, secretly, he had worried.
Now, waking, he peeped into Mack’s room.No, Treve was not lying on his mat at the snoring Royce’s feet. Joel dressed and went out into the dim morning.
A very few miles up the coulée was the southern boundary of the Triple Bar cattle range. Chris Hibben’s Triple Bar outfit, like most cow-men, had no use for sheep ranchers or for sheep-ranchers’ dogs. If, by any chance, Treve had strolled over their line and should be seen by any gun-packing puncher—
Joel set off at a worried walk, towards the coulée. The farther he went the faster he walked; the while cursing himself for a silly old fool, for wasting good sleep and good exercise on such a wild-goose chase.
At last, giving up the idea of squandering his energy by a trudge to the boundary of the Triple Bar, he stopped and made as though to turn back. As a salve to his feelings, he peeped over the wooded edge of the coulée, on the chance that Treve might be coursing jack rabbits somewhere along its dry bed. At the same time he bawled, perfunctorily:
“Treve!”
To his amaze, there was an answering bark, from somewhere along the coulée’s upper sides, not a hundred yards ahead of him. Joel broke into a shambling run.
Around the sharp turn in the road, just infront of him, appeared Treve. After a glance of appeal at his master, and a pleading bark, the collie turned and vanished into the chaparral along the lip of the gorge. Joel knew enough of the dog to read this plea aright. He followed, and, at the road-turn, he peered once more over the edge, along the general direction in which the dog had disappeared.
There, before him, he saw an upside-down and badly smashed automobile. Treve was mounting guard alongside. From an opening in the inverted front section of the car, as Joel crashed through the chaparral toward the wreck, appeared a blood-splotched and distorted face.
At sight of the face, Treve charged. The head was withdrawn, and a doubled seat-cushion was thrust hurriedly into its place. But not before Fenno had recognized the ample features of Fraser Colt.
The old man stood, blinking down at the upset car. Then his gaze fell upon a badly torn canvas bag, lying nearby; a bag whose few remaining bindings of rope showed sure signs of having been gnawed asunder by teeth. Joel whistled, long and low.
“I c’n understand how he cotched you, all right, Mister Colt,” said he, addressing the invisible occupant of the car. “Trevy c’n do ’most anything, when he reely puts his mind to it. Buthowyouever managed to ketchhimis beyond me. He—”
“Grab your dog and help me out of here!” bleated Colt, feebly, his nerve gone. “I’ll—I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Why should I butt in to help a dirty dog-stealer?” snarled Joel. “Tell me that, Mister. Why—?”
“I didn’t steal him!” wailed Colt. “He’s mine. He— Say, here’s his bill of sale to prove it, friend!”
Cautiously, he shoved forth through a cranny in the cushions a crumpled paper. Joel picked it up and read it, at the same time mechanically ordering Treve back from an abortive charge at the disappearing fingers.
“H’m!” grunted Joel, after a long pause for thought. “The dog seems to b’long to you, all right. Selling him?”
“No!” whined Colt, in a last flare of spirit.
“All right,” acquiesced Fenno, with something akin to geniality in his grouchy voice. “I’ll drop around, in a day or two, and see if you’ve changed your mind. Nobody’s li’ble to find you, down here in the chaparral, till then. Watch him, Trevy! Watch him, till I get back.”
He started off, up the coulée side. A pitiful howl from the prisoner recalled him.
“Hold on!” wheedled Colt. “Don’t leave mehere, with this rabid brute. I— What’ll you gimme for him? I paid—”
“I’m not honin’ to hear what you paid; or even what yousayyou paid,” retorted Joel, scribbling a line or two on the bottom of the bill of sale. “I’ll buy him from you for one dollar in cash an’ for the priv’lege of taking him away; so you c’n crawl out an’ get to a place where they’ll fix up your car an’ lift it to the road again. Take my bid or leave it.”
Colt “left” it. He did so, right blasphemously. Joel said nothing, except: “Watch him, Trevy!” and strolled away. He had reached the road before Colt recalled him.
“Good!” approved Joel. “Lucky I got my fount’n pen, in this vest. Here’s the bill of sale. Here’s the pen. Here’s the dollar. Sign under where I’ve writ that you’ve sold him to me. It’ll keep you from comin’ back to claim him ag’in. In this neck of the woods, my word’s better’n any stranger’s, like yours. An’ I’m p’pared to depose in court that you sold him to me of your own free will. If you try to steal him a second time, it’ll sure mean jail for you. Not that you wouldn’t be more to home there, than where decent folks is. C’mon, Trevy. Le’s you and me go to breakfast. So long, stranger. There’s a garage jes’ up the road. Not more’n about nine miles. By-by.”
As Joel and the collie neared the ranch house, Treve beheld the scrawny cat dozing on the kitchen stoop. In playful mischief, he rushed at her. The cat ran back into the kitchen, spitting blasphemously. Chang appeared on the threshold to learn the cause of his pet’s fright.
One look at the approaching dog, and the Celestial grabbed up his cat and ran gibbering from the house. Nor did he stop in his headlong flight from the supposed devil, until he had left the Dos Hermanos ranch far behind him.
“We’re out one good Chink,” mused Joel Fenno to himself, as he and Mack prepared their own breakfast, at sunrise. “But we’reinone grand dog. An’ I’m figgerin’ that’s nineteen times better.”
“Here, Trevy!” he called, slyly, taking advantage of Mack’s momentary departure from the kitchen. “Here’s a big hunk of fried pork for you—the kind you’re always beggin’ for. Ketch it!”
Joel Fenno was wading almost thigh-deep in a billowing and tossing grayish sea. Here and there, near him, arose the upper two-thirds of other men—his young partner, Royce Mack; their chief herder, Toni, the big Basque; and the other Dos Hermanos shepherds.
The tossing gray-white sea was made up of sheep;—hundreds upon hundreds of milling and worried sheep. Through its billows, like miniature speed-boats of black and of red-gold, dashed Zit, the squat little black “working collie” and his little black mate, Zilla, and the glowingly tawny bulk of Treve.
The three sheepdogs had their work cut out for them. Drouth had come with an unheard-of earliness to the Dos Hermanos Valley, that spring. And, now, in the past week, fire from some herder’s carelessly thrown cigarette had kindled a blaze in the tinder-dry buffalo grass, which a steady north gale had whipped into a very creditable little prairie fire.
The men of the Dos Hermanos ranch had fought back the crawling Red Terror, foot by foot; beating it to a sullen halt with brush, saving the ranch buildings by a cunningly managedbackfire; and frantically digging and dampening shallow ditches in the path of the creeping scarlet line.
The ranch houses had been saved. The course of the fire had been deflected up the coulée. The dogs had been able, by working twenty-four hours a day, to hold in bounds the smoke-scared sheep.
But the range in many places was burned as bare of grass as the palm of one’s hand. True, this area would bear all the richer verdure, later on. In the meantime, however, the innumerable sheep must be fed. And there was not grazing enough left standing to keep one-third of the ranch’s stock.
Wherefore, the one possible recourse was adopted. Fully a month ahead of the usual time, the flocks were to be driven to their summer pasturage along the grassy upper slopes of the Dos Hermanos peaks.
This entailed much bustle and some confusion. For the ordinary preparations, to smooth the yearly exodus, had not been made.
Range pasture after range pasture had been denuded of its woolly population. All the mass of sheep had been rounded up into the Number Three field; and now men and dogs were steering them toward the gateway, which opened direct on the trail they were to take for the hills.
An outsider, watching the scene, would have beheld merely a handful of excited men, waving staves and yelling and making uncouth and apparently unheeded gestures; and three panting and galloping dogs making crazy dashes through the tight-crowding multitude of sheep.
As a matter of fact, not one gesture of the men and not one step of the running dogs was without direct purpose. By degrees the sheep were bunched and headed for the wide-flung gateway, beyond which waited a shepherd.
At one moment, everything seemed hopeless confusion. The next, a disorderly but steadily progressing throng of sheep were headed for the open gate; and their leaders had begun to trot bleatingly out into the trail; started in the right direction by the shepherd who stood outside. The rest surged on in their wake.
By the time a half hundred of the pioneers essayed a scrambling rush from the trail, up a bank toward a burned and still smoking field beyond, Treve had cleared the pasture’s high wire and had flung himself ahead of them; noisily yet deftly driving them back to the trail; rounding up strays; keeping the huddle in the right direction and giving wide berth to the gateway that continued to vomit forth more and more woolly imbeciles.
Treve had been far inside the pasture when thesheep at last consented to head for the gate. In order to obey Royce Mack’s shouted command to guide aright those already outside, he had been forced to leap on the backs of the tight-jammed sheep nearest him; and to run lightly along on a succession of bumpy hips, until he could spy an opening on the ground of sufficient size for him to pursue his race on solid earth instead of sheepback.
While Zit and Zilla continued to herd and drive forward the remaining foolish occupants of the field, Treve was here and there and everywhere in general and nowhere in particular; among the debouching and ever more numerous sheep that had hit the trail.
It was a time for lightning action—for incessant motion;—for the use of the queer hereditary sheepdog instinct. There was no question of merely obeying shouted orders, now, nor of following the direction of a waved hat. Treve was working “on his own.” He was using his native genius as a herder; keeping that wild bunch headed aright and in the trail; and cutting short abortive efforts of the whole mass to cascade out on to the burnt fields on either side or to bolt for the smoking coulée.
His flying feet spurned the ground, scarcely seeming to touch it. His tawny-gold bodyflashed in and out; seemingly in ten parts of the trailside at once.
Then all at once the nerve-racking job was done. The whole flock was out of the gateway and safe on the trail; with Zit and Zilla weaving in and out, steering them straight; and the herdsmen in their places along the pattering ranks. Treve could change his flying zigzag gallop to a wolf-trot. He could even brush his panting muzzle against Royce Mack’s hand as he trotted past the busy rancher.
Up the coulée-side trail moved the sheep; the myriad patter of their hoofs sounding on the rutted roadbed like cloudburst rain on a shingle roof.
Deep in the bottom of the coulée, to left of the twisting trail, the fire still snapped and flickered. Its smell and sight and smoke sent recurrent panic waves over the army of sheep. The three dogs seemed to know in advance when these efforts at bolting would begin.
Treve’s white paws were grimed and sore from frequent dashes along the coulée-side; where he needs must run on the steep scorched bank paralleling the trail; turning back any loose edges of the gray-white flock that sought to scamper down the incline.
“Keep it up, Trevy,” whisperingly encouragedold Joel Fenno, as the collie whisked past him on such an errand. “Another mile, an’ the road’s due to shift to the right, away from this smoke-hole. Then it’ll be plain goin’.”
Treve caught the low sound of his own name; and wagged his plumed tail in reply, as he ran on.
“Be past the coulée in a little while, now!” sang out Royce Mack, to his partner. “The dogs are holding them, great!”
“Yep,” growled Fenno. “The two black ones are. Treve’s loafin’ on the job, as usual. I’m hopin’ he won’t do some fool stunt, when we get to the crossroad, up yonder, an’ hustle a bunch of the sheep onto the Triple Bar range. I wouldn’t put it past the chucklehead.”
Royce Mack did not answer, but hurried on to his own new place in the tedious procession. Fenno had touched on a theme that worried him. Not that either Royce or Joel really thought Treve would “do some fool stunt,” at the spot where the trail crossed the road that led to the Dos Hermanos peaks, nor at any other place or time. But both of them dreaded that bit of crossroad territory, which bordered the Triple Bar range.
The Triple Bar was a cattle outfit. Like most other aggregations of cattlemen, its men heldsheep and sheep ranchers in sharper abhorrence than they held rattlesnakes and skunks.
More than once had a serious clash been narrowly averted, between the Dos Hermanos partners and Chris Hibben of the Triple Bar, their nearest neighbor to the north. It was understood, without need of words, that any Dos Hermanos sheep or sheepdog, setting foot on the Triple Bar range, would be courting swift and certain death.
To-day the continued reek of smoke and the crackle and smolder of fire, in the coulée below them, served to fray the sheep’s bad nerves and to deprive them of what little sense they had. The work of the dogs and the shepherds grew increasingly difficult, as the trail mounted high and higher alongside the burning gorge.
At length, in front, appeared the open space at the coulée-head; the space where ran the road toward the peaks; and beyond which stretched the Triple Bar range.
The foremost dozen sheep caught sight of the cleared space. Perhaps with an idea that it signified an end of their smoky and terrifying climb, they bolted frenziedly toward it. Those behind them followed suit. A veritable tidal wave of sheep surged galloping toward the clearing; deaf and blind to all coercion.
Springing on the backs of the close-packed runaways nearest him, Treve tore forward to head off the stampede. He reached ground in front of the onrushing wall of sheep, at a spot where the bank rose high on the right side and where the pit-like top of the coulée fell in almost sheer precipice for fifty feet on the left.
Wheeling to face his panic-charges, Treve barked thundrously. But before he completed the bark or the wheel, the sheep were upon him. Unable to stop their own gallop and pushed on resistlessly by those behind, the front line smote against the whirling collie with the force of a catapult.
Knocked clean off his feet, Treve rolled writhingly to one side, to avoid being trampled to death. Over the coulée-lip he rolled; and crashed down the steep side of the gorge.
He landed on his back in the midst of a brush-fire, at the bottom; breathless and half-stunned. Joel Fenno cried aloud, as he saw the dog reel over the cliff-edge. He ran forward, kicking aside the encumbering sheep that tangled his progress. He reached the lip of the gorge just in time to see the dog come charging up the precipitous slope, his beautiful coat smeared by soot and with sparks still crackling here and there in it.
Gaining the summit, Treve wasted not asecond; but forged ahead toward the front of the stampede. He was too late.
The few seconds of leeway had permitted the galloping sheep to reach the clearing, unchecked. The two black collies were far behind, with the main flock. Nor were any of the men far enough forward to stem the rush. As a result, the first hundred sheep struck the cleared space at a speed which they could not check. Across the narrow highroad they hurled themselves blindly, shoved on by those behind them.
They crashed into a tall barbed wire fence on the far side of the road;—the boundary fence of the Triple Bar. They hit it with the impact of a battering ram. The front rank were ripped and torn on the jagged wires. But their weight and their blind momentum sagged the wire and snapped the nearest worm-gnawed post. A whole panel of fence gave way; falling obliquely backward, almost onto the grass. Through the gap and over the bodies of their wire-entangled comrades, swept scores of sheep. On they rushed; scattering into a ragged fan-shaped formation as they found themselves in the open range.
Joel Fenno went green-white with horror. Mack groped feebly for a gun at his belt. But, as usual, his gun hung forgotten from a peg in his bedroom. Indeed the whole party could notmuster any weapon more lethal than a staff. The shepherds involuntarily came to a dazed standstill.
But Treve did not hesitate, for the space of an instant. Hurdling the sheep which struggled in the strands of wire, he cleared the low-slanted broken panel and sprang into the forbidden range of the enemy. His singed coat almost sweeping the ground as he sped, he bore down upon the hundred strays.
The boundary range of the Triple Bar was perhaps two miles wide by three miles in length. Dotted along its expanse numbers of cattle were grazing. Also, entering through a gateway, three-quarters of a mile up the field, rode Chris Hibben.
Fate had brought Hibben to this especial field at this especial minute, during his leisurely tour of inspection of the Triple Bar herds.
Hibben pulled his pinto pony to a standstill. Open-eyed and open-mouthed he sat staring; unable to believe what his goggled eyes told him.
There, inside the road-end of his sacred range, cavorted something like a hundred detestable sheep! There, too, among them, galloped an equally detestable dog! The thing was impossible!
To add insult to injury, a panel of his barbed wire was down; and men of the loathed DosHermanos ranch were disentangling from it still more sheep; while two herdsmen were seeking to steer something like a billion other vile sheep aside from following their brethren into the field!
All this, in almost no space of time, did Chris Hibben see. Then back to him came his senses and with them his flaming temper. He whipped out a heavy-caliber pistol and struck spurs deep into his pinto.
Down the field, like a cyclone, came the infuriated cattle king; whooping, Comanche-fashion, and brandishing his drawn gun.
Meantime, in other parts of the field, other things had been happening. It was mere child’s play for Treve to round up and turn his runaways. It was the work of almost no time. Driving them headlong, he put them at the gap in the fence. Sharply checking their repeated tendency to loosen the close bunch into which he had welded the scattered hundred, he sent them at top speed toward the gap.
Through it he hustled them, just as the wire-tangled sheep had been cleared therefrom. Back into the mass of their fellows, Treve galloped the loudly baa-ing runaways. Then, collie-fashion, he whizzed about and stood midway in the gap, to prevent their doubling back.
He had worked fast and he had worked well.Mildly, he was pleased with himself. He glanced from one to the other of his two masters for a word of approval. But no such word was spoken. Aghast, dumbfounded, Joel and Mack were gaping at the oncharging Chris Hibben.
Toni, the chief herdsman, had presence of mind to grab Treve by the ruff and to yank the indignant collie back from the fence gap, out onto the neutral ground of the road. As he did so, one of the restored runaways exercised his inborn traits of idiocy by breaking from his subdued mates and scampering again through the gap, into the field. To avert capture, he continued to run, even after he had achieved his escape. Others made as though to follow. But the shepherds beat them back.