But he forced his growing terror from him and made a swift study of the currents. The lamb seemed doomed. There was no wading that frightful stream. A log sloped down into the water from the opposite bank, but there was no way to cross. The only hope lay in hurling himself into the torrent, fighting his way to the middle of the stream, seizing the lamb, and swimming with it to safety.
The dog could not give aid. The river was a succession of great rocks and treacherous whirlpools, the water was icy cold, and in the darkness a swimmer might easily be swept downstream to his death. Hugh saw all these things plainly. In his own heart he sensed an equal menace in some dim form that waited on the opposite bank to combat him for those few pounds of living flesh. And in that dim light he saw that only a few seconds remained in which to attempt a rescue. The wild waters broke against the rocks between which the lamb lay; and in a few seconds more it would cease its struggles.
It was only an animal, a baby sheep that was one of three thousand, a little armful of warm flesh that would never be missed. To rescue it would tax the last ounce of strength in Hugh’s body. It might very easily cost him his life. It wasn’t worth it. By all the dictates of good sense, the thing to do was to turn back, to leave the dog barking at the water’s edge and the ewe mourning on the shore. There were no human spectators to praise him for the deed or condemn him for its omission. He knew that even if he were put on trial no sensible man on the broad earth would hold it against him if he left the lamb to its fate.
Yet in that moment of inner trial a great and a serene knowledge came to him. He knew—in one instant of vision—that it did not lay with the shepherd to consider abstract issues of life and death. It was not for him to try to balance the value of a lamb’s life with his own. His business was to watch the flock. His work was to guard the sheep. Nothing could come between.
All the voices of prudence and good sense were stilled before the voice of his own soul. He was afraid, but his fear could not come between the shepherd and his work. He wanted to turn away; but a power greater than his own will made him stand fast. The laws of his own being had given their decree—and they could not be denied.
“All right, old fellow,” he said simply to the dog. “We’ll get the little devil.”
The dog plunged in. It was the voice he had awaited. The man dropped his coat, his gun, and the small pack that he wore on his back, then ran a short distance up the stream. And the muscles of his body seemed to shiver and vibrate with strength as he plunged into the dark waters.
Broken Fang, the cougar, had seen the dog and the man on the opposite bank, and at first he had been afraid. He retained enough of his natural caution not to wish to reveal himself at once. “Most of all, fear men,” was one of the first of the long scroll of forest laws, and time had been when he had shivered and skulked with fear at just the human smell on the wind. But tonight he was very hungry. And the game was almost in his claws.
He hadn’t forgotten that he was the master of the forest, who had felled even the horned steer. What were these slight figures to stand against him? Many of the forest laws he had already broken; he might even yet break the law that forbade the death-feast—and why should he obey now? A slow, terrible anger began to overcome him.
He had missed his kill too many times that night. He felt a blind desire not to run away but to stay and fight. He crept down nearer the water’s edge, his glaring eyes on the two figures on the opposite bank. At that instant he saw both of them plunge into the torrent.
This was the action of the deer when the wolves pressed them close—to jump into the river to escape. These creatures were like the deer, a breed known to him of old. Little Death the mink had done the same thing, the night he had been so hungry and in which the miniature slayer had slipped between his talons. The river was always a place of refuge for those that were afraid. Thus it was plain that if the dog and the man feared him there was no further cause for him to be afraid of them. He crept out boldly, a magnificent, tawny figure in the dim light, on to the log that led down into the water. His eyes shone with blue fire.
Perhaps the dog saw him first. He swam with wide-open eyes. He had jumped in almost opposite the little pile of driftwood where the lamb lay and was immediately swept downstream. Hugh, however, had leaped in farther up, and he had had a chance to work into the middle of the current as he was carried down.
He had always been a strong swimmer, and he needed that strength now. The water was icy cold; it gripped him with resistless strength. He fought it with powerful strokes, but it seemed to him that
