They got up, built the fire high so that its glow went out over the flock, and tried to get another glimpse of him. They found him easily enough, at the very foremost of the band, his brown color in vivid contrast to the whiteness of the ewes. And in finding him Alice made another, less pleasing discovery.
Hugh didn’t understand at first. He saw that she was making some kind of a count, first leisurely, then in frantic haste. A troubled look came into her fresh face. Once more she verified the count, then turned to him with a rueful smile.
“My day’s work is not yet over,” she said slowly.
“Why not?” he demanded.
“One of the markers—one of sixteen black ewes—is missing. Do you know what that means?”
“Good Heavens—that you’ve got to go out—in this dark forest—to look for him?”
“The ninety and nine,” she quoted, still with the same, inscrutable smile. “But it isn’t just one, Hugh. You see, sheep keep relatively the same position in the flock. Of course it might be just a single disaster—a coyote snatching her from the flanks—but ordinarily when one of the black sheep is gone, it means that a hundred or so others have gone with her. I can’t take the chance.”
His own face grew mournful. “You see—what a good herder I am. Lose a hundred sheep the first day.”
“It happens to the best of herders.”
“Then why can’t I go out to look for them—and let you stay here? That’s what I’m going to do.”
“No. You must stay here. You don’t know sheep yet, Hugh, and likely you don’t know these mountains. The band of them is somewhere through the stretch you fed over today—and I would know just how and where to look for them. At night with no dog—the dog must stay here with you—you wouldn’t be able to drive them. I even have to go on foot, so I can climb down into the steep canyons and go through the brush. It’s part of the life of the camp-tender.”
“But you won’t go—in this darkness—”
“I’ll wait till the moon rises. Besides, I know this Smoky Land from end to end. So don’t be afraid for me.”
They stood silent by the leaping flame. The sheep lay quiet, the shepherd dog slept at Hugh’s feet. And subtly stealing into their consciousness above the sound of the leaping flame they heard the voice of the forest, mysterious and profound—the little sounds of the wind in the thicket, the rustling of leaves, the hushed footfall of the wild creatures. Into that darkness Alice would venture for her lost sheep. Hugh felt a strange weight of dread.
Above the far mountains the clouds gleamed with the first beams of the rising moon.
XIII
In that momentous twilight that brought Hugh Gaylord to the sheep camp for the first time, there was unfamiliar traffic on the brown, pine-needle trail that wound down to the meadows from the darkening forest. There was the sound of a footfall not often heard. And one can imagine the lesser forest people—the little gnawing folk that have underground lairs and to whom the ferns are a beautiful, tropical forest—gazing up with bright eyes to see who came.
Perhaps at first they thought it was merely one of the hunters: a great creature of claw or fang such as a wolf or cougar. This was the hour when the beasts of prey started forth to hunt, and it was true that the step had a stealthy, hushed quality of one who does not care to have his presence known. It can be understood why a little gopher, so fat of cheeks that he gave the impression of being afflicted with mumps, lay rather close and still among his tree roots until the creature got past. He didn’t care to feel a puma claw impaling him as a fishhook impales a worm.
The gopher has not particularly acute vision, so this traveler on the pine-needle trail was to remain ever a mystery to him. He was aware of a tall, dark form that glided softly and departed; and life became the same puzzling grayness that it had been before. A chipmunk, however—like a little patch of light and shadow against a brown tree trunk—could see much better. And he lay very still, only his eyes busy, until he found out the truth.
The passerby was only a man, after all, such a creature as usually did not take the trouble to hunt chipmunks. Still he felt afraid, and it is extremely doubtful that the small-sized, always addled brain in his miniature skull could tell him why. The truth was that in that stealing figure there was something terribly suggestive of the beasts of prey themselves, creatures that—more than often—did devote unwelcome attentions to chipmunks. The man crept through the forest with the same caution. His eyes were strange and glowing like those of the lynx as it climbs through the branches. And over him—an aura too dim and obscure for the blunt senses of human beings—hung an essence with which the wilderness creatures are only too familiar: that ancient lust and fever that comes to Broken Fang when he strikes down his prey.
He was shivering all over; and it was to be remembered that the wolf—in certain dread moments at the end of the chase—shivered the same way. One would have been given cause to wonder what stress, what dreadful events had occurred beyond the edge of the meadow that had caused this queer inebriation.
But as strong drink dies in the body, the fever seemed to fall away from him as he made turn after turn in the trail. He stooped now, rather than crouched, his footfall had a fumbling, heavy, dragging quality that was not at all like the stealth it had possessed at first. The surface lights passed from his dark eyes, leaving them somewhat languorous and lifeless.
