XIV
It didn’t take Fargo long to perfect his plans. As the dawn emerged he talked them over with the Mexican, José, and the latter was ready with any little suggestions that did not occur to his chief. And the gray, soft, mysterious light of early morning came into that conference—through the stained and cobwebbed windowpane—and found a darkness it could not alleviate.
As they talked, the very atmosphere of the room seemed to change. It was tense, poignant as if with the remembered lusts and passions of an earlier, more savage world. The little sounds of a room in which two men talk together—the stir of moving bodies, the creak of furniture, the soft whisper of easy breathing seemed lacking here. Both were motionless as two serpents that lay in their sunbaths on their ledges, and thus an insidious stillness dropped down in the little intervals between their sentences.
The almost total absence of motion on the part of those two conspirators could not have been ignored. It implied only one thing: that their thoughts were so commanding and engrossing that even the almost unconscious movements of the body were suspended. What motion there was, was mostly only the deepening of the lines on their dark faces.
This tenseness, this silence, these submerged passions pointed to but one end. And the crime would not be outside the pale of the laws of man alone, but the basic laws of the forest as well. The feast of death was to take place after all—the same delight of which Broken Fang, the puma, was even then dreaming beside the sheep camp on the far headwaters of Silver Creek. But men, not wild beasts, were to be the debauchers.
“It’s the simplest way yet,” Fargo had whispered. The veins stood out in his brutal hands. “That pack of mine are devils—there’s no other word for ’em—and once they get goin’, they’d sweep through that flock of woollies like lightning. You’ve heard of sheep-killin’ dogs before—”
“Yes—but your dogs ain’t never been sheep killers,” the Mexican protested.
“What of that? They can learn fast enough. They’d tear a man to pieces just as quick if I didn’t keep ’em chained. I don’t see why I didn’t teach ’em long ago—they’d be worth a thousand coyotes for keepin’ this country clear of sheep. Maybe you don’t know about sheep-killing dogs. You might not have heard that in the sheep country in the East one dog that once got the habit will spoil the business for miles around. You see, José, most animals don’t kill more than they need; it’s an instinct with ’em, for if they did they’d pay for it by going hungry later. Nature has a way of teachin’ the wild varmints what to do. But dogs have been domesticated so long that they’ve forgotten most of their instincts, and once they get started, once the killin’ fever gets a hold of ’em, they don’t know when to quit. There’s many a dog that has slashed a hundred sheep in one night—jumpin’ from one to another, tearing out one throat after another, and runnin’ the rest till they die. It’s kind of a madness that gets a hold of ’em once they get started. True, my dogs ain’t ever got the habit, but one taste will teach ’em. And they’re half-wild already, as any man well knows who seen ’em tear that little black cub-bear to pieces last week. Just tore him to little scraps of black fur.”
Fargo leaned back in his chair and laughed. The sound burst out suddenly above the even murmur of his talk, and it was no less terrible to hear than the bay of the pack a few minutes before. It was a wild, harsh sound—and African travelers might have been given cause to remember the hyenas, laughing on the sunbaked hills. It pleased him to recall that scene in the forest beyond the creek, in which his pack of dogs had killed the cub. It moved him in unlovely, dark ways. The little bear had been a clumsy, furry, amiable little creature—representing what is perhaps the most lovable breed of all the wild animals—and the pack had made short and terrible work of him.
“There’s ten of ’em,” Fargo went on, “and there ain’t no one to guard the flock. That one big shepherd dog would last quick—he wouldn’t be able to bluff off them hounds of mine like he could bluff coyotes. And then they’d have the time of their lives—the time of their lives.”
“You mean—take ’em and sick ’em on?” José asked.
“I’ve got a better way than that. Of course one of us will have to take ’em and show ’em the way until they get on the track of the flock, and of course that one will have to be me. I’m the only living man that can handle ’em—you remember the night that old Ben got out and how he pretty near killed that little cowman from Naptha. There’s a little medicine I’ve got to give ’em before I go, and that means—for you to take a little ride over to Newt Hillguard’s.”
José half-closed his eyes. He had begun to understand.
“I’ve always cussed at Newt for keepin’ that little band of Shropshires in his back lot, but I’m glad now he didn’t get rid of them,” Fargo went on. “You’re to bring back a sheep in your saddle—a lamb’ll do, or any old ewe he was about to slaughter. Then, after we get through here, all I’ll have to do is start up the old Horse Creek trail with that pack of dogs. It’ll be a couple of hours before I can get started, and it’ll take till dark to get to the sheep camp, but dark’s the
