“And what if I am?”
The eyes of the two men met, and Hugh saw the bulldog lips drawing back over the strong teeth. The lids half-dropped over his own eyes, and he stood as if deep in thought.
He had been a little afraid, at first. Even now he was not blind to the evident strength of the formidable body, the huge fists, the brutal jaws. Yet—he suddenly knew to his vast amazement—these things no longer mattered. Instinctively he knew that he was face to face with a mortal foe; but he felt a miraculous trust in his own strength.
“I know something about Landy Fargo,” Hugh answered quietly. “He’s not the man I let sit by my fire. And the sooner you get away I think the better it will be.”
Fargo glared, and there ensued a half-second of strained silence, of curious immobility on the part of them both. The fire blazed beside them, the shadows leaped and danced, far away the moon gleamed on the white peaks of the Rockies. The whole forest world was wrapped in impenetrable silence. Fargo snarled, then started to turn.
And at that instant each of them forgot—for a little while—each other’s presence. They stood wholly silent, scarcely breathing—listening as men listen when life itself is at stake. From far away in the still forest—in the direction that Alice had gone—both of them heard the faint, savage bay of the hounds.
No human being, at that distance, could mistake the cry. The pack was hunting. It was running its game. And from the wild excitement and exultation of the clamoring voices, it was plain that the trail was hot, that the hounds were almost upon their prey.
Hugh suddenly turned his eyes to Fargo, trying to interpret the strange, exultant look in his brutal face. His own eyes narrowed. Then he started—a strange convulsive jerk that no man had ever seen in him before. It was an instinctive recoil at a great dread and horror that suddenly swept over him. There had been no time for thought. It was as if a voice had spoken, instantly and clear, and had told him the real character of that wild hunt in the darkness.
For he had heard, infinitely dim but sharp as a needle prick through almost a mile of silent forest, the explosion of Alice’s pistol. Some great danger was upon her and her little flock; even now, perhaps, she was fighting for her life. It was a moment of crisis not alone for her but for him: the time in which his metal would be tried in the fire. He knew, surely as if a voice had told him, that there were no seconds to waste.
“No,” he said clearly, “I believe you’d better stay here. I’ll take your horse.”
There was no time to catch and saddle Alice’s animal, feeding at the edge of the meadow. There was no tone of request in the words. He had simply given an order: with his very life he would see that it was obeyed.
“You will, will you?” Fargo howled. “We’ll see about that—”
Hugh reached for the reins, and it seemed to him that Fargo’s hand was fumbling at his hip. That in itself didn’t matter. Hugh only knew that he wanted the horse and that nothing must stand in the way. Fargo was shouting, his dark mouth was open. And Hugh lashed out with his fist, aiming straight for the savage lips.
He struck with all his strength, scarcely in rage but just as a means to an end. He had never fought before, yet the blow came unerringly and with terrific power. There could be only one result to such a blow as that. He dimly heard Fargo grunt—like a beast as it falls below the butcher’s stroke—then saw him reel and fall. He started to swing into the saddle.
It was better, he thought, that this man remain unconscious until he returned. He didn’t forget that he was still shepherd of the flocks and that Fargo was an enemy. Some great test lay before him, and the fewer his foes the better. He leaped down—like a cougar springing from his ambush—and struck once with each fist into the soggy, brutal face.
They were terrific blows, but expedience, rather than cruelty, was the motive behind them. Hugh did not even wonder at himself. He swung lightly on to the horse and lashed it to a gallop.
XVII
These were not wolves. This fact dawned upon Alice Crowson, running her little flock at top speed toward the camp, before ever she saw their savage forms burst forth from the thickets behind and even before she discerned the twitch and leap of their shadows in the distant stretch of moonlit canyon. Only in the starving time of winter had wolves approached with such terrible fearlessness and frenzy. Nor was the cry that long, strange running song of the wolf pack. She knew their breed. They were enormous hounds: such a savage pack as might have started forth from some awful Underworld of fable.
And it would have been better were they wolves. Not for nothing has man waged immemorial centuries of warfare, not only upon wolves but on the great felines as well. They have been taught a wholesome respect for the tall breed that has come to dominate the earth, and much hunger and madness must be upon them before they will dare raise fang or claw against him. But it is not this way with dogs. They have lived among men since the first days of the cave dwellers; they have found men out; they have been willing slaves and faithful servants, and once the impulse comes to attack, there is no ingenerate barrier of instincts to hold them back.
Alice glanced behind, and the Little People that watch with such bright eyes all the dramas of the forest heard her utter an unfamiliar sound. It sprang instinctively to her lips. “Hugh!” she cried to that beetling silence. “Help
