Shep was still beside him, and the communion between them was even more close than in life. They seemed almost like brothers, rather than master and servant. A peace that was almost rapture abided in their companionship. And it was necessary that Shep remain awake while he himself dozed. But the dog’s outline was vaguely different. The ears were always pointed and erect, the tail was not so lifted, and sometimes when Hugh caught a sudden glimpse of him out of the corner of his eye, a swift wave of icy terror swept over him. The dog was like Cry-in-the-night—that was it! He was gray and white-fanged just like the wolves themselves.
Even the wind—the air—was different. It was full of smells that stirred the flesh, and hushed little sounds to freeze the blood with dread. It was vibrant and shuddering and alive, and the world had not yet begun to grow old. And he always felt an overwhelming pride in his own strength. His arms—curiously long and quite black with hair—could crush the ribs of Cry-in-the-night like an eggshell. His chest was huge, his legs were knotted and gigantic, and when he saw his reflection in the water of the spring, the hairy growth was long and matted about his throat. And clearest of all the dream was the ring of deadly shadows that ever encroached upon the space of firelight, and the strange twin lights that ever glowed from their depths.
Two and two, everywhere he looked. They always glowed hungrily, and their watch was never done. Curious blue-green and yellow disks of fire, close together and glowing ever in the darkness. Sometimes he would open his lips and shout—and for an instant they would draw back. They were afraid of that wild cry of his, but they were more afraid of the flint dagger that lay at his side. Ah, they died quickly—with a scream and a howl—when the Death Flint went into them. It was a good thing to see, but it also filled the heart with fear. He laughed and exulted when he remembered how it was even quicker in its stroke than the leap of a wolf.—But most of all the watchful circle feared the camp fire. They could not rub the wood and strike the flame: in this he was master, ruler and monarch of the earth! Cry-in-the-night might kill him in a fair fight, but still he could not build a fire. The dreamer always felt a great wave of exultation.
One night he dreamed that the fire burned almost down, and the circle drew close. He wakened from his doze and shouted at them none too soon. And a strange, wild cry from his own lips wakened Hugh, in the sheep camp of the twentieth century, from his dream. He had cried out in his sleep—a hoarse, wild, savage cry that left him curiously awed. And the coyote that had crept close to the flank of the flock slipped quickly back into the forest.
Hugh got up, stood a moment in the gleam of the late September moon, then piled more wood upon the fire. The circle of twin lights was a reality tonight. The days of drought had brought ever more of the wild hunters about his flock, and almost anywhere he looked he saw their luminous eyes, two by two, as they waited in the darkness. He glanced down—but a rifle, not a dagger of flint, lay at his side. He looked out over the flock, instinctively counting up his markers. Most of the sheep were asleep, but one—the greatest of them all—stood erect, with lowered horns, as if on guard. It was Spot the yearling ram, and his horns looked oddly large in the soft light of the moon.
“Spot, old boy,” the man said, “I believe you’ve got memories too. I believe you’ve been dreaming—just as I have.”
XX
Dreams, dreams! Spot, the young ram, waking or sleeping, never escaped from them. They came to him through the long, still hours of night, they disturbed his sleep in the mid-afternoon rest when the flock sought the deep shade, he knew them even in the hours of grazing. They were so plain, so real that they seemed more like memories—events that had transpired before he came to lead Crowson’s flock.
Yet his damming was not the least in doubt. Crowson himself knew Spot’s full record as far as his own immediate life was concerned. He had been born in the lower foothills—the first lamb of the season. And his mother had died to give him birth.
Such casualties do not happen often among the domestic sheep. There were a few such losses each year, usually due to an unnatural delivery, but in this case there was a simpler explanation. Little Spot was oversized; in a remote way that Crowson could not quite identify, he differed in outline from any other lamb in the flock. The same divergence could still be noticed now as Spot reached his second autumn.
“Good Lord,” Crowson had said, when he marked the lamb’s coloring and size. “Here’s a little devil that would be worth watching if his ewe were just alive to keep him fed. I’d like to see just what kind of a ram he’d grow to be.”
He supposed that Spot would die; a motherless lamb in western flocks can’t be counted on to survive. But in this case Spot obviously had other plans. Before the end of his first day he had attached himself—with an instinct that was seemingly miraculous—to the largest, strongest ewe in the flock, one whose own lamb had died. Crowson himself fastened the skin of
