He was trembling all over with excitement; his blood simply racing in his veins. The night throbbed, his heart swelled as if it would burst. At first he only saw the moonlight, fragile and silvery, over the sleeping sheep. He raised his head.
One of the wilderness traits that even the domestic sheep have not altogether lost is the ability to stand absolutely motionless until human eyes get tired of watching. Not a hair twitched on the young ram. It was such a posture as his followers had often seen in him when the flock was menaced by some approaching beast of prey; yet Spot was not thinking of enemies now. And all at once a wild flood of ecstasy passed through his frame.
Out of the darkness of the ridge certain living forms came stealing one by one, as silently as stealing shadows. A wonderful and noble monarch—to whom even the wolf made obeisance—was first in the file—just as Spot had known. Others, even smaller than himself, brought up the rear. And then Spot knew the truth.
He knew that his dream was coming true.
XXI
All the dreams by which Spot knew of his lost heritage were realities to old Argali, leader of a band of wild mountain sheep, or bighorn, that had their craggy home in the high ranges of the Upper Salmon Mountains. The winged danger that fell from the clouds to menace the young lambs was not a memory to him: it was just an unavoidable detail of his life. Perhaps it was more familiar to the ewes, whose lambs were the lights of their souls, but old Argali had become rather indifferent to it years before. For the winged death was simply the great golden eagle who had his eyrie on a high ledge.
He had known in his own life the joys that Spot had dreamed about and missed: the wild runs, the leaping from ledge to ledge, the rough games, the glory of the sunset on the high peaks. In his own time he had stood on the high pinnacles and let the last red glow of the sun fall over him. He had known the strife, the danger, the exultation, and his flock would follow him wherever he chose to go.
There was no more magnificent creature in the whole mountain world than he. To Hugh, who had never seen a mountain sheep, his coloring would have recalled but one creature on earth—Spot himself. He had massive horns that could strike with resistless might, sturdy legs and little clinging hoofs that could scale the face of a precipice. A lone wolf wouldn’t have cared to meet old Argali on a narrow trail. Only Broken Fang himself had prowess enough to conquer him in a fair fight—and Broken Fang usually hunted in the woods far, far below Argali’s range.
But the bighorn ram had memories also; and it was because of them that he took the narrow trail down into the valleys this mid-September night. The wind—a soft little breath that had stolen up from the hills where the flock fled—had brought him a message; and it carried him back to an autumn night of two seasons before, recalling certain stirring events that had occurred upon a distant mountain side.
It was wholly possible that Bill Elkins, a herder who the following spring had gone over to Fargo and his gang, could remember that night also. But he had no real knowledge of the strange mountain drama that had taken place. His only recollection of it concerned a long and weary climb after a little band of strays that had wandered from the main band of domestic sheep and which a wolf had chased far into the distant mountains.
He did not know of the dramatic meeting that had taken place on a faraway crag that was the lower limit of Argali’s range. It was the last days of the rut—the season that was just now beginning. The old ram had been down from his high places looking for salt, and at first he had been just a little alarmed by the sight of the little band of all-white ewes fleeing so madly toward him. But understanding had come soon. He realized that these ewes were his own people—cousins far remote and yet females of his own breed. They were sheep, even as he himself. Their wool was full of alien smells, they were awkward and slow and helpless, their bodies were fat where they should have been trim, yet they were his own kind.
The fact that he had considerable of a harem already did not matter here: for the old ram—like all of his brethren—was an incorrigible polygamist. Were not the fall days almost done? It was the autumnal madness, and a wilderness mating had come to pass before the moon had set.
And Spot had been the child of that union—conceived in the far ranges that were his native land. But the strong ewe that was his mother did not follow her lord into his high trails, after all. Bill Elkins had come, Argali and his band had fled, and by driving the runaway sheep back to the flock the little bighorn—born the following spring—was to be cheated of his heritage.
All these memories swept the old flock leader as he came stealing through the forest shadows in response to that stirring message in the wind. He came out into the moonlit meadow; he lifted high his magnificent horns. And the wilderness gods—kind at last to this man of cities who had given his heart to the wilderness—wakened Hugh in time to behold the sight.
It was such a scene that the memory ever cherishes, a mystery and a delight through all of life. In all that breadth of forest there was no picture more wonderful, no forest drama that went more deeply into the mysteries of
