He didn’t know why he was so awed. It was as if the centuries had rolled back and had given him a glimpse of the young world—when the holy communion of men and nature still endured. He sensed the immutable enforcement of great laws—perhaps one instant’s half-darkened glimpse of the whole, unfathomable scheme of existence. And he was moved to the depths of his being by the sheer beauty and wonder of the scene.
The moonlight was a miracle in itself. It enchanted the meadows, it filled the open forest with gliding ghosts, it turned to snow the great, sleeping flock. The brush thickets were a mystery, a darkness that passed understanding. And at the edge of the forest stood the bighorns, forms in marble, noble past all words.
Yet it could endure but a moment more. Even now the great ram had begun to grow suspicious. The firelight cast a faint red glamor, and Argali eyed it with suspicion. There were unfamiliar smells in the air too: one that remotely suggested Cry-in-the-night and the other that he had experienced when Bill Elkins had come to drive back his ewes. He turned silently, starting to slip away.
But at that instant Spot—the yearling ram that had led the domestic flock—leaped forward as a meteor leaps in the sky. He knew this breed that had come down from the fastnesses. They were of his lost land, and even now they were turning back to the crags of which he had dreamed. Hugh saw the motion, gasped once in the depths of wonder, and sprang to his feet. The dog barked and raced about the flank of the flock.
Hugh cried out. Swept with wonder and tingling in every nerve, he couldn’t suppress the utterance. He saw old Argali pause with lowered horns as Spot raced toward him. His little flock stood statuesque for a single instant, as if they were waiting for him to join them. These were Spot’s people: in the moonlight there was no difference between them and the other bighorn yearlings. Hugh understood now why Spot had differed from the domestic sheep. And Shep raced—jealous as ever for the integrity of the flock—to cut off Spot’s flight.
And for the first time in his career with the sheep Hugh broke his trust. His business, too, was to keep the flock together, to help the dog round up the truants and the strays. Yet the promptings of his own spirit bade otherwise. He had repatriated himself, he had come to his lost land, and was such a right to be denied the bighorn that had led the flock? Spot’s place was in the rough crags and the high trails, snow sweep and precipice and the ruddy glow of sunset, not feeding with the domestic sheep. He knew that Alice would understand.
“Come back, Shep,” he called into the stillness. The dog turned, hesitated, then, faithful servant that he was, came trotting back. Spot overtook the flock and the forest closed behind him. The bighorn ram had come into his heritage.
XXII
José Mertos, when he came at Fargo’s bidding, looked exactly the same as always. He seemed to have partaken of the changeless quality of the desert where he was born. His lips were thin, his face impassive, his dark eyes somber as ever. Fargo himself, however, had undergone certain transformations. He was not quite so boastful as usual, nor so arrogant. He looked as if some especially effective medicine had been administered to him. It was plain, however, that the dose had not been entirely to his liking. There were little angry glowings in his eyes that seemed never entirely to fade out.
Anger had always come quickly to Fargo, but it isn’t good for the spirit to have it remain indefinitely. It cuts deep lines in the face and fills the eyeballs with ugly little blood vessels, and it makes the hands shake and the heart burn. It also swells the little sacks under the eyes, a thing that is never pleasant to see. It was plain that certain events had recently occurred that Fargo had not yet forgotten, but which had incited a strange hunger within himself that must be satiated with something quite different from bread. And as the days glided past the more fierce the hunger became.
It was true that he remembered only Hugh’s first blow—that which had stretched him flat upon his back. The feel of the earth throughout one’s length has a tremendous medicinal value in itself to some men, and in others it wakens a madness that is considerably worse than that which comes upon Broken Fang at the fall of darkness. And there had been at least two other blows when he was stretched out unconscious. One of them had temporarily closed his eye. The other had left a purple bruise about his lips. This was enough in itself. Men did not strike Landy Fargo down and have many months to boast of it. At least that was what he told himself time after time, in the long nights that he sat alone. The meeting with Hugh in which his horse had been returned to him had been scarcely less odious.
Fargo remembered how Hugh—with his bleeding arm—had motioned for him to go, and how at the same time his hard, bright eyes had been watching for any offensive motion on the part of Fargo. But courage to attack simply would not come to him. And in the morning light, burning with hatred and passion, he had ridden back to his home.
The affair in regard to the flocks was no longer merely a business proposition. It had its personal side now. It seemed to him that its completion was the only desire he had left. He hated the browsing sheep, he hated Crowson and Crowson’s daughter, but
