They reached the camp, and Alice left her place to secure the horses. One of them, her own riding bay, came quickly to her hand, but the pack horses were not to be seen. The only explanation was that while her own animal, true to his trust, had remained for his rider to come, the others—terrorized by the fire—had fled in the direction of the foothills. They were hobbled, surely, but by striking down with both fore feet at once, horses learn to make good time even with hobbles. It was not a great disaster, yet it cut down—to an appreciable degree—their chances of saving the flock. It was more difficult for them to keep the flock closely bunched. And both of them knew, and neither of them spoke of it, that in case of the “accidents” that all mountaineers learn—some time in their lives—to expect, it hurt their own chances of getting out alive. Because it impeded his ease of motion, Hugh left his rifle in camp, depending on the pistol at his belt for any emergencies that might arise.
The long afternoon drew to twilight. The fire slowly gained. It came with a rush up the ridges, a veritable charge that drove the wild beasts before it, but it crept like a snail as it descended. The crackle was no longer just a whisper in the air to be drowned out by the slightest sound. It had swollen until it filled the forest, and it had begun to have a strange, roaring quality that fire fighters learn to dread. It meant but one thing: an all-consuming forest and brush fire in which great sheets of flame spring from tree to tree, wherein no living thing may survive. Already a pronounced heat was in the air. The twilight did not fall soft and cool as usual. Worst of all, the wind had begun to increase.
They didn’t pause to eat. The girl shared with him the little food she had snatched from the tent—a handful of jerked venison and a few pieces of bread—and they ate it on the march. As the dog worked near her, she slipped scraps of the dried meat into his mouth. This was no time to neglect Shep. The success of their flight depended on his strength and skill.
The shadows lengthened, the sun declined and set, and an ominous glare spread over the sky behind them. And the impression began to grow on both of them that the sheep were constantly more hard to control. They kept dipping into the little glens and draws on each side of their valley; they bunched uneasily, then spread out into little scurrying groups. Their sense of unity seemed lost, and more than once only a quick word, a sharp command, a swift dash about the flanks of the flock kept them from a panic. They did not keep the even gait by which sheep usually move. Sometimes they ran and sometimes stopped, milling.
“I don’t understand,” Alice told Hugh, in an instant when they were within speaking range of each other. “Sheep usually know what to do better than their herders. And it looks as if they’d run straight away from the fire.”
It was true. Even the domestic sheep have not lost all their powers of instinct, and every herder knows that this inner knowledge is often more to be relied upon than his own intelligence. The flocks usually know what is best for them. And many a time a wise and experienced herder will come racing his flocks down from the higher levels just in time to escape a blizzard—without a word of forecast from the weather man. He has simply followed the sheep who in turn have obeyed their own instincts. And Hugh, too, found himself wondering why the flocks seemed so reluctant to flee down into the valley. It was true that their course led them to a narrow pass, bound on each side by steep cliffs and impassable walls of brush, but the flock could pass through with ease. It looked to him as if the sheep did not themselves know where they wished to go, but were undeniably uneasy and vacillating. The thought haunted Hugh, returning again and again, and filling him with a vague discomfort and dread.
There would be light to travel by tonight. The glare in the sky behind them ever brightened, and the eyes kept seeking it with an irresistible apprehension. It cast a red glow over the whole forest world. The warm color deepened as the night encroached upon the twilight, and all semblance of reality faded from the land. It was as if it had been dipped in red wine. The great trees were incarnadine, the canyons swam in red vapor, even the sheep had red wool. No longer was this the green and lovely mountain realm they had known. Rather it was an inferno of mythology, an underworld lighted by sulphurous fires.
From time to time, through the long afternoon, they beheld the march of the wild creatures. All manner of the forest people passed them, sometimes in little groups, sometimes one by one. Often the deer sped by, seemingly almost flying in the long tree-lanes; once a coyote ran yapping, his fur singed by the fire, and once a great bull elk stalked soberly past. He seemed to give no thought to the man that walked behind the sheep—the same form that had terrorized him that summer day beside the spring. Once a porcupine rattled his quills on a nearby hillside, and far away the brush crinkled and popped as a cougar passed through. And now—in the early night—a magnificent grizzly—that ancient and mystic nobleman of the forest—ambled past him at an awkward run.
But he was no longer gray.
