The Cross Pull/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
When Teton Jackson tore away from between two guards and threw himself from a moving train he left no trail.
The isolated mountain valley in the shadow of the Tetons, from which, as a boy, he had led his Robin Hood band to prey upon three states, still bore his name but the world never again found a single trace of the man himself. The valley of his name was settled by ranchers. Some few of the earlier settlers remembered him—and kindly, for no struggling squatter ever had cause to complain of his treatment at the hands of Jackson and his men.
Among all the outlaws that escaped during the next quarter of a century there were but few, perhaps a score, of whom no trace was ever found.
In prison circles rumor linked the names of these men together and there were whispers of some phantom rendezvous called “The Hole.”
No man seemed possessed of knowledge as to the whereabouts of this place. Stool pigeons heard nought but rumors. These rumors were persistent and it was recalled that the majority of these vanished ones were of the outdoor type of bandit. At last the authorities inclined to the belief that some of these men were banded together somewhere beyond reach of the law.
As Moran viewed the cabin these things flitted through his mind. He recalled tales that men told of signal lights flashing from peak to peak. One sportsman who could read the wigwag alphabet claimed to have caught a portion of one message. Among the words he made out were the names of two men—the names of two of the most desperate escaped criminals alive. Moran dismissed these thoughts as absurd—absurd at least in so far as they concerned this particular spot. A number of men could not help but leave numerous telltale signs of their presence. This was the home of some lone hermit.
Flash preceded him and scratched at the door. It opened—and the scene was transformed for Moran. Any man would have pronounced the girl’s beauty exceptional and perhaps Moran’s surprise at this vision in the door added to his estimate of her. He was instantly aware that he had never seen anything so intensely beautiful as the girl who stood there, vivid and alive, in this wild setting. She looked up and saw him and the color fled from her face, leaving it white and drawn.
“I startled you,” said Moran. “I’m sorry.”
She gazed at him without a word… Flash moved back to his side, his big tail waving proudly. Moran placed his hand on the dog’s head and from this move the girl divined the man’s identity.
“You’re Clark Moran,” she said. He nodded, surprised that she should know his name.
“Then they didn’t kill you after all.”
“No,” he smiled. “I’m very much alive.”
“Flash brought you here.” Again he nodded.
“Did they get Dad Kinney—is that the reason he hasn’t come?”
“I saw him a few days ago as I came up the Shoshone—stayed at his camp overnight,” said Moran. “He’s alive and well.”
“Then he didn’t get my letter,” she stated positively.
“Probably not,” said Moran. He sensed that there was some connecting link of thought between each disjointed phrase and he tried to understand it all.
“I can get him for you,” he offered. “I can make his camp in three days—two days on a forced hike—and have him back here in five; that or any other way in which I can help you.”
The reaction to her normal self was swift. It occurred to her that this man was wonderfully self-controlled. He was passing off a strange situation as if it were no unusual thing for him to find a girl in a secret cabin fifty miles from the nearest ranch. Her remarks must have sounded incoherent; she had spoken of things he had no way to know yet he showed no excitement or curiosity. She liked his level gaze—knew she had nothing to fear from him.
“I’m here alone, waiting for Dad Kinney to come. Please come in,” she said. “I’m starting dinner. As I work I’ll try and decide how I can take advantage of your offer to help.”
Flash prowled continuously between the two, his toenails clicking across the floor as he tried to keep within touching distance of each one. He sensed a certain constraint, an air of strangeness between them but he was too well pleased at having brought these two together to pay much heed to so trifling a thing as that.
When Moran picked up his axe Flash followed him outside. Moran selected a tall dead pine, sized it up with an appraising eye and notched the trunk.
“We’ll cut some regular wood for her, old boy,” he said. “She’s been burning squaw wood—limbs and scraps. I wish you could talk and tell me what it’s all about. She’s had something happen which has upset all her little world—and she’s run away from it. Her plans didn’t work out right and she’s had a tough time of it. Who is she, Flash, and how did she happen to know about this place?”
He had carried a dozen arm loads of wood before she announced the meal. The shadows were lengthening in the canyon when they had finished and Moran picked up his blanket roll.
“I’ll camp somewhere close at hand,” he said. “I’ll hear you if you call. You can decide in what way I can help you and I’ll hear the verdict in the morning.”
“Oh, don’t go,” she said. “Stay and talk to me. I’ve been alone too much. There’s some horrid beast that screams here in the canyon nearly every night. I want you to tell me what it is.”
Their conversation had been a little trite, limited to formal remarks, and Moran now welcomed the opportunity to break the ice by speaking on this familiar topic which was almost a hobby with him. He opened the door.
“Let’s sit here,” he said. “The wild things will soon begin to talk. I’ll try and interpret their notes as they come. There’s probably one man out of ten thousand who really understands half of what he hears in the woods at night.”
They sat together on the sill and Moran told her many things. He realized that the girl had stayed there night after night alone, assailed by all the imaginary dangers that besiege the mind of each novice in the hills. He explained away many man-made superstitions surrounding the creatures of the wild. Flash wedged in between them and as they talked he felt the dying out of that strangeness, the lessening of restraint between them.
“It must be a panther, I think,” she told Moran. She noted the almost imperceptible shake of his head. “Why not? Don’t they live here?” she asked.
“Yes—only they’re called lions here,” he said. “The panther, puma, cougar arid the mountain lion are the same animal, only differently named according to locality. I’ve known and studied them under all four names. I’ve lived in hopes—but I’ve never yet heard a panther scream. I have inquired of scores of reliable, observing men who have spent their lives in the hills of the northwest where the lions range; in the deserts of the southwest, the range of the cougar; the swamp and hard-wood country of the eastern panther and in Mexico, the home of the puma. A very few of them have told me that once or twice in their lives they had heard a note which they believed to be that of the panther. Even they could not be sure.”
“But I’ve read—”
“That they wail like a woman screams,” Moran smilingly finished for her. “That their eyes glow like twin coals of fire in the night as they stalk men through the hills. As a matter of fact it’s only in legend that a panther has ever once attacked man; and no man ever saw, or ever will see, an animal’s eyes at night unless the orbs are struck by a strong, direct ray of light which reflects back from them. A tin can or bit of glass will do the same.”
Moran broke off to explain each new sound, Some of the more common ones she knew; the owls and coyotes; even when a series of high-pitched barks sounded from down the slope she knew they came from a band of cow elk on the game trail. Flash suddenly pricked up his ears and attempted to squeeze past. Moran pushed him back as a low wail issued from the timber.
“Flash knew there was a tragedy going on out there. Guess what made that sound,” he urged.
“A wildcat,” she guessed.
“A rabbit,” said Moran. “That was his dying scream of fear. Few know that a rabbit makes a sound. Most men would have guessed as you did. That cottontail was probably struck by a weasel or an owl.”
A weird, unearthly squall floated down from the bald ridge that topped one wall of the canyon.
“There!” said Moran. “Try again.”
“A lynx,” she said.
“A fox,” he corrected. “Long ago some curbestone naturalist who owned a poodle dog announced to the world that the fox note was a yap. They’ve been yapping ever since. That long-drawn, maniac squall is their real note—call it a yap if you like. I rather thought we’d hear a fox and that it would prove to be the sound that had worried you. That wasn’t it?”
The girl shook her head.
“Not in the least like that,” she said.
“I can’t imagine what else it could be.” Moran was puzzled. A sudden thought struck him. He remembered the dead cow elk with the severed hamstrings, recalled the sudden hush and cessation of animals sounds that occurred as he lay on the far slope of the Wapiti Divide—the silence that had told him of a distant wolf howl. He looked around for Flash, but Flash had squeezed past on the other side of the girl and was gone.
“I think I can make a pretty accurate guess as to the source of that sound,” he said. “Our old friend Flash has been out with the wolves and found his voice. If he inherited his father’s cry it was the lobo call you heard.”
“Flash!” she exclaimed. “Why, Flash couldn’t make such a hideous sound. Oh, surely it wasn’t Flash!”
“I’m inclined to believe it was,” he said. “You see you’ve had the most dangerous beast in the hills right with you all the time.”
“Flash dangerous!” she cried. “Why he’s not dangerous. He’s the smartest dog alive.”
“And for that very reason he is positively the most dangerous beast within five hundred miles. Flash has ail of the killing power of a lobo wolf but without a wolf’s blind fear of man. Flash fears men intelligently, can gauge their power for harm. He knows their tricks. Instead of fleeing in a panic from the first taint of man scent he investigates it. Then he knows! Of course Flash wouldn’t attack men indiscriminately—he’d have to be spurred on by some strong dislike of one individual, but if he held a grudge against some man—well I’d hate to be that man and have Flash find me somewhere asleep or traveling through the hills at night.”
“It doesn’t seem possible that he could harm a man with only his teeth to fight with,” she insisted,
“Only his teeth!” Moran exclaimed. “Yes, that’s all. You’ve not the slightest conception of what those teeth of his can do. They cut like knives through the muscles, hide and even the hamstring cords of a bull elk. I’ve known him to kill elk, deer, antelope and mountain sheep. Only a few months ago there was a five hundred dollar bounty posted for the scalp of the worst lobo that ever struck Wind River. Flash was that wolf. I shouldn’t have left him. Ask Kinney. He tracked the Wind River wolf over a hundred miles on a new snow and found Flash at the end of the trail. You and I are the only ones who know he’s alive to-day. What chance would a man have against a killer like that if he didn’t have a gun?”
The girl’s mind traveled swiftly back to a certain night when she had heard screams and oaths behind her as Flash fought half a dozen men to give her time. She had had a vague idea that his snaps and snarls had retarded them until she was out of hearing. Now, for the first time, it occurred to her that he had struck them so savagely that they had feared to follow her through the night.
“Would you sell Flash at any price?” she asked.
“No,” Moran answered instantly. “He’s yours. I lost my title to him when I left him behind. I knew he would hate it in the city and I expected to be away but a week or two. He turned outlaw, was hunted all over the range. He showed up here and attached himself to you. I have no claim to him. He belongs to you.”
The girl held out her hand to him.
“Kinney told me that all men like you,” she said. “Now I know why. “They don’t make ’em any whiter than Clark Moran,’ was what he told me. I endorse his statement. And I want you to know that I consider that the very nicest present I ever had.”
“That repays me,” he said.
“And thank you for talking to me—instead of questioning me. Of course you know that I have a definite reason for being here. I’d tell you if I could. I think I know now how you can help me if you will. If you will stay near here until Dad Kinney comes, then send him here to me: is that too much to ask?”
“I intended to camp within a few miles of here,” he smiled. “So you’re asking nothing but what I would have done in any event. Just one question, please?”
She nodded assent.
“If I’m to camp here—how shall I address you? As an aid to conversation, you understand.”
“I’d rather you didn’t know my name,” she told him frankly. “At least not all of it. One of my reasons for being here is to try and forget who and what I am until I can reason things out coolly. That’s why I don’t care to hear my name spoken over and over again. But as an aid te conversation—Betty is the only part of my name I care to hear. You may call me that if you like.”
“Thank you,” said Moran. He picked up his blanket roll. “I’ll bunk just outside.”
“If it storms, come inside,” she said. “Circumstances alter cases, and I’m not priggishly conventional, you know. Good night.”
Moran knew that there was no least touch of coquetry in this permission to use her given name. There was some deep-rooted reason why she shrank from hearing the rest of her name. When he knew that reason he would know why she was here.
He had scarcely spread his blankets when a sudden shiver shook him as a cry rang out from the rims above; the lobo cry, the most chilling sound of all the wild. It was tossed from wall to wall of the canyon, its echoes dying slowly away among the peaks as the diminishing ripples caused by a thrown rock die out against the far shore of a quiet pool. Moran heard the girl call softly from the cabin.
“Do you still believe Flash could make a sound like that?”
“I’m sure of it. That was Flash—no other.”
“It’s rather a dreadful sound for so lovable a dog to make,” she said. “But now that I know it’s only Flash I need not shiver when I hear it again.” She heard Moran laugh softly.
“You are mistaken,” he said. “If you live for a thousand years and hear it every night it will always be the same. You may not fear it—but the wolf shiver will shake you each time it sounds.”
For the first time since her arrival the girl failed to bar the door at night but left it swinging open—mute evidence of her absolute confidence in Moran.
Half an hour later Flash touched Moran’s hand with his cold nose, gave one brief sniff and went inside to the girl. He sat beside her bunk, his chin resting on the edge while she stroked his head.
“Flash,” she whispered. “Flash. Why couldn’t it have been a man like the one out there—like Clark Moran?”
Flash trotted outside and lay beside Moran.
“You old rascal,” said Moran. “Just look what you’ve led me into now! I believe I’ve found her, Flash—I know it. Isn’t she a little beauty? Don’t you dare tell me you ever saw a woman who could compare with her. Any girl I’ve ever met would seem drab and commonplace beside her. What do you think about it, Flash?”
Flash only thought that he was vastly contented. Nevertheless he was restless, and spent the main part of the night in prowling uneasily back and forth between Betty and Moran.