Shepherds of the Wild/Chapter 14
Chapter XIV
It didn't take Fargo long to perfect his plans. As the dawn emerged he talked them over with the Mexican, José, and the latter was ready with any little suggestions that did not occur to his chief. And the gray, soft, mysterious light of early morning came into that conference—through the stained and cobwebbed windowpane—and found a darkness it could not alleviate.
As they talked, the very atmosphere of the room seemed to change. It was tense, poignant as if with the remembered lusts and passions of an earlier, more savage world. The little sounds of a room in which two men talk together—the stir of moving bodies, the creak of furniture, the soft whisper of easy breathing seemed lacking here. Both were motionless as two serpents that lay in their sunbaths on their ledges, and thus an insidious stillness dropped down in the little intervals between their sentences.
The almost total absence of motion on the part of those two conspirators could not have been ignored. It implied only one thing: that their thoughts were so commanding and engrossing that even the almost unconscious movements of the body were suspended. What motion there was, was mostly only the deepening of the lines on their dark faces.
This tenseness, this silence, these submerged passions pointed to but one end. And the crime would not be outside the pale of the laws of man alone, but the basic laws of the forest as well. The feast of death was to take place after all,—the same delight of which Broken Fang, the puma, was even then dreaming beside the sheep camp on the far headwaters of Silver Creek. But men, not wild beasts, were to be the debauchers.
"It's the simplest way yet," Fargo had whispered. The veins stood out in his brutal hands. "That pack of mine are devils—there's no other word for 'em—and once they get goin', they'd sweep through that flock of woollies like lightning. You've heard of sheep-killin' dogs before "
"Yes—but your dogs ain't never been sheep killers," the Mexican protested.
"What of that? They can learn fast enough. They'd tear a man to pieces just as quick if I didn't keep 'em chained. I don't see why I didn't teach 'em long ago—they'd be worth a thousand coyotes for keepin' this country clear of sheep. Maybe you don't know about sheep-killing dogs. You might not have heard that in the sheep country in the East one dog that once got the habit will spoil the business for miles around. You see, José, most animals don't kill more than they need; it's an instinct with 'em, for if they did they'd pay for it by going hungry later. Nature has a way of teachin' the wild varmints what to do. But dogs have been domesticated so long that they've forgotten most of their instincts, and once they get started, once the killin' fever gets a hold of 'em, they don't know when to quit. There's many a dog that has slashed a hundred sheep in one night—jumpin' from one to another, tearing out one throat after another, and runnin' the rest till they die. It's kind of a madness that gets a hold of 'em once they get started. True, my dogs ain't ever got the habit, but one taste will teach 'em. And they're half-wild already, as any man well knows who seen 'em tear that little black cub-bear to pieces last week. Just tore him to little scraps of black fur."
Fargo leaned back in his chair and laughed. The sound burst out suddenly above the even murmur of his talk, and it was no less terrible to hear than the bay of the pack a few minutes before. It was a wild, harsh sound,—and African travelers might have been given cause to remember the hyenas, laughing on the sun-baked hills. It pleased him to recall that scene in the forest beyond the creek, in which his pack of dogs had killed the cub. It moved him in unlovely, dark ways. The little bear had been a clumsy, furry, amiable little creature—representing what is perhaps the most lovable breed of all the wild animals—and the pack had made short and terrible work of him.
"There's ten of 'em," Fargo went on," and there ain't no one to guard the flock. That one big shepherd dog would last quick—he wouldn't be able to bluff off them hounds of mine like he could bluff coyotes. And then they'd have the time of their lives—the time of their lives."
"You mean—take 'em and sick 'em on?" José asked.
"I've got a better way than that. Of course one of us will have to take 'em and show 'em the way until they get on the track of the flock, and of course that one will have to be me. I'm the only living man that can handle 'em—you remember the night that old Ben got out and how he pretty near killed that little cowman from Naptha. There's a little medicine I've got to give 'em before I go, and that means—for you to take a little ride over to Newt Hillguard's."
José half-closed his eyes. He had begun to understand.
"I've always cussed at Newt for keepin' that little band of Shropshires in his back lot, but I'm glad now he didn't get rid of them," Fargo went on. "You're to bring back a sheep in your saddle—a lamb 'll do, or any old ewe he was about to slaughter. Then, after we get through here, all I'll have to do is start up the old Horse Creek trail with that pack of dogs. It'll be a couple of hours before I can get started, and it'll take till dark to get to the sheep camp, but dark's the best time for a sheep-killin' dog to work, anyhow. The sheep are bunched together, and it doesn't take so much runnin'. And I got to be on hand to call 'em back and round 'em up when they're done."
The face of the Mexican was suddenly crafty. "I suppose wantin' to see the fun hasn't anything to do with your goin'?" he suggested.
Fargo laughed again. "I'm not sayin' it won't be worth watching," he agreed. "But you know I can always round 'em up with my whistle. José—to-night will see the end of the sheep business for time to come."
They went about their preparations. They ate their breakfast in the unsavory kitchen, then Jose rode off to the ranch where Newt Hillguard kept his little flock of thirty Shropshires. There was no particular good in making full explanation to Newt. He was a cattleman surely, his little flock was just a diversion with him, but he might not take fondly to any plan that would make sheep killers out of Fargo's pack of dogs. Some night they might escape from their yard and visit his own little flock. "The boys say they're tired of beef and want a mutton blowout," José explained, "and I'm sent over here to supply it. Will you sell me one of them sheep of yours?"
"Seems funny to me," Newt returned, "that gang of Fargo's wantin' mutton. But I suppose I can sell you one."
"Any old ewe'll do," José went on. "We don't want 'em to like it so well they'll want it often. The one you can sell me cheapest. We'll want it alive, too, 'cause we ain't goin' to have him for a day or two. And once I've got to pack him on the horse, maybe I'd better take a lamb."
The money changed hands, Newt gave in exchange a few pounds of living flesh that blatted feebly and struggled in Jose's arms—with a strange, frantic terror—as if in premonition of its doom. The lips of the man set in a straight, cruel line, and he rode with an unjustified swiftness back to Fargo's house.
There was only one element of mercy in the unmentionable scene that followed in the little, tightly fenced enclosure behind Fargo's house. None whatever dwelt in the drawn faces of the men, or in the savage, white-fanged creatures that leaped so fiercely at the picket fence as the men approached. But the time, at least, was swift. It went almost too fast for Fargo's liking.
There was only a single second of strange and dreadful clamor within the enclosure, a glimpse of white in the ravening circle of browns and blacks, a smear of red and a faint cry that the men strained to hear but which was lost in the baying of the dogs. The pack had been given its lesson. Fargo foresaw in their glaring eyes—as they came rushing back to the palings again—the success of his plan.
"Get inside the house and shut the door," he commanded. "I can't answer for this bloodthirsty crowd. And do it quick."
For Fargo knew that the sooner he got started the more successful would be his undertaking. He didn't want their wild excitement to have a chance to die down. The great hounds saw his gun in his arms, a pungent stain of red was still upon their fangs, and they seemed to know that rapturous events were in store for them. The Mexican withdrew, Fargo unlatched the gate of the enclosure, and the animals leaped forth around him. In a moment he had swung on his horse; and followed by the crying pack galloped up the trail.
He rather hoped he would meet no pedestrian on the trail. He had never seen his dogs in such a savage mood, and he began to doubt his own ability to control them. There could be no doubt about the effectiveness of the medicine he had administered. The hunting lust was upon them as never before. And perhaps his eager spirit, his own madness went into them, and excited them all the more.
It was a long, hard ride before he came to that pine-clad heart of Smoky Land which Crowson had rented for a sheep range. He had been able to lope only a small part of the way: the trails were too narrow and steep. The dogs ran more silently now; yet with noticeable eagerness. During the long, still afternoon they were grimly patient, and they skulked like wolfine ghosts through the growing shadows of the twilight.
But their excitement began to return to them as the dark came down. It was the hunting hour: everywhere through the forests the beasts of prey were emerging from their lairs. The hounds were domestic animals, but some of the old wilderness madness revived when the wind came whispering its breathless messages through the trees. Their blood seemed to turn to fire. Time and time again Fargo had to utter the shrill whistle that called them to heel,—a signal that he had laboriously taught them and which they now seemed to be forgetting.
Fargo knew these mountains end to end, and he did not often mistake the trails. But soon after nightfall the conviction grew upon him that he was taking much too long to reach the sheep camp. Besides, the mountains didn't lie in just their proper places. The tall top of Grizzly Peak was too far to the right to suit him. He knew perfectly that he was within a very few miles of the camp, yet he chafed under the delay. And the darkness steadily deepened, dimming the landmarks by which he kept his directions.
He headed on, at first irritated, then apprehensive, finally wrathful and savage. He began to fear that possibly he would have to wait until dawn for the work. The dogs, however, were growing constantly more excited and harder to control.
The last grayness faded into the gloom, and Fargo could hardly see the trail. But he was a mountain man, and he knew what to do. In the last dim glimpses of late twilight the peaks had begun to wheel around where he wanted them to be, and he knew that the camp was now only three or four miles distant at most. And the proper course was to sit down, rest, and wait for the moon to rise. Then he could locate his landmarks, start down the ridge to the river, then up its banks to the camp.
He thought that as far as human beings went, he had the mountains all to himself. He supposed that in the camp—now certainly nearing—a dead herder lay face buried in his tree-bough pallet; but Fargo was not the kind of man to whom such a fact as this preys on the mind. He did not dream that the body had already been found, that the herd was guarded, and that even now the daughter of his enemy was waiting for this same moon,—to start forth to find the missing members of the flock.
Fargo watched the silver glint in the sky; he saw the white disk roll forth. The light grew, it leaped down between the trees, it worked nebulous magic on the floor of the forest, it enchanted the whole wilderness world. He located his peaks. And all at once he knew his exact position,—scarcely three miles from the camp and squarely across the ridge.
He got up and started on with the great hounds. At first they were curiously silent and alert. They did not frisk and run as in the first hour on the trail, and to a casual eye their excitement had died within them. For the moment they seemed perfectly under control. Yet Fargo watched them, wondering. They were moving with a peculiar stealth, and once the man caught the unmistakable glare of their yellow-green wolfine eyes in the moonlight.
At that instant Ben, the old pack leader, spoke in the silence. It was a sharp bay, and momentarily every dog stood lifeless. And then with a wild cry they darted into the shadows.
Fargo whistled frantically, but the pack didn't seem to hear. Their loud and savage bays obscured all sound. Oaths fell from the man's lips—sounds scarcely less savage than the bay of the dogs themselves—and at first he could see nothing but failure for his scheme.
It might be, however, that they were right and he was wrong. The dogs were not heading toward the sheep camp. But it was wholly possible that the flock had fed out far that day, had found another drinking place, and thus had not returned to the vicinity of Silver Creek; and the hounds were already on their trail. This theory had to include the death of the wounded shepherd dog, for the first instinct of the animal likely would have been to keep the flock near the tent of his dead master.
His own course was clear. He would cross the ridge to the camp, try to locate the flock, and then attempt to collect his hounds and bring them to it. He believed that if they were on a false scent they would return to him soon.
But the moon looked down and saw that their instincts had told them true. They had crossed the tracks that the flock had made on the outward feeding from the camp that day: they had only to follow it, circle about where Spot, the flock leader, had led, and find the sheep where they had bedded down at night. Yet they seemed to know that certain sport was in store for them before ever they made the long loop around to the sheep camp. For somewhere between was huddled a little group of a hundred stragglers,—the band that Hugh had lost during the day's grazing and which even now Alice had gone forth to find.