Shepherds of the Wild/Chapter 28
Chapter XXVIII
The face before her seemed only part of her dark dreams as Alice wakened from her unconsciousness. She hoped in an instant to waken into the world of reality she had always known, not this abyss with its red glare and creeping tongues of flame. She couldn't understand why her arms felt so numb and why they didn't answer the command of her nerves.
No moment of Alice's life had ever been more fearful, more fraught with despair, than that in which her full consciousness returned to her. The fire's glow was more lurid and terrifying than ever. The flame itself was nearer: already it had crept almost to the bottom of the glen. The way was still open, but a few moments would see it closed. Yet all these things were apart from her and infinitely remote. The only reality in her life, now that her dreams were done, was the intent face of her captor.
The red radiance was upon it, and all semblance of humanity seemed gone. Rather it seemed the face of some dreadful inmate of an Inferno. The glow was in his dark eyes too: they were too close to hers for her to mistake this fact. They smouldered, like the dead trees where the flame had swept. Her throat convulsed, and a high, far-carrying, piercing scream shuddered out above the roar of the fire.
But it was cut off as from beneath a blade. She had summoned all the strength of her will and spirit. After all, it was only wasted strength to scream. There were none to hear her in these fire-swept forests. When the pack of hounds had been about her, she had still retained a dim and flickering hope that Hugh would come to her aid, but she had no such hope now. She knew that stern, unbending man who watched the sheep. All her tears, all her prayers could never move him: he would linger, still at his post, till the insatiable tongues of fire licked at his breast. She was only the woman, but Hugh watched the sheep! Besides, the thing to do was to show this dark man before her that even if this was the moment of her death she would show no fear.
And this was no easy thing. Only because she was of the mountains, because the spirit that dwells in the forest, the rugged places, the wilderness primeval dwelt also in her, was she able to effect it at all.
"Don't be afraid," the man was saying. "You ain't goin' to be hurt. I'm goin' to let you go in plenty of time. In the first place, I've got to get out the same way myself."
She could believe this, at least. She saw that he kept close watch of the fire as it crept down toward the floor of the canyon.
Her eyes looked straight into his. Yet the fear crept at her heart—for if indeed he intended to let her go, none but the most dreadful reason occurred to her why she should be tied. And in truth, the spirit of Landy Fargo was far distant now. José knew perfectly that before she could reach a 'phone and men be secured to battle at this last stand against the fire, the hungry little tongues would have already encompassed the canyon. He only knew that he was shivering strangely, and that he was not yet ready to let her go. "Untie my hands," she commanded.
"I will—quick enough. I just thought we'd talk a while first. It ain't often I get to talk to a pretty girl like you "
There in the path of the advancing flame the words were ineffably strange and terrible to the girl,—like some demoniac torture of a shadow-world. "And you're not going to have a chance now," she told him clearly. "If you want to leave me here in the track of the fire, it's in your power to do it—but it won't make me bend to you, or plead with you, or treat you any different than I've ever treated you."
The man stiffened. She saw the gleam of his teeth through his thin lips. "Don't be too sure. I was told to let you go, but nothin's goin' to happen to me if I don't. Your position ain't what it used to be, Alice, and maybe I'm a different kind of man than you're used to. I come from a different race. And maybe you'd better try to be a little more polite."
"And I can only tell you this," she went on as if she had not heard. "If you do leave me here, if you put one indignity to me above what you've already put by tying me up and making me listen to your talk, you'll pay for it. I'm just as sure of that as I am that I'm alive."
And the man might have listened in vain for any waver, any note of doubt in her tone. She spoke as if in infallible prophecy.
"Who's goin' to do it?" the man demanded. "Who's goin' to find out?"
"It will be found out. You'll pay, whether I live or not. It seems—almost as if vengeance is coming to you soon—right away. I can't tell you how I know. I only tell you to let me go.
"You're from the desert, José, and not the mountains, and maybe the desert lets debts go unpaid," she went on, in a clear free tone of inspiration. "But I know these forests. It seems to me I know them now—better than I ever did before. One more insult—and I tell you you'll pay."
But José laughed. Just a little, harsh note of scorn fell from his lips. He was a mountain man, but in his passion and frenzy his wilderness knowledge had deserted him. He did not heed her words. And he bent to press his lips to hers.
And at that instant the thicket behind them parted as a terrible avenger leaped through. It was not his first leap in vengeance. Many times, in his years of service, he had sprung with magnificent ferocity at the throat of a wolf that menaced the white sheep in his care. But never before had he sprung so true, with such shattering power and dreadful fury. White fangs that could carry a lamb as tenderly as the arms of a shepherdess flashed in the firelight.
Just as she had said, the wilderness had spoken. One of the guardians of the flock had swept to her aid. Because he was in defense of his own, obeying the laws of his inmost being, his blow had the might not only of the wilderness but of that high power that has waged war with the wilderness, tamed its passions, subjugated its peoples. No man may say if love for this tall shepherdess was a factor too. Without its impulse, the lesser creatures do not often unleash their fury against man. Shep the dog had come because it was his duty and his destiny, and he sprang like a tigress through the air.
The great shepherd dog struck like a wolf, aiming straight for the throat. José had no time to ward off the blow. His back was to the thicket. He didn't even see it come. Gleaming fangs tore once at his dark flesh.
Then for an instant there was only the red fire and the red sky, with the wilderness bathed in their glow between. The dog had dropped silently to his four feet and was crouched, waiting to see if another blow were needed. The girl's face seemed bereft of all life. And that which had been a man was only a huddled heap in the pine needles, dark and strange and impotent as the dust. Red fire and red sky, and now a scarlet fountain, playing softly with ever decreasing impulses, on the parched earth.
Shep had avenged the insult. And in paying the debt the pair of hands that might have untied the bonds that held Alice in the path of the fire were stilled.