The Cross Pull/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
When Flash returned to the cabin he did not go in and sprawl before the fire as was his usual custom; instead he remained outside, watchful and alert. He tilted his ears to catch all sounds and his nose quivered eagerly as he sampled each slightest shift of wind under the trees. Twice he trotted down to the game trail and followed it a few hundred yards downstream. He wanted to know the meaning of that shot; to be sure of the exact location of the man that had fired it. He was well aware that as long as daylight lasted he was handicapped. He could, of course, view men at long range; sometimes in favorable cover he could approach unseen but such observations were highly unsatisfactory. Besides there was always an element of danger in this daylight scouting, the odds heavily against him, and he was far too smart to take such chances often.
“Flash knows that some man is within a few miles of us,” said Moran. “That shot has worried him. He’ll start off to investigate before long.” He called Flash inside and closed the door. “Just to keep him out of trouble,” he explained.
Flash read his purpose and whined uneasily, scratching at the door. He prowled along the wall, shoving his nose against the cracks where the chinking had dropped from between the logs as he tried to catch the scent of the outside world.
Moran had made use of a convenient arrangement of windfall logs some fifty yards from the cabin, thatching the sloping top with spruce bows and spreading over them the hide of the elk he had killed. An hour after dark he unrolled his blankets in this retreat and lay smoking his pipe and pondering over what the girl had told him. The fact of the men having been in this high country so early in the spring indicated that they might have wintered here. If this was the case they might even now be lingering in the hills—some band of hunted fugitives.
Inside the cabin Flash was waiting. At last the regular breathing of the girl announced to him that she slept. He reared up, placing his forepaws against the wall beside the door. The latch was but a beam, one end working on a wooden pivot and the other fitting down into a slot notched in the wall. Flash lifted the bar with his teeth and gave a backward wrench. The door gave toward him and the clatter of the heavy beam aroused the girl.
“Flash!” she called. But Flash was gone.
He was gliding silently down the slope, a gray shadow slipping through the trees. Without a pause he made straight for the spot where the men had camped on that other night. The vivid memory of the fight in the black, dripping fog was fresh in his mind and led him to that place as a starting point because he associated it with men.
He circled it swiftly. There was no taint of man. He rambled on, nose uplifted to catch the side currents of air that blew in from each opening gulch. Tiny streams trickled from the larger of these draws; a second creek forked in and the two plunged on together to the Thoroughfare. Still he held to the bottoms until he knew that he was too far west. A creek flowed in from the south and he turned and followed it upstream. It forked and he chose the eastern branch and eventually came out upon a ridge.
Below him lay another valley, a feather-veined network of streams. The ridge on which he stood swept away, stretching up to the parent divide, a myriad canyon heads dropping away from it. Fives miles along it, one among hundreds, the canyons which sheltered the cabin headed against this same ridge.
Flash knew the habits of men. They would be camped in the valley below along some one of the stream beds. It was not their custom to camp on ridges or away from water. He stopped, undecided whether to drop down and continue his hunt or to follow the ridge back to the cabin. His was not the mind of man, the mind which reasons out a plan of action and follows it tenaciously to the end; therefore he did not have the continuity of purpose that is solely the heritage of man. Only along certain lines, the few great natural laws that sway the flesh, was he capable of long sustained concentration, When hunger pressed him he hunted tirelessly for food. When in danger his mind was wholly concerned with escaping it. In the mating moon of his tribe he would listen to its call, the urge of the season keeping ever uppermost in his mind as he searched for a she wolf with whom to mate; and always there was running like a guiding thread through all other thoughts his great love for Betty and Moran. Every animal act hinges directly upon the first three fundamentals; food to maintain life, caution to retain life, and mating of the sexes to reproduce and perpetuate life. Analysis of any one move will prove it to be actuated by one of these dominating three—that the animal mind does not soar above these primary elements. Added to these, the dog, alone of all beasts, is given a fourth—his faithful, unwavering allegiance to man.
In all other things Flash was one with all animals—and the majority of men—in that only those things of immediate concern could hold his undivided interest for long; other issues would creep in to detract from the first, to share or overshadow the importance of the original design.
So it was with this. His desire to be near Betty and Moran now seemed paramount. He set off along the ridge toward the cabin; the idea that had urged him from it was still in his mind but was now relegated to a place of minor importance. If the men were camped in the opposite valley they were too distant to mean harm to-night. To-morrow could invariably be taken care of when it came. He wanted to be with Moran and the girl right now!
Nevertheless, in following out this latest impulse he achieved the first. He found the trail. Five horses had angled from a canyon and topped the ridge, turning up the country along its crest. Flash followed this trail swiftly. It was warm—scarce an hour old.
When within half a mile of the game trail that led down to his own destination he caught a faint trace of man scent and knew that the men had dismounted. He knew too that they had now moved on. Any dog can tell the trail scent or the odor left behind by men from the actual body scent itself, Flash sped to the spot, using no caution in his approach.
The two men had lingered for some time, one of them leaning against a single gnarled tree which stood on the ridge. Flash bristled and snarled as he neared it. Old, half dormant hates welled up within him. Flash had lately found all men to be his enemies and he hated and feared them as a whole without singling out each latest individual who sought his life. That was the wolf in him—the attitude of all wolves toward all men. These hates that now bubbled up in him came from back beyond the days of his running wild in the hills; from the days when he had been more dog than wolf and had formed an individual estimate of each man as he met him.
In those days of his impressionable puppyhood only one man had continuously mistreated him. That man had come to typify all that was mean in the human race and upon him was concentrated the hate aroused by the deeds of the many. This had long been passive but it was there and it flamed with the old intensity at this trace of his old enemy. The scent came strong and it was clearly, unmistakably that of Brent.
The two men had separated and there was no continuation of Brent’s trail. The horses had turned down a canyon that was next to the one which sheltered the cabin and Flash knew that Brent had remounted and gone that way; that where he found the horses he would find Brent.
The other man had gone on along the ridge on foot. If Brent had continued on foot the hate would have urged Flash to follow his trail instead of that of the stranger. Animals deal more with actualities than with probabilities. Flash’s brain told him the trail of the horses would lead him to Brent but the other’s trail was actual, warm and fresh under his very nose. Also the stranger’s way led nearer to the cabin and so coincided with his wish to return to it—and he chose that way.
If Flash had overtaken him it is possible that, from associating him with Brent, he might have torn him down without added incentive. However, he did not overtake him, for the man he followed had reached the end of his trail.
Flash reached the game trail which crossed the saddle in the ridge and dipped down the canyon. The man had followed it. Flash increased his speed. When he reached the last break in the rims the man’s tracks still led down toward the cabin,
A sound reached Flash, a far faint sound too muffled and indistinct to have reached the ears of man, but which told him many things. He could not catch the words but he knew the voice. It was Her voice and the vibrations were those of deadly fear; for the first time in his life Flash answered a human voice with the lobo howl.