The Cross Pull/Chapter 17

by Hal G. Evarts

 

CHAPTER XVII

A storm had settled down over the hills, a fine rain falling from leaden skies. Flash had been confined to the cabin for two days and nights. Fearful lest he locate Nash and either kill or be killed himself, Moran had kept him a prisoner. Flash found this extremely irksome. The storm terminated in a fierce downpour of rain; this over, the sun peeped through the rifts and turned the floating fog banks to milky white. The wind which invariably follows each storm in the western hills sprang up and dispersed the mist. Flash’s insistence to be freed now amounted to a clamor. He scratched furiously at the door and chewed at the beam which wedged it shut. His whining was so continuous as to resemble a steady chant of woe. He wished a speedy end put to this imprisonment. He was no indoor dog. Moran opened the door at last, and he was free to go.

He was hungry and his first concern was meat. As he topped the ridge above the cabin a luckless bobcat prowled along it far from any sheltering tree. This hate for the cat tribes was one of the things Flash seemed to know instinctively. There is a long standing grudge between the dog and cat kind. The enmity between domestic dogs and cats has been handed down from the age old feud between their wild progenitors. The first cat track which Flash had ever struck he had followed, knowing that he would find a natural enemy at the end of the trail. Nevertheless, while this knowledge had been inherited it was the knowledge of experience which had finally taught him how to handle cats.

The wind was right and not until he was almost upon it did the big cat know its danger. It was too late to flee and the old tom whirled to face his enemy with tooth and claw, his back arched high. One paw darted forth in a lightning jab for the eyes of the rushing wolf. Flash braced all four feet, and halted his drive a yard from his prey. He had killed many cats, and previous battles had taught him the slashing qualities of those hooked feet.

He knew that the instant he launched himself upon the cat it would fall upon its back and rake his flanks and belly with savage strength. Instead he commenced to circle slowly, the cat always facing him. The bobcat does not squall like his domestic cousin, and the snarls which issued from the gaping red mouth of the old tom were short and explosive.

Flash increased his speed, whirling round and round his prey with feint attacks. These amazing tactics were too rapid and bewildering for the lesser brain of the cat and he turned to flee. Even as he turned Flash pounced upon him and clamped his wicked teeth into his neck close behind the ears. As the big cat threw himself on one side to use his claws Flash hopped clear across him the opposite way. Twice more the cat changed sides and twice more Flash hopped, still retaining his crushing grip. His powerful jaws had closed until the long canine teeth pierced through the neck and met. Then Flash gave one savage shake and wrench, dropped his prey and leaped clear.

The bared claws worked convulsively, slashing circles in the air; this subsided to a mere twitching of the muscles, and the big round eyes stared in death. Flash tore the skin from the hips and feasted.

By some strange freak the meat of the bobcat or bay lynx is tender, fine fibered and clear, almost as transparent as the breast. meat of a quail; however, Flash cared less for this kind than for the heavier red meat of larger game, and he did not gorge as hugely as he would have done if his victim had been an elk or deer.

The wind rose to a gale, shrieking along the cliffs and moaning in the timber. There came sudden lulls after which the wind leaped again from some new direction, sometimes completely reversing its course in a space of seconds; gusts drove down from different divides and eddied about the hills, rushing up one canyon while the currents were sucked straight down the next.

Revelling in his freedom, Flash left the cat and rambled on. He chose the ridge which broke away from the parent divide and flanked the north side of the canyon, and followed it to where it ended in a point which fell away abruptly to the narrow floor of the valley at the confluence of the two little streams.

As he stood on the point of this spur there came one of the sudden lulls in the wind. Faint vibrations trembled in his ears; the sound of iron on rocks, and he knew that somewhere far up the slope of the divide a pack outfit was coming down from the Rampart Pass.

He growled uneasily and turned back. When halfway along the rims toward the cabin he stopped in his tracks, every hair stiff and erect along his spin. He had caught the plain scent of a single man; one strong whiff and it was lost in a conflicting rush of air. He knew that scent. It was that of one of the men who had been at Brent’s cabin the night he had looked in at the window; one of the three who had come into the hills that same night. Often he had noted his trail among those around the secret camp near Two Ocean Pass. Later he had been among those who had tried to take the girl when she stumbled across their fire in the black fog.

Flash knew that this man was somewhere close at hand. It was not the trail scent but the body scent that he had caught! He prowled along the rim but could not catch the scent again and he raced for the cabin without another pause.

Moran was sitting on the sill but Betty was not there. Flash found her warm trail, less than five minutes old, leading along the slope. It soon dipped slantingly toward the stream. The wind was at his back and he could not catch her body scent, and the groaning of the trees under the lash of the gale drowned the sound of her footfalls but he knew she was chose ahead.

There was a second’s calm and the wind shifted abruptly, the draft now being sucked up the canyon instead of down. The change in Flash was as startling and abrupt as the change of wind. The dog in search of a loving mistress was transformed into a wolf in search of dangerous prey. He slipped cautiously from one windfall jam to the next. He did not snarl. Snarls would not terrify the enemy he now stalked—would only serve to warn him and, once warned, the day was lost for Flash. The thing he now stalked was man.

The wind blew full in his face and carried the tidings that Betty was just ahead through the tangle of down timber—and that near her was the man. A few yards more and he saw her seated on a log near the game trail. Fifty yards above her the man crouched behind a stump.

His actions were furtive. As Flash watched him he moved to a tree a few feet nearer to the girl and stood motionless as she turned and glanced uphill. Flash circled to come in behind him; circled cautiously with great care to remain unseen. When he had reached his goal the man was halfway to the girl. Experience in stalking all varieties of game helped Flash now and his coyote brain was working. A full-strain dog would have rushed valiantly at the first sign of menace to one he loved; and he would have defeated his own purpose as he died. This man Wore a gun at each hip and Flash knew well his danger; that his one chance of success was to wait until the man entered cover which was dense enough to screen his own close approach for one desperate spring.

He drew near enough so that he could slip into each bit of cover as the man left it but still he was not close enough to spring. When within thirty feet of the girl the man knelt behind a waist-high mass of fallen lodgepole trunks. Forty feet behind him Flash crouched flat behind a log. It was too far for a single spring but it was his last hope. When the man started to crawl over or through the logs would be his time to strike. For a space of minutes neither moved, the man seeming unable to decide on his next step. Then he leaned forward and Flash tensed his muscles for the rush—but both suddenly drew back, each behind his own log screen.

Flash’s every sense had been so absorbed by this dangerous stalk as to exclude all else. The man’s quick ears caught a sound at the instant Flash caught the scent. A second man turned a bend in the game trail and came steadily on. He was of slender build and erect carriage; his gray beard was carefully trimmed, announcing the fact that he had come but recently from the outside world.

This new complication was too much for Flash. The dog in him rose above the wolf and the issue trembled in the balance. Only a saving ray of memory out of the dim past held him back from following the dog impulse to throw himself upon both men and sacrifice himself to warn the girl. This memory was not a distinct recollection of the time he had met this man in the moonlit park on the night he had first found the girl. His memory was not so retentive as that; could not retain for so long a time the identity of one who had made no very strong impression upon his mind. Rather, it was a certain haunting familiarity about his looks and scent that seemed in some vague way to be pleasantly associated with the girl. Without knowing why, he suddenly felt that this man was a reenforcement instead of an added menace.

Betty was gazing abstractedly away from him and so did not see him until he was quite close. Then she looked up and saw him and with a little cry she stepped into the game trail and threw herself into his arms. Flash knew that this grapple was not one of battle, no fight to the death as the move would indicate. Men had queer ways. Betty and this man were friends.

As surely as Flash was an exceptional animal the two men so near him were exceptional men. Both were cool and resourceful. It would be difficult to surprise either sufficiently to cause him for one instant to lose his presence of mind. Nevertheless, the man who watched seemed to lack his usual decisiveness. At last he rose from behind the log, his right hand dropping to the gun at his hip.

Flash rushed without a sound. The gun was half drawn when his teeth ripped the forearm from elbow to wrist and struck solidly against the base of his hand, the gun falling to the ground.

The force of the rush carried Flash clear against the log and he rolled half under the windfall. Even this sudden shock of surprise and pain was insufficient to cloud Harte’s lightning brain. His only sound was a sharp, gasping breath as his left hand reached for his other gun.

Flash would have surely died as he darted back to the attack if the man on the trail had not gone into action as suddenly as Harte himself. His eye had caught the charging gray streak on the slope and with it the man rising from behind the log. He sprang six feet from the girl, his hand thrust inside his coat for the gun which was slung under his left armpit.

Harte’s steady nerve did not desert him even in the face of this emergency. Instead of shooting Flash, he turned the gun in his left hand on the man below and crooked his crippled right arm to protect his throat from the wolf’s fierce lunge. Two shots roared together and even as Flash drove his teeth into Harte’s shoulder the man collapsed behind the log. As Flash darted away he saw the other man sag limply and crumple down on the trail.

Fiash took shelter behind a windfall. Both men lay still and quiet. He heard Betty sob as she knelt beside the older man. Then he heard Moran bounding toward them from the cabin, crashing through the underbrush and hurdling fallen logs. He moved farther away. He knew that two men were dying and he could not tell how much of this was wrong and how much was right—or for how large a part of it he himself would be held accountable. Men sometimes reasoned queerly. Flash kept out of sight.

Moran found Betty kneeling on the trail.

“Where’s the other one?—quick!” he said.

“Up there,” she answered, pointing up the slope. “But he is dead. Don’t go. I want you here to help me with my father.”

Moran knelt beside her and started to unbutton the flannel shirt.

“I’ll do all I can,” he said.

The other man opened his eyes and shook his head.

“Too late, son,” he said. “It’s just as well this way. Look after her. Keep her away from Nash.” He smiled at Betty and closed his eyes. Out in the timber Flash howled—not his usual note but a mournful dog howl which had never before sounded from his throat.

Moran sprang suddenly to his feet as a voice spoke from among the logs a few feet up the slope.

“I wonder how it happens that a dog always knows when someone cashes in,” it said.

Moran found Harte sprawled behind the log.

“You don’t know me, Moran,” he said. “I’m Calvin Harte. It’s queer how things work out sometimes. No man could down me as long as I used my brains—but I lost my head for the one time in my life and here I am. I’d seen the girl before. I was sent here to get you and saw her again. She went to my head. I hung around watching her, planning to kill you and take her for myself. Indecision downed me. It never fails. You lose your decision, and you lose your life.”

“Who sent you after me?” Moran demanded.

Harte smiled and shook his head.

“Even now I can’t squeal on my own breed,” he said. “I never tried to play both ends against the middle but only played one end—the losing end.” After a short silence he reverted to his original question. “How is it that a dog can tell when a man kicks out?” he asked. “You’re a naturalist, they tell me, so you should know.”

It all seemed an unreal dream to Moran; Betty kneeling there with her dead and this man inquiring on odd subjects as calmly as if he had a hundred years of life ahead instead of seconds. Harte guessed the thought.

“I’d rather die talking than thinking,” he said. “That topic will answer as well as any. Can you tell me why it is?”

“It is scent,” Moran said, humoring his whim. “A bird dog knows the difference between a dead and a crippled bird. He will point a wounded quail but step in to retrieve it the instant it dies. There is a difference of scent. It is probably in that same way that a dog knows the instant a man’s life goes out.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Harte. “Thanks. I rather hope they don’t get you, Moran—but they will.” He closed his eyes. Once more Flash howled dismally out in the timber, and a human soul traveled with the sound.

Moran knew that Calvin Harte was considered the most clever and dangerous criminal at large. As he stood looking down at him he heard Flash growl warningly. There sounded the thud of hoofs and the jangle of equipment as Dad Kinney’s pack train came swinging up the trail.