The Cross Pull/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
The girl rested on a rock beside the game trail. A tiny mountain stream rushed past a few feet away. The ground sloped steeply up on either side of the stream bed, matted with a tangled jungle of spruce that was tropical in its density. Great windfalls of down timber were piled about and many trees had not even found space in which to fall but rested at odd angles against living trunks. A thick carpet of moss covered earth and rocks and clung in frowsy shreds to the trees themselves.
“This seemed the most peaceful, lovely spot on earth when I was here before, Flash.” The girl Shivered slightly as she glanced around. “It seems dark and gloomy now. I must have been mad to do it. I had to act at once—no time to think; and I was too dazed to think even if I had been granted time. There was no one to advise me, Flash, and I did the best I knew.”
“I’m glad we’re here at last, Flash.” She pointed up the slope. “It’s right up there, only a few minutes’ climb. It’s weakening to live for three days on cold lunch alone, especially on short rations of that. I had to travel light.”
She slipped into the harness of the haversack in which she had packed her scanty store of food. The single blanket was rolled sling fashion, and she adjusted it across her shoulders and started to climb the slope.
For two hundred yards the ascent was steep. They crawled under and over log jams and threaded their way between close growing spruce trunks. Then Flash stepped in his tracks.
The ground had flattened into a tiny hollow at the base of the cliffs that towered abruptly up above the trees and defined the limits of the narrow gorge. In the center of this depression a cabin showed among the trees.
His nose had given him no warning of this. Always he knew of the presence of man before drawing near, yet he had come full upon this house; even now his nose told him that his eyes were wrong. There was not the slightest trace of man scent, and his ears caught no single vibration of sound. He had no previous experience to guide him in sizing up a house that had been so long untenanted as to have lost all taint of man. He shrank from approaching this unnatural place. But the girl pressed on, and he followed, every hair tingling and each nerve aquiver, his muscles bunched for sudden flight. He was filled with all the apprehensions of a boy who enters at night a house alleged to be haunted.
The girl lifted a heavy wooden latch and entered, but Flash refused to be coaxed inside. He circled the cabin, examining it minutely, shoving his nose hard against the logs and breathing explosively in his effort to solve this strange mystery of the house that held no scent.
It was built of heavy logs. A woodsman could have told at a glance that it had been erected long ago and that only primitive tools had been used in its construction. The door was built of spruce planks slabbed out with an axe and swung on hinges of elk hide nailed on with wooden pegs. The roof was of lodge-pole logs five inches through and covered with a foot of dirt.
Satisfied at last that there was no lurking menace about this strange place, Flash went in to the girl.
The fireplace was built of flat stones cemented with clay which had baked hard. The furniture was of rough hewed pine with legs of seasoned mountain ash driven in two-inch auger holes bored in the planks.
Inside Flash caught a very faint scent which was not that of man, but was in some vague way suggestive of man. This came from the flour, beans, rice and other food that was sealed in almost air tight cans to protect it from marauding pack rats.
The girl gathered branches and kindled a blaze in the fireplace. From an icy spring at the base of the cliff she carried a small pail of water and started to prepare a meal, cooking over the coals in the fireplace as if over a camp fire in the open.
Early dusk was settling in the depths of the canyon, and before eating she gathered a great pile of wood.
“That’s the only light we’ll have, Flash,” she told him. “Firelight.” She offered him a share of the meal but cooked food was not to his liking.
Since finding this lovely goddess the previous night Flash had not once been out of sight of her, but he now felt the pangs of hunger. He scratched at the door and whined, imploring the girl to let him out.
“Where’s that man Moran who owns you, Flash?” she asked. “He must be here somewhere or you wouldn’t be here yourself. If I let you out you’ll run away and go back to him. I want you to stay with me until Dad Kinney comes.”
Flash scratched and whined again.
“He should be here now,” she said.
“He’ll be here surely in a day or two. Then you can go. You’ll stay with me until then, won’t you, Flash?”
His whining and scratching became so insistent that at last she walked reluctantly to the door and opened it, leaving it ajar so he could reenter when he wished.
“Don’t you desert me, Flash,” she admonished him as he slipped out.
Flash dropped swiftly down the slope to the game trail and followed along it toward the mouth of the canyon, his nose uplifted to catch the first scent of meat. Half a mile below, the gorge widened into a narrow park beside the stream. A cow elk was feeding there. She caught a faint whiff of danger and stood rigid. The dread wolf scent suddenly reached her flaring nostrils and she fled—but not in time to escape the shadowy form that drove down upon her from the timber edge with lightning speed.
Back at the cabin the girl, alarmed at his long absence, was whistling and coaxing from the door in the hope that he would hear and come back to her, but there was no answering whine from the inky blackness under the trees and at last she decided that he had gone back to Moran.
Loneliness clutched her with an icy hand. She sat by the fire, knowing she would not sleep until dawn lifted the shadows from the canyon. The vast silence seemed freighted with unknown dangers. She almost prayed for some sound to break it. Then it came! And her supplication was instantly transformed into an earnest prayer that she might never hear that awful cry again.
She did not know what it was—except that it was made by some terrible beast of prey. It carried to her the same sensation as if she had scratched her finger-nails across the rough surface of a sand rock.
It sounded again, this time close at hand, filling the canyon with its volume. The cry was charged with all the aching misery and loneliness of the ages.
A sudden bump at the door startled her horribly. It was followed by an eager whine and a furious scratching. She sprang to the door and let Flash in, barring it shut once more the instant he crossed the sill. The flood of relief that surged through her was like a blessing. She put her arms around the dog.
“Poor Flash,” she said. “Poor Flash. It chased you home. Did it nearly catch you, old boy?”
Flash did not seem troubled. On the contrary he sprawled in front of the fire and blinked contentedly up at her. His mood was mellow, for he had dined well, and his placid calm reassured the girl for she knew that if danger lurked just outside Flash would be bristling and alert.
She spread her blanket on the bunk and the rough boards felt soft. The last sight that her drowsy eyes rested upon before she slept the sleep of utter exhaustion was the peacefully dozing dog before the fire. It was well for her peace of mind that she did not suspect the truth; that the soul chilling cry had been his own imploring message to a long lost mate—the summons to come and feast upon the elk he had torn down with his savage teeth.
She slept on soundly until the dog’s restless wanderings about the room aroused her to the light of day. Every muscle ached from the night on the hard bunk and her first task after breakfast was to carry spruce boughs to cover the boards.
Early in the afternoon she grew restless from inactivity and wandered down the game trail with Flash. Half a mile down she saw a dead elk in an open park. It had not been there when they came up the previous day. She could see the throat, gashed open by savage teeth, and knew that the elk had been killed by the beast whose cry had chilled her the night before.
She had no further taste for walking and hurried back to the house. Near evening she went to the spring for water. As she knelt to dip it Flash came creeping up from the opposite side. He moved with a stealthy crouch and there was a queer light in the yellow eyes. When within twenty feet he sprang straight towards her.
There was a sudden rushing whir of wings as a blue grouse took flight only to be struck down by a big paw. The wings drummed on the ground as Flash held the bird down after beheading it with one nip.
For a full ten seconds she could only gaze, fascinated by this wild picture, then jumped the spring and ran to him. Flash drew away, fearing he had offended her by this deed, but when she picked up the grouse and turned to him there was no reproach in her voice.
“Oh, Flash, it’s a mean trick to steal your dinner,” she said. “But I haven’t any meat. Beans and rice and biscuits are so dry and I do love grouse. Will you share it with me, Flash?”
She carried the bird back to the cabin and dressed it, reserving only the white breast meat for herself and giving the rest to Flash. This female tyranny was no new thing to Flash. Often when with Silver he had killed some small game animal or bird only to have Silver deprive him of it.
The next day he foraged near the cabin and killed another grouse. As he pulled off the head and swallowed it a sudden thought struck him, and he did not tear at the bird. He had been the main support of his family during the first month after Silver’s pups were born, carrying food to the den each night. This wonderful, shining Goddess who had adopted him had taken his last grouse for her own.
He took the grouse in his mouth and trotted back to the cabin. From past experience with Silver it seemed perfectly natural to kill and carry his prey to the den of this new companion.
When he dropped the grouse before the girl the light in her eyes and thrill of love in her voice repaid him a thousand times.
“Why, Flash! You old darling, you’re trying to feed me, aren’t you?” she cried. “You’re the smartest dog that ever lived. I envy that Moran. I think I’ll steal you, Flash.”
That night Flash once more scratched to get out. Soon after she heard the dreadful cry of two nights before. She did not know that Flash had pulled down a small yearling elk, and that this was his joyful call for her to come and join him at the kill; for now, having killed food for her, his call was meant for her instead of the departed Silver.
Someway he knew that the girl would not come and after eating his fill he sliced deeply into a hind quarter to tear it off. When he had cut nearly to the bone he seized the foot and wrenched the leg over the back at right angles, throwing the hip socket out of joint.
He worked tirelessly, alternately cutting at the ligaments with his teeth, and wrenching on the foot with all his strength until it was severed from the rest.
It weighed forty pounds but was no heavier load than he had frequently taken home to Silver and the pups. He lifted the heavy end and started for the cabin, the foot trailing on the ground beside him. Every few yards the weight tired his neck and he rested, sometimes taking the foot and dragging the heavy end.
The girl sat in the cabin, wondering at his long absence, when she heard a peculiar dragging sound punctuated with dull thumps as Flash wrestled the heavy quarter up the slope from the game trail, jerking it over and through the windfall jams.
She opened to his scratching and he backed in, pulling his offering across the sill.
The frayed end of the meat was black with dirt and spruce needles, and she drew back from the gruesome relic. She little suspected that Flash had killed this elk for her but naturally supposed he had found a portion of some dead animal and brought it in.
Her eyes were bright with tears as she patted and stroked his head.
You’re a good provider, Flash,” she praised. “You don’t want me to starve on beans and rice, do you, old boy? There was never in this world another dog like you.”
He revelled in the knowledge that his lovely mistress was pleased with him. At the same time he fully realized her distaste for this latest contribution. He knew that she relished some of the meat he had brought. Evidently she did not care for this kind. He was not critical of her tastes. She should have the kind she chose.
To his mind the animal world was divided into two classes as far as food purposes were concerned. The first and by far the most important included the meat of all large animals. The second included all small animals and birds. Of this division there were some few whose meat he did not like and which only starvation would have driven him to touch.
His mistress seemed to prefer meat that came from the smaller species. For the next two days he hunted tirelessly as he had for Silver and the pups. The den must be supplied with meat.
The girl was between laughter and tears at the growing assortment of game he brought to the cabin. Grouse, rabbits, woodchucks, a marten, a packrat and a whole family of little striped chipmunks were included in the list of small creatures whose lives were sacrificed through his love of her.
His intelligence seemed so almost human that she hesitated to throw away these offerings lest he should take offense. When he was off on his hunts she dropped the undesirable specimens in deep cracks in the rock rubble that lay piled at the foot of the cliff.
In common with the majority of the human race she grossly underestimated animal powers of scent. Flash could scent a track made by a grouse two hours past. A rabbit has a half inch of hair on his feet yet Flash could follow the trail one left on hard frozen ground or even on glare ice as easily as a man sees its track in soft snow.
He had no need to go within thirty feet of the cliff to know accurately the exact spot in which each one had been dropped and just which one it was.
In the old days with Silver he himself had buried meat in a score of places near the den after the family had feasted to capacity. That these caches had never been re-opened mattered not at all. They were but reserves against the possible famine which never came.
It now seemed perfectly natural that the girl should bury her surplus meat, However he preferred dirt to rocks for this purpose and those of the victims he could reach he drew forth and carried to some spot of his own selection, interring them deep in the ground and pushing the soft dirt in place, tamping it firmly with his nose.