CHAPTER TWO: “THE HUNT IS UP!”
MICHAEL TRENT stood knee-deep in a grey-white drift that eddied and surged about him in tumultuous, soft waves, almost threatening to engulf him.
The grey-white drift filled the tiny field in whose centre Trent was standing. Its ragged edges were spilling in irregular driblets into the adjoining fields and the road, scattering thence athwart the nearer countryside.
To descend to bare fact, Michael Trent was in the middle of a milling and unruly flock of merino sheep; and he was, incidentally, in more or less of a fix.
Of these sheep, seventy had belonged to his farm for months. And he had just added to them two additional flocks, new-bought, of thirty and of twenty-five each; making a grand total of one hundred and twenty-five.
This morning he had undertaken to pasture the three groups together in a single paddock-field while he should assort from the full flock a detachment of forty which he planned to drive to Boone Lake the following morning for the rural metropolis’ monthly market day.
It had seemed a simple thing, this opening of the gates from two fields and driving into a third field the occupants of the other two. So simple had it appeared that Trent had not even enlisted the services of his beautiful collie Buff in the petty task.
Buff had been sent, a half-hour earlier, to drive the farm’s little bunch of cattle to the “forest pasture,” a mile to the east; and he was not yet back. Trent had not bothered to wait for the collie’s return before herding the three flocks of sheep into one. He had merely opened the gates leading into the central field where were pastured his original flock, and had driven the newer occupants of those two fields into the middle one.
Then trouble had set in—as trouble is forever waiting to do, where sheep are concerned.
One of the two new flocks had stampeded at sight and scent of the strange flocks, and of the still more strange man. The stampeding flock had ploughed straight into and through the thick of the others, jostling and shoving them roughly, and communicating to them the stampede impulse.
That had been quite enough, and all at once there were a hundred and twenty-five crazy sheep surging around Trent and radiating away in every direction. Their fear-driven bodies had found a weak panel in the hurdle fence that bordered the road. Down flapped the hurdle, and through the gap the nearest sheep began to dribble. The remainder were in great and ever-increasing danger of injury from the mad plungings of their companions.
Another accidental shove had loosed the half-fastened latch on the centre field’s gate, which Trent had neglected to clamp when he came into the paddock; and another leakage seeped out through that opening.
Helpless, wrathful, Trent waded through the turmoil, trying in vain to restore quiet, and to make his way to one or both of the apertures before a wholesale stampede should empty the field through gate or hurdle, bruising and perhaps killing some of the weaker sheep against the sides of the gap.
In his extremity, the farmer put his fingers to his lips and sent forth a whistle agonisingly piercing and shrill. Then he turned back to his futile labours of calming the stampede. Because he turned back thus, he missed a sight really worth seeing.
Over the brow of a ridge, across the winding high road, flashed a tawny and white shape that was silhouetted for an instant on the pulsing sky-line—the shape of a large collie running as no dog but a collie or a greyhound can run. Close to earth, in his sweeping stride, Buff was coming at full speed in response to the far-heard whistle.
As he breasted the ridge-crest, the dog took in the scene below him in a single glance. He saw the milling and straggling sheep, and his distracted master in the centre of the panic throng. Thus, he did not wait, as usual, for the signals Trent had taught him in “working” sheep. Instead, he went into action on his own account.
Through the waves of greyish-white a tawny and wedge-shaped head clove its way at express-train speed. With seeming aimlessness, Buff swirled through the mass, sheering now to right, now to left, now wheeling, now halting with a menace of thundered barks. Yet not one move was thrown away, not one step was without definite purpose.
As by miracle, the charging sheep began to shape up, in the field’s centre; and while they were still following this centrifugal impulse, Buff was gone from among them. Out into the high road he flew, not waiting to find either of the openings; but taking the tall hurdles in his stride.
And in another second or so he had caught up with the rearmost of the stragglers, had passed it and flashed on toward the more distant strays. Before the sheep in the paddock had shaken off their Buff-given impulse to crowd to the centre of the enclosure, the collie had rounded up the scampering and bleating strays and was driving them in a reluctant huddle through the gateway and in among their fellows once more.
Then, without resting, he swung shut the gate—an easy trick long since taught to him, as to many another working collie—and was guarding with his body the gap made by the overset hurdle.
Trent ran up, fixed the hurdle in place, and then turned to pet and praise his exultant dog.
“Buff,” he declared, taking the collie’s fluffy head between his two gnarled hands, “you’re worth ten times your weight in hired men, and you’re the best side-partner and chum a lonely chap ever had!”
Buff grinned, licked his master’s hand in quick friendliness, then lay down at Trent’s feet for an instant’s rest. And, for the thousandth time in the past three years the man noted something in the collie’s pose that baffled him.
For, though Buff was lying upright and not on his side, both hind legs were stretched straight out behind him. Normally no collie lies thus, nor does any other canine that is not the possessor of a strong strain of bulldog. It was Buff’s favourite posture. And Buff had every point of a pure-bred collie—indeed, of the highest type of “show collie.”
The man’s bewilderment was roused, thus, from time to time, by the dog’s various bulldog traits, such as lying with hindlegs out behind him, or of holding a grip with the grim stubbornness of a pit terrier rather than with the fiery dash of a true collie, or of diving for the heels of driven cattle instead of for nose and ear.
Waiting only for a moment, while Buff was breathing himself after his hard run across country, and his harder rounding up of the flock, Trent chirped to the collie, and prepared to shut the two new consignments of merinos back in their respective pens. The mingling of the three flocks had been a mistake. Until their forthcoming drive to market, the three bunches would fare better among their own acquaintances than among strange sheep.
But the task was no easy one. To a casual eye all the milling sheep looked just alike. Trent could distinguish by his personal red mark his original flock. But the two sets of strangers were unmarked. Wherefore his chirp to Buff.
The moment the collie was made to see what was required of him, he was in the thick of the jostling turmoil again, flashing in and out like a streak of tawny fire, seeming to have no objective, but to be scampering without any special purpose.
Yet within fifty seconds he had headed a scared sheep through the gateway into the right-hand paddock where stood his master. Then another and yet another sheep, then a huddled half-dozen of them cantered bleatingly into the paddock. While Trent looked on in wonder, Buff proceeded to segregate, until the entire twenty-five that belonged in this particular field were back within its boundaries.
Trent shifted to the opposite paddock, whence he had turned the second flock of thirty into the central enclosure. And here Buff repeated his unerring performance.
Though Trent was filled with amazed admiration at his pet’s discernment, yet he recognised there was nothing miraculous in it. Buff had herded both these new flocks into the paddocks at least three times before, on their way from pasture, during the few days Trent had owned them. He had become familiar with their scents and their separate identities, after the uncanny fashion of the best sort of working collie.
As the job ended, and Trent started homeward, with Buff trotting chummily beside him, a slender black saddle-horse came single-footing around the bend of the road between the paddocks and the farmhouse. Astride the black, sat a figure as slender and highbred as the mount’s own.
The rider was a girl of perhaps twenty, clad in crash and booted. At sight of the man and the collie she waved her crop gaily at them, and put her horse to a lope by a shift of the snaffle-rein.
Trent’s bronzed face went red with surprised pleasure at the equestrian vision bearing down on him. Buff, after a single doubtful glance, recognised horse and rider, and set off at a run to welcome them.
“Why, I didn’t know you were at home yet, Ruth!” exclaimed Trent, reaching up to take the gauntleted little hand extended to greet him. “Your father said you’d be in the city another month. I saw him at the store last evening, and he said——”
“Yes,” she interrupted, “I know. He hadn’t got my telegram, then. Aunt Hester had to go out West to take care of her son—my cousin, Dick Clinton, you remember? He has a ranch in Idaho. She had a letter from him yesterday morning, saying he’d broken his leg. So she packed up, right away; and took the night train, West. And I came home.”
“Oh!” said Trent, in an effort at sympathy. “And you had to cut your visit in half? What a shame!”
“No,” she denied guiltily, “it wasn’t a shame. It was a blessing. I oughtn’t to say so, but it was. She did everything to give me a good time. And I enjoyed it, too, ever so much. But all the while I was homesick for these dear hills. And I’m so glad to get back to them! It’s queer,” she added, “how I’ve grown to love this Boone Lake region; when dad and I have lived here barely eighteen months.”
“Eighteen months and nine days,” gravely corrected Trent. “I remember. I had gone to town that evening to get the mail. And when I passed by the old Brander house I saw lights in it. At the post-office they told me a New York man and his daughter—‘some people named Hammerton’—had moved in, that day, and that they’d come here for Mr. Hammerton’s health. It wasn’t more than a week—just six days, to be exact—after that, when your father stopped here to ask me about the commission people I was dealing with in the city. He spent the morning, and he asked me to come and see him. It was the next evening I called. That was when I met you. So——”
“Do you keep a diary?” she asked, in an amusement that seemed tinged with embarrassment. “Or have you a genius for remembering dates?”
“And,” pursued Trent, “it was just sixteen days after that when we went horseback riding the first time. It—it may be a bit of silly superstition,” he went on reluctantly, “but I’ve always dated the start of this farm toward real success from the time you people moved to Boone Lake. Ever since then I’ve prospered. Another six months will find me in shape to install the last lot of up-to-date machinery and to take over that eighty-acre tract of Holden’s that I’ve got the option on. Then I can begin to call my soul my own and live like real people. And, the first day I can do that, I am going to put my whole fortune and my life, too, to the biggest test in the world. A test I hadn’t any right to put it to while I was staggering along on the edge of bankruptcy and with the future all so hazy. In six months I’ll be able to ask a question that will show me whether all my luck is Dead Sea fruit or—or the greatest thing that ever happened.”
He talked on, ramblingly, with an effort at unconcern; avoiding her eyes. But his gaze was on her little gloved hand as it lay athwart the horse’s mane. And he saw it tremble and clench. Trent was half glad, half frightened that she had caught the drift of his blundering words.
Before he could continue, Buff created a diversion by routing a large and terrified rabbit out of a fence corner and charging down the road toward them in noisy pursuit of his prey. Bunny fled in blind panic straight between the nervous horse’s forefeet. The mount snorted and reared. As Ruth skilfully mastered the plunging steed, Trent caught the bridle, close to the bit, and at the same time whistled Buff to heel. Unwillingly, but instantly, the collie abandoned his delightful chase and trotted obediently back to his master.
“Don’t scold him!” begged Ruth. “It wasn’t his fault!”
“I’m not going to scold him!” laughed Trent, ruffling the dog’s ears. “It’s many a long month since Buff needed a scolding. He didn’t drive the rabbit this way. The rabbit drove itself, before Buff could choose the direction. He——”
“Buff is splendid protection for you, isn’t he?” she broke in, a tinge of nervousness in her soft voice.
“Why, personally, I don’t stand in any great need of protection,” he smiled. “I’m not exactly a timid little flower. But he protects the farm and the house and the livestock as efficiently as a machine-gun company could. He’s a born watchdog.”
Buff, realising he was under discussion, sat down in the road between the man and the girl. He was wriggling with self-consciousness and fanning the dust into a little whirlwind with the lightning sweeps of his plumy tail; as he grinned expectantly from one to the other of the speakers. But the collie’s grin found no answer on Ruth Hammerton’s flower-tinted face. The girl’s eyes had grown grave, and there was a tinge of uneasiness in them.
“I hope you’re right,” she began, hesitantly, “in saying you don’t need any protection. And probably I’m foolish. But that’s why I rode out here this morning.”
“To protect me?” he asked quizzically, yet perplexed at her new bearing.
“To risk your thinking me impertinent,” she evaded, “by mixing into something that doesn’t concern me.”
“Anything that concerns me,” he said as she hesitated again, “concerns you, too; so far as you’ll let it. What’s the matter?”
She drew a long breath, knit her dark brows, and plunged into the distasteful mission that had brought her to the Trent farm.
“In the first place,” she began, “do you know two men named Con Hegan and Billy Gates?”
In stark surprise Trent stared up at her.
“Why, yes!” he made answer. “Of course I do. I have good reason to know them. I’ve told you the story. I told it to your father, too, before I accepted his invitation to come and see him. They were the two men I found in my kitchen when I——”
“Yes, yes,” she interposed hastily, as though trying to shield him from memories that must be painful. “I know. Of course, I remember. But—but you never told me their names. I’m certain you didn’t. Or they’d have been familiar to me when I heard them this morning.”
“This morning?” echoed Trent, puzzled. “I don’t——”
“I was at the store, doing the marketing,” she explained. “Some men were loafing on the steps, just outside the window. And one of them said, ‘A fellow from down Logan-way told me just now that Con Hegan and Billy Gates are due to be turned loose to-morrow.’ And one of the other men said, ‘Then Trent had better hire a special cop and take out another life insurance policy. Both of ’em swore they’d get him, if they was to go to the chair for it. And that’s one kind of an oath neither of ’em’s liable to break. I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes just now!’ That was all I could hear. But it worried me. I didn’t associate the names with those men you had told me about. Perhaps because the phrase ‘turned loose’ didn’t mean anything to me. But I came out here to tell you, just the same. It wasn’t so much what the fellow on the store steps said, as the scared way he said it, that frightened me. Oh, is there any real danger of——”
“Nonsense!” laughed Trent. “There’s no danger at all. And you’re not to give the matter another minute of your precious thought. But it was bully of you to come out here to warn me—to care enough to——”
“You’re making light of it, just to make me stop worrying!” she accused. “I know you are! Won’t you please notify the police about their threat? Won’t you go armed? Won’t you lock your house ever so carefully and keep indoors after dark? And——”
“And wear warm flannels next to my skin, all summer?” supplemented Trent, with vast solemnity. “And carry an umbrella and wear rubbers if the day is at all stormy? And——”
“Stop!” she commanded, a hint of tears in her troubled young voice. “You’re making fun of me!”
“Heaven forbid!” he disclaimed, piously.
“You are!” she accused. “And you’re doing it to lead me to think you aren’t in any danger; so that I won’t worry. But there is danger! And I know it. I’m positive of it, now that you’ve told me who those men really are. Oh, can’t you——”
“Listen!” he begged. “You’re getting all wrought up over nothing, Ruth. It’s wonderful to have you bother your head over my safety. But I’m not going to let you do it. Here’s the idea: Hegan and Gates belonged to the ‘Riverside Gang,’ over in South Boone. The gang was cleared out some years ago. Some of its members went to jail. The police had nothing definite on those two; so they let them alone. They picked up a living by their wits, as semi-stationary tramps and they kept their petty thefts from being found out. Then, when they’d sent me to prison—they’d had it in for me ever since the time I caught them near my hen-roost and ordered them off my land, to the accompaniment of a stray kick or so—they went into the business on a larger scale, using my house as a place to store their plunder and to hide out in, when the neighbours might be suspecting them of a share in the robberies. When Buff and I collared them they went all to pieces and confessed everything. Just as I told you, before. Now, I leave it to you if two such pitifully cowardly sneak thieves are likely to risk another jail sentence by trying to harm me. It’s ridiculous. Just the same, I’m as much your debtor for warning me, as if the danger were real.”
Ruth had dismounted, during the talk. Now, turning to the horse, she prepared to get into the saddle once more. But first she bent down and laid her soft cheek against the delighted Buff’s head. Under cover of the collie’s glad whimper of friendliness she whispered very low:
“Take care of him, Buff! Oh, take care of him—for me.”
Then, with assumed lightness, she said, as Trent lifted her to the saddle:
“Probably you’re right. But it didn’t do any harm to warn you. I’m sorry if I’ve seemed foolish. Good-bye!”
The little black horse cantered away. Michael Trent and Buff stood in the middle of the road watching the girl out of sight. Then Trent turned slowly to his chum.
“Buff, old man,” said he, “we made a good bluff of it just now, you and I. All the same, it’s up to us both to keep our eyes open for a while. Hegan and Gates were soaked with cheap whisky and sodden and jumpy after a week’s carouse, when the chief of police ‘sweated’ them. And he sure did ‘sweat’ them good and hard. It smashed their nerve. Because they were in prime shape to have it smashed. And that’s how he got them to go all to pieces and confess. That and the goods he found on them. And, besides, he told each of them separately that the other one had squealed; and made them sore on each other that way.
“But that wasn’t like either Gates or Hegan to give in. When they were normal, they were as tough a pair of birds as I care to see. They’ve had nearly three years to sober up in and get back their nerve by hard work and plain food and no drink, Buff. And unless I’ve got them both sized up all wrong, they’ve been spending most of that three years in planning how to get back at the man who spoiled their game and thrashed them and got them put away.
“They’ve had plenty of time to store up venom, Buff. And plenty of venom to store up. Yes, and a good alibi, too, to clear them if anything happens to me. Buff, we aren’t going to be fools enough to worry. But we’ll keep awake, just the same. And, Lord, but wasn’t it glorious of her to care enough about me to come ’way out here and warn me! Buff, she knew what I meant, too, when I told her about having the right pretty soon to ‘ask a question.’ I wonder if I’m pig-headed not to have asked it long ago instead of waiting till I had something besides my measly self to offer?”
During his mumbled address to the wistfully listening dog he had been moving homeward. Now, standing on his neat porch, the man looked about him, over his well-kept farm and its trim buildings; with a little throb of pride as he contrasted it with the way the home had looked on his return from prison three years earlier. The world, all at once, seemed to him a wonderful place to live in, and life seemed unbelievably sweet. His glance strayed down the long, yellow road toward the old Brander place, and his lean face softened with a glow that transfigured it.
Early the following morning Michael Trent set off down the same yellow road toward Boone Lake for the monthly market day. But the patch of road directly in front of him was no longer yellow. It was filled with jogging and tossing billows of greyish-white.
Forty sheep, consigned to the market, were moving in close formation in front of their staff-swinging master. For one reason alone did they keep this close formation or, indeed, keep to the narrow road at all.
That one reason was Buff. The collie, with calm generalship, was herding and driving them. And he was doing it to such perfection as to make Trent’s rearguard task a sinecure.
For more than thirty months now Buff had been the lonely Trent’s closest chum and almost his only companion. With true collie efficiency, the dog had learned his hard and confusing farm lessons from the master, who never lost his temper with him and who never dealt unjustly by him. The bond between the two had sharpened and increased Buff’s naturally “human” tendencies, and had brought out in him the great soul and uncanny brain wherewith nature had endowed him. A one-man dog, he idolised Trent and served him with joyous zeal.
Trent and Buff guided their woolly charges through the single winding street of Boone Lake, now beginning to fill with market day traffic, and on to the fenced-in market square. There they herded the forty silly sheep in one corner of the livestock enclosure, a rod or two distant from a second and much larger flock.
The owner of this second flock—a drover named Bayne—had no dog to reinforce his shepherding. Instead, three of his hired men were busily running and shouting along the wabbly borders of the hemmed-in flock.
Trent observed that they were not keeping their sheep in the best order, and that they seemed to be wilfully exciting instead of calming the big flock. At this he wondered, even as he had wondered when these same shepherds had been equally awkward at two former market days—days whereon Trent himself had had no sheep to sell.
He had heard rumours—odd, unconfirmed gossip—about this Bayne’s methods. And, when he was not watching the antics of the three clumsy shepherds, he observed Bayne’s craggy and shifty-eyed face with covert interest.
A half-hour later, as a third huddle of sheep were driven into the enclosure, there was a new commotion among Bayne’s flock.
All three shepherds dashed into the jostling mass as in an effort to calm the pestered beasts. Instead, the noisy move stampeded the entire flock. They scattered broadcast through the entire enclosure.
The new arrival saw the panic. He jumped ahead of his own bunch of sheep as they were filing in, and drove them precipitately out of the square, standing at the opening to see that none of Bayne’s stampeding flock should follow. Thus, by rare presence of mind—and perhaps having also had experience with Bayne—he avoided any chance of his sheep mingling with the runaways.
Michael Trent was less fortunate. Full tilt into the very midst of his orderly flock charged some fifty of Bayne’s stampeders, a shepherd at their heels yelling to them to stop. The shepherd’s voice and excitement had merely the effect of urging them on. Trent, watching, wondered wrathfully why so stupid a man should be placed in charge of any market consignment.
Ragged and lean were the newcomers, of mixed blood and in bad condition; as was the way with Bayne’s livestock. They were not to be compared to Trent’s fine merinos, either in blood or in condition—assuredly not in value.
Into and through the Trent flock swarmed the invaders. In ten seconds the two flocks were inextricably intertangled. In vain did Buff seek to restore order. He could do nothing against three men—four now, for Bayne had joined the bedlam—whose yells and crazy rushes frustrated his every movement. The dog looked up in angry bewilderment at Trent, mutely begging for advice as to how the snarl might be straightened out.
But Trent did not see the appealing glance. His mind and eyes were too completely taken up in staring at Bayne and the latter’s three men.
For in a flash the quartet had changed from impotently roaring and running idiots, to swiftly certain and efficient shepherds. With splendid skill and speed they were quelling the stampede, separating the two flocks and driving their own sheep to their allotted corner of the enclosure. Their command of the situation was something to admire.
Presently the Bayne flock was in its place, orderly and safe, with two shepherds in front of it to prevent further panic flight. Trent glanced back at his own flock, attracted to them by a sudden stir among the forty.
Buff, leaving his master, had plunged into the flock and was busily at work, but for what purpose Trent could not guess. Then, almost at once, he was out of the compact flock again, driving in front of him six sheep, which he detached from the remaining thirty-four, and sent helter skelter out into the middle of the square.
Still wondering if his wise dog had lost his wits, Trent chanced to take special note of the six sheep as they hurtled past him. And his face went blank. The six were dirty, thin, undersized, sparse of wool. They were as different from his own plump flock as a scavenger horse from a Derby winner.
Before Trent could speak or move, Buff had deserted the six ragged specimens, leaving them bleating forlornly in the centre of the square.
And he had bounded straight at Bayne’s close-huddled flock. At one leap he was on the backs of the sheep which formed the outer wall of the mass. He did not even waste time to plough through their tight-held front rank.
Over their backs he ran; and on until he vanished into the milling sea of wool.
Then, while Bayne and his three shepherds still shouted in uncomprehending dismay, the dog appeared again on one edge of the flock. Moving slowly, by reason of the press around and ahead of him, he emerged from the bunch, driving two sheep. Fat they were and of heavy wool, undoubted merinos both. Across the narrow space Buff headed them and drove them into his master’s flock. Then, on the instant, he was in the Bayne flock again, running once more over the scared backs of many sheep and dropping to earth in the middle of the throng.
A second time he emerged from the huddle, again with two fat and woolly merinos ahead of him. Eluding Bayne, who rushed down on him with staff upraised, Buff galloped the two into his master’s corner, and was back again, without pausing, in front of Bayne’s flock.
But this time his self-imposed job was no sinecure. Bayne and the three shepherds had shaken off their amaze and were ready for him. Shouting and threatening they advanced on the eager dog.
Trent, leaving his sheep in care of an official of the market, sprang to Buff’s aid. But the dog did not wait for him. Instead, the collie made a growling dash at Bayne’s booted legs.
Bayne jumped aside to guard his endangered shanks, and smote at the attacking collie with his staff. The blow did not land;—Buff was no longer there. Eluding the swung cudgel with wolfish agility, he darted into the gap in the line—the gap made by Bayne’s sideways jump—and was at the fiercely guarded flock once more.
As Buff reappeared, after an interval, with another pair of sheep herded ahead of him, Bayne and the shepherds were waiting for him. But so was Trent. A shepherd made a lunging rush at the two salvaged sheep. Bayne aimed a murderous blow at the dog.
Trent, with ludicrous ease, tripped the awkwardly charging shepherd and sent him asprawl on the ground. Trent’s staff met the descending stick of Bayne, and the latter’s weapon was shattered by the impact.
In practically the same gesture, Trent leaped between his dog and the two remaining shepherds, menacing them with staff and voice, and holding them in check while the collie cantered the rescued sheep back into Trent’s flock.
Bayne, swearing and mouthing, strode in pursuit. He was met by a crouching collie, who faced him with an expression that looked like a smile and which was not a smile.
Bayne hesitated, whirling on the tranquil Trent.
“Your cur’s stolen six of my sheep!” he thundered in righteous indignation. “I’ll——”
“No, you won’t, Mr. Bayne,” gently contradicted Trent, his pleasant voice slow and drawling. “Stop a second and cool off, and you’ll let the matter drop. You’ll let it go as a mistake of your men’s in separating the two flocks. Men often make mistakes, you know. Buff never does. There are six sheep straying over yonder—six thin, cross-bred sheep. Not merinos. They are yours.”
“I tell you—” spluttered Bayne, though visibly uneasy at Trent’s manner and at the crowd that was collecting three deep around them.
“No,” intervened Trent. “Don’t tell me, Mr. Bayne; don’t bother to. I see it was a mistake. Just as you are beginning to see it. There’s no sin in a mistake. Though there’s always sure to be a mistake in a sin. My sheep are safe. So are yours. Let the matter drop. I’ve seen stampedes of your flocks before. And I’ve heard of them, too. This time no harm’s done. That’s all, I think.”
“I’ll get a court order for my sheep your cur run off!” flared Bayne in a last rally; and he turned to his shepherds, commanding:
“Here, boys, go and get them sheep he run into that bunch. Get ’em!”
“Speaking of court orders,” said Trent, still in the same cool, slow tones of indifference and interposing his own lithe body beside the bristling Buff’s to the hesitant advance of the shepherds—“speaking of court orders, Mr. Bayne, when you get yours, be sure to tell the judge that I’m ready to show him the secret mark on each and every one of my sheep, to prove they’re mine. Now, if your men care to keep on edging toward my flock, Buff and I will try to entertain them as best we can till the police come up.”
Bayne glowered horribly into the smilingly level eyes that met his glare so tranquilly. Then, with a grunt, he turned back to his own corner, the three shepherds trailing after him.
Behind his calm exterior Michael Trent drew a long breath of relief. These forty sheep of his were culled from the two new flocks he had so recently purchased. None of them bore a mark. The only “secret mark” on them was Buff’s unerring knowledge of their identity. Trent stooped and petted the collie lovingly on the head and stroked the massive ruff.
“That’s how Mr. Bayne makes money, old man,” he whispered. “One of his several hundred ways. We couldn’t have proved he didn’t have six fat merinos in that mangy bunch of sheep. And his shepherds would have sworn to them. Figure out the price-difference between six of our best sheep and six of Bayne’s scarecrows, and you’ll know to a penny how much cash you’ve saved me to-day, Buff.”
The collie did not get the sense of one word in five. But he realised he had somehow made Trent very proud of him and that he was being praised. So for a moment he forgot to be stately and aloof. He wagged his tail wildly and caught Trent’s caressing hand between his mighty jaws in well-simulated savageness, pretending to bite it ferociously, while not exerting the pressure of a fraction of an ounce. Which was one of Buff’s many modes of showing affection for the pleasant-voiced man who was his master and his god.
Dusk had fallen when Trent and Buff turned in at the gate of the silent farmhouse. The day had been prosperous. The merinos had brought a well-nigh record price—the whole forty having been bought by an up-country stock farm man. Thus, Trent’s investment in them had turned into an unexpectedly quick and large profit.
Also, he had been congratulated by a dozen fellow sheep raisers on his victory over Bayne. He had banked his market cheque—the Boone Lake Bank remaining open until seven in the evening on market days—and had spent a blissful half-hour on the Hammerton porch with Ruth on the way home. Now, comfortably tired and buoyed by an equally comfortable sense of well-being, he lounged up the short path leading from the road to his house. As he reached the fence gate he had bidden Buff fetch the cows from their upland pasturage and drive them to the barn. He himself went around to the side door, for the milk pails that were kept in the kitchen during the day.
He unlocked and opened the door and stepped in. As he did so a bag was thrown over his head, and the upper part of his body—a bag whose bottom was soaked in something that smelt like crushed apples. A rope was flung about his arms at the same moment and its noose ran tight.
Vainly, Trent stamped and writhed to free himself. His wiry strength was pinioned and cramped by the noose and the impeding bag. More of the apple-smelling liquid was dashed into his face through the sack’s loose meshes. Then, as he still struggled and choked, something crashed down upon his skull.
Buff trotted obediently across the road toward the hill pasture. Like his master, Buff had had a happy and busy day. He had been praised much and petted much by Trent, and had had a truly marvellous dinner at the Boone Lake Hotel. He was complacently at peace with the world.
Then all at once he was not at peace with anything. For, far behind him, he heard the noise of scuffling feet and of a loud, choking gasp. And his weird sixth sense told him his master was in trouble.
Wheeling, he set off for the house at a tearing run. Excited as he was, he was aware of a strange and vaguely remembered foot-scent as he whirled in through the gate and up the path. His faint memory of the scent was hostile. He could not remember why.
At a bound he reached the open kitchen door. Trent was lying inert and crumpled on the floor. Two men were bending over him. And, as he charged, Buff caught their scent.
Like a rabid wolf he hurled himself upon the nearest of the men. His teeth closed in Hegan’s shoulder with the bone-crushing grip of his pit terrier ancestors. At the same moment Gates drew a pistol and fired point blank at the leaping dog.
Buff’s muscles collapsed. He slumped to the floor and lay lifelessly across the body of his master.
“What’d you shoot for, you chucklehead!” panted Hegan, nursing his rent shoulder. “Want to bring all Boone Lake down on us?”
“Only way to get him!” retorted Gates. “He’d ‘a’ chewed us both into Hamburg steak if I hadn’t.”
Quickly and deftly the two worked. First assuring themselves that no one had heard the shot, they went through the house and through Trent’s clothes. Then, their loot gathered, they carried it to the barn and stowed it in Trent’s new car. After which, under cover of darkness and carrying Trent between them, they loaded their victim into the tonneau, covering him with a blanket. Then, while Hegan groaningly and laboriously cleaned away the tell-tale blood spots and other marks of struggle, Gates scowled down at the motionless huddle of tawny soft fur.
“Got to lug him along with us, too, I s’pose?” he grunted. “Can’t leave him here.”
“Get a stone,” commanded Hegan—“a big one. Tie it around his neck. Then drop him down the well.”
Gates groped around the steps until he found one of the old-time door stones, and in another minute or so this was firmly affixed to Buff’s collar by a stout rope. As Gates picked up the heavy dog and carried him puffingly to the well the telephone bell rung.
Tossing dog and stone over the well curb, Gates bolted for the house in sudden fright. Hegan had already gone into the hall, and was lifting the instrument from its table.
“Hallo!” he grunted in a stifled voice as he motioned Gates to silence.
His face cleared, and he made answer to the query at the far end:
“Yep, this is Michael Trent. Yes? No, I won’t be here. Nope. I’m just starting off on a motor trip up country. I may go a couple of thousand miles before I get back. Maybe I won’t ever come back. I’m dead sick of this hole. Yep. Good-bye.”
He hung up the receiver.
“Corking good alibi!” he chuckled gleefully. “Some feller that Trent sold some sheep to to-day. Don’t seem to know Trent well. Didn’t suspicion the voice. Now, when Trent and his car are missing, nobody’ll ask nosey questions. Come along!”
They hurried to the barn, backed the laden car out, and drove away into the night.
Not for some minutes did Buff recover consciousness from the bullet graze that had rapped his skull so hard as to stun him and to gash the silken fur above his eye.
He woke in decided discomfort; his head was still in dire pain, and he was fastened securely in one spot.
When Michael Trent had had his farm drinking water tested, a year earlier, he had learned that the well showed strong traces of stable drainage. Wherefore, the well had been filled up, to within two yards of the surface, and a new well had been dug on higher ground behind the house.
Thus it was that Buff woke to find himself sprawling on a pile of rubble, with a short rope attaching him to a large stone.
Indignantly the collie set to work gnawing the rope in two. This accomplished, he got dizzily to his feet. A rush and a scramble, and he was up the stone-lined wall of the well and on firm ground above.
Straight to the house he ran, his teeth gleaming, his ruff abristle. At the kitchen door he halted. The door was shut; he could not get in. But his scent told him Trent was no longer there. His scent told him more—much more. It confirmed his memory of his master’s two assailants, and stamped their odour for ever in his mind. Their steps led him to the barn whither they had carried Trent. The senseless man’s clothing had brushed the lintel of the barn door as they had lifted him into the car. Buff looked wildly about him, sniffing the air, his tense brain telling him much.
Then a red light began to smoulder in his deep-set eyes. Out into the high road he dashed, not running now like a collie, but like a timber wolf. As he ran he paused but once, and then he waited only long enough to throw his head aloft and shatter the night silences with a howl as hideous and discordant as it was ear-splitting.
A mile away a drowsy farmer dropped his weekly paper with a shiver.
“If I was back on the frontier,” he mused to his startled wife, “I’d say that was a mad wolf a-howlin’—and I’d say the hunt was up!”