CHAPTER IV: THE KILLER
The rainy season was coming to an end—the season as nastily disagreeable as it was needful. Spring was at hand. And the folk on the Dos Hermanos ranch rejoiced almost as much as did their thousands of chronically damp sheep and their soggy acres of mud-tormented range land.
To Treve the winter had passed pleasantly enough. He had had more time for cross-country rambles and for jack rabbit chasing than was at his command during the year’s three other and busier seasons.
The soaking rains bothered him not at all. True, his mighty outer coat was often drenched and flattened by the wet. But the queerly woven and downy mist-hued undercoat served him as well as could any mackintosh. It was waterproof and all but coldproof.
The occasional snowfalls exhilarated him. The glare and tingle of them went to his head and made him frisk and roll in puppylike glee and snatch up mouthfuls of the stinging white flakes as they lay for a brief space on the sodden or half-frozen earth.
True, hard snow-lumps had an annoying way of forming between his pads; so that he had to halt in his romps or his runs, every few minutes, to gnaw them out. But these were petty drawbacks. The snow, for the most part, was Treve’s loved playfellow.
Royce Mack was as enthusiastic over the snowfalls as was Treve himself. They reminded him of the jolly winter sports in the Vermont hills he had left so far behind him. He and Treve used to tramp for miles through the glistening whiteness; just for the fun of it.
Joel Fenno had never in his long and grouchy life done anything “just for the fun of it.” Fun had no place in his meager workaday vocabulary. Sourly he used to watch Royce and young Treve set forth together on their snow-tramps, in the rare hours of worklessness, that winter.
He grudged the idea of any energy not directed to the piling up of dollars and cents. Moreover, he had grown to care queerly much for the big collie that once had saved him from death. He was vaguely annoyed by the dog’s evident preference for Mack; and the gay romps and rambles they enjoyed.
To Royce, the old chap grumbled loudly about the folly of wasting time in such fashion. He used to scowl in disgust at Treve and make as though to repel the collie’s playful offers of friendship. Not to Royce or to any one else would Fenno have admitted that he had so far broken the crust of his own grouchiness as to entertain a genuine yearning for the comradeship of a mere dog.
Mack was deceived by Joel’s attitude of lofty contempt; even though Treve was not. The fact that Joel ignored him or glowered at him, in public, did not offset to Treve the pleasanter fact that he fed him choice bits from his own dinner plate or patted his head with awkward furtiveness when Royce’s back was turned.
One morning, as spring was dawning, the two partners sat at their sunrise breakfast, preparatory to starting out for a day of “marking,” at their Number Three camp. Treve’s usual place, at meals, was on the puncheon floor; to the left of Royce Mack’s seat at the table. This morning, the big dog was absent.
“Where’s Treve?” asked Fenno, with elaborate carelessness; adding, surlily: “It’s good to have one meal in peace, without a measly cur to take away my appetite by scratchin’ fleas and watchin’ every mouthful I eat.”
“I don’t know where he is,” Mack answered. “Around, outside, somewhere, most likely. These warm spring nights when we leave the doors open, he’s apt to trot out, as soon as he’s awake. If it takes your appetite away to have him here when we eat, I can tell him not to come in at meals. He never needs to be told anything but once.”
Royce spoke, aggrievedly. Treve was his chum, his loyal and loved comrade. It irked him to hear Fenno’s incessant grumblings at the great dog’s presence as a housemate.
“Oh, let him keep on comin’ to table if you’re a mind to!” muttered Joel, ungraciously. “If it makes a hit with you to have him spraddled out on the floor beside you when you eat an’ at the foot of your bunk at nights and traipsin’ along after you all day—why, go ahead. We settled that, long ago. I’d rather put up with it than have you sore about it or bickerin’ an’ jawin’ at me all the time, because your purp can’t be treated like he was folks. I c’n go on standin’ it, I reckon. I used to figger that this outfit was a workin’ proposition; an’ that every man and every critter on the Dos Hermanos ranch was s’posed to hustle all day and every day fer his board and keep. But if it amooses you to keep a dog that’s just a silly pet an’ to waste a lot of good work-time playin’ around with him—”
“Treve does his share of the ranch work, and more than his share!” declared Royce. “You know that as well as I do. And you wouldn’t have been here, grouching and whining, if he hadn’t saved you from dying, out on the Ova trail. Yes, and we’d have been shy forty-seven sheep, last fall, if he hadn’t herded ’em safe home here, when they got lost up on the Peak. Oh, what’s the use? We’ve been over all this a trillion times. Either say outright you don’t want him in the house at meals and at night; or else quit nagging about it.”
Joel Fenno rebuked this unwonted tirade from his pleasant-tempered partner by sinking into grieved silence. Surreptitiously, he hid under a slice of bread two tempting morsels of pork that he had been saving to give to Treve.
Seldom was the collie absent from meals, and Fenno missed him. He enjoyed feeding the big young dog on the sly, when Mack was not looking. The loveless, sour old man had never before made a pet or a chum of any dumb animal. He was unreasonably vexed that Treve should not be there to eat the bits of meat he had set aside for him.
As Mack wiped his mouth and got up from the deal table, Joel took occasion to slip the two fragments of pork into his own shirt pocket, on the chance of being able to give them to Treve, unnoticed, during the morning. Then he swore at himself for a slobbery old fool, for doing such a thing.
He and Royce left the house. As usual, they made their way toward the ramble of adobe outbuildings which served as barn, garage, storerooms, stable and “home-fold.” As they neared this straggling group of shacks, two men came in sight, over the low swell of ground from the southward.
The men were mounted, and they rode fast. As they sighted Mark and Fenno, they left the trail-like road and cantered across the three-acre dooryard toward them.
At a glance, both partners had recognized the riders. They were Bob Garry, of the Golden Fleece sheep-ranch, five miles to southward, and Garry’s foreman.
“I tried to get you boys on the phone,” hailed Garry, as he drew near. “But you didn’t answer. So we rode over. I—”
“Phone’s been out of kilter, for three days,” said Mack. “They’re sending a man out from Santa Carlotta, to-day, to fix it. What’s wrong?”
He noted both horses had been ridden hard and their riders’ faces were grim.
“What’s wrong?” echoed Garry. “’Nough’s wrong. We came over to see if he’d visited Dos Hermanos, yet. Has he?”
“Who?” snapped Joel; continuing crankily: “We don’t hone for vis’tors. Not in a rush season like this. Who’s due to come a-visitin’?”
“If you don’t know,” retorted Garry, nettled at the inhospitable tone, so rare in that region of roughly eager hospitality, “if you don’t know, then it’s a cinch he didn’t come here. Your herders would have reported him, before now. He—”
“Who?” insisted Fenno, trying to stem the flood of angry garrulity and to glean the facts. “Who’s—?”
“The Killer,” replied Garry. “First one that’s hit the Dos Hermanos valley, since—”
“Killer?” babbled Royce Mack, aghast. “Good Lord, man!”
He and Joel stared at the riders and then at each other, in slack-jawed dismay. Well did they understand, now, the grim look on the faces of Garry and his foreman. Well did they realize what was implied to all sheepmen by that sinister word, “Killer.”
From time to time, throughout the annals of Western shepherding, flocks have been devastated by some predatory dog or wolf; whose murders have been wrought on a wholesale basis and have piled up a cash loss of many thousands of dollars, before he could be destroyed. Not a mere mischievous mongrel, which perhaps managed to kill a sheep or two and then was tracked down and shot; but a genuine Killer.
Such a Killer was the famed “Custer wolf” of the Black Hills country, whose depredations cost more than $25,000 in slaughtered livestock, and whose killing, by Harry Williams, in November, 1920, was greeted by a local celebration which eclipsed that of Armistice Day. Such a Killer was the dread “black greyhound” of Northern California, with his hideous toll of slain and mangled young cattle and sheep.
Killers seem to be inspired by a devilish ingenuity which for a time gives them charmed lives and renders useless the cleverest efforts of ranchers and professional hunters to track and slay them. Tidings that such dog or wolf has begun operations in any particular region is cause for tenfold more alarm than would be the news of a smallpox epidemic. For it means grave loss to the community and to all the community’s stockmen.
Small wonder that Royce and Joel gaped blankly at each other, on hearing Garry’s announcement! Mack was the first to recover his tongue.
“Every time a lamb is missing or a wether gets gouged on a barbed wire,” he said, with an effort at banter, “the yell of ‘Killer’ goes up. Most likely this is—”
“Most likely you’re talking like a wall-eyed ijit!” cut in Garry. “Eleven of my sheep found, an hour ago, with their throats torn out.”
“Huh?” grunted Fenno, with much the sound that might have been expected had he been kicked in the stomach.
“Eleven of ’em!” reiterated Garry. “Down in my Number Two range. I had a bunch of five hundred wethers and old ewes down there. My poor collie, Tiptop, was in charge of ’em. We found him with both forelegs broke and his jugular slit. He’d done his best. I c’d see that, by the way the soft ground was mussed up, all around him. But he’s a little feller; and pretty old, besides. So the Killer got him. And then he got eleven of my sheep. Simmons found what’d happened, when he made his rounds, at sunrise. He came, lickety-split, to me. I phoned up and down the line; but the Golden Fleece seems to be the only ranch he came to.”
“He didn’t come here,” said Royce. “We’d have got word, before now, if he’d done any killing at one of the outlying ranges. He—”
“That’s the Killer of it!” commented Fenno, savagely. “I know. I’ve been in sections where one of ’em worked. Never visit the same place twice in the same month. Never go back to their kill. Clean up at one ranch to-night; then at another, twelve miles away, to-morrow night; then maybe a week later at one that’s fifty miles away; then back next door to where they killed fust. No way to dope out where they’ll land next. They’re wise to pizen an’ traps an’ guns an’ sich. Send out parties to track ’em, an’ they give ’em the slip an’ double back an’ kill, right behind ’em. Put night guards on the ranges, an’ next mornin’ you’ll find dead sheep not fifty feet from where the guards was posted. Killers are smarter than folks are. We’re sure in for a passel of trouble—the lot of us. That’s the way with luck!” sighed the old pessimist with the sorrily triumphant air of one whose worst fears are realized. “Yep, that’s what I always say about luck. It’s pretty bad, for a while. Then all at once it begins to get a heap worse. Now—”
“Well, I’m out to round up a posse of hunters,” interrupted Garry. “That’s the only hope. Post good shots everywhere, on every range; and then let a posse comb the country for the Killer’s lair. Most likely he has a hide-out, somewheres along the foothills of the Dos Hermanos peaks, or maybe down in the coulée. And maybe, with the right men, we can root him out. Anyhow, with men hunting him all day and with the ranges close-guarded all night, he’s li’ble to figger that this ain’t a healthy region for his work; and he’ll shift to somewheres else.”
“You said just now that my partner is a wall-eyed ijit,” drawled Fenno. “I’m not denyin’ it. Lord knows he is. I found it out, a long while back. But he’s plumb sensible, compared to you, Mister Garry; with your talk of trackin’ down a Killer or makin’ the region too hot to hold him. Why, that sort of a thing is meat an’ drink to a Killer! That’s what a Killer likes better’n to be ’lected Pres’dent. It gives him a chance to amoose himself by gettin’ the best of folks. He’ll run circles around your posse an’ he’ll toll it into a swamp. He’ll sneak behind your range-guards; just like I said; an’ they’ll find a bunch of killed sheep, next mornin’, not fifty feet from where they was standin’ guard. You’re wastin’ your time, a whole lot and you’re losin’ sleep. No, sir, it’s you that’s the wall-eyed ijit; not Royce Mack;—when you hand out that line of chatter. Why, son, you couldn’t even strike the Killer’s trail; let alone foller it! He’ll—”
“Maybe there’s three wall-eyed ijits, then,” spoke up the Golden Fleece foreman, “with you for the middle one, Mister Fenno. ’Cause we’ve found his trail, as plain as if it was wrote in big print. Likewise we follered it. Follered it clean to the main road; and lost it, there, on a ridge of hardpan and rock that didn’t leave any marks like the wet ground did. Headed for the coulée, I’ll bet he was. It’s a trail that ain’t to be mistook for any other, neither.”
“Huh?” grunted Joel, with reluctant interest. “If it’s a queer trail, maybe that’ll help. Did—?”
“It’s a queer trail, all right,” said Garry. “It’s a three-legged trail.”
“A which?”
“A three-legged trail,” repeated Garry. “Left front foot don’t touch ground at all.”
“A lame Killer!” ejaculated Mack. “That’s something new.”
“Maybe so. Maybe not,” said Garry. “It struck me queer, first-off. But I got figgering on it. If it’s a wolf or a coyote that’s hurt its left front foot, that means it can’t run as fast as it used to; and it can’t run down its food in the hills. The only way it can get square meals is to slink down to the ranges and stalk a bunch of sleeping sheep. That’s simple enough, ain’t it? My foreman’s right. We studied those tracks of the Killer, in the mud of the range and in the muck at the edge of the road. Three legs. I c’n swear to that. Left forefoot off the ground.”
“Some sheep dog, gone bad, most likely!” ruminated Mack, half to himself. “I’ve read about such. And—”
“Nope,” denied Garry. “Nothing like it. I thought of that, too. But it ain’t.”
“How d’you know?” challenged Fenno, ever eager for argument. “Can’t a sheep dog hurt his left front foot as easy as a wolf can? Huh? Tell me that! Is there anything in the Constitootion that forbids a—”
“Sure he can,” assented Garry. “Only, this time he didn’t. A dog that’s spent his life running, thirty miles a day, over this country’s hardpan, after straying or bolting sheep—that dog’s feet gets as splayed as a cimmaron bear’s. A wolf’s don’t. A wolf don’t have to run, except when he wants to. And his pads don’t splay, to any extent. No more’n a house dog’s feet splay. These tracks was of feet that weren’t hardly splayed at all. So that’s the answer to that.... Well, we’re wasting time. I wanted to pass the word to you boys, and I wanted to see if one of you or both of you would maybe join up with the posse we’re going to form. How about it?”
Before either of the partners could answer, the Golden Fleece foreman cried out and pointed a stubby forefinger, dramatically. Around the corner of the farthest outbuilding, from the direction of the coulée, appeared a bedraggled figure.
The newcomer was Treve. His golden-tawny coat and his immaculate white ruff and frill were stained with mire and blood. Bloodstreaks marred his classic muzzle and his jaws.
He was hobbling on three legs; his left forepaw dangling helpless in air.
The dog made straight for Mack and Fenno; his plumed tail essaying to wag greeting to his masters. He was a sorry sight. In his dark deepset eyes lurked the glint of half-shame, half-fun, which is the eternal expression of a collie that has been in delightful mischief and fears a scolding for his pranks.
After that first loud exclamation from the foreman, none of the onlookers spoke or moved; for the space of perhaps ten seconds. Frozen, wide-eyed, jaws adroop, they stared at the oncoming Treve.
In every brain raced the same line of glaringly simple logic. And in every brain was registered the dire word: “Guilty!”
Treve, ignoring the battery of horrified eyes, came limping up to Royce Mack, and stood in front of the younger man, gazing in friendly fashion into the whitened face and holding out for sympathy his sprained foreleg.
But, for once in his life, Treve received from his adored god neither sympathy nor a pat, nor any other sign of welcome. Royce simply blinked down at him in unbelieving horror.
As Mack gave no response to his overtures, Treve limped over to Joel Fenno, thrusting his bloodstained muzzle affectionately into the oldster’s cupped palm. At the touch, a violent shudder wrenched Joel’s whole meager body. He did not withdraw his hand from the caress. But he turned his sick eyes miserably toward Bob Garry. In response to the look, Garry said curtly:
“The Killer’s found; sooner’n I thought. I’m sorry, boys. I know what store you set by the brute. But there’s only one thing to do. You know that, as well as I do.”
There was no answer. Royce Mack took an impulsive half-step between the speaker and the wondering collie. Fenno did not speak nor stir. His sick old eyes were still fixed on Garry with a world of appeal in them. Garry spoke again; this time with a tinge of angry impatience in his tone.
“Well,” he rasped, “I’m waiting to see it done. I reckon I’ve paid for my seat to the show. I paid for it with eleven killed sheep. And I don’t aim to go from here till I make sure the Killer is put out of the way for good. We can settle, later, for the sheep of mine he slaughtered and for my good little old collie, too. But that can wait. Just now, the main thing is to see he don’t do any more killing.”
Neither partner answered. Garry laid a hand on the rifle he had strapped across his saddlebow when he had started forth on the Killer-hunt. The gesture made old Fenno shake from head to foot as with a congestive chill.
Royce Mack, hollow-eyed and desperate, pushed the amazed collie behind him; and stood shielding him with his own athletic body.
“That won’t get you nowheres!” sternly reproved Garry, noting the instinctive motion, and unstrapping his rifle as he spoke. “You know the law as well as I do. You ought to be thankful we’ve nailed him before he could do any more killing. It isn’t once in a blue moon that a Killer is nabbed at the very start; before he c’n get away to the hills. We’re plumb lucky. Now, then, will you shoot him; or do you want me to do it? Which’ll it be? Speak up, quick!”
“Wait!” sputtered Royce, stammering in his heartsick eagerness. “Wait! This dog’s my chum. He’s never done anything like this, before. He’d never have done it, now; if he hadn’t gone crazy, some way. I’ve read about sheep dogs ‘going bad,’ like this. It isn’t their fault. Any more’n it’s a human’s fault, if he goes crazy. Folks don’t shoot a human that’s lost his wits. They shut him up somewheres and treat him kind; and then, like as not, he gets his mind back again. It’s likely the same with a dog. I—”
“It’s you that’s lost your mind!” scoffed Garry, angrily, as he fingered his rifle. “If you haven’t the whiteness or the nerve to shoot him, stand clear; and I’ll do it, myself. He—”
“Wait!” implored poor Mack, the sweat running down his tortured face. “Hold on! Let me finish. Here’s my proposition:—I’ll pay you double market price on your eleven killed sheep and on your dog he killed. And I’ll put up a thousand-dollar bond to keep Treve tied or else in the house, all the time. I’ll do this, if you and your man will call it square and keep your mouths shut about his going bad. I’m offering this, on my own hook. My partner hates Treve, anyhow. So I’m not asking him to share the cost or the responsibility. How about it, Garry? Is it a go?”
“It is—not!” refused Garry, his voice like the scraping of a file upon rust. “I’m not in the bribe-taking game. Besides, I’d feel grand, wouldn’t I, first time the cur sneaked loose and began killing sheep again, all up and down the Valley? Nice responsibility I’d have, hey? And that’s what he’d do. Once a Killer, always a Killer. I’m clean s’prised at you for making such a crack as that! Clean s’prised! Stand clear, there! I’m going to put a stop to this Killer danger, here and now. The law will uphold me. Stand clear of him, unless you want me to take a chance at shooting him between your knees.”
He swung the rifle to his shoulder, as he spoke. Then it was that Joel Fenno came out of his brief trance of dumbness.
“You’re right,” agreed Fenno, grumpily. “The law’ll uphold you. But the law gives a owner the right to shoot his own dog, if he’s willin’ to. Royce, here, ain’t willin’ to. But I am. And I’m the cur’s joint owner.”
“Go ahead and do it then,” ordered Garry forestalling a fierce interruption from Royce Mack. “Only, cut out the blab; and do it. I got a morning’s work to catch up with. And I don’t stir from here till the dog’s dead.”
“All right!” agreed Joel; a tinge of gruff anticipation in his surly voice. “That suits me. An’ when you tell this yarn around, jes’ bear witness that one of the Dos Hermanos partners was willin’ and ready to obey the law; even if t’other one was too white-livered. Gimme the rifle. My own gun’s up to the house.”
He reached out for the weapon; and snatched, rather than accepted it, from Garry’s hands. Hefting it, and turning toward Treve, he grumbled:
“I never did get the right hang of a rifle. A pistol’s a heap handier. Got a pistol along, either of you?”
“No,” said Garry.
The foreman shook his head.
“That’s all right, then,” cheerily remarked Fenno. “I—”
“You’ll shoot Treve, through me!” panted Royce, shoving the collie behind him again; and advancing in hot menace on his detested partner. “It’s bad enough to have—”
He got no further. Eyes abulge, he stared at Fenno.
Joel had caught the rifle deftly in both hands and was hard at work pumping the cartridges from its magazine. In clinking sequence they fell to earth. Three seconds later, he picked up and pocketed the shells and laid the empty and useless gun on the ground. Then he faced the loudly blaspheming Garry.
“I’ll send the rifle back to you by one of the men,” said he. “I’m not givin’ it to you, now; for fear you may have a spare ca’tridge or two in your jeans. I was afraid maybe one of you had packed a revolver, too. That’s why I made sure. Your teeth is drawed, friends. S’pose you traipse off home?”
“Joel!” cried Mack, overjoyed, incredulous. “Joel!”
The old man spun about on him; scowling, shrill with peevish wrath.
“What’ve I always told you about that dog?” he accused. “Didn’t I always say he wa’n’t wuth his salt? You’ve cosseted him an’ you’ve made much of him an’ you’ve sp’iled him. Not that he ever ’mounted to anything, to begin with. An’ now you see what you’ve brang him to. Made a Killer of him! He—”
“I’m going to have the sheriff here, inside of one hour!” the enraged Garry was declaiming, unheeded, at the same time. “And after the Killer is shot by an off’cer of the court, I am going to bring soot agin you for impeding the course of the law and likewise for stealing my gun. Then I’m going to sue you both, in the Dos Hermanos County Court, for the loss of my sheep and—”
“Likewise,” snarled on old Joel Fenno, still haranguing his partner, “this comes of tryin’ to make a dog a c’mpanion instead of a beast of burden, like the Almighty intended him to be. I hope you’re plumb sat’sfied with the passel of trouble you’ve yanked down onto us, an’—”
“My foreman, here, is witness to it all,” raged on Garry, in the same breath. “He’ll test’fy how you d’prived me of my rifle, by trick’ry; and then—”
“Don’t go pirootin’ off with the idee I put Friend Garry’s gun out of c’mission, jes’ to save Treve from the death he’s deservin’,” orated Joel, to his dizzy partner. “I didn’t crave to have outsiders come here an’ give me orders. And if I help you hide Treve away somewheres or ship him East to my nephew, before the sheriff gets here, it’ll only be because—”
The advent of two new figures, around the corner of the barns, cut short the dual flood of oratory.
Toni, the Basque chief herder of the Dos Hermanos ranch, came into view. He was bent far forward under the weight of something that was balanced across his spine and which dangled lifelessly to either side of his ox-like shoulders.
Close behind him walked a smaller man, in soiled khaki and puttees; a repeating rifle slung by a bandolier athwart his back.
At sight and scent of the thing, carried by the big herdsman, Treve abandoned his puzzled efforts to make out what all the din and elocution were about. Wheeling, he bared his teeth and lowered his blood-stained head.
Then and only then did his human companions make out the nature of Toni’s burden. It was the scarred and lifeless body of a giant gray wolf.
The partners, at the same time, recognized the slender khaki-clad rifleman who moved lightly along in the herdsman’s wake. Twice, on his journeys, this man had stopped at the ranch for a meal. For hundreds of miles in all directions, he was known and admired.
For this was Eleazar Wilton, of the “Hunters’ and Trappers’ Service,” operated by the governmental Biological Survey;—one of the best shots in the West; and a huntsman who had done glorious work from Texas to northern Wyoming, in ridding the range country of predatory wolves. His fame was sung at a score of campfires and bunkhouses. He was a royally welcome guest wherever he might choose to set foot.
At sight of him, now, Bob Garry shouted aloud:
“Here’s the man who’ll do the job you tricked me out of doing! Cap’n Wilton, this dog has kilt eleven of my sheep! I call on you, in the name of the law, to put a bullet through his head. I’d ’a’ done it myself; if these fellers hadn’t fooled me out of it. He—”
“This dog, here?” asked Wilton in his quietly uninterested voice; as he strolled past Toni and up to Treve.
“Yep! That’s the one!” trumpeted Garry. “See? He’s still got their blood all over him. And his forefoot’s bit and chawed where my collie died fighting him. There’s other bitemarks on him, too. He—”
Royce and Fenno, by common consent, moved in front of their imperilled chum. But, before either of them could speak, Wilton interrupted Garry’s harangue by stepping past the two partners and laying his bronzed hands on Treve’s blood-streaked head.
There was greeting—almost benediction—in the gesture. At the touch, Treve left off growling at the huge dead wolf which Toni was laying on the ground, nearby; and glanced quickly up at the stranger who had offered him this unwonted familiarity.
At what he read behind Wilton’s steady eyes, the collie’s glint of suspicion softened to friendliness. His tail wagged, hospitably; and he laid his cut head against the huntsman’s khaki knee.
Meantime, Wilton was turning to the gesticulating Garry.
“They ‘fooled you’ out of shooting this collie, did they?” he asked. “Then it was the luckiest bit of fooling done in Dos Hermanos County for a long time. I was afraid of something like that. So I came on here, as soon as I could. I got that double-sized herder to give me a lift with the wolf; so we could get here quicker.”
He nodded over his shoulder, as he spoke. The others, for the first time, took full cognizance of the wolf that Toni was stretching out on the muddy ground.
The giant animal measured well over six feet from muzzle to tail-tip. His hide was plentifully scored with olden wounds and with very new gashes. But it was Bob Garry who, with a gasp of amaze, pointed out the beast’s most striking peculiarity.
His left forefoot was gone.
It had been cut off, clean, at the ankle-joint. The injury had occurred long ago, for the skin and the hair had grown over the wound.
“Ever hear of him?” asked Wilton.
Nobody answered. Wilton continued:
“No, you wouldn’t have been likely to hear. But, up in the Mateo country, there isn’t a sheepman or a cattleman that hasn’t heard of him. I was sent up there, to get him. He had visited every range from San Mateo to Hecker’s. Always they could trace him by his three-footed track. Must have been caught in a steel trap, years ago, and got loose by gnawing his foot off. He seems to have navigated faster on three legs than most animals can, on four. He was a ‘lone wolf,’ too. And he had all the sense of a dozen stage-detectives. Never tackled the same place twice in succession. Poison-wise and trap-wise. He could throw off pursuit as easily as any dime-novel Sioux. They sent me up to the Mateo district to get him. He fooled me, every time. Then he started south. The rains helped me track him. I suppose he didn’t bother to confuse his trail or to double, on a long hike like that. More than a hundred miles, it was. And I could never catch up with him. Sometimes I lost his trail, altogether; and I’d pick it up, more by chance than by any skill.”
A second time his hand dropped caressingly on Treve’s head. The collie paused in the task of licking his own various flesh wounds and licked the caressing hand. Wilton smiled, rubbed clean his licked hand with his other sleeve, and resumed:
“Last night, at dusk, I lost the trail again. He was beginning to get cautious, once more. I figured that meant he was planning to stop and do some raiding. There was no use looking for tracks in the twilight. He couldn’t be very far ahead of me. So I rode on. I rode till I got to the coulée, beyond here. It’s a great place for any animal to hide out in;—with all those rocks and bushes. It struck me that would be just the lair for him to crawl into, daytimes; while he was ravaging this part of the world. Besides, it was right in his line of march. So I spent the night there; waiting for him. I was pretty sure I’d gotten in front of him; and that he’d stop there, to hide or else to sleep; before he went farther. Well, he did.”
Again he paused, as if for dramatic effect.
“I watched, from before daybreak,” he continued, presently. “No sign of him. I had crawled into a little niche between two bowlders, at the top of the coulée, just at its mouth. I couldn’t miss him there. Then, about an hour ago, I got sight of him. He was pelting away, at top speed, on those three pins of his. And he wasn’t using any craftiness, either. He was running, full tilt. And, not a hundred yards behind him, a collie was tearing along. This collie dog, here.”
“They hunted together, hey?” exclaimed Garry. “I knew this cur was—”
“No,” denied Wilton. “Dogs don’t hunt with wolves. Coyotes do, but not dogs. The collie was hunting the wolf. He was after him, with every ounce he had. I take it the collie had been out on an early morning stroll, not far from his own home; when he got sight or scent of the wolf as he was coming this way from a kill And the dog gave chase. The wolf was all blood; so I knew he’d been at a bunch of livestock, somewhere. The dog hadn’t a mark on him. There was light enough for me to see that.”
“Good old Treve!” applauded Mack. “But, Captain, if—”
“Wasn’t the dog even running on three legs?” despairingly asked Garry.
“He was,” admitted Wilton; adding: “And on the fourth leg, too. No lameness, then. I wondered, at first, why a Killer, like the three-legged wolf, should run away from a dog smaller and lighter than himself. But I made a guess; and the guess was right. Dawn had come. People were likely to be astir. It was no time to be caught in the open, in a fight. The wolf was looking for cover. After he found it, there’d be time enough to dispose of the collie. That’s wolf-nature.”
“He—”
“The wolf got to the mouth of the coulée; where another ten steps would hide him in the undergrowth and the rock holes so safely that no hundred hunters could root him out. He was right below me. I drew a bead on him. But I didn’t shoot. Because just then, the collie overtook him. And I saw the prettiest battle ever. It would have been a crime to spoil it by a shot.”
“Lord!” breathed Royce Mack. “Why wasn’t I there?”
“The wolf spun around on him,” went on Wilton, “and made a dive, wolf-fashion, for the collie’s foreleg; to break it. The collie was going too fast to dodge, altogether. But he did his best. And he got off with nothing worse than a pinched left forefoot. Then the fun began. The old wolf was as quick as lightning. But the collie—well, the collie was as quick as—as a collie. I don’t know anything quicker. He got a slash or two; and once he was bowled over in the mud and the wolf got a throat grip.”
“But—”
“But the collie tore free, by leaving a handful of mattress-hair and skin in the wolf’s jaws. And before the wolf could spit it out and get his jaws into action again, the collie had flashed in and gotten to the jugular. He hung on, like grim death; grinding those slender jaws of his deeper and deeper; while the wolf kept thrashing about and hammering him against rocks and against the ground; to make him let go. But the collie hung on. That’s the collie of it. That’s the thoroughbred of it, too. He knew he had the one hold he could hope to win by. And he held it. At last his teeth ground their way down to the jugular and through it. That’s all there was to that fight.”
“Treve!” babbled Joel. “Trevy!”
His unconscious exclamation went unheard in the hum of excitement.
“The collie lay down for a minute, panting,” finished Wilton. “Then he got up and sniffed at the dead wolf. Then, before I had the sense to try to stop him, he limped off, in this direction. It seemed to me I remembered him, when I was at Dos Hermanos, last time. I got to wondering if he’d be shot, by mistake, when news came of killed sheep and when he was all bloody. So I hustled on here, after him. A dog, like that, is too plucky to let die.”
“Mister Bob Garry, Esquire,” drawled Fenno sourly, as Royce bent in keen solicitude over his battered collie chum. “You was sayin’ suthin’, awhile back, ’bout having a mort of work to do, at your own ranch, this mornin’. Well, friend, the mornin’s joggin’ on. Here’s your pop-gun. Here’s your pretty ca’tridges. Scat!”
“You’ll come to the house for some breakfast, won’t you, Captain?” asked Royce, as the disgruntled Garry and his foreman rode off. “Chang can rustle you some grub, in no time. Come on, Treve. I want to wash out those bites of yours; and fix up your paw.”
He set off toward the house, at Wilton’s side. But Joel Fenno, behind their backs, buried his fingers lovingly in the collie’s bloody and muddy ruff.
“Trevy,” he whispered, the other hand groping in his shirt pocket, “here’s some grand lumps of pork I saved out for you, from my breakfast. An’—an’, Trevy, that Garry blowhard would ’a’ had to shoot me as full of holes as these last year’s pants of mine; before I’d ’a’ let him git you. Yep—an’ Wilton, too. Of all the dogs that ever happened, Trevy—you’re that dog.... Hey!” he called grumpily after the departing Royce. “Here’s your cur. Take him along to the house with you. He’s jes’ in my way, down here!”