At such times, every able-bodied farmer, from Trask Frayne to the members of the Italian garden-truck colony, up Suffern-way, would arm himself and join the hunt. Rounding up the horde of mongrels, they would shoot fast and unerringly. Such few members of the pack as managed to break through the cordon and make a dash for the mountains were followed hotly up into the fastnesses of the grey rocks and were exterminated by trained huntsmen.
The mountaineers were too shrewd to make any effort to protect their sheep-slaying and chicken-stealing pets from the hunters. Much as they affected to despise the stolid toilers of the Valley, yet they had learned from more than one bitter and long bygone experience that the Valley men were not safe to trifle with when once righteous indignation drove them to the warpath.
For years after such a battle, the Valley was wholly free from the marauding black-dog pack. Not only did the dogs seem to shun, by experience, the peril of invading the lowlands; but their numbers were so depleted that there was more than enough food for all of the few survivors, in the meagre garbage of the mountain shacks. Not until numbers and forgetfulness again joined hands with famine, did the pack renew its Valley forays.
When this story begins, a mere two years had passed since the latest of the mongrel hunts. Forty farmers and hired men, marshalled and led by young Trask Frayne, had rounded up not less than seventy-five of the great black raiders at the bank of the frozen little Ramapo river, which winds along at the base of the mountain wall, dividing the Valley from the savage hinterland.
The pack’s depredations had beaten all records, that season. And the farmers were grimly vengeful. Mercilessly, they had poured volley after volley into the milling swarm of freebooters. Led by a giant dog, ebony black and with the forequarters of a timber wolf, the handful of remaining pillagers had burst through the cordon and crossed the river to the safety of the bleak hills.
It was Trask Frayne who guided the posse of trackers in pursuit. For the best part of two days the farmers kept up the hunt. An occasional far-off report of a shotgun would be wafted to the Valley below, in token of some quarry trailed to within buckshot range.
The gaunt black giant leading the pack seemed to be invulnerable. No less than five times during that two-day pursuit some farmer caught momentary sight of him; only to miss aim by reason of the beast’s uncanny craftiness and speed.
Trask Frayne himself was able to take a hurried shot at the ebony creature as the fugitive slunk shadowlike between two hillock boulders.
At the report of Trask’s gun, the huge mongrel had whirled about, snarling and foaming at the mouth and had snapped savagely at his own shoulder; where a single buckshot had just seared a jagged groove. But, before Frayne could fire a second shot, the dog had vanished.
Thus the hunt ended. Nearly all the black dogs of the mountaineers had met the death penalty. It was the most thorough and successful of the historic list of such battles. The raiders were practically exterminated. Many a year must pass before the pack could hope again to muster numbers for an invasion. And the Valley breathed easier.