Frayne started a little, and blinked. As he did so, his disturbed mind told him he had not awakened naturally, but that he had been disturbed by some sound. He shifted his drowsy gaze towards the tethered sheep. And at once all slumber was wiped from his brain.
The wether was lying sprawled on the ground, in a posture that nature neither intends nor permits. Its upflung legs were still jerking convulsively, like galvanised stilts. And above it was bending a huge dark shape.
The moon beat down mercilessly on the tableau of the slain sheep, and of the Black, with his fangs buried deep in the twisting throat.
Now that the longed-for moment had at last come, Trask found himself seized by an unaccountable numbness of mind and of body. By a mighty effort he regained control of his faculties. Slowly and in utter silence he lifted the cocked gun from his knees and put its butt to the hollow of his shoulder.
The Black looked up, in quick suspicion, from his meal. Even in the excitement of the instant, Frayne found scope to wonder at the brute’s ability to hear so noiseless a motion. And his sleep-numbed finger sought the trigger.
Then, in a flash, he knew why the Black’s great head had lurched so suddenly up from the interrupted meal. From out a clump of alder, twenty feet to shoreward of the river-bank orgy, whirled a tawny shape. With the speed of a flung spear it sped; straight for the feasting mongrel. And, in the mere breath of time it took to dash through the intervening patch of moonlight, Frayne recognised the newcomer.
The Black sprang up from beside the dead sheep, and faced the foe he could no longer elude. Barely had he gained his feet when Tam was upon him.
Yet the mongrel was not taken unaware. His crafty brain was alert and the master of his sinewy body. As Tam leaped, the black dog reared to meet him. Then, in practically the same gesture, the Black shifted his direction, and dived beneath the charging collie, lunging for the latter’s unprotected stomach. It was a manœuvre worthy of a wolf; and one against which the average dog must have been helpless.
But the Black’s opponent was a collie. And, in the back of his brain, though never in his chivalric heart, a collie is forever reverting to his own wolf ancestors. Thus, as the Black changed the course of his lunge, Tam, in mid-air, changed his. By a violent twist of every whalebone muscle, Tam whirled himself sidewise. And the Black’s ravening jaws closed on nothing.
In another instant,—even before he had touched ground,—Tam had slashed with his curving eyeteeth. This is another trick known to practically no animal save the wolf and the wolf’s direct descendant, the collie. The razorlike teeth cut the Black’s left ear and cheek as cleanly as might a blade.