The drouth and the eternal smell of smoke had gotten on the nerves of the three hundred cattle pastured in the field. To-day, the inrush of the strange and repellent-smelling grayish creatures upon their territory had agonized those raw nerves to frenzy. On top of all this, the scent of fresh-spilled blood had the effect that so often it has on overwrought range cattle.
Something like fifty white-fronted Hereford steers suddenly lowered their horns and, by common consent, charged that blood-reek. In other words, Joel Fenno, in trying to get up, had seen coming toward the alcove-space a tumble of lowered heads and express-train red bodies. Though he was a sheepman, he knew what a cattle charge meant. And he screamed horrified warning to his fellow-human in that death-trap.
Old cattleman though he was, Chris Hibben stood frozen to stone at the sight. Then he glanced toward the alcove fence behind them. Seven feet of close-meshed barbed wire—coyote-proof, bull-tight, horse-high. No man might hope to scale so bristling a stockade. Hibben himself had ordained that fence in the days when this end of the range had been given up to calves, and when wolves and rustlers abounded.
Subconsciously, the two men stood close beside each other, as they faced the thundrous charge. Their hands met in a moment’s tight grip. Treve did nothing so professionally melodramatic. He saw the peril quite as clearly as did Joel or Hibben. But his duty was to avert it; not to stand supine or to make stagey gestures. In the wink of an eye, he was off on his gay dash toward the on-thundering bunch of blood-crazed steers.
Treve had had no experience in driving cattle. But his wolf ancestors had known crafty ways of their own, in dealing with wild cows. Into their descendant’s wise brain their spirits whispered the secret, now; even as Treve’s collie ancestors had told him, from the first, how sheep must be herded.
Tearing along toward the galloping phalanx of horned and lowered heads, the collie burst into a harrowing fanfare of barks. Straight at the mad steers he ran; barking in a way to rouse the ire of the most placid bovine. Nor did he check his flying run, until he was almost under the hoofs of the foremost steer—a mighty Hereford which ran well in advance of his crowding companions.
To the lowered nose of this leader, Treve lunged; slashing the sensitive nostril; and then, by miraculous dexterity, dodging aside from the hammering hoofs. Not once did he abate that nerve-jarring bark.
The hurt steer swerved slightly, in an effort to pin the elusive collie to earth. The dog swerved, too—barely out of reach of the horns. As he dodged, he slashed the bleeding nostril afresh.
It was pretty work, this close-quarters flirting with destruction. The fearless dog was enjoying the gay thrill and novelty of it as seldom had he enjoyed anything.