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—”