But even then the vital, surging life in the creature still lingered. He came creeping forward, fangs gleaming, long talons bared. An instant more Hugh waited, standing straight and motionless. Only one bullet remained, and no risks must be taken with that. Shep—who had rushed about the flock at Spot’s approach—came charging to his master’s aid.
One long second dragged away, with a curious effect of silence and immeasurable suspense. It was such a picture that might never be effaced from the memory: the suddenly awakened sheep, the approaching forest fire, the motionless figures, the snarling, creeping feline, and the red glow as of the abyss over all. The creature paused—scarcely ten feet distant—and gathered himself for a final spring. Hugh fired his last bullet.
There was one strange instant more in which the bunched muscles relaxed and the great body wilted in the pine needles. The dog leaped upon it, but it was already impotent. A strength such as but rarely comes to man had held Hugh’s hand steady; and the shot had made a clean passage through the creature’s brain.
Broken Fang’s trail of rapine and carnage had come to an end at last. He typified all that was most deadly and terrible in the wilderness, and he had fallen in fair battle with the breed whose strength—in such regions where they venture—has conquered the wilderness. He was a forest monarch; but his foe was the shepherd. Talon and fang and supple strength had not been availing.
He would linger no more about the white flocks, and the Little People along the game trails had seen him steal by for the last time. No more would the deer know his long, shuddering scream as the night came down. He lay as if fallen in battle against the flocks,—a token of man’s dominance of the wild.
Hugh turned from him to find a strange stir and excitement among the sheep. It seemed to him that in those invisible ways no man may trace, a knowledge and a message was being passed from one to another; and a new hope and spirit was sweeping the flock. There was no concerted movement as yet. Still the sheep stood motionless, but their heads were raised. The only moving forms were those of Spot and his ewes, running along the flank of the flock. And suddenly Spot turned back in the direction that he had come.
And every animal in that flock of three thousand leaped after him in pursuit. The whole expanse of white lurched forward like an avalanche starting from the high peaks. Hugh cried out in irrepressible wonder, and thrill after thrill coursed like electricity through his frame. An unspeakable rapture flooded his being; and he whirled about to find a white flame—no less miraculous than this sudden sweeping-forward of the flocks—mounting in Alice’s face. The dog raced forward, barking.
By instinct rather than reason the shepherds understood. Their old leader had for the moment at least returned to the sheep; they rallied as instinctively as soldiers at the sight of their beloved general, and they were ready to follow him even into the flame. It made no difference that he was leading straight toward the flaming wall to the east, a dreadful region where the fire raged fiercely and whence without his leadership they would have been afraid to go. They ran as if with renewed spirit.
Perhaps they remembered him of old and gave him their trust. Perhaps he brought them word of some new hope that lay even in the jaws of death. Swiftly the flock fell into its old formation, the strongest in front, every black marker in its place. They swept like a foam-covered sheet of water into the red dusk of the distant forest.
“Come!” Hugh shouted. “Spot’s showing us the way.”