Shepherds of the Wild

by Edison Marshall

And for the first time in his career with the sheep Hugh broke his trust. His business, too, was to keep the flock together, to help the dog round up the truants and the strays. Yet the promptings of his own spirit bade otherwise. He had repatriated himself, he had come to his lost land, and was such a right to be denied the bighorn that had led the flock? Spot’s place was in the rough crags and the high trails, snow sweep and precipice and the ruddy glow of sunset, not feeding with the domestic sheep. He knew that Alice would understand.

“Come back, Shep,” he called into the stillness. The dog turned, hesitated, then, faithful servant that he was, came trotting back. Spot overtook the flock and the forest closed behind him. The bighorn ram had come into his heritage.

CHAPTER XXII

José Mertos, when he came at Fargo’s bidding, looked exactly the same as always. He seemed to have partaken of the changeless quality of the desert where he was born. His lips were thin, his face impassive, his dark eyes somber as ever. Fargo himself, however, had undergone certain transformations. He was not quite so boastful as usual, nor so arrogant. He looked as if some especially effective medicine had been administered to him. It was plain, however, that the dose had not been entirely to his liking. There were little angry glowings in his eyes that seemed never entirely to fade out.

Anger had always come quickly to Fargo, but it isn’t good for the spirit to have it remain indefinitely. It cuts deep lines in the face and fills the eyeballs with ugly little blood vessels, and it makes the hands shake and the heart burn. It also swells the little sacks under the eyes, a thing that is never pleasant to see. It was plain that certain events had recently occurred that Fargo had not yet forgotten, but which had incited a strange hunger within himself that must be satiated with something quite different from bread. And as the days glided past the more fierce the hunger became.

It was true that he remembered only Hugh’s first blow,—that which had stretched him flat upon his back. The feel of the earth throughout one’s length has a tremendous medicinal value in itself to some men, and in others it wakens a madness that is considerably worse than that which comes upon Broken Fang at the fall of darkness. And there had been at least two other blows when he was stretched out unconscious. One of them had temporarily closed his eye. The other had left a purple bruise about his lips. This was enough in itself. Men did not strike Landy Fargo down and have many months to boast of it. At least that was what he told himself time after time, in the long nights that he sat alone. The meeting with Hugh in which his horse had been returned to him had been scarcely less odious.

Fargo remembered how Hugh—with his bleeding arm—had motioned for him to go, and how at the same time his hard, bright eyes had been watching for any offensive motion on the part of Fargo. But courage to attack simply would not come to him. And in the morning light, burning with hatred and passion, he had ridden back to his home.

The affair in regard to the flocks was no longer merely a business proposition. It had its personal side now. It seemed to him that its completion was the only desire he had left. He hated the browsing sheep, he hated Crowson and Crowson’s daughter, but most of all he hated Hugh. There was the man who had defeated all his plans. It was Hugh’s fists that had knocked him to the earth and that had lashed into his face as he lay unconscious. Night after night, week after week, he had sat—savage as one of his own hounds—staring into the fire. The flames had leaped: and he knew that some time in their lurid glow they would show him his course of action. His only wish was to make payment.

The time in which he might strike was almost up. October—when the detachment of forest rangers would take over the district and protect such lawful industries as Crowson’s—was almost at hand. The thought seemed to drive him insane. And one night, when September was almost done, inspiration came to him.

A cowman had come in, complaining of the drought. The streams where his cattle fed were drying up. “Never seen the woods so dry in all my days,” the man had said. “Just like tinder. And already most of the cattle have crossed over Eagle Ridge into the Bear Canyon country.”