Shepherds of the Wild

by Edison Marshall

And the man might have listened in vain for any waver, any note of doubt in her tone. She spoke as if in infallible prophecy.

“Who’s goin’ to do it?” the man demanded. “Who’s goin’ to find out?”

“It will be found out. You’ll pay, whether I live or not. It seems—almost as if vengeance is coming to you soon—right away. I can’t tell you how I know. I only tell you to let me go.

“You’re from the desert, José, and not the mountains, and maybe the desert lets debts go unpaid,” she went on, in a clear free tone of inspiration. “But I know these forests. It seems to me I know them now—better than I ever did before. One more insult—and I tell you you’ll pay.”

But José laughed. Just a little, harsh note of scorn fell from his lips. He was a mountain man, but in his passion and frenzy his wilderness knowledge had deserted him. He did not heed her words. And he bent to press his lips to hers.

And at that instant the thicket behind them parted as a terrible avenger leaped through. It was not his first leap in vengeance. Many times, in his years of service, he had sprung with magnificent ferocity at the throat of a wolf that menaced the white sheep in his care. But never before had he sprung so true, with such shattering power and dreadful fury. White fangs that could carry a lamb as tenderly as the arms of a shepherdess flashed in the firelight.

Just as she had said, the wilderness had spoken. One of the guardians of the flock had swept to her aid. Because he was in defense of his own, obeying the laws of his inmost being, his blow had the might not only of the wilderness but of that high power that has waged war with the wilderness, tamed its passions, subjugated its peoples. No man may say if love for this tall shepherdess was a factor too. Without its impulse, the lesser creatures do not often unleash their fury against man. Shep the dog had come because it was his duty and his destiny, and he sprang like a tigress through the air.

The great shepherd dog struck like a wolf, aiming straight for the throat. José had no time to ward off the blow. His back was to the thicket. He didn’t even see it come. Gleaming fangs tore once at his dark flesh.

Then for an instant there was only the red fire and the red sky, with the wilderness bathed in their glow between. The dog had dropped silently to his four feet and was crouched, waiting to see if another blow were needed. The girl’s face seemed bereft of all life. And that which had been a man was only a huddled heap in the pine needles, dark and strange and impotent as the dust. Red fire and red sky, and now a scarlet fountain, playing softly with ever decreasing impulses, on the parched earth.

Shep had avenged the insult. And in paying the debt the pair of hands that might have untied the bonds that held Alice in the path of the fire were stilled.