Ben stated his case simply. He was the partner of Hiram's brother, he said, and he had been designated to take care of Fenris and such other belongings as Hiram had left. Morris studied his face with the quiet, far-seeing eyes of a woodsman.
"You've got means of identification?" he asked.
Ben realized with something of a shock that he had none at all. The letter he carried was merely a copy without Hiram's signature; besides, he had no desire to reveal its contents. For an instant he was considerably embarrassed. But Morris smiled quietly.
"I guess I won't ask you for any," he said. "Hiram didn't leave anything, far as I know, except his old gun and his pet. Lord knows, I'd let anybody take that pet of his that's fool enough to say he's got any claim to him, and you can be sure I ain't going to dispute his claim."
"Fenris, then, is,—something of a problem?"
"The worst I ever had. His old gun is a good enough weapon, but I'm willing to trust you with it to get rid of Fenris. If you don't turn out to be the right man, I'll dig up for the gun—and feel lucky at that. I won't be able to furnish another Fenris, though, and I guess nobody'll be sorry. And if I was you—I'd take him out in a nice quiet place and shoot him."
He turned, with the intention of securing the gun from an inner room. He did not even reach the door. It was as if both of them were struck motionless, frozen in odd, fixed attitudes, by a shrill scream for help that penetrated like a bullet the thin walls of the house.
Instinctively both of them recognized it, unmistakably, as the piercing cry of a woman in great distress and terror. It rose surprisingly high, hovered a ghastly instant, and then was almost drowned out and obliterated by another sound, such a sound as left Ben only wondering and appalled.
The sound was in the range between a growl and a bay, instantly identifying itself as the utterance of an animal, rather than a human being. And it was savage and ferocious simply beyond power of words to tell. Ben's first thought was of some enormous, vicious dog, and yet his wood's sense told him that the utterance was not that of a dog. Rather it contained that incredible fierceness and savagery that marks the killing cries of the creatures of the wild.
He heard it even as he leaped through the door in answer to the scream for aid. His muscles gathered with that mysterious power that had always sustained him in his moments of crisis. He took the steps in one leap, Morris immediately behind him.