One of the sentinels sat on a mound. His short tail jerked, but no other part of him moved. Suddenly the air was split by the warning whistle of the big sentinel on the high rock. The dog sentinels repeated the warning in a wild chorus of “skr-skrr’s.” Dogs raced in from the meadow. They paused for a moment to sit upright on their mounds, then they went down their slides to the tunnels below the ground. Out from the ground came their defiant voices, “squit-tuck! squit-tuck!”
A lank coyote stepped out of a clump of rose brier close to the spruce woods. He stood gazing disgustedly over the meadow, his green eyes watching the yellowbellies as they romped to their dens at the base of the castle rocks. The whistlers had warned the dogs and ground squirrels of his presence. He ran at a lope across the meadow. Lady Ebony snorted and shook her head as he passed. Her eyes followed the glinting sun on his fur. When he had vanished down the trail which led into Shadow Canyon she returned to her feeding.
2. Wild Horse
High up under the snow rims, where the grass was short but rich with moss and lichens, lay a little lake. Its upper shore line was formed by a barren rockslide which tumbled down from the naked cliffs above timber line, its lower edge was fringed with spruce and balsam. Below the lake nestled a little meadow. On this meadow fed a band of twenty horses.
At the head of this band of wild horses ran a chestnut stallion, a heavy-chested, thick-legged fellow with a splashed white star in his forehead. His protruding eyes were set wide apart and his heavy jaws and massive neck showed his battling qualities, while his wide chest and thick barrel indicated great strength.
The chestnut stud moved restlessly as he fed, jerking up his head, listening, testing the air with flaring nostrils. The mares with their colts close beside them cropped the short grass, content to let him keep a wary watch for danger.
And there was danger ahead on every trail. There was the lank cougar whose desire for colt flesh was greater than any urge in his tawny body except the hot flames that fired him when the mating call floated up through the twilight under the high spruce. There was the wolf pack, not so dangerous in summer but always ready to kill. The chestnut stallion knew that at this season the old lobos would be running with their sons and daughters in bachelor packs. They were training their young to kill and would attack any colt or mare that strayed far from the band. There was the bear gone killer, the brute who had deserted his vegetable diet and turned killer. He was not a common enemy, but one that was terrible in savage lust for slaughter. Lastly, there was the most dreaded enemy of all, man.
The chestnut had learned that man was the most ruthless and dangerous of the killers. He walked upright and his eyes were in front of his head, not at the side as in animals who do not kill but are pursued by the killers. The ranchers did not like wild horses because they ate the range grass and often crossed with the ranch mares, who then brought forth scrubby, worthless colts, mean and useless as saddle stock. The chestnut stallion stole mares from the range when he could coax or drive them from their pastures. With savage daring he led his band into the tall-grass range in the summer. If the cowboys with their rifles hunted him too persistently he faded away to a distant range down in the desert. In this he was like the lobo wolf. When poison and traps and guns become too evident an old lobo shifts his range.
The chestnut stallion had begun to feel that it was time for him to lead his band out of the Crazy Kill country. He was being steadily hunted. Rifles spat in the misty dawn, riders swooped down on the mares when they came out into the open to feed. Major Howard had given orders to kill or run the wild band off his range. He wanted no crossing of his good stock. At first he had played with the idea of having the chestnut stud brought in alive, but his riders could not trap or outrun the big fellow in the rough, broken country. There were too many avenues of escape, too many canyons and tangled mats of down timber. So the major gave the order to shoot the big stud and to exterminate his band.