For instance, Frank Warring, while on his way home from town in his wagon, toward evening of a cloudy day, beheld the pack cross the road right in front of him, the animals in single file, one following another, silent as specters, noses outstretched, the big, shaggy black-and-white fellow leading. In the rear were two or three puppies, perhaps nine months old. Frank had no gun. Somebody else also saw the pack.
The brutes' depredations continued, being limited, so far as we could ascertain, to our vicinity, as if they had selected Hicks Mountain for a hunting-ground. They hunted without howling. A spasmodic, rabid bark was the only sound that we could attribute to them, but it was sufficient.
We were afraid of this wild pack; more afraid than of wolves. There is something uncanny about a dog gone wild, for he combines the lessons taught by domesticity with the instincts of savagery.
As nobody from our section had missed dogs, we concluded that this band had come down upon us from Wyoming, a hundred and fifty miles north. Up in Wyoming wild dogs had been bothering the sheep-range. Probably energetic measures adopted by the irate sheep men had driven the marauders to seek new fields.
Finally, Sam Morris had a chance to retaliate. He was hunting deer afoot. The day was dark and snowy. As he was sitting motionless beside a boulder, watching the slope below and the ascent across the draw, the dog-pack suddenly streamed out from the pines down there, and all at a lope threaded the bottom of the draw, onward bound. The shaggy black-and-white was leading, as usual.
Sam's gun was loaded with buckshot, and he waited greedily, that he might get more than one dog with his charge. But the animals were too shrewd to travel bunched; they left intervals, as do the wolves when trailing, and when at last Sam would desperately have "whanged away," his gun missed fire. Rather chagrined was Sam, telling his tale afterward. He confirmed the previous statements that the pack was variously colored, made up of different breeds; a strange invasion surely.
The trail through the draw remained unobliterated, for no snow fell for two weeks thereafter. We found that the dog-pack was utilizing this draw for a pass. It appeared to lead from one favorite point to another. The trail grew more distinct, but it scarcely widened; the dogs stepped always, so it seemed, in the same spots. It was vain to set traps; the disturbance of the snow was noticed at once. Poison was disregarded. The pack kept on ranging the country and attacking stock.
Sam was anxious to retrieve himself, and he and I agreed to put in our time watching that trail until we should "fix" some of those outlaws. I remember that it was the tenth day of January, and toward four o'clock in the afternoon, when, for perhaps the sixth or seventh time, we ensconced ourselves between two boulders on the slope overlooking the trail below.
The sky was cloudy; a snowstorm was evidently approaching. Cloudy days seemed to be those upon which the dog-pack was most likely to be sighted. Probably upon such days it emerged earlier on account of the waning light. This afternoon we had been in ambush only a half-hour when the pack appeared.
In silent, single file the pack came trotting out of the timber on our right, and across before us, following the trail in the draw. The big, black-and-white, shaggy fellow was the first; next to him was the brindle. I recognized them, for every narrative had contained them.