Shepherds of the Wild/Chapter 13
Chapter XIII
In that momentous twilight that brought Hugh Gaylord to the sheep camp for the first time, there was unfamiliar traffic on the brown, pine-needle trail that wound down to the meadows from the darkening forest. There was the sound of a footfall not often heard. And one can imagine the lesser forest people—the little gnawing folk that have underground lairs and to whom the ferns are a beautiful, tropical forest—gazing up with bright eyes to see who came.
Perhaps at first they thought it was merely one of the hunters: a great creature of claw or fang such as a wolf or cougar. This was the hour when the beasts of prey started forth to hunt, and it was true that the step had a stealthy, hushed quality of one who does not care to have his presence known. It can be understood why a little gopher, so fat of cheeks that he gave the impression of being afflicted with mumps, lay rather close and still among his tree roots until the creature got past. He didn't care to feel a puma claw impaling him as a fishhook impales a worm.
The gopher has not particularly acute vision, so this traveler on the pine-needle trail was to remain ever a mystery to him. He was aware of a tall, dark form that glided softly and departed; and life became the same puzzling grayness that it had been before. A chipmunk, however—like a little patch of light and shadow against a brown tree trunk—could see much better. And he lay very still, only his eyes busy, until he found out the truth.
The passer-by was only a man, after all, such a creature as usually did not take the trouble to hunt chipmunks. Still he felt afraid, and it is extremely doubtful that the small-sized, always addled brain in his miniature skull could tell him why. The truth was that in that stealing figure there was something terribly suggestive of the beasts of prey themselves, creatures that—more than often—did devote unwelcome attentions to chipmunks. The man crept through the forest with the same caution. His eyes were strange and glowing like those of the lynx as it climbs through the branches. And over him—an aura too dim and obscure for the blunt senses of human beings—hung an essence with which the wilderness creatures are only too familiar: that ancient lust and fever that comes to Broken Fang when he strikes down his prey.
He was shivering all over; and it was to be remembered that the wolf—in certain dread moments at the end of the chase—shivered the same way. One would have been given cause to wonder what stress, what dreadful events had occurred beyond the edge of the meadow that had caused this queer inebriation.
But as strong drink dies in the body, the fever seemed to fall away from him as he made turn after turn in the trail. He stooped now, rather than crouched, his footfall had a fumbling, heavy, dragging quality that was not at all like the stealth it had possessed at first. The surface lights passed from his dark eyes, leaving them somewhat languorous and lifeless. The lines of his face were of inordinate fatigue; he no longer trembled in excitement, and for all the heat of the July night he felt cold.
José Mertos was no stranger to the bloodmadness. It had been upon him plenty of times in his own land, and he had shivered and exulted with it beneath far southern stars. Yet it never grew old to him. Its rapture seemed ever greater. But unfortunately, when it died, it left disquieting pictures in his brain. They always took the fine edge from his satisfaction after a particularly skilful affair such as this had been. He was a tried hand in such work, innured to wickedness, yet he still retained the same troublesome tendency toward after-images that had spoiled his sleep, one night and another, in the past.
At present he couldn't forget the ludicrous look of bewilderment with which Dan the herder had received the rifle shot. It was only a thing to laugh at, to tell as a good joke when he sat with his employer, yet he found no pleasure in thinking of it now. The herder had simply looked amazed,—not afraid, not awed by the Gates of Darkness that had rushed up to him, nothing at all but deeply bewildered and unbelieving. He hadn't seemed to realize that José had shot him, that even as the blank expression of astonishment had come upon his face the lead ball had forced a passage through his breast. Perhaps he died too quickly for any sort of realization. And José could not forget the queer swaying and staggering with which he fell back upon his tree-bough pallet,—just as if he were drunk and falling into bed.
The pictures came in a series, one after another. First this falling, then the glimpse of the still form on the fir boughs. The black shepherd dog had come bounding toward him, and José had drawn his pistol for this work. It was just as good at close range. And he remembered with amazing clearness how the light had died, slowly and unmistakably, in the dog's eyes. He had watched the sheep for the last time.
Even now José didn't understand how he had missed the other, larger shepherd dog. He had shot, the animal had rocked down, he had looked back once to the dead herder in the tent (perhaps to see how he was taking this slaughter of his pets) and when he had turned his eyes again, the animal had risen and was fleeing from him about the flank of the flock. The cur was wounded, anyway: perhaps the injury was severe enough to end his life before the morning. His watch of the sheep was surely done. And Landy Fargo—the man who even now waited for his report—would find the whole matter to his satisfaction.
A few minutes later José came to the thicket where he had left his horse; then he headed on down the trail. Through the night hours he rode. Not in one chance out of a thousand would the murder be discovered before Alice Crowson returned, three days later, but he didn't care to take that thousandth chance. It might be embarrassing—considering his past record—to explain his presence near the murder. "If you can't buy him over and things do get to the shooting stage," Landy Fargo had said, "no one will find the stiff for three days. You'll be miles away by then, the flock'll be torn to pieces, and we'll be settin' pretty. It's the safest deal you were ever in."
The destruction of the flock, José considered, was not his business. His work was done and the sooner he got out of the immediate vicinity the better it would be for him. He spurred the horse into a slow, easy gallop.
The moon came up, falling dimly upon his burnished skin. It would be no longer possible to mistake his race. He was even darker than Pete, the Indian, his eyes were like jet, his lips were thin and dark and cruel. But he rode well. He seemed to hang almost limp in the saddle, utterly without effort, and the long miles sped beneath him.
But the night was almost done when he came to Landy Fargo's house on the lower waters of Silver Creek. Fargo himself was dozing in a great chair in his stuffy living room, waiting for his envoy to return.
There were several noticeable features about this room. The principal one was its dirt. The floors were stained, the carpets soiled, the corners cluttered with rubbish of all kinds; the window glass was so spotted that it did not let the moonlight in, and the soft light lingered—like an unwelcome ghost—against the windowpane. The effect that wise interior decorators try to obtain in furnishing—that in which the pieces, not holding the eye in themselves, give an atmosphere, a sense of unity—was quite lacking here. The mantel was clustered with gaudy ornaments, the chairs were tawdry, cheap pictures covered the walls. But yet the room reflected the individuality of the man in the chair. He was just as cheaply gaudy, just as unclean as the room itself.
He got up, and it was to be seen that he had a rather formidable physique. He had imposing muscles, stocky legs, and it was wholly possible that before prosperity had come upon him he had been an agile, muscular cattleman. But the gaze left his heavy frame and was held by the unmistakable brutality of his face. There was none of the fine-edged cruelty—that with which a puma pats and plays his prey to death—that was to be seen in the swarthy face of José. He was blunt, dull; his savagery was that of the bulldog,—heavy lips closed over strong teeth, little lurid eyes looking out from under heavy brows.
José rolled a cigarette, lighted it, drew its smoke into his vitals, then lolled in one of the chairs. Fargo watched him with hard eyes, not a little admiring. Most of his understrappers did not come into his presence with this same ease and self-possession. He was used to seeing men cower before him. He had learned to look for a certain cringing and servility, and many a time when it was lacking he forced it with his heavy, flailing fists. But José was different. It might not be healthy to strike José. They met eyes to eyes.
"Well?" Fargo demanded.
He was somewhat anxious about the verdict. This had been no child's play,—what José had been sent to do. It was really a new departure for the little clique that he headed. There had been deaths before, open riding and fast shooting, but deliberate and premeditated killing had never been necessary. Slumber hadn't come easily to him to-night. And now he didn't like to be kept waiting.
"Well, what?" José answered. "You mean—what luck?"
"That's it." Fargo uttered a short syllable of a laugh. "What luck?"
"I said I'd do it, didn't I, if he didn't come around? Well, I've done it. There's nobody watchin' them sheep to-night." And thus it was to be seen that José had lived long enough among Americans to acquire the vernacular. Only a hint of the Latin, a softening of consonants, remained in his tone.
Fargo uttered a short sigh of relief. "Clean job, eh?"
"All except the big dog. Killed the black one. Wounded the shepherd—think he'll kick in before morning."
Fargo leaned back in his chair. "Then there's nothin' to it. I guess that'll show 'em, eh, José?" He fell to boasting. "I guess that makes it plain that when I say get out, I mean get out. You know I told that devil this was his last warning—told him myself what would happen to him if he didn't switch over to us—and I guess he got what he wanted. But I'm sorry you missed the dog. He might keep away a lot of cats and coyotes that would otherwise be busy for the next few days."
"He's wounded—don't think he can." José breathed an oath in his own tongue. "But I don't see what it's all about. Crowson had that tract rented "
"You don't, eh?" Fargo stiffened. "I don't know it's necessary that you see what it's all about. That happens to be my business—and don't go making any mistake about that. But I'll explain it a little better. I've been told—by the men that own the herds with me—to keep out sheepmen at all cost. That one piece of range that Crowson rented has been worth ten thousand a year to us. Do you think we're goin' to let that slip out of our hands for a bunch of measly sheep?"
"But why didn't you have enough sense to rent that tract yourself?"
"Because we're trying to make a clean-up out of this deal, that's why. Who'd ever dream that old hag would ever find a renter—and as long as we were gettin' it free, what was the use? We've been here a long time—if this flock prospered there'd be more of 'em come in—and where'd be our monopoly of the range then? You know that our policy has always been to squeeze out the little fellow—cattle as well as sheep. We've got to set an example with this flock of Crowson's—and to have 'em all get killed—in a few days—or even part of 'em, is going to discourage any more sheepmen coming into a cattle country. You don't know cattlemen, José, or you wouldn't question. Just the same—the job's only half done. A shepherd dog, wounded or not, 'll stay to fight to the last inch of hair on his body, especially that big devil of Crowson's. And he sure can bluff out the coyotes."
José discarded his cigarette, and lit a fresh one. "Well, say what's to be done," he said. "I'm not goin' back after that other dog."
"I'm not tellin' you to, either. Your job is to stay away from there." Fargo suddenly leaned forward, his eyes burning. "You know what I'd like to see?" he whispered. "I'd like to have that Crowson girl ride up there in a day or two and find every one of those damned woollies—every one, not three or four hundred of 'em—dead and rotting in the grass. Then people'd know this was a cattle country. Since we've gone as far as we have, the thing to do is to go all the way. And we might work it yet."
José's face showed that he was interested.
"Poison?" he asked.
"You can't never tell about poison. Sheep are queer critters. When they're well fed they'll shy of anything that tastes queer. Think again "
"The only other way's rifles—and that would take a carload of shells. But I tell you—the coyotes will slash a lot of 'em and run the rest to death."
"Maybe—and maybe not. A coyote don't run sheep. They kill all they can, and then start to eatin'. Of course there's exceptions. It takes a dog to slash a hundred of 'em in one night—and run the rest "
And at that instant his words were drowned out. A strange, formidable cry reached them from behind the house: a long, far-carrying chorus of savage voices. It rang shockingly loud in the silent darkness. It was a symphony of prolonged, deep bays,—a sound as terrifying and menacing as any voice of the wilderness. And an evil glitter came into Fargo' s eyes.
The explosion of sound, blaring out so suddenly in the stillness, had startled Jose; but he caught himself at once. The cry ceased, the stillness fell again. "Your pack of bear dogs!" he exclaimed.
"Yes. It was as if they heard us talkin' about sheep. It's like they was try in' to tell us what to do."
It was true. It might have been the voice of an evil genius, prompting their vicious designs. Fargo was a superstitious man, and now he was tingling all over with hatred and malice, inspired to the depths of his wicked being by the cry in the darkness.
"Yes," he whispered. "My pack of bear dogs—ten of 'em, savage as wolves—and not to be afraid of no wounded shepherd dog, and tearin' to pieces any one that tries to stop 'em. They've told us how to solve our problem. And I don't see why I didn't think of 'em before."