All through the parchingly dry summer the sheep of the Dos Hermanos
ranch had pastured on the upper slopes of the Peaks; far above the
rainless and baking valley where the verdure was dead and where the
short grass would not come to life again until late autumn should usher
in the brief rainy season.
Here on the government grazing land of the lofty mountainsides there
was good pasturage. Here, too, as far up as the end of the timber line,
there was shade and there were tempered heat of day and coolness of
nights; and there were brooks and springs and pools of cold water.
For a mere handful of dollars, paid to the government, the Dos Hermanos
ranch partners and many another denizen of the valley could graze their
sheep at will among the upland meadows and gorges.
Young Royce Mack and old Joel Fenno still kept their headquarters at
the lowland ranch house during the hot spell, one or both of them
riding up, weekly, into the cooler hill country to inspect the flocks
and to see that their three shepherds were taking best advantage of
the successive grass stretches.
When it was Royce Mack’s turn to make this periodic tour of the
mountain pastures, he always took with him the tawny-gold young collie,
Treve. This companionship meant much to both dog and man. For the two
were still inseparable chums.
Three little black collies, Zit and Rastus and Zilla, were permanently
attached to the flocks; and worked, day and night, with the
shepherds, in all weathers. But Treve’s actual sheepdog work was more
intermittent. True, in emergencies or in times of extra toil, he was
impressed into service with the sheep. But, as a rule, nowadays, he
was the ranch house’s guard and the guard of the home-tract folds.
He helped, also, in rounding up and driving bunches of sheep to the
railroad, and the like. The routine duties fell to Zit and Rastus and
Zilla.
Occasionally, for Mack’s benefit, Fenno still complained of this
favoritism shown to the big dog. But, since the day when Treve saved
him from death under the broiling sun, on the Ova trail, he had privily
accepted the collie as a privileged member of the ranch household.
This he did in grudging fashion, as he did all things. It was an
ingrained trait of old Fenno’s crusty nature to be grudging of anything
and everything; from toothaches to legacies. But, to his own amaze
and shame, he had become aware of an odd affection for the big young
collie. This fondness he hid from Royce and from Treve himself under a
guise of grumpy distaste.
So successfully did Joel mask his new liking for the dog that Mack had
no suspicion his partner did not still regard Treve with the impersonal
aversion which he felt toward all the world. As for Treve, the dog was
as well aware of Fenno’s new attitude of mind toward him as though Joel
had spent a lifetime in cultivating his society.
A collie has a queer sixth sense not granted to all dogs. But even a
street puppy has the instinct to know what humans like him and what
humans do not. Treve, of yore, had known that Fenno had no use for dogs
in general, nor for him in particular. Since their ordeal on the Ova
trail and during Joel’s brief convalescence from his hurts, the collie
recognized that the old man had grown reluctantly to like him.
Formerly, Treve had obeyed Fenno, as part of his daily routine of duty.
But never had he accorded to the oldster the slightest mark of personal
friendliness. Nowadays, at times, he would stroll up to Joel, with
wagging tail, and would thrust his classic nose affectionately into the
old fellow’s cupped hand or would lay a white forepaw on his knee or
come gamboling across to greet him on a return to the ranch.
Such exhibitions of good-fellowship embarrassed the crochety Joel
as much as secretly they delighted him. For the first time in his
sixty-odd years, a living creature was proffering active friendship to
him. It did funny things to Fenno’s withered sensibilities.
When other humans were present at these manifestations, Joel would
thrust the dog aside with a glower or a mutter of disgust. When no
fellow-human was in sight, Fenno would look guiltily around him and
then give Treve’s head a furtive pat and would whisper: “_Nice_
doggie!” He would do this with as keen a sense of self-contempt as
though he were picking a pocket.
Treve, with a collie’s inherent love of mischief, not only understood
the foolish situation, but seemed to take positive delight in shaming
Fenno by playful efforts to make friends with him in the presence of
Mack and the shepherds.
“You owe a lot to that dog, Joel,” said Royce, at dinner one day, as
Fenno angrily shoved aside the paw which Treve had placed on his knee.
“It’s a wonder you keep on hating him. He doesn’t make friends with
every one. And I don’t see why he keeps on trying to make friends with
you. He never used to. Why can’t you pat him or say ‘hello’ to him
sometimes when he comes up to you like that?”
“I got no use for dogs,” grumbled Joel, “nor yet for any other critter;
except for the work we can get out of ’em. I got no time to go makin’
a pet of any cur. One of these days, when he comes sticking that ugly
nose of his into my hand or wiping his dirty forepaw onto my knee, I’m
goin’ to give him a good swift kick.”
He glared forbiddingly at the collie. Treve wagged his plumed tail,
unafraid; and thrust his muzzle into the cup of the forbidding old
man’s gnarled hand. Joel drew back in ostentatious aversion. But,
somehow, he did not carry out his threat of a kick. Presently, when
Mack chanced to leave the room, Fenno slipped a large hunk of meat from
his own plate to the collie’s dinner platter on the kitchen floor. He
did it with the air of one poisoning a loathed enemy. But it was the
biggest and tenderest morsel of meat in his noonday meal. And he had
been waiting an opportunity to give it, unobserved, to Treve.
All of which was silly, past words. Nobody realized that more clearly
than did Joel Fenno.
The endless hot summer wore itself out; but not until long after its
drouth had worn out every trace of vegetation in the valley and the
lower foothills; and had turned the once-verdant lowland world into
a khaki brown lifelessness. Day after day, evening after evening, the
mercury in the rusty thermometer on the Dos Hermanos ranch house porch
registered anywhere from 110 to 120. It was weather to fray nerves
and temper. Treve, under his heavy coat, sweltered and looked forward
longingly to the occasional trips to the mountain pastures.
Then came late autumn; and on one of these mountain trips both partners
went, instead of going singly. They took along Treve; and they took
every man on the ranch except Chang, the old Chinese cook.
The time had come to drive all the sheep down from the mountain grazing
grounds, into the valley ranges, for the winter. It was a job calling
for the services of all available men and dogs.
Up through the foothills toward the towering heights of the mountains
rode Mack and Fenno; the collie gamboling happily along in front of
their ponies and halting at every few yards to investigate the burrow
of some rabbit or ground-squirrel.
In front of the riders loomed the twin peaks of Dos Hermanos, rising
into the very clouds. For more than three-fourths of the way up, there
were lush forest and meadow. Then, the timberline halted abruptly; like
the ring of hair that encircles a baldheaded man’s skull. Above timber
line, on each peak, was a smooth expanse of rock; crowned by snow.
The foothills were passed by; and now the indiscriminate green
of the left hand peak, whither the riders were moving, took on a
hundred irregularities. The brown and twisting trail upward, through
rock-shoulders, could be seen in spots. So could the dense forests and
the softer green of the cleared grazing lands. Adown the left peak
roared the torrential little Chiquita River, broken in fifty places by
cataract and cascade;--the river that is born among the mountain-top
springs and is fed by melting snows from the summit.
By reason of the innumerable inequalities of ground and the erratic
course of the rock-ledges, this mountain stream forms roughly a
half-moon in its descent; and is joined and reënforced, three-fourths
of the way down, by the Pico, a tributary rivulet from adjacent
summit-springs; forming a “Y,” that encloses perhaps five square miles
of the wildest and most inaccessible section of the left slope.
By reason of the trickiness of the Chiquita River and of the narrower
Pico, the sheepmen seldom lead their flocks into the “Y.” Not only
is much of the pasturage bad, but the streams are subject to sudden
freshets from unduly swift melting of the summit snows. Thus, flocks
venturing into the enclosure are liable to be cut off unexpectedly from
the outer world or even to be swept to death in attempting to cross.
Wherefore the place is shunned by man and sheep. And as a result it
long since became the winter haunt of such wild animals as spend the
rest of the year on the inaccessible upper reaches of the left peak.
In another hour of steady riding, the partners had reached the lower
plateau of pasturage on which they had told their men to have the Dos
Hermanos sheep rounded up, this day, for the drive to the ranch.
There, on the rolling plateau, they found their flocks and shepherds
awaiting them; the little black collies busily keeping the mass of
milling and silly sheep in some semblance of formation.
The partners had left the ranch house while the big autumn moon was
still yellow in the sky. The sun had barely risen when they reached the
plateau. Within another half hour the long procession of woolly sheep
and their attendant men and dogs were starting down the twisty trail
toward the far-off valley;--the partners arranging to camp for the
night among the foothills and to reach the ranch some time the next day.
For sheep in great numbers cannot be hurried unduly. Nor can
their drivers insure against a score of senseless stampedes
or side-excursions which delay the march to the point of utter
exasperation. A sheep is probably--no, _certainly_--the most foolish
and non-dependable item of livestock sent by Satan to harry an
agricultural life.
“The patriarch, Job,” spoke up Fenno, dourly, as he and Mack chanced to
be riding side by side, after an uncalled-for scattering of a thousand
of the sheep had delayed the line of travel for nearly an hour while
Treve and Zit and Rastus and Zilla and the partners and the shepherds
(named in the order of their importance in handling that particular
crisis) had succeeded in getting them into line again and in preventing
any wholesale scattering of the rest of the huge flock, “The patriarch,
Job, in Holy Writ, got the name for bein’ the most patient cuss in all
the Bible. D’ you know how he got that same reputation, Royce?”
“No,” laughed the younger man, amused that his taciturn partner should
choose such a time for theological debate. “If it’s a riddle I give it
up. How?”
“The Good Book tells us,” glumly expounded Fenno, mopping the sweat
from his leathern face, “the Good Book tells us Job owned ‘seven
thousand sheep.’ But it tells us he had seven sons to handle the measly
brutes, and a multitude of men servants. So he could stay home an’
work at his trade of being patient and let his boys and that same
multitude of hired men rustle the sheep. I’ll bet $9 if he’d had only
one lazy young rattle-pated kid of a partner and three numbskull Basque
herdsmen and three or four wuthless collies to help him work the sheep,
he’d never ’a’ won the Patience Medal in his district. He’d likely ’a’
been jailed for swearin’. I--”
“Speaking of ‘worthless collies,’” interrupted Mack, who had been
standing in his stirrups and staring over the gray-white sea of sheep,
“what’s become of Treve? Generally, when his work’s done for a few
minutes, he trots alongside me. You took him with you, didn’t you, when
you rode back after that last bunch of strays? You ran the bunch into
the lot that Zit is handling. Where’s Treve?”
“Oh, likely he’s barkin’ down some gopher-hole or tryin’ to make Toni
play tag with him, or suthin’!” growled the old man, annoyed at Royce’s
dearth of interest in the comparison between Job and his partner.
“He’ll show up. He always does. You waste more time worritin’ over that
four-legged flea-pasture than any sensible feller would spend on his
bankbook. Treve’s all right. He always is. It’s a way he’s got. Fergit
it.”
But, oddly enough, Joel himself did not forget it. Indeed, presently
he made excuse to ride back to speak to Toni; who was in charge of
the rearguard of the flock. Out of hearing of his partner, he bawled
lustily to Treve. But there was no answering scurry of white paws.
Nor, when the party made camp, at dusk, among the foothills, had the
big young collie rejoined them. Joel Fenno scoffed at Mack’s show of
anxiety about the absent Treve. Yet, Joel discovered now that he had
dropped his pipe, somewhere along the route; and fussily he insisted on
riding back through the dark to look for it.
He was gone for three hours. On his return he grumbled at his failure
to find the missing pipe--which, by the way, he had been smoking
throughout his three-hour absence.
“Didn’t see or hear anything of Treve, back yonder, did you?” queried
Mack, from among the blankets.
“Treve?” repeated Joel, grouchily. “Nope. Never thought to look for
him. Likely he’s gone on ahead; and we’ll find him at the ranch house.
He’s a lazy cuss. Likely he’s scamped his work and trotted on home.
Nope, I never bothered to look for him. It was my pipe I was huntin’.
Not a measly dog.”
He cleared his throat contemptuously. His throat was rough and raw from
repeated shoutings of Treve’s name, during his three hours of futile
hunt for the missing collie.
Treve was not at the ranch house, when the herders got there, next
afternoon. Fenno was loud in derision, when Royce Mack insisted on
riding back over the mountain trail in quest of the lost dog. But Mack
went. And he found nothing.
Meanwhile, Treve was in serious trouble.
Toni and the other shepherds had grown unspeakably weary of the lonely
mountainside life; and yearned for the ranch with its nearness to a
town. The bunk house was a bare eleven miles from the 1,500-population
metropolis of Santa Carlotta.
Thus, their work of driving the sheep down the trail, toward the
valley, was marked with more haste than care. But for the presence of
their two employers, they would have done the driving in a far more
precipitate and slipshod way. At it was, at every possible chance, when
Royce and Fenno were engaged elsewhere along the line of march, they
sacrificed care to haste.
At one point, thanks to this over-hurrying, a large bunch of wethers,
at the rear of the procession, bolted. They streamed backward, up the
trail, and they scattered to every side of it in fan-formation. It was
heartbreaking work to get them back. Fenno and Treve had gone to help
Toni and the little black Zit in the thanklessly hard task.
“All here?” Joel had demanded, when the round-up of the strays seemed
complete.
“All here!” glibly announced Toni; and Fenno rode forward.
Toni had been certain all were there;--chiefly because he wanted to
believe so. Hence, he did not trouble to count the bunch of galloping
wethers. He knew that both Treve and Zit had worked the underbrush and
the upper trail, in search of the wanderers; and he knew both were
absolutely reliable sheep dogs. Zit was back with him again. And Treve,
presumably, had trotted ahead with Fenno. Toni knew Treve would not
have given up the search while any strays were left unfound. The delay
had been long. The Basque herder was cross and hungry.
Toni had been justified in his faith that Treve would not abandon the
quest, while any strays still remained outside the flock. Treve was on
the job. And that was why Treve was in trouble.
When, for some idiotic reason of their own, the several hundred wethers
of the rear guard started to bolt, the foremost contingent of them went
up the steep trail in a mad rush, well in advance of the rest. Up they
galloped, along the twisting path, crowding and milling and jostling.
Midway of their rush, a jack rabbit flashed across the trail; just in
front of their leader.
At this truly terrifying spectacle, the leader shied with as much dread
as might a skittish colt at sight of a newspaper blowing across the
road. Into the underbrush he wheeled, continuing his flight at an acute
angle to the trail, but bearing gradually farther away from it, as
bowlder and thicket forced him out of his direct line.
After the manner of their breed, the remaining sheep of this advance
band wheeled into the underbrush behind him. After the first few
hundred feet, some of them balked at a narrow brooklet which the leader
had crossed at a single jump. They turned again toward the trail,
leaving the rest--forty-eight in all--to run on and to become hidden in
the undergrowth.
Zit, following close behind, came to the brook. There, the scent veered
to the left; and he pursued it; presently coming up with the contingent
which had not crossed; and herding them skillfully back to the main
body.
The forty-eight strays continued their onward and upward course, at
last slackening their gallop to a trot and stopping now and then to
snatch at a mouthful of herbage, but always resuming their journey,
farther from the trail. There was no sense at all in their doing so.
This, probably, was why they did it;--being sheep.
Treve had gone after a half-score sheep that broke trail lower down the
mountain. He rounded them up and sent them into the main flock. Then,
scenting or hearing or guessing the presence of other sheep, higher
on the mountain, he cantered up the steep slope to investigate. His
straight line of progress brought him out on the track of the strays, a
few rods to the right of the brooklet. He followed; only to catch the
scent of Zit’s flying feet, where they had passed by, a few minutes
earlier. The scent proved that Zit had rounded up this particular bunch
of strays, and that Treve’s climb had gone for nothing.
Thirsty from his fast ascent, he stopped at the brook to drink. Here
the sheep had arrived. Here, some had turned and had been overtaken by
Zit. But here, too, Treve’s scent told him, other sheep had crossed the
trickle of water; and Zit had not followed this lot.
As he stooped to drink, Treve’s nose was not eighteen inches from
the opposite bank. There, the leader and his remaining followers had
planted their feet as they bounded across. The scent was fresh. To the
trained collie it told its own story. Zit had missed the clue because
of following the remnant that they had not crossed. In following the
stronger and nearer scent he had taken no note of the other. Treve
himself might well have overlooked it, but for the chance of his
stopping to drink.
Hot on the track of the escaped forty-eight wethers, the collie sprang
across the narrow brook and up the hill after them. Bad as was the
going and uncertain as was the runaways’ course, it was a matter of
only a few minutes for him to overhaul them.
They had just come to a huddled pause in their flight. Detouring, to
avoid climbing a high ridge of rock which arose in front of them,
they had followed this barrier of stone to rightward, with some idea
of going around its end. But this they could not do. The ridge ended
abruptly in a cliff that jutted out above the Chiquita River.
The Chiquita was in flood. This, because a spell of warm weather, had
replaced a spell of snow and chill on the summit; sending millions of
gallons of melted snow cascading down the peak. The Chiquita and the
Pico alike were changed from modest creeks to turbulent torrents. Even
the usually dry stream beds along the slope were now full of water, as
in the case of the brooklet which some of the sheep had crossed and
which others of them had avoided.
Thus, the venturesome leader of the wethers found his detour had been
in vain. There was no space between the cliff and the roaring river;
no path whereby he and his forty-seven followers might continue their
aimless climb.
Bridging the stream, just in front of them, was an uprooted tree;
undermined, years earlier, by some freshet which had cut the dirt from
its roots. Athwart the river, at this narrow point, lay the huge tree.
Its branches had rotted away or had been broken off by successive
hammering of freshets.
But the trunk still bridged the current, its top resting on the edge of
a high bank of clay upon the far side. The bark had long since decayed.
Worms and woodpeckers and weather and rot had been busily at work on
the exposed trunk, for decades, until it was but a sodden shell of its
former self.
The leading runaway apparently had no great desire to tempt a ducking,
through continuing his escape by means of so fragile a path as the
rotted log. Hence, he paused as he reached it. And the others piled up
behind him, milling and bleating and as uncertain as he.
It was at this moment that Treve came charging up the mountainside;
sweeping toward them, with a thunder of barking.
The dog knew every phase of sheep herding. He knew how to herd and
drive a flock of lambs as tenderly as a mother would guide her child’s
first steps. He knew the art of coaxing and soothing the march of a
bunch of heavy ewes. But he also knew that a band of scraggy wethers,
on the autumn roundup, can be dealt with in more tumultuous fashion,
and that finesse is not needed in driving such strays back to the flock.
Wherefore, his furious charge, now; a charge planned to get the sheep
on the run, in a compact bunch, and to gallop them back to the main
body. But, unfamiliar with that part of the mountain, he knew nothing
of the impasse which had halted them; nor of the log across the river.
At sound of the bark and of the oncoming rush of the pursuer, the
wether-leader lost what scant discretion a sheep may have been born
with. In fear of recapture and of fast driving down the mountain,
he ran bleating out on the rotten log. Urged by the same fear, the
forty-seven wethers followed him.
A sheep is not as sure-footed as a goat. But sure-footedness was not
needed. Under the pattering hoofs the decayed surface of the log
crumbled; leaving a soft and ever-deeper rut for the ensuing hoofs to
tread.
Over the impromptu bridge scampered the wether; to the safety of the
far bank. And over the same bridge, in scurrying haste, stormed the
other sheep.
Under their sustained weight and the incessant reverberating impact of
their pounding hoofs, the rotted log was assailed more heavily than its
feeble shell of resistance could withstand. Not with the usual cracking
and rending, but with a soggily soughing sound, it gave way. Not a
fiber of it was strong enough to crackle. But the whole bridge went to
pieces as might a wad of soaked blotting paper that is wrenched apart.
By the rare luck that so often attends idiots and sheep, the leader and
forty-six of his flock had reached the high clay bank on the far side,
before the thick log collapsed.
Treve came whizzing up the slope to the spot where the crossing had
been made. He arrived, just as the log went to pieces. Its punk-like
sections splashed noisily into the torrent below. And with them
splashed almost as noisily the last sheep that had attempted the
crossing. This wether had hesitated and started to turn back as he felt
the bridge sinking under him. The moment of delay had sent him headlong
into the water among the log débris.
Down plunged the unlucky wether. Before his body struck water, his
silly head smote against a pointed outcrop of rock that protruded
above the churned surface of the river. The contact broke the sheep’s
skull, as neatly as could a hatchet-corner. Stone dead, the poor
creature went bobbing and tossing and revolving, down the swirling
current.
Scarce had the wether plunged into the Chiquita when Treve was off the
bank, in one wild bound; and into the water after him.
It was not the first nor the tenth time that the collie had “gone
overboard” to rescue a sheep. For there is no limit to the quantity and
quality of mischances into which sheep can entangle themselves. Falling
off bridges is one of their recognized accomplishments.
But never in his two years of life had the young dog found himself in a
torrent like this. At his first immersion into it, he was bowled over,
then sucked under water; then he was spun dizzily about;--all before he
could get his bearings. Rising to the surface and taking instinctive
advantage of the current, he shook the water from his eyes and struck
downstream after the bobbing gray-white body of the sheep.
At the end of fifty yards--during which a whirling log had well nigh
stove the collie’s ribs in, and two successive eddies had pulled his
head under water--he saw a twist of the erratic current pick up the
sheep’s body and sling it high on a patch of stony beach at a bend in
the stream.
There it sprawled. And thither the collie fought his breath-tortured
way. But when he dragged himself up out of the water and sniffed at the
wet huddle of wool and flesh, a single instant’s inspection told him he
had had his hazardous swim for nothing. The sheep was dead.
Panting from his stupendous efforts, Treve started at a canter along
the far bank of the stream, toward the forty-seven wethers that had
crossed in safety. His sole duty, now, was toward them; and he realized
it. He must get them back to the other side of the river and thence
down to the main flock, a mile below.
The sheep had been grievously affrighted by the splash of the log and
by the mishap to their fellow-imbecile. They were scattering, with loud
bleats, through the rock-strewn underbrush. But they did not scatter
far. After them, in front of them, on every side of them, swept a
golden-tawny and loud-mouthed whirlwind; that gave them no peace until
they consented to turn back from their four-direction flight and bunch
themselves as he decreed.
Then, his strays rounded up and submissive, Treve undertook to get
them out of their predicament. But this was a task beyond his collie
brain. He did not seek to drive them across the tossing little river.
The death of the one sheep that had fallen into the flood told him
the futility of such a move;--even could he have forced them to the
terrifying passage. He must find some better way to get back to the
flock.
The river, in its descent, waxed ever wider. Moreover, its course
continued steadily to travel farther and farther from the trail.
Perhaps for this reason, perhaps by mere instinct, Treve began to drive
his scared sheep up the mountain; keeping ever as near as possible to
the stream; and watching for a safe way to cross. Again and again he
tested its bottom in hope of a ford. But he found none. Nor was the
river bridged, farther up, by any tree.
Still, he continued his climb, marshaling the forty-seven wethers ahead
of him. The going was rough and the sheep were tired and rebellious.
But he kept on. At the end of a few minutes he stopped. Or rather, he
_was_ stopped. He was stopped by the same form of barrier as had halted
the sheep, in the first place, on the other side of the stream, far
below.
A rock ridge, some twelve feet high, and with a front as precipitous as
the wall of a room, loomed in front of him and his flock. It continued
to the very edge of the stream and indeed for a yard or two out into
the water; the current foaming around its base. There was no way of
climbing it. Treve must needs follow, to the right along its base, for
an opportunity to skirt it or else to surmount it at some place where
the cliff should be lower and less precipitate.
So, to the right, he guided his weary captives and moved along the
ridge’s base. Presently, the roar of the Chiquita River died away
behind them as they pushed forward through the rubble and thickets that
fringed the bottom of the cliff. Nowhere did the cliff itself appear
to be lower. Instead, it seemed to be sloping upward, gradually, to
greater height.
The sheep became harder to drive. For hereabouts were wide clearings in
the forest and underbrush. These clearings were lush with grass. Here,
no flock had grazed; the herdsmen wisely sticking to the other side of
the Chiquita. But Treve would not let the wethers loiter. The day was
growing late, and the journey to the flock below was momentarily waxing
greater.
Only once did the collie check his steady drive. That was when the
front of the cliff opened wide in a split that had had its origin in
some ancient earthquake. Here was an aperture, some six feet wide; the
cliff-top meeting above it in a sort of Gothic arch, formed by the
toppling of two crest bowlders against each other, long ago.
Leaving his fagged-out sheep to browse on the grass, Treve explored
this opening. Warily, he advanced into it. For his nostrils registered
the scent of wild beasts here. But, as the scent was old and stale, he
did not hesitate to continue.
Inside the arch was a cave, partly natural, partly caused by the
juncture of fallen bowlders at the top. The cavern was about ninety
feet wide, by some seventy feet deep; before the gradually shelving
roof rock made it too low for the dog’s body to wriggle onward. Its
floor was strewn with rock-fragments and with the scattered bones of
animals long since slain.
Here the wild beast scent was somewhat more rank than from the
entrance. Yet here too it was stale. To all appearances this was
the lair of some brute or brutes that used it only as a winter-time
shelter. The fact did not interest Treve. He had come in here, hoping
the opening might go all the way through the ledge and let him and
the sheep out at the other side. As it did not, he went back to his
wethers; rounded them up from their grass-munching and set them in
motion, still skirting the ledge in the same direction.
A few rods farther, the cliff was broken again; this time by a spring
that trickled out from a rent in the precipice and filled a little
natural rock pool in the ground in front of it.
Another half-mile brought them within sound of rushing water, again;
and they emerged on the bank of the little Pico River,--as swollen and
as turbulent as the Chiquita itself and as impassable. Both tiny rivers
had their birth on the summit. Both flowed down, on opposite sides
of the cliff which extended from one to the other. The two streams
converged a mile below.
The sight of this new obstacle roused Treve to worried activity.
Once more deserting his flock, he set off at a loping run, downhill,
skirting the Pico. And at the end of a mile he came on the seething
confluence of the two rivers. Thence he traced the Chiquita back to the
ledge; after which, perplexedly, he ran on and rejoined the sheep.
To his collie mind, one thing was clear. Until the waters should
subside, there was no possibility of leading his wethers out of this
enclosure.
Here they must stay; and here he must look after them. It would have
been the simplest sort of exploit for him to swim the river himself
and get back to his master. But this would involve deserting the
sheep;--which is the first and the most sacred “Thou Shalt Not” in all
a trained sheep dog’s list of commandments.
Having been wholly out of earshot from the trail, Treve did not hear
the shouts of Fenno and later, of Royce. Mack, following the path of
the strays, on his return, two days later, saw where it had approached
the brook and then where part of it had branched off again, back toward
the trail. Hence, he missed the one chance of finding his chum. He knew
no sheep would swim the flooded river. The bridging log was gone. Thus,
he did not explore beyond the Chiquita.
The tally at the ranch proved the flock to be forty-eight sheep short.
Both partners came to the somewhat natural conclusion that these must
have encountered a group of cattlemen, rounding up their herds on the
no-sheep section of the peak; and that the cowboys had destroyed them
and their guardian collie. Such reprisals were not unprecedented in the
eternal sheepman-cattleman war.
Mack would have made further search and would have quartered the whole
mountain. But, before he could arrange to do so, the rains set in.
The upper half of Dos Hermanos peaks was lost in deep snow. The lower
half was a combination of quagmire and torrent. No, the search must be
postponed till spring. Heavy-hearted, the partners set themselves to
forget the collie they loved and the sheep whose loss they could not
afford. It was not likely to be a happy winter at the ranch.
At first the marooned dog and his forty-seven sheep fared comfortably
enough. The grass was lush. The water was plentiful. In that
man-avoided loop of the two rivers, there were an abundance of rabbits
and squirrels and raccoons and similar small game which any clever and
energetic collie could catch with no vast difficulty.
Treve was miserably unhappy over his absence from Royce and from home.
But he was far from starvation. And his herding job was reasonably
easy. The first snows did not creep down as far as the ledge. Nor was
the cold too intense to make outdoor sleeping comfortable. The larger
forest creatures were taking greedy advantage of the fat autumn season
of easy kills, farther up the peak. Not until driven down by cold and
by dearth of game would most of them invade the ledge-and-water-girt
loop between the rivers.
But, in another fortnight, rain changed to alternate sleet and snow. In
one night the wool of nearly half the flock froze hard to the ground.
But for a merciful sluice of warmer rain in the early morning, the
victims must have stuck there until they starved. But the accident
gave Treve his warning. Thus had a bunch of sheep frozen to the corral
ground, one sleety night, the year before, at the ranch. Next night
Treve had helped Mack herd them through the narrow gate into a covered
fold. The memory had stayed by him, as well as the sane reason for the
act.
And, this day, when night drew near, he shoved and coerced his
wondering charges in through the six-foot opening of the cliff-cave
he had explored. It was an ideal fold. He himself slept at the cave’s
narrow mouth;--perhaps less, at first, with an idea of guarding his
flock than to escape their rank odor and jostling bodies. But, on the
third night, he had good cause to be glad of his choice of a bed.
He was roused from a snooze, by the return of the lair’s winter
occupant. Starting up, urged by some warning that pierced his slumber,
he confronted an indistinct form that approached in the darkness, not
twenty feet in front of him.
The elderly mountain lion which, for years, had made his winter abode
in the cave, had dropped down over the ledge, from his summer and
autumn wanderings in the rich hunting grounds among the higher reaches
of the peak. A warm reek of delicious live mutton assailed his hungry
senses as he neared his home. Then, of a sudden, out of the doorway of
the lair flashed something hostile and furious; charging straight at
him before the lion could so much as crouch for a spring.
Treve carried the battle to the enemy, ere the latter knew there was
such a thing as a foe between him and the sheep whose stronger odor
had stifled the scent of the collie.
With hurricane speed he dashed at the approaching beast. The lion
reared on his hind legs, spitting, snarling, swatting with both
murderous forepaws. But, by reason of the attack’s complete surprise
and a season of heavy feeding and his advancing years, he was slow. The
dog was able to dive beneath the flailing claws, slash the unprotected
underbody, and spring to one side.
The lion swerved, to follow. But Treve was of a breed whose ancestors
were wolves;--a breed whose brain never quite loses, at emergency,
the wolf-cunning. A million times, in the world’s earlier centuries,
had panther and wolf done death-battle in prehistoric forests. Their
warfare was a phase of the eternal cat-and-dog feud. Some native
ancestral skill guided Treve, to-night.
For, as he swerved, he twisted back, with the speed of thought. The
mountain lion lunged after him. The collie was no longer there.
Instead, his white fangs had found the mark that instinct taught them
to seek. They closed on the nape of the lion’s neck, as the old cat
shifted his head in pursuit of his dodging foe.
The lion thrashed madly about to dislodge the jaws that were grinding
unrelentingly toward his spinal cord. He tossed the dog to and fro.
He banged him against the ground and against the cliffside. Once his
curved claws raked Treve obliquely, shearing to the bone.
But the dog hung on; ever deepening his bite into the neck-nape. He was
knocked breathless. He was in torment. But he hung on. He redoubled the
muscular pressure of his grinding jaws. It was his only chance. And he
knew it.
Then, with a last frantic plunge, the lion flung him off. The dog’s
whirling body crashed athwart the cliffside.
Treve fell breathless and stunned to the ground; and lay there. The
lion did not follow up his victory, but lay where he had fought.
He twisted and writhed like a broken snake. That last irresistible
fling had been his death-struggle. The collie’s teeth had found their
unerring way to the spinal cord.
When, at last--battered and bruised and bleeding--the collie staggered
to his feet, the enemy sprawled inert and lifeless, ten feet away from
him; and the cave was reverberant with the bleating of panic sheep.
On another night, two coyotes approached the cave. Treve stood his
ground in the narrow passageway, resisting their lures to venture
forth; that they might take him from opposite sides.
One of them, feinting a dash, in hope of drawing him out, ventured
too close. The next moment he went howling back to his mate; a broken
forepaw dragging limp.
The two marauders contented themselves with lurking out of reach for
the rest of the night. In the dawning they set off in search of easier
prey. Nor did they return.
Luckily for Treve, the wolves and the bulk of the other large beasts of
prey had not yet crossed the rivers or come down over the ledge, for
the winter. As it was, his labors were wearing enough; in leading his
hungry flock to stretches of snow not too deep or too hard for them to
dig through in search of grass.
Then dawned a morning when the temperature was many degrees below
zero. It was the third morning of the first real ice-grip weather of
the young winter. Another night or so of such awful cold would bring
the hungry wolf-packs down from their higher hunting grounds;--down to
where the scent of sheep would muster them to the slaughter.
On that morning the hollow, below the spring-trickle, was frozen solid.
Perforce, Treve led his sheep afield in search of water. He led them to
the Chiquita River, a quarter mile below the ledge. As they neared it,
he left them and bounded forward.
To his amazed near-sighted eyes, there was a wide and solid bridge
spanning the stream at this narrow point;--a bridge which, assuredly,
had not been there when last he visited the river. It shone like white
flame in the bitter cold sunrise.
The freshet had long since subsided. The freezing of the pools near the
summit, for two nights, had made the stream sink still lower. Here, the
queer trend of the water into a cataract, and the sudden visitation of
the supreme cold had caused a phenomenon familiar to every one who has
seen northern waterfalls in winter. An ice-bridge had formed over the
shallow cataract.
Now, Treve had no method of knowing whether this seemingly firm bridge
was strong enough to hold an army or too fragile to support a mouse.
Nor did he stop to test it. Enough for him to realize that he and his
sheep were no longer cut off from the world.
Wheeling, he bunched his flock, with clamorous barks and with flying
feet; and fairly hurled them at the bridge. Laggards and cowards were
nipped or hustled. Fearing their guard more than they feared the
uncertain ice, the forty-seven wethers rushed the bridge; slipping and
slithering across it, helter-skelter, singly and in twos and threes.
Over they surged, in safety; the big young dog driving them fast and
mercilessly.
Early winter dusk had fallen. Royce and Fenno were entering the ranch
house at the close of their day’s chilly work, when a shout from Toni,
at the barns, made them stop and turn around.
Up the meadow, from the direction of the foothills, a scarred and thin
collie was driving a bunch of thinner and leg-weary sheep. All day and
at a racking pace Treve had driven them; giving them no semblance of
rest; keeping them at a gallop whenever he could urge their tired legs
into such violent action.
Now, at sight of Mack, the collie left his detested charges to the
oncoming Toni; and galloped ecstatically up to Royce; leaping on the
dumbfounded man and licking his hands and making the icy air reëcho
with his rapture-barks.
While master and dog were greeting each other, Toni counted the sheep
and made report to Fenno.
“Where--where the blue blazes have you been, old friend?” Mack was
demanding of the excited dog. “And where’d you lose all that flesh and
get all those scars? You poor boy! Where you been?”
“Huh!” scoffed Joel, blowing his nose and forcing his shaky voice
to its wonted growl of complaint. “Best ask him what he done with
that other sheep. There was forty-eight of ’em, when him and them
disappeared. There’s only forty-seven now. I’m wonderin’--”
“I’m wondering, too!” flared the indignant Royce, pausing in the
petting of Treve, to whirl angrily on his partner. “I’m wondering
what’d happen if some one should return a thousand-dollar roll of
banknotes to you, that you’d lost. I’m wondering what you’d say to him.
No, I’m not wondering, either. I _know_. You’d say: ‘What became of
the nice rubber band that used to be fastened around this roll?’ Gee,
but you’re a grateful soul, partner! Lost forty-eight sheep; and Treve
pretty near gets himself scarred and starved to death getting ’em back
for you! And all you do is to kick because one of ’em’s lost!”
He strode contemptuously into the house, whistling the collie to
follow. But Joel Fenno surreptitiously laid a detaining hand on Treve’s
neck.
“Trevy,” he cooed, hoarsely, bending low over the happy dog and petting
him with clumsy fervor, “I--I reckon _you_ understand, don’t you? Lord,
but I’ve missed you!”