Joel Fenno was wading almost thigh-deep in a billowing and tossing
grayish sea. Here and there, near him, arose the upper two-thirds of
other men--his young partner, Royce Mack; their chief herder, Toni, the
big Basque; and the other Dos Hermanos shepherds.
The tossing gray-white sea was made up of sheep;--hundreds upon
hundreds of milling and worried sheep. Through its billows, like
miniature speed-boats of black and of red-gold, dashed Zit, the squat
little black “working collie” and his little black mate, Zilla, and the
glowingly tawny bulk of Treve.
The three sheepdogs had their work cut out for them. Drouth had come
with an unheard-of earliness to the Dos Hermanos Valley, that spring.
And, now, in the past week, fire from some herder’s carelessly thrown
cigarette had kindled a blaze in the tinder-dry buffalo grass, which
a steady north gale had whipped into a very creditable little prairie
fire.
The men of the Dos Hermanos ranch had fought back the crawling Red
Terror, foot by foot; beating it to a sullen halt with brush, saving
the ranch buildings by a cunningly managed backfire; and frantically
digging and dampening shallow ditches in the path of the creeping
scarlet line.
The ranch houses had been saved. The course of the fire had been
deflected up the coulée. The dogs had been able, by working twenty-four
hours a day, to hold in bounds the smoke-scared sheep.
But the range in many places was burned as bare of grass as the palm of
one’s hand. True, this area would bear all the richer verdure, later
on. In the meantime, however, the innumerable sheep must be fed. And
there was not grazing enough left standing to keep one-third of the
ranch’s stock.
Wherefore, the one possible recourse was adopted. Fully a month ahead
of the usual time, the flocks were to be driven to their summer
pasturage along the grassy upper slopes of the Dos Hermanos peaks.
This entailed much bustle and some confusion. For the ordinary
preparations, to smooth the yearly exodus, had not been made.
Range pasture after range pasture had been denuded of its woolly
population. All the mass of sheep had been rounded up into the Number
Three field; and now men and dogs were steering them toward the
gateway, which opened direct on the trail they were to take for the
hills.
An outsider, watching the scene, would have beheld merely a handful
of excited men, waving staves and yelling and making uncouth and
apparently unheeded gestures; and three panting and galloping dogs
making crazy dashes through the tight-crowding multitude of sheep.
As a matter of fact, not one gesture of the men and not one step of
the running dogs was without direct purpose. By degrees the sheep were
bunched and headed for the wide-flung gateway, beyond which waited a
shepherd.
At one moment, everything seemed hopeless confusion. The next, a
disorderly but steadily progressing throng of sheep were headed for
the open gate; and their leaders had begun to trot bleatingly out into
the trail; started in the right direction by the shepherd who stood
outside. The rest surged on in their wake.
By the time a half hundred of the pioneers essayed a scrambling rush
from the trail, up a bank toward a burned and still smoking field
beyond, Treve had cleared the pasture’s high wire and had flung himself
ahead of them; noisily yet deftly driving them back to the trail;
rounding up strays; keeping the huddle in the right direction and
giving wide berth to the gateway that continued to vomit forth more and
more woolly imbeciles.
Treve had been far inside the pasture when the sheep at last consented
to head for the gate. In order to obey Royce Mack’s shouted command to
guide aright those already outside, he had been forced to leap on the
backs of the tight-jammed sheep nearest him; and to run lightly along
on a succession of bumpy hips, until he could spy an opening on the
ground of sufficient size for him to pursue his race on solid earth
instead of sheepback.
While Zit and Zilla continued to herd and drive forward the remaining
foolish occupants of the field, Treve was here and there and everywhere
in general and nowhere in particular; among the debouching and ever
more numerous sheep that had hit the trail.
It was a time for lightning action--for incessant motion;--for the use
of the queer hereditary sheepdog instinct. There was no question of
merely obeying shouted orders, now, nor of following the direction of
a waved hat. Treve was working “on his own.” He was using his native
genius as a herder; keeping that wild bunch headed aright and in the
trail; and cutting short abortive efforts of the whole mass to cascade
out on to the burnt fields on either side or to bolt for the smoking
coulée.
His flying feet spurned the ground, scarcely seeming to touch it. His
tawny-gold body flashed in and out; seemingly in ten parts of the
trailside at once.
Then all at once the nerve-racking job was done. The whole flock was
out of the gateway and safe on the trail; with Zit and Zilla weaving in
and out, steering them straight; and the herdsmen in their places along
the pattering ranks. Treve could change his flying zigzag gallop to a
wolf-trot. He could even brush his panting muzzle against Royce Mack’s
hand as he trotted past the busy rancher.
Up the coulée-side trail moved the sheep; the myriad patter of their
hoofs sounding on the rutted roadbed like cloudburst rain on a shingle
roof.
Deep in the bottom of the coulée, to left of the twisting trail, the
fire still snapped and flickered. Its smell and sight and smoke sent
recurrent panic waves over the army of sheep. The three dogs seemed to
know in advance when these efforts at bolting would begin.
Treve’s white paws were grimed and sore from frequent dashes along
the coulée-side; where he needs must run on the steep scorched bank
paralleling the trail; turning back any loose edges of the gray-white
flock that sought to scamper down the incline.
“Keep it up, Trevy,” whisperingly encouraged old Joel Fenno, as the
collie whisked past him on such an errand. “Another mile, an’ the
road’s due to shift to the right, away from this smoke-hole. Then it’ll
be plain goin’.”
Treve caught the low sound of his own name; and wagged his plumed tail
in reply, as he ran on.
“Be past the coulée in a little while, now!” sang out Royce Mack, to
his partner. “The dogs are holding them, great!”
“Yep,” growled Fenno. “The two black ones are. Treve’s loafin’ on the
job, as usual. I’m hopin’ he won’t do some fool stunt, when we get to
the crossroad, up yonder, an’ hustle a bunch of the sheep onto the
Triple Bar range. I wouldn’t put it past the chucklehead.”
Royce Mack did not answer, but hurried on to his own new place in the
tedious procession. Fenno had touched on a theme that worried him. Not
that either Royce or Joel really thought Treve would “do some fool
stunt,” at the spot where the trail crossed the road that led to the
Dos Hermanos peaks, nor at any other place or time. But both of them
dreaded that bit of crossroad territory, which bordered the Triple Bar
range.
The Triple Bar was a cattle outfit. Like most other aggregations of
cattlemen, its men held sheep and sheep ranchers in sharper abhorrence
than they held rattlesnakes and skunks.
More than once had a serious clash been narrowly averted, between the
Dos Hermanos partners and Chris Hibben of the Triple Bar, their nearest
neighbor to the north. It was understood, without need of words, that
any Dos Hermanos sheep or sheepdog, setting foot on the Triple Bar
range, would be courting swift and certain death.
To-day the continued reek of smoke and the crackle and smolder of fire,
in the coulée below them, served to fray the sheep’s bad nerves and to
deprive them of what little sense they had. The work of the dogs and
the shepherds grew increasingly difficult, as the trail mounted high
and higher alongside the burning gorge.
At length, in front, appeared the open space at the coulée-head; the
space where ran the road toward the peaks; and beyond which stretched
the Triple Bar range.
The foremost dozen sheep caught sight of the cleared space. Perhaps
with an idea that it signified an end of their smoky and terrifying
climb, they bolted frenziedly toward it. Those behind them followed
suit. A veritable tidal wave of sheep surged galloping toward the
clearing; deaf and blind to all coercion.
Springing on the backs of the close-packed runaways nearest him, Treve
tore forward to head off the stampede. He reached ground in front of
the onrushing wall of sheep, at a spot where the bank rose high on the
right side and where the pit-like top of the coulée fell in almost
sheer precipice for fifty feet on the left.
Wheeling to face his panic-charges, Treve barked thundrously. But
before he completed the bark or the wheel, the sheep were upon him.
Unable to stop their own gallop and pushed on resistlessly by those
behind, the front line smote against the whirling collie with the force
of a catapult.
Knocked clean off his feet, Treve rolled writhingly to one side, to
avoid being trampled to death. Over the coulée-lip he rolled; and
crashed down the steep side of the gorge.
He landed on his back in the midst of a brush-fire, at the bottom;
breathless and half-stunned. Joel Fenno cried aloud, as he saw the dog
reel over the cliff-edge. He ran forward, kicking aside the encumbering
sheep that tangled his progress. He reached the lip of the gorge just
in time to see the dog come charging up the precipitous slope, his
beautiful coat smeared by soot and with sparks still crackling here and
there in it.
Gaining the summit, Treve wasted not a second; but forged ahead toward
the front of the stampede. He was too late.
The few seconds of leeway had permitted the galloping sheep to reach
the clearing, unchecked. The two black collies were far behind, with
the main flock. Nor were any of the men far enough forward to stem the
rush. As a result, the first hundred sheep struck the cleared space at
a speed which they could not check. Across the narrow highroad they
hurled themselves blindly, shoved on by those behind them.
They crashed into a tall barbed wire fence on the far side of the
road;--the boundary fence of the Triple Bar. They hit it with the
impact of a battering ram. The front rank were ripped and torn on the
jagged wires. But their weight and their blind momentum sagged the wire
and snapped the nearest worm-gnawed post. A whole panel of fence gave
way; falling obliquely backward, almost onto the grass. Through the gap
and over the bodies of their wire-entangled comrades, swept scores of
sheep. On they rushed; scattering into a ragged fan-shaped formation as
they found themselves in the open range.
Joel Fenno went green-white with horror. Mack groped feebly for a
gun at his belt. But, as usual, his gun hung forgotten from a peg
in his bedroom. Indeed the whole party could not muster any weapon
more lethal than a staff. The shepherds involuntarily came to a dazed
standstill.
But Treve did not hesitate, for the space of an instant. Hurdling
the sheep which struggled in the strands of wire, he cleared the
low-slanted broken panel and sprang into the forbidden range of the
enemy. His singed coat almost sweeping the ground as he sped, he bore
down upon the hundred strays.
The boundary range of the Triple Bar was perhaps two miles wide by
three miles in length. Dotted along its expanse numbers of cattle were
grazing. Also, entering through a gateway, three-quarters of a mile up
the field, rode Chris Hibben.
Fate had brought Hibben to this especial field at this especial minute,
during his leisurely tour of inspection of the Triple Bar herds.
Hibben pulled his pinto pony to a standstill. Open-eyed and
open-mouthed he sat staring; unable to believe what his goggled eyes
told him.
There, inside the road-end of his sacred range, cavorted something like
a hundred detestable sheep! There, too, among them, galloped an equally
detestable dog! The thing was impossible!
To add insult to injury, a panel of his barbed wire was down; and men
of the loathed Dos Hermanos ranch were disentangling from it still
more sheep; while two herdsmen were seeking to steer something like a
billion other vile sheep aside from following their brethren into the
field!
All this, in almost no space of time, did Chris Hibben see. Then back
to him came his senses and with them his flaming temper. He whipped out
a heavy-caliber pistol and struck spurs deep into his pinto.
Down the field, like a cyclone, came the infuriated cattle king;
whooping, Comanche-fashion, and brandishing his drawn gun.
Meantime, in other parts of the field, other things had been happening.
It was mere child’s play for Treve to round up and turn his runaways.
It was the work of almost no time. Driving them headlong, he put them
at the gap in the fence. Sharply checking their repeated tendency to
loosen the close bunch into which he had welded the scattered hundred,
he sent them at top speed toward the gap.
Through it he hustled them, just as the wire-tangled sheep had been
cleared therefrom. Back into the mass of their fellows, Treve galloped
the loudly baa-ing runaways. Then, collie-fashion, he whizzed about and
stood midway in the gap, to prevent their doubling back.
He had worked fast and he had worked well. Mildly, he was pleased with
himself. He glanced from one to the other of his two masters for a word
of approval. But no such word was spoken. Aghast, dumbfounded, Joel and
Mack were gaping at the oncharging Chris Hibben.
Toni, the chief herdsman, had presence of mind to grab Treve by the
ruff and to yank the indignant collie back from the fence gap, out
onto the neutral ground of the road. As he did so, one of the restored
runaways exercised his inborn traits of idiocy by breaking from his
subdued mates and scampering again through the gap, into the field.
To avert capture, he continued to run, even after he had achieved his
escape. Others made as though to follow. But the shepherds beat them
back.
Treve noted the single sheep’s flight. It outraged all his native
prowess as a herder that he should be held ignominiously by the scruff
of the neck while such a thing went on. Twisting suddenly, he wrenched
free from Toni’s careless grip; and rushed back into the field after
the stray. Toni snatched belatedly at the golden swirl of fur that
flashed past him. So did Joel Fenno.
The sheep, hearing his pursuer behind him, veered to the left; making
for a right-angle niche that indented one edge of the side fence,
perhaps a hundred yards from the gap;--a sort of alcove; where cattle
had formerly been herded in bunches of two or three, to pass on through
a gate whose place had since been taken by the high barrier of wire.
With Treve not three feet behind him, the sheep reached this
cul-de-sac; discovered that it led nowhere; and turned to get out
of it. At his first shambling step he rolled heels over head in a
somersault; a .45 bullet drilling him clean.
Chris Hibben had gone into action. As soon as the hard-ridden pony had
brought him within range, he had opened fire. His first bullet found
its mark; but--as he himself knew--more by luck than by skill. For,
only in motion pictures and in Buffalo Bill shows can a man hope to
take any sort of accurate aim from the back of a jerkily running pony.
Moreover, this pinto of Hibben’s was but half-broke. At sound of the
shot, the pony swerved, spun about on the pivot of his own bunched
hindlegs; and then sought to get the bit between his teeth and run
away. Failing, he resented curb and spur by a really brilliant
exhibition of bucking.
Enraged, and by no means intending that his prey should escape or
that the wizened old Fenno should complete his rheumatic run across
the corner of the field in time to save the collie, Hibben sprang to
earth, flinging the reins over his pinto’s head.
A trained cow-pony will stand for hours if the rein is thus flung. But
the pinto was not yet well trained. Also, he had been bewildered by the
shot and by the spurring, into a forgetfulness of all he had learned.
He set off at a panicky canter, the loose rein catching in his forefoot
and snapping.
Unheeding, Chris Hibben ran forward to the niche where Treve was
standing in grieved amaze above the body of the slain sheep. Halting
just within the outer opening of the alcove, Hibben leveled his gun,
using his left forearm as a rest; and pulled the trigger.
He was not twenty feet from the motionless dog; and he was a good shot.
Yet he missed Treve by at least six feet. This by reason of a fragile
old body that hurled itself against him from behind.
Joel Fenno had made the last few rods of the distance between the gap
and the indented niche in something like record time; his stiff muscles
stirred to incredible power by the imminent danger of his chum. The
others from the Dos Hermanos ranch, Royce Mack among them, were still
standing stupefied and inert. Joel struck up the pistol arm and in the
same move banged his own full weight against the broad back of the
cattleman. The result was a lamentable miss; and the saving of the
collie’s life.
The impact and the heavy-caliber pistol’s own recoil, knocked the gun
from Hibben’s hand. Chris turned, cursing. His left elbow caught Fenno
in the chest and knocked the little old rancher flat. Then Hibben
stooped to regain the pistol.
But he was met and driven backward by a flamingly wrathful mass of
fur and whalebone strength that smote him amidships, in an effort to
seize his throat. Treve, seeing his loved master knocked down, had left
his post beside the dead sheep and launched himself like a vengeful
avalanche upon Joel’s assailant. Here lay his first duty; and he wasted
no time in fulfilling it.
Hibben staggered backward, clawing at the furious brute which sought to
rend his throat. In the same instant, a scream of mortal terror from
Joel Fenno was taken up by the far-off group at the gap. At the sound,
Treve forsook his prey and spun about to face the slowly rising Joel.
Hibben, too, forgot his own danger, in the stress of that shriek; and
turned to look.
The drouth and the eternal smell of smoke had gotten on the nerves of
the three hundred cattle pastured in the field. To-day, the inrush
of the strange and repellent-smelling grayish creatures upon their
territory had agonized those raw nerves to frenzy. On top of all this,
the scent of fresh-spilled blood had the effect that so often it has on
overwrought range cattle.
Something like fifty white-fronted Hereford steers suddenly lowered
their horns and, by common consent, charged that blood-reek. In other
words, Joel Fenno, in trying to get up, had seen coming toward the
alcove-space a tumble of lowered heads and express-train red bodies.
Though he was a sheepman, he knew what a cattle charge meant. And he
screamed horrified warning to his fellow-human in that death-trap.
Old cattleman though he was, Chris Hibben stood frozen to stone at the
sight. Then he glanced toward the alcove fence behind them. Seven feet
of close-meshed barbed wire--coyote-proof, bull-tight, horse-high. No
man might hope to scale so bristling a stockade. Hibben himself had
ordained that fence in the days when this end of the range had been
given up to calves, and when wolves and rustlers abounded.
Subconsciously, the two men stood close beside each other, as they
faced the thundrous charge. Their hands met in a moment’s tight grip.
Treve did nothing so professionally melodramatic. He saw the peril
quite as clearly as did Joel or Hibben. But his duty was to avert
it; not to stand supine or to make stagey gestures. In the wink of
an eye, he was off on his gay dash toward the on-thundering bunch of
blood-crazed steers.
Treve had had no experience in driving cattle. But his wolf ancestors
had known crafty ways of their own, in dealing with wild cows. Into
their descendant’s wise brain their spirits whispered the secret, now;
even as Treve’s collie ancestors had told him, from the first, how
sheep must be herded.
Tearing along toward the galloping phalanx of horned and lowered heads,
the collie burst into a harrowing fanfare of barks. Straight at the mad
steers he ran; barking in a way to rouse the ire of the most placid
bovine. Nor did he check his flying run, until he was almost under
the hoofs of the foremost steer--a mighty Hereford which ran well in
advance of his crowding companions.
To the lowered nose of this leader, Treve lunged; slashing the
sensitive nostril; and then, by miraculous dexterity, dodging aside
from the hammering hoofs. Not once did he abate that nerve-jarring bark.
The hurt steer swerved slightly, in an effort to pin the elusive collie
to earth. The dog swerved, too--barely out of reach of the horns. As he
dodged, he slashed the bleeding nostril afresh.
It was pretty work, this close-quarters flirting with destruction. The
fearless dog was enjoying the gay thrill and novelty of it as seldom
had he enjoyed anything.
Under the repeated onslaught, the steer definitely abandoned his former
course; and set about to demolish the dog. But Treve, always a bare
inch or two out of reach, refused to be demolished. Indeed, he ducked
under the lumberingly chasing body and flew at the two nearest steers
that pressed on behind their leader. The nose of one of these he
slashed deeply. The second steer of the two was too close upon him for
such treatment. Treve leaped high in air, landing on the back of the
plunging animal, and nipping him acutely in the flank before jumping
off to continue his nagging tactics.
That was quite enough. The steers had some definite object, now, in
their charge. Following their three affronted leaders, the whole
battalion of them bore down upon the flying collie. Forgotten was their
vague intent to charge the alcove space and trample the blood-soaked
earth around the dead sheep. There was a more worthy object now for
their rage.
Treve noted his own success in deflecting the rush. Blithely he fled
from before his bellowing foes. But he fled at an increasing angle from
the direction in which first they had been going. The steers hammered
on in his wake. He kept scarcely five feet of space between himself and
their front rank. Head high, plumed tail flying, he galloped merrily
along, barking impudent insult over his shoulder; and leading the chase
noisily down the field.
Treve was having a beautiful time.
Nearly a mile farther on, he tired of the sport. His ruse had
succeeded. Putting on all speed, he drew away easily from the wearying
cattle; made a wide detour and trotted back to his master. The winded
steers had had quite enough. Finding at length that the dog had
swiftness they could not hope to equal, they shambled to a halt. One
by one they stopped staring sulkily after their tormentor; and fell to
cropping grass. Steers are philosophers, in their way.
Treve found Joel and Hibben standing with the herdsmen at the fence
gap. They were waiting only for his return to lift the broken-posted
panel to place again, as best they could.
“If you’re still honin’ to shoot him, Mister Hibben--” began Fenno,
sourly, as Treve came up.
“I--I left my gun back yonder,” muttered Hibben, in reply, his tall
body still shaking as with a chill. “And, anyhow-- Say, put a price
on that collie of yours! Don’t haggle! Put a price on him. If I c’n
help it, no such grand dog is going to have to live with a passel of
sheepmen, no longer. He--”
“This here’s only a dog,” gravely interrupted Fenno, “a no-’count dog,
for the most part. But we-all don’t aim to humiliate him by makin’ him
’sociate with cowboys an’ steers and suchlike trash. He ain’t wuthless
enough for that. So long, neighbor! We’ll be on our way, now. Any time
you want to reform an’ buy a nice bunch of sheep, jes’ give us a call.
C’m’on Trevy!”