Three miles to eastward of the Dos Hermanos ranch runs the Black Angel
Trail. Far to northward it has its beginning. It cuts the state from
top to bottom, like a jaggèd swordstroke. Up above the Peixoto Range it
starts; and it runs almost due south across the Mexican border.
Nearly a century ago this trail was blazed. Of old it was the chief
artery between the north counties and Mexico. The state roads and the
railways have long since taken its place; and have diverted from it the
bulk of traffic. Bumps and dips and narrow cuts between canyonsides
render it impassable to motor car or to other modern vehicle.
But in spite of all this, the grass does not grow over-thick in
the Black Angel Trail. No longer a main highway, it is a mighty
convenient byway. Burro trains still traverse it. So do cattle drovers
and shepherds. So do less reputable forms of traffic. It has great
advantages over the thronged and town-fringed state roads, for the
driving of livestock as well as for the transporting of goods which
are best moved with no undue publicity. Sojourners of the Black Angel
Trail have a way of minding their own business. The law seldom patrols
the backwater route or takes cognizance of it.
Along this trail, from southward, one day in earliest spring, fared a
bee caravan, five wagons strong. Each wagon carried full complement of
hives.
The only noteworthy detail of the procession was that it numbered
several more grown men than can usually find time to accompany such a
caravan. The chief work of the bee route can be done by women and boys;
leaving most of the men of the family or community to attend to the
crops at home.
Every year, these bee caravans are loaded with hives, as soon as the
fruit blossoms in the southernmost corner of the state have been
despoiled of their honey-making possibilities. Northward move the
caravans; following the various blossom seasons; and camping in likely
spots along the way, to let their bees ravage whatever blooms happen to
be most plentiful at that place and at that time.
There is a regularly marked-out rotation of blossom-ripening, in one
section of the state after the other. And this rotation the beekeepers
follow; thus gathering the choicest honey everywhere and all season
long.
The five-wagon caravan halted and pitched camp in a sheltered arroyo, a
few miles from the borders of the Dos Hermanos ranch. It was the first
year a bee outfit had done such a thing. But then it was the first year
the new almond orchard of the Goldring ranch, a mile to east of the
arroyo, had put forth any profusion of blossoms. Thus there was nothing
remarkable about the occurrence.
Indeed when Royce Mack rode back from collecting the mail at Santa
Carlotta, and told his partner about their temporary neighbors, old
Joel Fenno did not deem the news worth so much as a grunt of comment.
Instead, he glared dourly at Treve, who had trotted homeward alongside
Royce’s mustang.
“That cur,” he railed, “is gettin’ wuthlesser an’ wuthlesser ev’ry
day of his life. Here I go an’ train poor little blind Nellie to work
sheep with him; an’ this morning I took her along to help me shift that
Number Four bunch to Number Five. It was a two-dog job; ’count of the
twist by the coulée an’ ’count of some of the bunch bein’ new. I took
her and Zit. What d’ye s’pose? She wouldn’t work with him! Acted like
she didn’t know how. An’ no more she did, I reckon; her havin’ worked
only with Treve and only knowin’ his ways, an’ all that. I couldn’t
do a thing with her. Only that she’s blind an’ that she was most
likely doin’ her best, I’d ’a’ whaled the daylights out’n her. An’
where was Treve, all that time? Where _was_ he, I’m askin’ you? He was
pirooting over to Santa Carlotta, along of _you_; pleasurin’ himself
an’ holiday-makin’, while there was work to do;--the measly slacker!”
“It wasn’t Treve’s fault,” rejoined Mack, wearily. “I took him along
for comp’ny. I didn’t know you were aiming to shift that bunch till
to-morrow. You said--”
“Took him ’long for comp’ny?” gibed Fenno. “_Comp’ny_, hey? You got
plenty of comp’ny here, without no useless dog traipsin’ after you.
Ain’t _I_ ‘comp’ny,’ if comp’ny’s what you’re honin’ after. Ain’t I?”
“Yes,” said Mack, briefly. “That’s why I took Treve.”
Leaving his glum partner to digest this cryptic speech, Royce stamped
off to the back steps to wash up for dinner. Left alone with Treve, the
elder partner lost his disgusted glower. Glancing furtively after Mack,
he drew something from his pocket.
“Trevy!” he called under his breath.
The big collie had been following Royce out of the room. At the whisper
of his name he halted and turned quickly back. Tail wagging and eyes
full of eager friendliness to the old man who had just been denouncing
him so harshly, he came up to Joel and sniffed interestedly at the hand
extended to him. In the palm was a crumby and none-too-clean fragment
of cake.
It was the final morsel left from a surreptitious visit to the bakery,
the last time Joel had gone to Santa Carlotta. Guiltily, the old man
had bought a whole pound of stale jumbles. He had bought them for
Treve’s sole benefit; and he had been doling them out, secretly, to
the delighted collie ever since. It was the first present of any sort
he had purchased for anybody or anything, in all his sixty-odd crabbèd
years.
“Here you are, Trevy!” said Joel hospitably, as the collie made a
single dainty mouthful of the offering. “An’ when we go to town,
next time, I’ll see can I git you some pound cake. Pound cake is
dretful good. You’ll sure relish it a whole lot, Trevy. Mighty few
millionaires’ dogs gits to eat pound cake, I reckon. Then--Say,
Royce,” he broke off, snarlingly, as he caught the sound of his
partner’s return, “call this durn cuss out onto the stoop with you.
He’s tromplin’ dust all over the clean floor. Dogs don’t b’long in the
house, anyhow. You’ve got him pampered till he’s no good to no one. He
thinks he’s folks. Take him outside!”
“I forgot to tell you,” said Royce, coming into the room, red and
shining from his wash, “I met up with Chris Hibben, over at Santa
Carlotta. He was coming out of the sheriff’s office; and he was mad as
hops. He says thirty of his beef cattle were run off the Triple Bar
last night. Three of his cow-ponies were lifted right out of the home
corral, too, he says.”
“Strayed, most likely,” suggested Joel, with no sign of interest in his
neighbor’s mishap.
“Chris says not,” denied Royce. “He says they were lifted. Says it’s
rustlers.”
At the ominous word, Joel Fenno’s crooked brows twitched. Nobody in the
sheep-and-cattle country, in those days, could hear the name “rustlers”
without a twinge. In spite of watchfulness and in defiance of all law,
livestock thieves had not yet been stamped out. They worked, as a rule,
in gangs and with consummate cleverness. Their system of theft might
vary, as occasion demanded. But whatever the system chanced to be, it
had a way of circumventing the best efforts of ranchers.
It was easy for crafty and organized bands to lift large or small
bunches of livestock from a vast range; to drive it to the nearest safe
hiding place; and thence run it across the border or sell it to some
dishonest wholesale butcher’s agent. There was much money in such an
enterprise;--much money and occasional death. For the captured rustler
expected and received short shrift. The Black Angel Trail was the local
livestock thief’s route to wealth.
Long and disputatiously the Dos Hermanos partners talked over the news;
Fenno as usual discrediting its truth and Royce increasingly impressed
by it. The conference ended with an arrangement to send word to every
herder on the Dos Hermanos ranch to keep strict guard for a night or
two, and to carry a shotgun.
“Treve,” said Royce, at bedtime, as the collie prepared to stretch
himself as usual on the rag mat at the foot of his master’s bunk,
“you’ve got to do guard duty to-night. It’s outdoors for yours. There
are too many sheep in the home fold, just now, for us to take any
chances. The other dogs are out on the range; and they’ve got to stay
there while this scare lasts. All but Nellie. She’s no good, Joel says,
except when you can work with her. It’s up to you to keep an eye on the
fold. Outside, son! _Watch!_”
Treve did not catch the meaning of one-tenth of his master’s harangue.
But he understood enough of it to know, past doubt, that he was
expected to stay away from his cherished rag mat that night, and
stand guard over the house and the stable-buildings and the adjoining
fold. He sighed discontent at his banishment. Then obediently he
went outdoors and lay down with a little thump on the corner of the
porch;--a post whence he could see or hear or scent anything going on
in the clutter of outbuildings and yards in the hollow directly below.
His little blind mate, Nellie, came forward from the door-mat which
was her usual bed and walked across the porch to him. Mincingly she
came; her mahogany coat fluffing in the faint breeze. She touched noses
affectionately with the big golden dog. Then, crouching, she danced her
white forepaws on the boards, excitedly, tempting Treve to a romp.
But Treve was on duty, and he knew it. He resisted the temptation for
a scamper and a mock battle in the soft dust. He lay still, merely
wagging his plumed tail in recognition of the inviting dance. Failing
to lure her mate into a frolic, Nellie lay soberly down beside him, her
graceful body curled against his mighty shoulder.
She loved to romp with Treve. Always he was as gentle in his play with
her as with a weak child. With her, alone of the ranch dogs, would he
unbend from his benign dignity. But since he would not play to-night,
it was next best to cuddle close to him and to join in his vigil.
The long nights were a stupid and lonely time to Nellie, out there
by herself on the porch. It made her happy, now, to have Treve’s
companionship in the hours of dark.
The two collies dozed. Yet they dozed as only a trained watch-dog knows
how to; with every sense subconsciously alert. A little after midnight
both their heads were lifted in unison, and both sets of ears were
pricked to listen.
Along the road beyond the ranch-house gate came the pad-pad-pad of a
slow-ridden horse that wore no shoes.
This, by itself, was not a matter for excitement. Both collies knew the
ill-kept road was public, and that passersby were not to be molested.
Thus, they did not give tongue, nor do more than look up and listen as
the horse padded by.
The night was close-clouded; though there was a moon behind the
banks of gray vapor. There was light enough for even a human to
detect dimly any objects moving at a reasonable distance. To Treve’s
night-accustomed eyes there was no difficulty in making out the figures
of horse and rider as they passed the gate.
The man was sitting carelessly in the saddle. His face was turned
toward the house, on whose porch-edge the two silent collies were
wholly visible to him. He watched them a moment or so, and they
returned his gaze.
Then gradually his horse carried him past and on a line paralleling
the outbuildings. Treve’s eyes followed him, but only in the mildest
interest, as an incident of a quiet night. Nellie’s uncannily keen
nostrils sniffed the rider’s unfamiliar scent, as the breeze bore it to
her.
Then, of a sudden, Treve got to his feet; his hackles bristling.
Dutifully, Nellie followed his example.
The rider had jogged on for more than a hundred yards. But at the far
end of the outbuildings he had halted his horse. Dismounting, he took
a hesitant step toward the palings which separated the ranch from
the road. Instantly, both dogs were in motion. Running shoulder to
shoulder, they bore down upon the man to resent the threat of intrusion.
Now “Greaser” Todd was anything but a fool. Hence the deservedly high
place he occupied in his chosen trade. He knew dogs. A man in his line
of business must know them and know them well. Of these two dogs he had
gained casual knowledge, not only on an earlier ride past the ranch,
but from chat with one of the herders whom he had managed to engage in
idle talk that day. Thus, he was not silly enough to suppose he could
hope to climb the paling undeterred.
But he had no desire to climb it just then. His plan was to get the
dogs down here, well away from the house and from any possibly wakeful
occupant thereof. Moreover, their dash would unquestionably bring
forth any other of the ranch dogs which might be quartered around the
fold.
As Treve and Nellie ran silently toward him, Todd sprang to the saddle
again and set his mount in motion. The two collies came alongside,
just inside the paling, as Greaser touched heel to his horse. He was
grateful that they had advanced in silence, instead of barking in a way
to disturb weary sleepers’ rest. He was a most considerate man, was
Greaser Todd.
As he cantered off, he drew from his saddlebags two objects, each about
half the size of a man’s fist, and tossed them over the paling at the
angrily dancing collies.
The two flung objects were hunks of cooked meat; savory and alluring.
One of them, on its downward flight, would have hit Treve in the head
had not he flashed aside from the strange missile. It struck against
a sloping stone and bounced back again through the gap between two
palings into the dust of the road. There it lay, out of his reach;
unless he should care to go all the way around to the gate and retrieve
the tempting food. There Fenno found it next day.
The second bit of well-aimed meat fell to earth directly in front of
Nellie’s quivering nostrils. Lightly fed and perpetually hungry, she
pounced upon the titbit; guided by her powers of scent. One gulp and
she had swallowed it.
Treve was of two minds as to the advisability of waking the echoes
with a salvo of barking by way of farewell insult to the intruder,
or to go around and get the delicious-smelling meat that had rolled
so provokingly out of his reach. The man was gone. His horse’s light
hoofbeats were dying away, up the coulée. The logical thing to do now
was to get that generously-given meat and devour it.
Already, Nellie was beside the palings, thrusting her slender nose
through the gap, in quest of the food she could smell but could not
get. Being blind, she could not know, as did Treve, the futility of
pushing her nose through one paling-gap after another in the hope of
finding a space wide enough to let her jaws close on the meat.
But as Treve set off, along the inner side of the fence, on his errand
of retrieving the fragment of cooked food, she seemed to understand his
purpose. For she trotted eagerly alongside him; her shoulder as ever
touching his, in order to guide her steps.
Treve had not gone twenty feet when he felt her swing away from him, in
a lurch that almost upset her. Halting to let her catch up with him
after her supposed stumble, he saw Nellie stagger sideways a step or
two, then curl back her lips from her teeth and come to a shivering
stop. She moaned once in stifled agony; then collapsed in a furry heap
on the ground.
Full of keen solicitude, Treve ran over to where she lay. As he gazed
worriedly down upon the pitifully still little body, a trembling shook
him from crown to toes. Not for the first time was the great collie
looking upon Death.
His adored little mate was dead;--stone dead. How or why she had been
stricken down so suddenly--she who just now had been so full of life
and of pretty, loving ways--was beyond his knowledge. But grief smote
him to the depths of his soul.
Long he stood there above her; now and then touching her still little
body or face with his nose, as if entreating her to come back to him.
Then, whimpering as no physical pain could have made him whimper, he
turned and fled to the house.
Even as man in dire distress turns to his God for aid, so did the
heartbroken collie turn now to his two human gods.
Bounding up on the porch, he scratched imperiously at the locked door;
whining and sobbing in stark anguish of heart. Perhaps these humans
could bring back to life the dear mate who had meant so much to him.
Fiercely impatient in his grief, he scratched the harder at the door
panel; crying under his breath and quivering as in a death-chill.
After an eternity came a slumbrous and cross voice from Royce Mack’s
room.
“Shut up there, Treve!” commanded Royce, angry at being wakened. “Shut
up, you fool! No, you can’t come in! You’re spoiled--pampered--just as
Joel said. You’ll stay outside, as I told you to. Shut up!”
Mack rolled over, as he finished shouting his peevish order, and sank
again into slumber, worn out by his long day in the open.
Treve shrank back from the door as though his master’s angry reproof
had been a blow. Hesitant, he crouched there. He had turned to his god
in his moment of heartbreak. And his god had refused to come to his aid.
Then, an instant later, the collie’s ears were raised in new eagerness.
A soft, if stumpy, footfall was crossing the kitchen floor. Joel Fenno
opened the door and slipped out onto the porch, in sketchy attire,
closing the door behind him.
“What’s the matter, Trevy?” he whispered. “What’s wrong, old sonny?
Hey?”
Treve caught him by the hem of his abbreviated nightshirt and tugged
at the garment, frantically; backing off the steps and seeking to drag
Fenno after him. Joel gave one sharp look at the quivering dog; then
nodded.
“I’ll take your tip, Trevy,” he whispered, disengaging his shirt from
the hauling jaws. “Wait!”
He tiptoed indoors. But Treve was content. He knew the man would rejoin
him.
In less than a minute Joel came back. He had yanked on his trousers and
had stuck his feet into a ragged pair of carpet slippers. Under his
arm he carried a loaded shotgun. In a trouser pocket were stuck four
buckshot cartridges and a flashlight.
“Now, then,” he bade the dog, “come on!”
Treve waited for no second bidding. He wheeled and made for the
outbuildings. At every few rods, he would pause and look back to make
sure Fenno was following.
“All right!” grumbled Joel, as if to a human companion. “All right!
I’m a-comin’, Trevy. I heard Royce call you a fool, jes’ now. Maybe
it’s me that’s the fool for trailin’ along with you. And then ag’in,
maybe not. You ain’t given to actin’ like this. Besides, with all this
rustler-talk--”
He stopped short. Treve was no longer leading him on. The dog had
halted at the fence edge, and was standing there, looking downward in
drooping misery at something small and dark that lay at his feet. Joel
pressed his flashlight button.
Almost instantly he released the pressure. But not before he had seen
Nellie’s lifeless body and had taken cognizance of her writhen lips.
Her attitude and her convulsed mouth told their own story.
“Pizen!” muttered Joel, aghast.
His first sharp thought was for Treve. He went over to the disconsolate
collie and felt his head and jaws.
“Nope,” he said. “She was the only one that got it. If it was strong
enough to git her as quick as that, it’d ’a’ got you, too, before now.
An’--an’, Trevy, I’m thankin’ Gawd it didn’t! I’m a-thankin’ Him, reel
rev’rent!”
The old brain was working and working fast. Now that the Dos Hermanos
ranch was at peace with the Triple Bar outfit, there was no neighbor
who would poison any of the collies. The only person to do such a
damnable thing must be some one who desired to get the ranch guards out
of the way in order to rob the place.
Rustlers!
Joel listened. Except for an occasional bleat or stir in the nearby
fold, no sound broke the awesome stillness of the early spring night.
The collie stood statuelike above his dead mate, his sorrowful dark
eyes fixed on Joel in dumb appeal.
“We can’t bring her back, Trevy,” said Fenno, gently, caressing the
bowed silken head with rough tenderness. “Only the good Gawd c’d do
that. An’ in His wisdom, He don’t ever do it no more--nowadays....
_He_ knows why. _I_ don’t. We ain’t so lucky as them folks in Bible
times.... But maybe we c’n git the swine that killed her, Trevy!”
There was a fiery thread of menace in the old voice, a note that made
the collie lift his drooping head and turn toward the rancher. Just
then, blurred and from far off, came a scent and a sound. They were
indistinguishable to gross human senses. But Treve read them aright.
The sound was of three cautiously-ridden horses. The scent was of
men;--one of them the man who had loitered beside the fence and flung
the meat that had killed Treve’s mate.
The dog stiffened. His teeth bared. Deep down in his throat a growl was
born. He remembered; and now he understood.
This was the man who had somehow done Nellie to death. It was directly
after he stopped there, on the far side of the fence, that she had
died. Red rage flamed in the dog’s heart and eyes.
“Quiet, Trevy!” breathed Joel, at the sound of the low growl. “Hear
suthin’, do you? Quiet, then, an’ wait!... Huh! Royce Mack called you a
fool, did he? Called _you_ a fool! In the mornin’--”
He fell silent. To his own straining ears now came the faint beat of
muffle-hoofed horses. Nearer they came and nearer. Joel gripped his
shotgun and peered through the high fence palings.
Presently, in the dim light, he was aware of three mounted men and two
more men on foot, coming toward him from the direction of the coulée.
At the same moment one of the three riders spurred forward from the
rest. Drawing his horse alongside the high fence, he vaulted lightly
from the saddle, coming to earth on the inner side of the palings.
As his feet touched ground, something hairy and terrible whizzed at him
through the darkness; awful in its murderous silence. Before Greaser
Todd could get his hand to his knife or shove back his mysterious
assailant, Treve’s mighty jaws had found their goal in his unshaven
throat.
The rustler crashed to earth, the mutely homicidal collie atop him; the
curved white eyeteeth grinding toward the jugular.
“What’s the matter, Greaser?” queried the rider behind him, hearing
his leader stumble and fall. “Bootsoles too slippery?”
As he spoke, he, too, vaulted the palings and dropped to his feet in
the yard. One of the unmounted men was climbing the fence in more
leisurely fashion, his head appearing now over the top.
As calmly as though he were shooting quail, Fenno went into action.
One barrel of his shotgun was fired point-blank at the rustler who had
just landed in the yard. Wheeling, he emptied the left barrel into the
head of the climber.
There was a panic yell from the road; then pell-mell a scurry of hoofs
and of running feet. Slipping two new cartridges into the breech, Joel
Fenno climbed halfway up the fence and fired both barrels down the road
into the muddled dust-cloud that was dashing toward the coulée.
Royce Mack, still drunk with sleep, came staggering and shouting down
from the ranch house, his flashlight playing in every direction. At the
edge of the outbuildings he slithered to a dumbfounded halt.
The arc of white radiance from his flashlight illumed a truly hideous
and incredible scene. Athwart the fence top, like a shot squirrel,
sprawled an all-but headless man. On the ground, just inside the
palings, lay another slumped figure.
Somewhat nearer to Mack knelt Joel Fenno, his gun on the earth beside
him. He was stanching the blood of a third man--a man whose throat was
that of a jungle beast’s victim.
Beside him, tense and raging, and held in check only by Joel’s crooning
voice, towered the huge gold-white Treve.
“I reckon we c’n save this one of ’em, Royce, long ’nough for the
sheriff to git his c’nfession,” airily observed Joel, continuing his
first-aid work. “I pried Trevy loose before he got to the jug’l’r. With
Trevy standin’ by, to prompt him like, the feller’s due to talk all the
sheriff wants him to. Me an’ Trevy will see to that. As f’r them other
two--”
“What--what the--?” sputtered Mack, stupid with horror.
“Trevy’s a ‘fool,’ all right!” scoffed Joel. “Jes’ like I heard you
call him, awhile back. He tries to be more like you all the time.
Likewise he s’cceeds. Now run an’ phone for the sheriff. Me an’ Trevy
has had a busy night. It’s up to _you_ to do the rest of the chores.”