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Treve

[Pg 70] <h2>CHAPTER III: MAROONED!</h2> 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 [Pg 71]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[Pg 72] 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[Pg 73] 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[Pg 74] 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[Pg 75] 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[Pg 76] 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[Pg 77] 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[Pg 78] 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[Pg 79] 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 [Pg 80]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 [Pg 81]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[Pg 82] 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[Pg 83] 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.[Pg 84] 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[Pg 85] 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. [Pg 86] 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. [Pg 87] 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[Pg 88] 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[Pg 89] 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[Pg 90] 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[Pg 91] 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 [Pg 92]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[Pg 93] 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[Pg 94] 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[Pg 95] 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 [Pg 96]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[Pg 97] 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 [Pg 98]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[Pg 99] 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. [Pg 100] 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. [Pg 101] 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. [Pg 102] 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[Pg 103] 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!” <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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