Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/164

156 dawn for the work. The dogs, however, were growing constantly more excited and harder to control.

The last grayness faded into the gloom, and Fargo could hardly see the trail. But he was a mountain man, and he knew what to do. In the last dim glimpses of late twilight the peaks had begun to wheel around where he wanted them to be, and he knew that the camp was now only three or four miles distant at most. And the proper course was to sit down, rest, and wait for the moon to rise. Then he could locate his landmarks, start down the ridge to the river, then up its banks to the camp.

He thought that as far as human beings went, he had the mountains all to himself. He supposed that in the camp—now certainly nearing—a dead herder lay face buried in his tree-bough pallet; but Fargo was not the kind of man to whom such a fact as this preys on the mind. He did not dream that the body had already been found, that the herd was guarded, and that even now the daughter of his enemy was waiting for this same moon,—to start forth to find the missing members of the flock.

Fargo watched the silver glint in the sky; he saw the white disk roll forth. The light grew, it leaped down between the trees, it worked nebulous magic on the floor of the forest, it enchanted the whole wilderness world. He located his peaks. And all at once he knew his exact