Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/18

10 of night. It was the drinking hour. A spring flowed at the foot of the glen, Spread Horn knew, and he turned toward it, stealing softly. And all at once he seemed to freeze in his tracks.

The wind had brought him a message, unmistakably as wireless telephones bring messages of approaching foes across a battle field. His nervous reaction was instantaneous: danger, go slow! Yet it was not a familiar smell, and scientists would have a hard time explaining why the stag had at once recognized its menace. For the creature from whom it came was almost a stranger to these mountains, and it was wholly possible that Spread Horn had never perceived the breed before.

He stood still, gazing, and he looked a long time through the shrubbery branches down to a little green glade beside the spring. He raised one foot and lifted his long muzzle. Then he gave the warning cry,—the sound with which, in the fall, he would warn his herd of danger.

There was no more distinctive cry in the whole wilderness world than this,—a strange, whistling snort, beginning high on the scale and descending to a deep bawl. It traveled far through the stillness. He waited a breathless instant while the echo came back to him. Then he sprang and darted at full speed away into the heavier thickets.

Far below, at the spring, an unfamiliar figure in these wilds leaped to his feet with a guttural