Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/190

182 smell of blood, the shots, the casualties in their own ranks, and the sight of this slight, sobbing figure in the middle of the white band filled their canine brains with fury and their veins with lust. Their excitement was at the highest pitch: and she raised her voice in a frantic scream for help.

For her eyes had dropped down to Ben, the terrible leader of the pack; and his glowing eyes were no longer fixed upon the sheep. Instead he was crouched, snarling,—just out of leaping range in front of her; and white foam was at his fangs. And then he came creeping toward her, across the blood-stained pine needles.

Out of the comer of her eyes she saw other black forms, all of them snarling, all of them stealing along the flanks of the little flock in her direction. There was no defense. The last cartridge in her little pistol had been spent. Regret, infinitely bitter, seized her at the realization that the last shot should have been saved for her own moment of ultimate need.

Darting down the narrow game trail, Hugh Gaylord sped in the direction of the shots. In all the forest dramas that the pines had looked down upon—the lightning flight of the deer before the wolf pack, the elk speeding madly with the lynx at his flanks—they had never seen a more desperate ride, a wilder race. He had lashed the horse into the fastest pace it knew: not loping, not running easily, but a frantic run to