Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/302



" Little People show the way," was the saying of a more credulous race in an older West; and Hugh knew its truth at last. This was no blind lead,—the westward course of the bighorn ram in the van of the sheep flock. He led them straight to a pass that only the wild creatures knew, a course already taken by such of the animals as had been trapped between the converging walls of flame and through which Broken Fang had pursued him. The instincts of the lesser folk had served when Hugh's own conscious intelligence and knowledge had failed.

After a half mile's wild run Spot turned into a narrow-mouthed canyon, leading in a long course clear to the high peaks. A creek had flowed through it in some past age and carved its banks, but through some geological catastrophe its waters were diverted and only a dry bed of stones remained. Half-hidden by heavy brush-thickets, neither Fargo nor Alice had ever dreamed of its existence: it was just one of many unknown gorges in the unlimited mountain spaces of the American West. Spot—perhaps wholly unaware of the fire—had sped down it before the pursuit of Broken Fang, and now that