Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/87



the first dozen paces up the trail Hugh tried to shut his ears to the frenzied barking of the dog. He found it hard to believe that the animal was merely rounding up the sheep, keeping them in a compact herd as he had been trained to do. It wasn't the same cry that he had listened to before. It had an angry, warning quality, a threatening note as if it were trying to intimidate some enemy of the sheep. Then Hugh began to believe that his own fancy was carrying him away. For it seemed to him that the animal's voice had an actual undertone addressed to himself,—an appeal for aid before it was too late.

But, after all, he was not responsible for the flock. They were not his sheep. He had not been employed by the flock owner to care for them; and the idea of Hugh Gaylord, member of the Greenwood Club, acting as sheep herder was simply laughable. It was not his war,—that in which the herder had been struck down. He was anxious to go back to his own kind, to take up anew his old carefree life in his home city.

The dog's bark rose to a veritable clamor. Then He came racing back toward Hugh.