Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/107

 where or you wouldn’t be here yourself. If I let you out you’ll run away and go back to him. I want you to stay with me until Dad Kinney comes.”

Flash scratched and whined again.

“He should be here now,” she said.

“He’ll be here surely in a day or two. Then you can go. You’ll stay with me until then, won’t you, Flash?”

His whining and scratching became so insistent that at last she walked reluctantly to the door and opened it, leaving it ajar so he could reenter when he wished.

“Don’t you desert me, Flash,” she admonished him as he slipped out.

Flash dropped swiftly down the slope to the game trail and followed along it toward the mouth of the canyon, his nose uplifted to catch the first scent of meat. Half a mile below, the gorge widened into a narrow park beside the stream. A cow elk was feeding there. She caught a faint whiff of danger and stood rigid. The dread wolf scent suddenly reached her flaring nostrils and she fled—but not in time to escape the shadowy form that drove down upon her from the timber edge with lightning speed.

Back at the cabin the girl, alarmed at his long