Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/124

 at her. These men stood in awe of Harte but the beauty of the girl had inflamed them beyond caution. One man crowded closer to her.

As he moved, a silent shadow out in the fog moved with him, crouching low to the ground.

Harte’s own blood pounded hotly from her nearness, and he knew that he could not control the lawless impulses of the others yet his brain functioned as coolly as before.

“Think it over,” he advised them calmly. “You know what it will mean to have a fight with a party of hunters in here. In a week we’d have posses scouring this whole country.”

“What of it? The Hole is twenty miles from here,” said one, his eyes resting hungrily on the girl, “I’ll have my taste of her before she goes.”

He threw his arms around her and as he touched her a demon apparition with flashing eyes and fangs split the curtain of fog and drove straight for his throat. The teeth sank deep in his upraised shoulder and the force of the drive bore him to the ground.

The blank wall of fog had swallowed both the dog and the fleeing girl before a man of them fully realized what had occurred. Before she had