Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/129

 Flash started at once for the scene of the fight. He circled cautiously, testing the wind. The rank odor of the drowned camp fire was all that reached him. The rain had washed out all but the faintest trace of human scent.

As he drew near he snarled and bristled his back roach at the smell of blood that haunted the wet spruce needles where he had slashed at them the night before.

He followed their cold trail for a mile, then left it, satisfied that they were far away, and started on a hunt for meat. An hour later he turned up at the cabin carrying a grouse.

The girl would not leave the cabin again, not even descending to the game trail along the stream. The scant store of provisions was running low.

She could not help but associate these men with Dad Kinney’s failure to arrive. Her worry over him inspired a like uneasiness about a man she had never seen—Moran, the owner of Flash.

On that other trip when Flash had crept up to her in the moonlit park Kinney had told her that the dog would never leave Moran yet Flash now stayed with her. Her chief fear had been that Flash would leave her any moment and go back to him. But he had stayed. It now occurred to