Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/20

 the scent of cold meat meant not food but death, and that only warm, quivering flesh was safe to eat.

Once more the blood of his ancestors exerted their cross-currents in his puppy heart. Hunger and the doglike affection he was beginning to feel for Moran spurred the desire to take the food; wolf suspicion of man and the things he had seen of their works against his kind combined with his dread of the cold meat scent to hold him back. He compromised by licking the meat Moran held out to him, but refusing to take it in his mouth.

Evening of the second day found Moran still patiently tempting him to eat.

A horse clattered into the yard and Ash Brent dismounted before the house. His horse flinched nervously away from him as he stooped to loosen the cinch and Brent jerked savagely on the reins until blood trickled from the ends of the heavy spade bit.

He strode to the door and stood looking in—a big man with a too small head set low upon wide shoulders. His light eyebrows showed up white against the baked red of his skin and from beneath them a pair of cold blue eyes peered bleakly forth upon the world and saw no good therein.