Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/202



storm had settled down over the hills, a fine rain falling from leaden skies. Flash had been confined to the cabin for two days and nights. Fearful lest he locate Nash and either kill or be killed himself, Moran had kept him a prisoner. Flash found this extremely irksome. The storm terminated in a fierce downpour of rain; this over, the sun peeped through the rifts and turned the floating fog banks to milky white. The wind which invariably follows each storm in the western hills sprang up and dispersed the mist. Flash’s insistence to be freed now amounted to a clamor. He scratched furiously at the door and chewed at the beam which wedged it shut. His whining was so continuous as to resemble a steady chant of woe. He wished a speedy end put to this imprisonment. He was no indoor dog. Moran opened the door at last, and he was free to go.

He was hungry and his first concern was meat. As he topped the ridge above the cabin a luckless