Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/22



“That’s intelligence,’ Moran explained. “His early training taught him not to gulp down everything he sees. I’ve only had him a day or two. He’ll come out of it as soon as confidence in me overcomes that wolf caution of his.”

As the two men talked, the wolf pup noted their difference of tone. Then, too, they gave off a different scent. Moran’s was friendly and quieting, while Brent radiated an atmosphere of cold-blooded cruelty toward every living thing. His only ascendency over beasts would be the rule of fear.

Flash was already beginning to classify the world of men. Those who do not know speak of “animal instinct” when referring to the unerring ability of animals to recognize love, hatred, fear and other emotions in man. Moran’s naturalist mind was not satisfied with the vague generality of this term. He knew that this so called instinct was in reality a delicately balanced sense of hearing and of smell. No man who has lived much and understandingly with animals but knows that each kind has a vocabulary of its own—not that of the spoken word but of the varying inflection of tone.

It is this that enables a dog to catch the under-