Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/28

 dread wolf scent as at first. From living long in the cabin and around the fire at cooking time he had come to smell much as a dog who leads that life and the horses accepted him as such. Moran then started breaking him to handle stock. He knew that in trying to teach this art to Flash it meant a two to one chance of having to sacrifice a horse.

Flash would take one of three holds upon the first animal that Moran worked him on. He might have inherited the strike of a natural born heeler from his renegade grandmother and go to the heel of a horse or cow. Otherwise he would lunge for a wolf hold, and a wolf strikes either for the flank, ripping a gash through which the heavy paunch drops out, or slashes each hind leg above the hock turn, severing the hamstrings of his prey.

Even a lobo, powerful as he is, never strikes for a throat hold until after his meat is down, knowing that even as he tore the life from a plunging steer the battering hoofs would strike him down or the crazed beast would kneel and crush his life out with its own.

Moran gathered a bunch of a dozen horses and headed them toward Harmon’s cabin. He motioned Flash after them.