Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/43

 miles on unending miles; the slopes dense with spruce growth and valleys of stately lodge-pole pines, broken only by the open parks and meadows along the streams or by the bald, windswept ridges that reared their rocky crests above the trees.

The world of men was far behind them, and Flash had Moran to himself.

Moran spoke to him as he would have spoken to another man, and found a sufficient sense of companionship from the presence of the dog. Often he told him that he was the best stock dog in the world, and while Flash could not understand the words he knew from the inflection that his master spoke in praise.

It was merited praise, for Flash solved the one problem that is always uppermost in the mind of every lonely rambler in the hills—the possible loss of his horses.

The love and understanding between Moran and his horses far surpassed that between most men and their saddle stock, but Moran was also a realist and he endowed no animal with legendary qualities it did not possess.

He knew that when in a strange country a range-bred horse will inevitably make use of every