Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/44

 opportunity to break for home—a gelding for the spot where he was born, and a mare straight for the range where her first colt was foaled. The fact that he always knew where to find them later had proven small solace upon the several occasions in the past when they had eluded his every precaution and left him on foot in the hills.

But now no worry or listening for a distant horse bell broke his rest at night. Flash knew that Moran wanted the horses kept close at hand, and he kept them there.

His nose and ears told him things which his master could not know, and often at night he raised his head and nosed the air or inclined his ear to catch some sound, then slipped silently away from the sleeping Moran. In the morning the horses were always grazing near.

They saw many animals that Flash had never seen before. Droves of cow elk in the valleys and bunches of blacktail does and fawns along the streams, while higher up in the rim-rocked pockets near timberline they met the lords of the same species with their antlers in the velvet. Bighorn rams peered down at them from ledges of the cliffs and their ewes and lambs grazed on the broad grassy meadows above the timberline.