Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/57

 to Clark Moran. Did it make you nervous to watch a wolf crawl up to her that way?”

“No,” said the other man. “A wolf wouldn’t come that close to us in a thousand years. Then I saw him swing his brush up in the air when Betty spoke to him. A wolf never cocks his tail up in the air—and I knew he was a dog.”

This stranger with the close-clipped gray beard and close-clipped accent of the east evidently knew the animals of the hills.

Their voices had a friendly ring and Flash lay flat beside the girl.

“Who is Moran?” she asked. “I’m going to buy his dog.”

Kinney chuckled and shook his head.

“You can’t,” he said.

“But I want him,” she insisted. “Surely he’ll sell him at some price.”

“Not him,” said Kinney. “Moran seems to have enough money of his own to worry along. It don’t mean as much to him as Flash. He wouldn’t consider any sum.”

Kinney gave them a brief history of the wolf.

“Moran’s a queer one—and a good one too,” he said. “He puts in his time visiting around