Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/71

 challenge, backed by a thousand dollar purse, proclaiming him the wide open champion of the world. The BarT owner had made Moran a standing offer of five hundred for the dog.

The stockmen of Wind River had posted a five hundred dollar reward for the scalp of the most savage lobo that had ever showed up on the range and who made periodical forays among their cows, killing more than the price on his head in a single week.

Thus each of the two extremes in Flash built up a reputation of its own, for the champion stock dog of the Greybull and the famous lobo killer of Wind River were the same.

His absences which were attributed to wandering around in search of Moran, were now spent in raiding. On these trips he was all wild. He bedded down with the wind at his back and a clear field of view in front. He feared men, not with blind, unreasoning terror but with a certain knowledge of their power for harm.

His coyote intelligence saved him from panicky flights in the open at the first whiff of man scent; instead he would flatten out and let them pass or watch his chance to slip away unseen. Then old