CHAPTER III
Naturalists have made only incidental mention of the rare swift-fox that inhabits a limited area of the badlands and cedar breaks along the east slope of the Rockies.
Moran had searched long for a den of these little fellows, scarcely larger than a squirrel but an exact duplicate in miniature of the coyote.
The fur markets listed them as kit-fox but locally all men called them swifts. Aside from the fact that each year a few were caught in coyote traps or with strychnine bait, little was known of them.
To better study them, Moran shifted his base camp the following spring, moving his outfit into a log cabin used by the Bar T ranch for a winter line camp.
On his first day at the cabin Flash had jumped a pair of these tiny swifts in a near-by gulch. Several times since Moran had seen one running like a vivid yellow streak, and he knew the den was somewhere close at hand.
The year-old wolf could not resist the call to match his tremendous speed against that of these pigmy cousins each time he sighted them. This was no part of Moran’s plan, and Flash, to his everlasting disgust, spent much of his time chained to a staple in the cabin wall.
Morning and evening Moran lay concealed on some commanding ridge, sweeping the country with his powerful glasses as he tried to determine the locality where the swift family had their home.
Riders from the Bar T ranch often dropped by, sometimes stopping to see Moran or lolling sidewise in their saddles to exchange a few words before riding on. Those who came to the cabin when Moran was gone always spoke in a friendly tone to Flash but made no move to touch him. It was known to them that this great wolf dog with the bright yellow eyes would allow no hand to touch him but Moran’s.
Long before they came in sight the thudding hoofs and creak of the saddle leather informed Flash of their approach. Then the wind announced their identity to his quivering nose.
Thus it happened that on the morning Brent rode to the cabin Flash was standing tense and rigid, his shoulder hair bristling, even before Brent turned the corner of the corral.
As the man dropped from his horse and strode to the door, Flash moved only his eyes as they followed Brent.
Finding that Moran had gone, Brent started back to his horse. In his hand he carried a heavy blacksnake stock whip of plaited rawhide, and as he passed Flash he flipped it carelessly at the wolf. Flash snapped at it and the pop-lash drew the blood from his lip.
Without a sound he launched himself straight for Brent. His splendid body was three feet in the air when he struck the end of the chain and was jerked flat by his own force. His fangs had gleamed within a foot of the man’s face before he was snatched back, and for one brief instant Brent had seen death staring him in the face.
The sudden, numbing shock from this unexpected move was followed instantly by a blind rage and he swung the whip again and again. The very intensity of his desire to hurt defeated its own purpose as he lashed out in a frenzy of harmless blows, swinging the pliable whip as he would a club, when the deathly sting of the blacksnake whip is carried only in the back-snap of the popper.
Brent’s gust of reason-shaking hatred cooled into definite purpose and he stepped back.
“You yellow-eyed devil! I’ll start you for hell in slivers the size of a horse hair,” he said.
From long and gloating practice, Brent knew himself a master of what he was about to do.
He sent the long lash curving toward Flash, and with the sudden backward twist of his wrist the pop-lash hissed sharply, then cracked like a rifle as the bare tip reached through the hair and drew blood from the chained wolf dog.
His only answer to the deadly hurt was to spring full length of his chain at Brent.
The man settled to his work. Each report of the whip wrung agony from Flash and brought a thrill of joy to Brent.
With the pride of an expert the man chose a fresh spot for each bite of the whip. Once it would strike blood from the knee joint of the hind leg where the hair was short; next pluck a patch of skin the size of a dime from the tender flank.
Burning agony wrecked Flash’s frame; hot tongues of flame shot through him with every tortured pulse of blood in his veins. His senses were beginning to dull under the ordeal and at last the lash cut a half inch gash at the corner of one eye and the flow of blood partially obscured his sight.
Brent craved audible evidence of pain. With the same lash he had often worked on the tough hide of a steer until the crazed animal bawled. But the glazing yellow eyes of the wolf dog faced him with as deadly a hatred as before, and he surged against the chain which held him back from Brent.
“You big gray devil, I’ll make you talk,” said Brent. “I’ll drag a yelp out of you.” And he started in again.
Moran came over a ridge of two hundred yards behind the cabin and saw Brent’s big blue roan standing in the yard. As he looked, the horse jerked his head and sidled a half step farther from the house. Again and again he repeated this strange move, and Moran stopped to listen. He heard a faint hiss followed by a sharp report. Once more the horse jerked his head and sidestepped. Then came the rattle of a chain and a dull thud, such as a roped steer makes when he strikes the ground. Moran started running for the house.
“Sing for me,” Brent was mumbling. “Sing for me. I’ll make you sing.”
A rough hand seized his collar, and he was snatched violently back, dropping the whip and reaching for his gun as he fell.
It flashed forth as he struck the ground, and Moran’s boot struck square across his knuckles. The gun sailed twenty feet away, and Moran ground the hand into the gravel with his heel.
Brent wrapped his arms about the other’s knees, shifted one hand to the belt and literally climbed up Moran against the rain of solid blows which rocked his head. He lurched to his feet with his long arms locked around Moran. As they swayed, Moran drew up one knee and braced it against Brent’s chest in an effort to break the hold. The two fell together and rolled into a deadlock on the ground.
It was a silent, savage fight. Each man saved his breath and spoke no word. There was no sound but the shuffle of heaving bodies on the ground, the labored breathing of the two men and the repeated, heavy slam as the great wolf dog drove straight to the end of his chain.
Each man fought for a hold that would pin the other helpless to the ground. Moran writhed on top and freed one hand, driving it full into Brent’s upturned face.
Then Brent got his hold. With his right arm clamped around the small of Moran’s back he squeezed down on it with a grip of death while his left arm was doubled under the other’s chin. Slowly, like opening a pair of shears, he lifted the left forearm, forcing Moran’s head up and back to snap the neck.
Moran could not break the hold. The veins purpled at his temples as he strained neck and shoulder muscles to resist the terrible pressure that was cutting off his wind. Specks danced before his eyes, and a nasty rattle sounded in his throat. Six times while the lock held he heard the wicked smash of the wolf against his chain.
His weight shifted to one side. The two men turned as one until they rested on their sides, but the grip still held. Brent arched his back for the final heave that would snap the neck, but instead his arms flew wide apart and Moran felt the blessed air rush back to his lungs.
The slight arching of his back had edged Brent just one bare inch within the limits of the chain, and Flash instantly struck just one inch deep and slashed the full length of his hip.
The two rose to their knees, and Moran bored his fist full against Brent’s mouth to drive him back. Brent did not strike but groped toward him, trying to regain his hold, and they rolled together in another lock.
Brent used his head and butted Moran in the face. It was a fast pace and was telling upon both men; the strain of heaving muscles knotted the cords of neck and face. Their breath sounded in spasmodic gasps.
Fear began to assault Brent from within.
The regular, deady slam of the chain was beginning to shake his nerve. If the wolf would only make a sound! Only growl or rage aloud—anything but this silent, murderous concentration upon one point—to break that chain.
Moran found his chance to writhe on top and force Brent down on his face, stretching him full length, toe locking toe, and hands pinioned to his sides, with his forehead pressed down upon Brent’s head, jamming his face in the ground.
Both men heard a screech, such as a rusty nail makes when drawn from a board, and a shape hurtled above them, propelled by the driving force behind its own release. The staple had given away from the wall.
A dog, in trying to punish Brent, would have fallen in a fighting frenzy upon both men, but Flash would not touch Moran—and Moran was on top.
As he lit sprawling and darted back, one waving foot was all Flash saw of Brent and there was a choked grant of pain as his long fangs sank through leather and flesh and reached the bones of the foot.
The wolf leaped for the sound of the hated voice.
Moran felt a hot breath fan his cheek, and something pressed against his hair as Flash pushed under him and stretched his long jaws as far down each side of Brent’s head as he could reach.
There was a sudden scream of mortal agony and fear as he closed the jaws, and the savage teeth cut through Brent’s scalp and grated along his skull.
As Flash reached under a second time, Moran fastened both hands in his heavy collar.
“Run, Brent!” he gasped. “Run or he’ll kill you sure!”
Brent scrambled away on hands and knees with Flash after him, dragging Moran, and twice more his teeth slashed Brent’s legs before he could rise. Then he gained his feet and made a staggering run for his horse, with Flash lunging for him and jerking Moran along.
The loss of blood, and the long fight to break the chain had weakened Flash by half, or Moran could not have stayed with him for a single jump. The wolf dragged him past a hitch-post in the yard, and with his right hand gripped in the collar Moran reached out his left, and made two quick turns of the chain and snubbed him to the post.
The horse flinched away from the smell of blood, but Brent seized the reins and swung to the saddle. He wheeled to run, but pulled up and stopped when he saw that Moran had snubbed the wolf.
“That slobbering fiend damn near scalped me,” he raged. “I’ll kill him for that, Moran.”
Moran waved his arm down the gulch.
“Get started, Brent, before I change my mind and turn him loose on you,” he said, “And don’t come back.”
After the two had watched Brent out of sight, Moran took the wolf’s great head between his hands.
“I’m half-way sorry I held you back,” he said. “Next time you can have him, Flash.”