Shepherds of the Wild

The mouth of the canyon was darkened with shadows when the bull elk came stealing down the brown trail through the dusky thicket. In all this mountain realm, a land where the wi...

It is a far cry from the fastnesses of Idaho back to the lounging room of the Greenwood Club in a great and fashionable city on the Atlantic seaboard; but that distance must be...

The camp-robber, perched on a limb, was in considerable of a mental turmoil. His mentality was never of an extra high grade, and to-day his intellectual grasp had almost failed...

It was written, by those special jungle gods that plan entertainment for tenderfeet, that Hugh Gaylord should get some slight taste of the real mountains on his walk to the shee...

Hugh Gaylord had never known a more mysterious hour than that in which the darkness fell over the sheep camp. At the end of it he felt as if he had lost himself in a dim and eer...

In the hour before Pete, the guide, returned with camp supplies to the sheep camp, Hugh had a chance to observe various things about this mountain land of which he had never bee...

Of the three that lay beside the sheep that night, Hugh slept lightest of all. He missed the effects of strong drink. Night after night—more of them than he liked to remember—he...

For the first dozen paces up the trail Hugh tried to shut his ears to the frenzied barking of the dog. He found it hard to believe that the animal was merely rounding up the she...

As the dawn broke over Smoky Land, the sheep fed farther and farther out from the camp,—a long, white column like a moving snow field against the deep dusk of the forest. The li...

No observer could make any mistake about Spot’s position in the flock. Through all the maneuvers of the great band he kept the foremost place; and the other sheep followed him w...

Hugh Gaylord had, like all men, experienced some rather violent surprises in his time. They had been coming exceptionally thick and fast since he had come to Smoky Land. His cha...

As the stars emerged and the little mountain wind sprang up and crept forth in its never-ending explorations of the thickets, the shepherdess explained all things to Hugh’s sati...

In that momentous twilight that brought Hugh Gaylord to the sheep camp for the first time, there was unfamiliar traffic on the brown, pine-needle trail that wound down to the me...

It didn’t take Fargo long to perfect his plans. As the dawn emerged he talked them over with the Mexican, José, and the latter was ready with any little suggestions that did not...

Like a song soaring over the camp fire, clear and wonderfully sweet in the hushed and tremulous darkness, Alice’s laugh had been her only good-by to Hugh. He hadn’t approved of...

Landy Fargo tried to approach the sheep camp with some caution. It was an instinctive effort: he had not the slightest idea that the lone human occupant of the little meadow cou...

These were not wolves. This fact dawned upon Alice Crowson, running her little flock at top speed toward the camp, before ever she saw their savage forms burst forth from the th...

The summer days dragged by, one by one, until they were all gone. Moons waxed and waned, annual plants budded, flowered, and died, the glossy green of the pine needles changed t...

Beyond all other joys and compensations for these three months in Smoky Land, there remained—a subject for humble thanks to the skies—the comradeship of Alice. Every day it made...

Dreams, dreams! Spot, the young ram, waking or sleeping, never escaped from them. They came to him through the long, still hours of night, they disturbed his sleep in the mid-af...

All the dreams by which Spot knew of his lost heritage were realities to old Argali, leader of a band of wild mountain sheep, or bighorn, that had their craggy home in the high...

José Mertos, when he came at Fargo’s bidding, looked exactly the same as always. He seemed to have partaken of the changeless quality of the desert where he was born. His lips w...

In the still midday, desperate and half-mad with hunger, Broken Fang, the cougar, came stealing along a narrow pass in the high ranges of Smoky Land. He hadn’t had a great deal...

The sheep were taking their midday rest, and Hugh and Alice exchanged certain confidences as they kept watch over them, sitting side by side on a dead log. Always, it seemed to...

In the glow of the fire, and speaking just loud enough to be heard above its roar, Alice and Hugh made swift appraisal of their situation. It was not easy to be calm, to hold th...

Landy Fargo was not of a mind to have his plan go wrong, so he had given particular care to its details. He didn’t want to take even the slightest chance of failure. Not probabi...

While José Mertos had been riding, Landy Fargo had been busy, too. It wasn’t enough just to order things done, and later to learn of their accomplishment. In the hand, more than...

The face before her seemed only part of her dark dreams as Alice wakened from her unconsciousness. She hoped in an instant to waken into the world of reality she had always know...

Almost in a breath Shep’s ferocity passed away. He eyed the still form for a sign of life, but quickly the fierce yellow lights died from his eyes. The avenger, the remorseless...

It was more than a reprieve,—the little hour that they would have together before their own island was submerged. They were three shepherds, and in their united strength they we...

“The Little People show the way,” was the saying of a more credulous race in an older West; and Hugh knew its truth at last. This was no blind lead,—the westward course of the b...