There was only a stifled and choked sound from the bull. The blood was gushing with the beat of the arteries from his throat where the double row of fangs had slashed deep and torn him. He made one last effort to rise and then dropped his nose to the ground and waited for death with eyes fierce and unconquered to the last.
As for The Ghost, he had landed with his head turned away from the bull, and he paid no further heed to his victim. He had performed the task he had set for himself. He had done the impossible. He had actually killed a full-grown bull by a frontal attack. Now he gave his attention to the active group that swept over the hills beyond, while he licked the blood from his lips for a second time.
Chapter II
The Chase
They were close, dangerously close, and The Ghost knew to the last scruple every degree of that danger. Knives and guns and dogs were coming, and, above all, that trebly horrible scent of man which was the one thing in the world he truly feared. Gather under one head all the meaning that was in the scents of the mountain lion, with his claws and his hooked teeth; and the grizzly bear, with downright power of paw and bone-crushing jaws and deep wisdom; and the rattler with glide and strike and poison add all these items together and put with them a certain mysterious horror, and one may gain some conception of what man meant to The Ghost.
There were a full dozen riders on fine horses; and before them ran a solid pack of wolfhounds, big, savage-jawed creatures who were now running well within their strength, as if they knew that only in a long chase would they have a chance of setting teeth in The Ghost. The vanguard was a round score of greyhounds, running with their snaky heads jerking in and out and the lank bodies flashing in the sun. Half delicate, half clumsily-sprawling creatures they looked as they bounded frantically forward. There had been a time when The Ghost had scorned them, feeling that he could break a dozen of them between his jaws one after another as they came up, but he had learned from experience that a greyhound can fight desperately long enough to let the main body of wolfhounds get up.
Something flashed in the distance - sun on a rifle barrel - and there was a wicked humming overhead that made The Ghost wince flat to the ground with down-shrinking of the ears. The sound went through him like a knife, vibrating electrically. Afterwards the report of the rifle cracked on his ears like two sledge hammers swung face to face - a sharp sound with a ring of metal at the tail of it. This was the last command. Now he must be off.
The greyhounds were shooting up the last slope beneath him; it was time, full time for running. He parted his teeth and gave them a terrible wolf-grin, and then wheeled and fled over the grass toward the heart of the hills.
He chose that course because every irregularity of the ground would be an advantage to him. He knew that country as a student knows the memorized page of a book. He knew the short cuts, the ups and downs, and where one saves strength and time by going straight up the steepest slope, and where it is better to take the long way around if one wishes to conserve the wind.
The greyhounds were perilously close, but The Ghost began slowly. In his puppy days he had been apt to break his heart and his wind in the first wild, hysterical, straightaway sprint. Now he knew that a fast beginning cramps the muscles and blears the mind and leaves one broken, whether for fighting or for more running at the end of five miles.
He went with that baffling wolf-lope which is unlike any gait in the world. A dog pounds his way along; a wolf seems to glide along, and, when watched closely, he seems to be trying to get all four feet ahead of him at once. There is an easy, overlapping play of legs that shoots the body ahead.
Yet he went with amazing speed. To the hunters from behind he seemed merely a gray streak shooting across the green of the grass; from the side he seemed to be galloping lazily, almost. The greyhounds walked up on him hand over hand. He let them come, with one ear flagged back to give word if some unusually fleet rascal had spurted from the pack to nail him. They were almost at his heels when he slipped over the nearest hilltop and entered the broken country. It was toothed with boulders and slashed across with low rock ridges.
The Ghost took the very roughest way because the greyhounds were now so close that he knew they would follow him blindly, for they were running blind-eyed, slavering with the lust to kill, furious with the scent of the game which a greyhound catches only when he is very close up.
Straight through the heart of the roughest of that rough stretch The Ghost led them, and the result was that the sprinting pace broke the hearts of most of them. By the time they reached the far side and the smoother going again, two thirds of the hounds were falling back, or running with labored gaits, their heads jerking up and down, a sure sign that they were nearly spent. They might get their wind and come back for the kill, but at present they were done out.
There remained, however, a thick-grouped set of half a dozen in all, chosen dogs weeded from the rest. The Ghost tried them out by a breathless burst of running for half a mile and then canted his head a little and observed them. The result was that the average speed of the remaining group was sensibly diminished, and, going up the slope beyond, The Ghost increased his gait. Beyond this hill the roughest sort of country began, where the men and the horses would have to make wide detours to follow the chase, and where even the dogs would have a bad time following him. The chase, he felt, was as good as ended as soon as he got across the narrow valley beyond and entered the thick timber.
So he shot over the top of the hill at full speed, breathing deep to make his lungs clean for the last strong spurt of racingand below him, streaming into the upper end of the valley, he saw five horsemen and a round dozen choice wolfhounds. He was cut off from the rough country and certain safety!
Chapter III
Man-Tricks
He slackened his gait. The wind had fallen so that he could hear the gasping of the spent greyhounds far behind him, but the wind held strong enough to bring the telltale scent of man-kept dog, and to bring the crowning horror of the man-scent itself out and up from the valley. As though his eyes alone did not tell him enough!
It was a man-trick - typically a man-trick - and he grinned with rage as he looked down at them. He knew at once what they had done. Guessing that he intended to detour through the heavy going to kill off the greyhounds before he cut in at the rough country where he would be comparatively impossible to follow, the leader of the hunt had detached part of his men and dogs to cut straight across for this valley and block it when the lobo turned.
Now they were waiting there for him, rested, fresh, full of running, and ready to turn him south across the rolling hills where they would have every advantage, and where, by teamwork of the trained packs, they might finally wear him down.
The Ghost shook his loose-wrinkled pelt and snarled as he loped across the brow of the hill. A shout tingled up from the base of the valley; the hounds were cutting straight down the bottom of it to head him off even from the rolling country - to surround him.