Never before had he seen a man laugh; never before had he seen that senseless, strange contortion of the face and heard that ringing sound. First he snarled; then he crouched.
Now the laughter rang with redoubled force. At this the trouble waxed great in The Ghost. He wanted to hide his head. He wanted to ask questions. In his big, intelligent eyes a pain of question arose. He stood up on his three legs and suddenly - barked in the face of the man!
It put a sharp period to the laughter. The big man recoiled a step. No wolf since the beginning of time had ever uttered a sound just like this.
“By jingo,” he muttered, “you’ve got a wolf’s head and a wolf’s body and a wolf’s teeth, but you got the heart of a dog and the brain of a dog and the voice of a dog - and - and you are a dog, old fellow!”
Chapter VIII
A Partner’s Code
A flesh wound in a wild animal, so long as the wound is clean, heals with marvelous rapidity; and before many days the wolf was putting his weight on the injured leg once more. There was still a bandage about it; but the other, slighter wounds had been left open for some time; except for the right hind leg, The Ghost was quite recovered.
They had been days strange beyond precedent to him. Every hour his keen nose, his unfailing eyes, his ready ear had been drinking in knowledge. His life had been spent as a wolf; now the dog nature, released, rushed into maturity overnight almost literally. Among other things, the scent of that second man, which had been so fresh in the cabin on his first arrival, was now blurred away to obscurity. It remained keen only around the bunk on the far side of the room, and about certain bits of clothing. The Ghost hated that smell because it was unknown; also, because it was the smell of a man.
His life with Bull Hunter was not teaching him to understand the species. The big man was to him merely the great exception. He had felt the power of Bull Hunter’s hand; he had experienced the wisdom and the cleverness of the big man’s mind. But this learning had taught him that man was truly formidable, and his close-hand knowledge made him dread all the others. Here was the exception, this man of the calm voice and the wise eye. Here was the man who knew how to turn pain into comfort. But had not the wound been, in the first place, dealt by the hand of a man?
It was for this reason, many nights later, that the big animal wakened halfway between dark and dawn, and crouched lower to the floor.
The night was warm, the door was open, and through it blew the scent of horse and man coming over the hill. The Ghost slid a step toward the bunk of the master, but the master slept. He cautiously tried the strength of his chain. It was as powerful as ever. There was nothing for it but to crouch there and wait and endure.
The waiting did not last long. There were noises - creaking of leather, snort of a horse, behind the shack; and then man and horse odors both approached. The horse odor came from something which the man carried; the man odor was that which had been in the cabin ever since The Ghost came there.
He slid back against the wall so that, in case of need, he could use the full length of his chain for the purpose of a leap.
The stranger came softly, making a faint singing sound beneath his breath. The Ghost had often heard Bull Hunter make a similar sound; but the similarity did not make this the less offensive. Yet he waited without a growl.
Presently a sulphur match spurted into a faint blur of blue light, and then a lantern shone. It discovered a little man with hair streaked with gray and a withering, keen-eyed face. He hung the lantern on a nail, and as he did so, The Ghost made his leap. He had calculated well, aiming to drive his long head just above the man’s shoulder and give the full range of his fangs to the soft flesh of the throat.
By one inch he came short of his mark. The chain jerked taut as he shot through the air, his murderous fangs clashed under the chin of the little man. As he fell toward the floor he made a frantic effort to make up for the first failure by settling his teeth in the man’s leg. That would bring him toppling down, and, once down, The Ghost would get at his throat.
But the little man had skipped back with a tingling yell, and the Colt winked in his hand with the speed of his draw. The thundering call of Bull Hunter saved the life of The Ghost by the split part of a second.
“But it’s a wolf!” shouted the stranger.
“It is - no - a dog, Pete. Let me explain!”
“It’s a wolf, and of all the ornery, no-account critters in the world a wolf is the meanest. That one is going to die pronto. D’you think you can turn this shack into a menagerie?”
“Pete, don’t you see he’s chained? Otherwise you’d be a dead one yourself instead of talking about killing.”
The little man rubbed his throat ruefully, still feeling in imagination, the tearing grip of those fangs.
“Besides,” Bull went on, getting up from his bunk, “he’s not a wolf!”
“Look out!” shouted Pete Reeve, whipping out his gun again.
For his gigantic companion was going toward him quite regardless of the fact that in so doing he was placing himself in range of the teeth of The Ghost. The Ghost, indeed, had flung himself in the path of the advancing master and tried to drive him back with one of his most terrible growls.
“Watch out, Bull!” cried Pete Reeve again. “The beast is going to give you his teeth. Jump out of line with my gun, and I’ll blow his brains out.”
“You put up your gun,” commanded Bull Hunter, “I’d rather have you shoot one of my legs off than shoot The Ghost.”
“The Ghost!” breathed Pete Reeve, changing color. “That murdering devil? Is that The Ghost?”
“That’s him,” said Bull.
“He’s crouching for his jump right now, Bull!”
“I dunno what’s got into him,” muttered Bull.
He leaned over, Pete Reeve quaking when he saw his companion bring his face a foot from the snarling head of the wolf.
“What’s wrong, partner?” said Bull to the big animal.
For answer The Ghost whirled, and, facing Pete Reeve, he threw himself back against the legs of Bull Hunter.
Bull Hunter began to laugh. “Don’t you see it?” he cried happily. “The Ghost don’t know you, and he don’t like you. He’s trying to keep me from getting near a dangerous gent like you, Pete.”
“He don’t like me, hey?” grumbled Pete Reeve, gradually adjusting himself to the strange state of affairs which he had found in his shack. “Well, no more do I like him. Butwhat’s it mean, Bull? What you done to him?”
“Treated him like a dog,” said Bull quietly, “and that’s just turned him from a wolf into a dog. Look at that. No wolf, no real, full-blooded wolf, could ever be tamed. They’re wild all the way through. But this Ghost is half dog, Pete. The wolf shows on the outside; he’s all dog on the inside.”
“Half dog? Half snake!” said Pete Reeve, partly in disgust and partly with relief.
He sat down on a box and examined the snarling giant more closely.
“My, but he’s got a devil’s disposition, Bull. And that’s The Ghost? But you’re right, Bull. I know wolves back and forth and sidewise, and there never was a real one that ever run quite as big or as heavy in the shoulders as that, and there never was one near as broad across the eyes; nor with a coat near as silky as that. Besides, he’s clean-skinned. Not the wolf rankness about him.”
Bull nodded and looked admiringly at his companion.
“You sure see things, Pete,” he said. “I never noticed none of those things.”