In the golden glow of the autumn sun there one day came up the stream
overlooked by the Sun Rock a man, a woman, and a child. Almost two years
had passed since Joan, the girl-wife, had left these regions with her
trapper husband for a taste of that distant world which is known as
Civilization. All her life, except the years she had passed at a Mission
school over at Fort Churchill, she had lived in the forests--a wild
flower of nature as truly as the velvety _bakneesh_ flowers among the
rocks. And civilization had done for her what it had done for many
another wild flower transplanted from the depths of the wilderness. She
did not look as she did in the days when she was Kazan's mistress, and
when the wolf-dog's loyalty was divided between Gray Wolf, on the Sun
Rock, and Joan, in the cabin half a mile away. Her cheeks were thin. Her
blue eyes had lost their luster. She coughed, and when she coughed the
man looked at her with love and fear in his eyes.
But now, slowly, the man had begun to see the transformation, and on the
day their canoe pointed up the stream and into the wonderful valley that
had been their home before the call of the distant city came to them, he
noted the flush gathering once more in her cheeks, the fuller redness of
her lips, and the gathering glow of happiness and content in her eyes.
He laughed softly as he saw these things, and he blessed the forests.
"You are happy again, Joan," he said joyously. "The doctors were right.
You are a part of the forests."
"Yes, I am happy," she whispered, and suddenly there came a little
thrill into her voice, and she pointed to a white finger of sand running
out into the stream. "Do you remember--years and years ago, it
seems--that Kazan left us here? She was on the sand over there, calling
to him. Do you remember?" There came a little tremble to her mouth. "I
wonder--where they--have gone."
The cabin was as they had left it. Only the crimson _bakneesh_ had grown
up about it, and shrubs and tall grass had sprung up near its walls.
Once more it took on life, and day by day the color came deeper into
Joan's cheeks, and her voice was filled with its old wild sweetness of
song. Joan's husband cleared the trails over his old trap-lines, and
Joan and the little Joan, who romped and talked now, transformed the
cabin into _home._ One night the man returned to the cabin late, and
when he came in there was a glow of excitement in Joan's blue eyes.
"Did you hear it?" she asked. "Did you hear--_the call?_"
He nodded, stroking her soft hair.
"I was a mile back in the creek swamp," he said. "I heard it!"
Joan's hands clutched his arms.
"It wasn't Kazan," she said. "I would recognize his voice. But it seemed
to me it was like the other--the call that came that morning from the
sandbar, his mate's."
The man was thinking. Joan's fingers tightened. She was breathing a
little quickly.
"Will you promise me this?" she asked. "Will you promise me that you
will never hunt or trap for wolves?"
"I had thought of that," he replied. "I thought of it--after I heard the
call. Yes, I will promise."
Joan's arms stole up about his neck.
"We loved Kazan," she whispered. "And you might kill him--or her."
Suddenly she stopped. Both listened. The door was a little ajar, and to
them there came again the wailing mate-call of the wolf. Joan ran to the
door. Her husband followed. Together they stood silent, and with tense
breath Joan pointed over the starlit plain.
"Listen! Listen!" she commanded. "It's her cry, _and it came from the
Sun Rock!_"
She ran out into the night, forgetting that the man was close behind her
now, forgetting that little Joan was alone in her bed. And to them, from
miles and miles across the plain, there came a wailing cry in answer--a
cry that seemed a part of the wind, and that thrilled Joan until her
breath broke in a strange sob.
Farther out on the plain she went, and then stopped, with the golden
glow of the autumn moon and the stars shimmering in her hair and eyes.
It was many minutes before the cry came again, and then it was so near
that Joan put her hands to her mouth, and her cry rang out over the
plain as of old:
"_Kazan! Kazan! Kazan!_"
At the top of the Sun Rock, Gray Wolf--gaunt and thinned by
starvation--heard the woman's cry, and the call that was in her throat
died away in a whine. And to the north a swiftly moving shadow stopped
for a moment, and stood like a thing of rock under the starlight. It was
Kazan. A strange fire leaped through his body. Every fiber of his brute
understanding was afire with the knowledge that here was home. It was
here, long ago, that he had lived, and loved, and fought--and all at
once the dreams that had grown faded and indistinct in his memory came
back to him as real, living things. For, coming to him faintly over the
plain, _he heard Joan's voice!_
In the starlight Joan stood, tense and white, when from out of the pale
mists of the moon-glow he came to her, cringing on his belly, panting
and wind-run, and with a strange whining note in his throat. To Joan,
Kazan was more than mere dog. Next to her husband and baby she loved
him. There passed through her mind a day when he had saved her and the
baby from the wolves--and again the scene of that other day when he had
leaped upon the giant husky that was at the throat of little Joan. . . .
As her arms hugged Kazan's great shaggy head up to her, the man heard
the whining, gasping joy of the beast.
And then there came once more across the plain Gray Wolf's mate-seeking
cry of grief and of loneliness. Swiftly, as though struck by a lash,
Kazan was on his feet. In another instant he was gone.
"_Now_ do you believe?" cried Joan pantingly. "_Now_ do you believe
in the God of my world--the God I have lived with, the God that
gives souls to the wild things, the God that--that has brought--us
all--together--once more--_home!_"
His arms closed gently about her.
"I believe, my Joan," he whispered. Afterward they sat in the starlight
in front of the cabin. But they did not hear again that lonely cry from
the Sun Rock. Joan and her husband understood. "He'll visit us again
tomorrow," the man said at last. "Come, Joan, let us go to bed."
Together they entered the cabin. And that night, side by side, Kazan and
Gray Wolf hunted again on the moonlit plain.
[Footnote 4: _From James Other Curwood's Kazan. Copyright 1914, by
Cosmopolitan Book Corporation. By permission of the publishers._]
[Illustration: MEREDITH NICHOLSON]
_FOREWORD_
_I ALWAYS find myself uncomfortable in the company of those who delight
in literary shop-talk. Nothing I have ever heard or read on the subject
of writing has seemed to me of any value to a practitioner of the art in
so far as methods, hours of work and such matters are concerned. One
writes or one doesn't, and that seems to me the end on't. In the domain
of style there is, of course, a valuable and fascinating literature, but
the ability to write English prose of beauty and power pertains to the
higher branches of the craft._
_The choice and use of a subject is a thing apart. Here we enter a
no-man's land "where all is possible and all unknown." Pretending to no
special knowledge of this matter, I will, however, acknowledge myself a
firm believer in the operation of subconscious processes that assist in
the development of ideas. Once an idea takes root in the mind and has a
fertile germ in it, it immediately begins to grow. And as the plant
matures it thrusts its way through the crust teasingly from time to
time, until finally it stands up in full bloom in the conscious mind. It
is obviously difficult for anyone engaged in the creative arts to take
himself as a subject for psychological analysis. For the mind's
operation is a mystery. The origin of ideas belongs in the realm of the
unfathomable. If it were not for arousing the ire of trained
psychologists, there are a good many things that I could suggest from my
own experience that hint of forces at work in all of us that lure us to
a twilight borderland beyond which nothing is quite real but all is
touched with mystery._
_Nothing is more interesting than the manner in which the inevitable
form in which a thing should be written is instantly evident when the
idea itself--the device--becomes clear and definite. When I was a
newspaper reporter and had got my facts on some assignment, I found
myself visualizing the story as it would appear in print, even to the
first sentence and the arrangement of paragraphs, on my way back to the
office. There is, beyond question, a journalistic sense that enables one
instantaneously to appraise material and determine its treatment. I have
written almost everything from five-line news items, newspaper
editorial, verse, history, essays and short stories to novels of various
kinds, and I have always found that first instinctive sense of value and
form a pretty safe guide._
_When a short-story idea strikes me I draw a line like the flight of a
rocket across a piece of paper and write across it a few words
indicating the chief incidents of the story. The back of an envelope
suffices for this; I never make elaborate notes even for a novel,
trusting to the merry little imps in the subconscious cellar to keep me
supplied with material. And they are wilful little devils, who are
likely to go on a strike at times; but as nothing can be done to
stimulate their efforts, it's the wiser plan to try to forget what it is
you want to fashion and mold until, some day when you are watching a
ball game or hearing a symphony or doing something else utterly
unrelated to the particular idea that has tormented you, the whole thing
stands there before your eyes quite as unexpectedly as though a magician
had waved his wand and wrought a miracle you can't explain--and need
not._
_"The Third Man" struck me one day in a hotel room where, beside the
telephone, was a tablet on which some scribbling of the last guest
remained--a curious geometric cal figure roughly outlined all over the
sheet. I had often noticed the habit men have--women seem less addicted
to it--of marking with a pencil while the mind is engaged with something
wholly alien. As I reflected upon this I found not only that I myself
drew symbols or scrawled words when preoccupied, but that I constantly
repeated the same signs and words. It occurred to me that a man might
leave incriminating testimony by such idle pencilings. The idea having
interested me for an hour, I forgot all about it until one day the whole
story of "The Third Man" rose out of the subcellar and demanded to be
written._
_I employed in this story a character I have used frequently in short
stories--a banker with an adventurous, quixotic strain and a sincere
interest in helping the underdog. The idea of giving a dinner and
placing at every plate a tablet and pencil and (no one being in the
secret) waiting to see whether a certain man, never suspected of a
murder, would not from habit draw a certain figure which the host had
found on a scrap of paper at the scene of the crime, gives an
opportunity for that suspensive interest which is essential to a mystery
tale._
_I may add that I never have found a device for a story, long or short,
when I was consciously seeking it. Others no doubt have a very different
experience, and they are luckier than those of us who are obliged to
wait for the subconscious imps to throw up the trapdoor and disclose
something. There are well-known instances of writers dreaming a plot,
but only once have I been so favored. The thing looked quite splendid
while I slept, but it dissolved so quickly at the moment of waking that
I was unable to piece it together._
_It may be of interest to the student of such matters that practically
every idea that I have ever developed came to me at some place which I
always identify with it. And further, when this has happened on the
street or in some room of a house, I never revisit the place without an
odd feeling--a curious, disturbing uneasiness. There is a street corner
in my home town that I avoid, for there, I remember distinctly, the
device for a story occurred to me. The story was, I may say, one of the
most successful I ever wrote, and yet by some freakish and inexplicable
association of ideas I don't like to pass that corner! I should add that
neither the corner nor anything pertaining to it figured in the story or
was in any way related to it._
_So it will readily be seen that I am unlikely to be of service to
students or beginners, for in very plain terms I must admit that I do
not know how I do things. It is because the whole business is so
enveloped in mystery that I enjoy writing and try to keep myself in a
receptive state for those happy surprises, without which I should
quickly find myself without material and seeking other occupation._
[Illustration]
_The_ THIRD MAN[5]