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THE SONG OF THE WOLF
by
FRANK MAYER
Copyright, 1910, by
Moffat, Yard and Company
New York
Published, April, 1910
CONTENTS
I. A RIFT IN THE LUTE
II. THE MARK OF THE BEAST
III. AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING
IV. IN THE MIDST OF ALARUMS
V. "HER HEART WON'T BE BROKE NONE"
VI. THE MAN AND THE WOMAN
VII. BELSHAZZAR
VIII. THE PASSING OF A CLOUD
IX. IN PART PAYMENT
X. THAT WHICH IS CAESAR'S
XI. FRENZIED FINANCE
XII. NOT STRICTLY ACCORDING TO PROGRAM
XIII. A LAUGH IN THE NIGHT
XIV. A FAIR FIELD AND NO FAVORS
XV. GREAT EXPECTATIONS
XVI. THE SONG OF THE WOLF
XVII. THE FROWNING GODDESS SMILES
XVIII. IN THE HOUSE OF POTIPHAR
XIX. MUTUAL ASSISTANCE
XX. A PASSAGE AT ARMS
XXI. THE WIDENING CHASM
XXII. THE RENUNCIATION
XXIII. BELSHAZZAR COMES BACK TO STAY
"When a man gets through playin' thu goat he gin'rally feels some
obligated to act the sheep foh a spell, so's to even up thu deal."
Red McVey
THE SONG OF THE WOLF
CHAPTER I
A RIFT IN THE LUTE
Everything else was in harmony. If the sky turquoise was a shade or two
paler than the prescribed robin's-egg, it blended perfectly with the
unpronounced greens of the sprouting grass and the uncertain olive of
the budding sagebrush. On the crest of the distant divide a silver-gray
wreath of aspens lay against the tawny cheek of the mountain as daintily
as an otter-fur collarette on the neck of a girl. Even the darker girdle
of spruce and pine, lower down, lost its harsh individuality, merging
insensibly into the faded umbers, sepias, lavenders and tans of the
graduating background where the rocks and buckbrush fell away to the
open slopes beneath.
On the vega below, the alkaline scars, as yet uncalcined by the sun's
fires into glaring chalkiness, gave no offense in their moist
neutrality, and the coyote slinking dejectedly among the deserted
prairie-dog mounds was, in his ash-colored surtout, as inconspicuous as
the long wan shadows cast by the weak spring sun. In the hollow of the
foothill's arm lay a little lake, fed by a brook born in heights so
remote that its purl was deduced rather than heard, and over all lay
the soft glow of the fading twilight, accentuated by the subtle incense
of the young year's breath.
It was a symphony of tender half-tone in minor key, one of these
mystical, ethereal, God-painted Corots of the great West whose
enchantment outlives life itself, calling with an insistence which will
not be denied until the souls of its hearing yearn for its bondage again
and return to the rack of the cow-range, the torments of the desert, the
chain of the eternal hills.
The only discord was in the heart and speech of the man who swore
savagely at his over-ridden horse stumbling among the loose bowlders of
the half-effaced trail. The anathema and succeeding spur thrust were
alike cruel and undeserved, for the faithful beast had borne his rider
bravely throughout a long and weary day's work, and despite the
favorable temperature of the mild spring day, his chest was foam-flecked
and sweat-crusted and his gaunt flanks heaved pitiably. And yet there
was nothing particularly vicious in the face of the cowpuncher glaring
so disconsolately over the tender vista. It was a bit thin-lipped and
there was more than a suggestion of merciless hardness in the deep lines
about the mouth, but the blue-gray eyes were calm and steady and there
was a sturdy independence in the out-thrust of his prominent chin and
the bird-like poise of his head which, bespoke either a clear conscience
or the lethal indifference of an indomitable will. Bull-throated, yet
withal of a lean, rangy, muscular conformation, his every movement
betokened virility and force; an experienced frontiersman would have
glanced approvingly at his well-ordered equipment, the wicked blue Colts
in its Mexican holster sagging at just the proper angle for quick work
on a cartridge belt filled to the last becket, the pliable reata hanging
in unkinked coils with chafed honda evincing long usage. There was a
significant absence of fringe and ornament about this man, yet the
excellence of materials was noticeable, from the selected buckskin of
his gauntlets to the tempered steel of his rowels and expensive Stetson
hat; and women usually looked twice at the broad-chested, flat-thighed,
bronze-faced fellow who returned their stares with disconcerting
assurance. It was his habit to look all things squarely in the face, and
before his level gaze women blushed unaccountably and men smiled,
squirmed or turned quietly away as the circumstances warranted. Little
children alone took liberties with him, and for these the bold eyes
would soften wondrously and a rare gentleness creep into his usually
crisp and terse speech.
The panorama stretched out before him as he topped the ridge, halting
his horse instinctively to reconnoitre the ground, was one that would
ordinarily have appealed to him, for despite his prosaic avocation, his
was the true artistic temperament; but to-day he looked with weary
unappreciation bordering upon disgust, and mumbled profanely under his
heavy mustache.
The coyote sneaking stealthily among the short sagebrush caught his eye
and he laughed mirthlessly. "Poor devil! Rustling like the rest of us to
keep his miserable body and soul together--and making a damn poor job of
it. It would be a mercy--" and he half drew the heavy revolver from its
sheath. Just then the wolf sprang fiercely at a clump of grass and a
plaintive squeal rose upon the air. Then the coyote trotted out into the
open with a rabbit hanging limply from its jaws and made off across the
vega in a swinging gallop instead of devouring its prey instantly, as
one would have naturally anticipated, considering its gaunt and starved
appearance.
Under the tan of the cowboy's face a darker flush spread redly.
"A bunch of starving pups in the arroyo yonder, and I would have
wantonly killed her. God! what a brute I am."
For a space he sat in silent self-abasement; then as his horse champed
impatiently on the bit, he tightened the rein and rode slowly down to
the little lake.
At its edge he dismounted, and after removing the bridle so that his
horse could drink and graze more comfortably, threw himself at full
length upon the short grass. The well-trained broncho would not stray
far, and both needed rest. The coyote was still in his thoughts, but his
mood had changed. "After all," he meditated, "she got that rabbit
unexpectedly when she sure needed it worst--and she won out by staying
with the game. Maybe my turn will come, too, if I don't get buffaloed
and stampede. Was it Seneca or Lucretius--no, Havard--who said that
perseverance is a virtue
'that plucks success
Even from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger.'
Well, in this case I'll be virtuous from force of necessity. But how
long, oh, Lord, how long?"
From which it might be inferred that this particular cowboy had some
time or other drank from springs Pierian as well as alkaline. Just now
it was hard to say which was most bitter in his mouth.
He shifted restlessly to his elbow and built a cigarette; through its
thin blue mist he waded retrospectively in the stream of memory. Rapidly
in review passed his boyhood days in the far East, his college career
with its vast ambitions and roseate dreams, his migration to the
cloud-kissed Rockies where he had suffered the undoing of all his
mawkish illusions. An idealist of the most refined type, he writhed even
now at the merciless rape of all his virginal conceptions by that
unsympathetic iconoclast Practicality, that ironical cynic who laughs
our adolescent theories to scorn and desecrates the holiest of our
dream-woven holies. All his finespun hopes had been ruthlessly rent by
the hand of reality. Contact with humanity in its primeval phase had
worn his unusually refined sensibilities to the quick and the reaction
was as unhealthy as it was inevitable. From enthusiastic optimism to
hopeless pessimism is only a short step for exaggerated natures like
his, and there were few things that this man now held sacred--and none
that he held holy. Even life itself, and particularly that of other men,
he held in contempt, and with the usual disastrous consequences. There
were few, even in this land of reckless men, who cared to arouse the
slumbering devil under the quiet demeanor of this gray-eyed range rider
who killed first and argued afterward.
From the pinnacle of a great faith in his kind he had been hurled
headlong to the depths of unbelief and suspicion. He had seen Loyalty
mocked and betrayed; starving Intelligence bought with a price by
crime-opulent Ignorance; naked Virtue crouched shivering in the shadow
of exalted, ermined Vice; the sots and trulls of bestial Sensuality
deified and worshiped in the public places. He had seen the harlotry of
Society set above the sacrament of Maternity, the butchery of embryonic
souls so that their lawful heritage might be squandered in the
prostitution of Love to Vanity and Indolence. He had witnessed the
sacrifice of every civic virtue to the Moloch of Greed and Graft, the
abasement of all human motives to the idol of Self.
The fiercely-drawn cigarette burned his lips and he threw it away with a
snarling curse, his whole sentience revolted with the odor of social
corruption, his soul sickening in resentment of his own undeserved
failure. He had been honest and industrious, energetic, leal and true,
conscientious in all things--and to what end?
That he might look every man fearlessly in the face by day and go
ahungered to a scant bed at night. He had labored servilely in the
vineyard of the Lord and been paid by the contemptuously-thrown lees of
the vintage. Thrice had he lost employment because he had indignantly
refused to be a party to mendacity and rascality, the recollection of
his rather strenuous resentment in the last instance wrinkling his face
with a grim, unlovely smile; it had made an outlaw of him. But the
other was an object of compassion ever since. Another Ishmael, he had
turned naturally to the clean, free independence of the life outdoors,
drifting ultimately to the cow range. His natural ability and
adaptiveness soon brought him recognition in a sphere where men are
weighed in the scale of their actual worth as men, not as puppets in the
pantomime of conventionality. It paid him bread and he bedded where and
how he chose. In the first flush of independence he felt a certain
content, but his was too intense a nature--he was cursed with too much
knowledge and ambition--and the encysted leaven began to work.
In one thing he was fortunate. The hard outdoor work had hammered the
native iron of the man into finely-tempered steel and he was thewed and
sinewed like a cougar. He had learned self-reliance, which is a good
thing, and self-containment, which is a better. Best of all, he was
beginning to place a value on himself; all he needed was incentive. And
such men make their own opportunities.
The fast waning light warned him that it was time to take the trail
again. It was quite dark when he swung himself into the saddle with ten
miles of rough country to negotiate, and the trail's difficulties in
nowise lessened his mental discontent. For the first time he was
resenting morosely the necessity of preparing his own supper at the end
of his journey, and he was nowise gentle in the roping of a fresh mount
for the morrow's work on his arrival at the outlying camp, where he ate
perfunctorily and without gust; despite his harsh fatigue a great
restlessness sent him wide, with pipe in mouth, into the stellar
splendor that beatifies every clear Colorado night.
The thin, pure air was surcharged with ozone and delicately perfumed
with the aroma of the lemonia crushing beneath his feet. A big white
moon topped the far-off crests of the Continental Divide, silvering the
cottonwood fringe of the creek bank and transmuting the dull lead of the
sagebrush waste into molten silver and liquid pearl. High up the aspens
were a shimmering sea of aquamarine, and the snow fields at the foot of
the moon were scintillating masses of opal; the cloudless sky above was
a shield of steel-blue sapphire emblazoned with diamond stars. The
sanctity of the profound solitude was as yet unbroken by the inevitable
wolf wails; the tender benediction of a supernal beauty was over all;
and everywhere, save in the hot heart of Ken Douglass, was a great
Peace.
Unseeing the glory spread about him, he tramped far into the night, torn
by conflicting emotions, none of which could he analyze. He was
conscious only of a great Desire whose inchoateness maddened and
bewildered him, and he stumbled blindly through the mazes of his
uncertainty, falling over the truth at every turn but never once
realizing it. Vainly he evoked all the logic and reason at his command,
but the analogies of a by no means inconsiderable experience failed him
utterly. It was ordinarily characteristic of him to arrive at
conclusions with a bound where he himself was the object under
consideration, but to-night his powers of concentration were strangely
deficient and he chafed as much under the sense of indecision as he did
over his inability to diagnose his ailment.
"What's the matter of me, anyhow?" he ruminated, lapsing whimsically
into the range vernacular which he seldom affected. "Here I've been
riding circle on myself all day and haven't rounded in even a sick
maverick. I reckon I'm losing my grip on myself--and that's a bad sign.
Guess I'm herding by my lonely too much and it's getting on my nerves.
Might as well be a sheep-herd as hold down this job; then I'd have a dog
to talk to at any rate. Well, wolfing it like this won't do my
complexion any good; guess I'll go and get my beauty sleep!" But the
gray eyes held an unusual languor when he rode out in the morning, and
the look of worriment increased with every strenuous hour; all
throughout the night had he lain wide-eyed, and the experience was a
disturbing one. Never before had sleep been denied him; even on that
memorable night when, in a difference of opinion as to whose horse was
entitled to precedence at the public watering trough in Tin Cup, he had
roped and dragged nigh to death the foreman of the C Bar outfit, he had
audaciously crept into the bunkhouse of the outraged fellows who were
vengefully seeking him in every place but the right one, and after
calmly appropriating the personal blankets of his victim, had slept the
sleep of vindicated virtue. That this necessitated his shooting his way
out, on his discovery by the astonished outfit the next morning, in
nowise affected the soundness of his slumbers; sleep was imperative to
this hard-working young man, and the incident had gone far towards the
establishment of his standing on the range. He had watered his horses
unchallenged and slept undisturbedly ever since.
Therefore his last night's experience was anomalous to a degree and one
to be reckoned with seriously. In Douglass's perplexity he decided to
extend the day's pascar to Tin Cup and get decently drunk; convinced
that conviviality was the one essential lacking to his happiness. He
dismounted at the ford of the creek on, the outskirts of the village and
looked solicitously after the condition of his revolver. Not that he
deliberately, contemplated "shooting up" the town; but there was always
the possibility of the C Bar gang coming into town after their mail and
it was only proper and wise to provide against contingencies. And Ken's
favorite maxim was, "Never overlook no bets."