The Song of the Wolf. Frank Mayer

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