The Song of the Wolf. Frank Mayer

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."

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

THE MARK OF THE BEAST

       Table of Contents

      As he rode slowly up the little squalid street, seemingly lost in a brown study and gazing abstractedly straight between his horse's ears, he was in reality keenly alive to his surroundings. Not a face or movement escaped him, and his mouth hardened ever so slightly as he noted a couple of C Bar horses tied to the hitching rail before the door of the Alcazar saloon. Dismounting leisurely before the grimy little shack which did combined duty as stationery store and post office, he nodded casually to the crowd of loafers about the entrance; if he noticed significant glances toward the horses tied to the railing across the street, he made no sign. And when the old postmaster quietly volunteered the information, "Matlock is in town," he merely smiled his comprehension and rolled a fresh cigarette. Matlock was the man whom he had so ignominiously dragged at his rope's end a month ago. And Matlock had been indiscreet of speech since.

      At the door he turned and came back with his hand extended to his friend, "I am sure grateful to you for your interest, Hank," he said gravely. "I noticed his horse as I came in. Well, so-long!" and thrusting into his pocket the bundle of mail at which he had scarcely glanced, went out, mounted his horse and rode unconcernedly toward the one hotel which the embryo metropolis boasted.

      Hank Williams scratched his head thoughtfully as he turned again to the task of assorting the afternoon's mail. "Of course he must play his own hand," he ruminated, "an' he'll come mighty nigh to winnin' out. But all the same I'd like to set in the game a deal or two myself. Guess I'll look in at the Alcazar to-night."

      "I ain't got no call to butt in," he continued as he puzzled over an unusually illegible address, "but that Matlock is a treacherous coyote an' there's no tellin' what lowdown play he'll make. I just nacherally have to keep cases to-night." His work finished, the old man proceeded to carefully fill the empty loops of his cartridge belt and there was a grim determination on his handsome hard old face as he spun the cylinder of his ".45" to test its perfect action.

      Up at the hotel an ambuscade was laid into which Douglass walked unwittingly. As his foot reached the first of the three low steps leading up to the rickety veranda, an arm shot around the corner of the house, there was a soft swis-h-h, a chuckle of tense triumph, and the folds of a lasso encircled his throat. Involuntarily his hand leaped to his holster on his hip and the ready gun came flashing half way up. But after a lightning glance at the chubby fist holding the other end of the reata, the twinkle in his eyes accorded but illy with his subsequent plunging and yelling as he sprawled on all fours and bawled like a choking calf.

      Then from around the corner rushed a sturdy little boy of five, gathering up the slack of the rope as he came, followed by a red-cheeked, star-eyed girl of four, who brandished a huge branding iron. Upon the prostrate cowpuncher they precipitated themselves with a yell, the boy deftly throwing a bight of the rope about Ken's feet and drawing up the slack. Then placing one foot on Douglass's neck he laconically announced:

      "Tied! Put the iron to 'im, Yule."

      The little girl thrust the end of the brand against the brawny shoulder now quivering with the suppressed laughter of its owner and made a quaint sizzling noise with her puckered lips. The cowboy emitted an agonized bawl wonderfully like that of a calf in the throes of the red-hot iron's bite and the boy stooped