The Song of the Wolf. Frank Mayer

entrusted to her tender mercies. In his ride over the range he had come upon one of the pitiful little tragedies common to the great Outdoors with its unending struggle of the weak against the strong and merciless. In a little hollow of the foothills its mother, hamstrung by a pair of wolves and exhausted by her gallant fight against the inevitable, was making a last frantic effort to defend her offspring cowering between her feet. The revolver flashed twice vengefully and then a third time mercifully, for the poor doe's condition was hopeless. But of this third shot Douglass said nothing to Miss Carter, simply saying that the doe had succumbed to her injuries. Neither did he deem it advisable to tell her that with the economy and thrift inseparable from plainsmen, he had sent the carcass of the martyred mother to one of his outlying camps to eke out its larder, and so save the otherwise necessary sacrifice of a valuable yearling for camp meat. Nor did he mention the fact that this had occurred quite early in the afternoon, necessitating his "packing" the helpless kid about on his saddle for many weary miles.

      The girl's eyes had filled at his simple recital and she cooed assuringly to the kid, which nestled contentedly in her arms. But something in her eyes and about her lips as he threw the wolf pelts at her feet caused the man to look at her curiously. He had seen that expression once before on the face of the wife of the dead sheepman when some one had told her of the finding of a C Bar rider with a load of buckshot through his heart some weeks after the assassination of her husband. There had been no over-officious zeal displayed by the authorities in their attempts to fix the responsibility of the man's death, despite the fact that the sheepman's son possessed one of the only three shotguns in the county, the deceased being reputedly a "bad man" and notoriously the creature of Matlock. He it was who had assisted in the fleecing of poor Braun, and the general consensus of opinion was that "he only got what was coming to him!" The code of the range is as drastic as it is simple.

      "It's up to you now to mother this goat, Miss Grace," he said whimsically; "I'll send a man in to Tin Cup to-morrow for a gunnysackful of any pap-maker you nominate. We've got to assume the responsibility of him, his mother having come to grief on your demesne. When you are ready to christen him I'll get Red to stand godfather for him—that is, if you have no other preferred sponsor in mind."

      The girl looked up quickly; his tone seemed a bit patronizing and to her mind altogether too familiar. It was an opportune time to inaugurate a new order of things which all day she had been formulating.

      "I shall name him now," she said, icily. "He shall be known as Buffo and you are his sponsor."

      "Buffo—a buffoon!" He laughed a little constrainedly. "Well, I think the name is appropriate. He is a fool and so was his mother before him. Otherwise they'd have never ventured in where naught but angels have any license to tread."

      She bit her lip in chagrin as he lifted his sombrero and rode nonchalantly away. The intended rebuke had recoiled upon her and she was furious at her impotence. Retreating to the kitchen, she somewhat curtly ordered the cook—old Abigail Williams, sister to the postmaster, who in order to preserve the proprieties had been engaged in that capacity—to prepare some nourishment for her charge.

      "We've got to feed the thing," she snapped in a tone strangely variant from her endearing coo of a few minutes before.

      Abbie nodded briskly: "I'll fix up a rag on a bottle of new milk. I've raised 'em before. We bed two on em oncet—Hank ez thet foolish about sich critters."

      "It'll make quite a peart pet," went on the garrulous old body. "An' I s'pose ye'll be fer givin' it sum name? Ourn was Belshazzar an' Sappho. Hank got the buck's name outen a book where it said in slick soundin' poetry as how Belshazzar was king an' Belshazzar waz lord. Thet buck were sure the mos' uppity critter! Nuthin' waz good enuf fer him to sociate with and he herded by hisself mos'ly. He waz allus on thu prod, stompin' aroun' darin' thu other critters to fite. He waz powerful or'nary, that Belshazzar, lordin' it over everybody an' allus huntin' trouble.

      "He waz mean to thu she-goat an' treated her scan'lous! The more she tried to be sociable an' nice the more biggoty he got. She'd go up'n nuzzle 'im an' he'd back off an' look at her scornful and walk away high an' mighty-like on thu tips uv he's toes, jest like he's walkin' on aigs. He waz allus hurtin' uv her feelin's but he didn't seem to care none. An' thu poor critter would tag after 'im an' humor 'im ontil she made me sick! If he got outen her sight she'd blat an' take on suthin' drefful, an' one spring when he jumped thu fence an' went out gallivantin' with thu wild ones fer a spell, she went loco an' actooly cried tears! That's sure right. I seed 'em.

      "That was the spring that Ken Douglass hit this range. One day when she is actin' more foolish than, most he pats her on thu back an' calls her 'Sappho' an' spouts a lot o' hifalutin dago talk an' wipes her eyes with his new silk han'kerchief—really! Tenderfeets air cu'r'ous critters an' Ken acts loco a leetle hisself sumtimes. He takes a heap o' int'rest in her after that, and fetches her apples n' things every time he goes to Tin Cup. An' one day I hears that durn fool say to Sappho as how he wishes he was a goat so that he could teach her to fergit her sorrer. Did ye ever hear anythin' so plumb ridic-lous! Then one day he rides up to thu gate an' says: 'Miss Abbie'—he kin be real polite when he wants—'there's rejoicin' in Lesbos to-day. Belshazzar has come back!' Then he rides off laffin, an' I gits my sunbonnit and hikes down to ther pastur'. Sure 'nough, thar's thet fool buck, an' for the fust time he's nuzzlin' her! An' thet Sappho she waz so foolish happy that I wanted to shake her."

      Grace put the kid down very gently on the floor. "I had thought of a name for him but—"

      A shadow darkened the door. "Hello, Buffo. You getting your first lesson, too?"

      The girl stiffened instantly. "I shall call him that, after all. Thank you, Mr. Douglass, for strengthening my resolution."

      "And as his godfather I, of course, must be Momus," said Ken, nothing abashed, though his eyes glittered. And in a not unpleasant if somewhat strident voice, he mischievously sang:

      "Why gall and wormwood in a throat

       Designed for hydromel!

       Far better be a Buffo goat

       And court the booze bot-tel."

      Her lips curled at what she mistook for an implied threat. With all the hauteur she could summon to her aid, she swept him with her scorn. "Oh! If you feel a really irresistible desire to get drunk," she said, "that is a waste of talent far more appreciable by the critics of the Alcazar; my brother, being unfortunately absent, will be desolated at missing this performance."

      She regretted her temerity even before she had finished. His face seemed to age as she looked. A man putting such indignity upon him, at first view of that face, would have hastily laid his hand on his pistol-butt; the girl placed hers tremblingly above her heart.

      The man's self-restraint was wonderful. For an interminable moment which seemed an age to the frightened women—for even old Abbie was blanched with comprehension and stood with clasped hands and white lips—he was silent. Then in a voice whose calmness made the girl shiver with an undefinable fear, he said:

      "That is twice to-day, Miss Carter, that you have been pleased to insult me. I am most unfortunate in having incurred your disfavor. My intrusion here was to acquaint you with the news that your brother, accompanied by your mother, will be here to-morrow night, a rider having just brought a telegram to that effect. It will take me but a few minutes to gather my effects. I will submit a full account of my stewardship to Mr. Carter to-morrow—from Tin Cup. It will be sufficiently full and comprehensive enough to obviate the necessity of any explanations on your part. Have I your permission to retire?"

      Unable to think coherently she mutely nodded assent. Hat in hand, he turned on the threshold. "The performance will begin at ten, to-morrow night," he said. "Abbie, don't put any wormwood in Buffo's milk. It'll make him uppish."

      But the gods who dispose of man's proposals ordained that Douglass was not to leave the C Bar that night. As he swung out into the moonlight his nostrils were assailed with the pungent fumes of burning hay and a man came running toward him.

      "The stacks have been fired and the ditches cut! Red saw one of them and is on his trail!" Afar in