The Voice of the Pack

ll. He got down on to the gravel of the station yard, and out on the gray street pavement he heard the clang of a trolley car. Trolley cars didn't fit into his picture of the West at all. Many aut

nd how one can step out of a modern country club to hear the coyotes wailing on the hills. He really had no right to feel disappointed. He had simply come to the real West-that bewildering land in which To-morrow and Yesterday sit right next to each other, with no To-day between. The cities, often built on the

they range all the way from lavender to a pale sort of blue for which no name has ever been invented. Just before dark, when, as all mountaineers know, the sky turns green, the forests are simply curious, dusky shadows. The pines are always dark. Perhaps, after all, they are simply the symbol of the wilderness,-eternal, silent, and in a vague way rather dark and sad. No one who really knows the mountains can completely get away fro

messages, and their hearer, without knowing why, knows that he has heard the truth. Silas Lennox was not dressed in a way that would distinguish him. It was true that he wore a flannel shirt, riding trousers, and rather heavy, leathern boots. But sportsmen all over the face of the earth wear th

is,-two fine black points in a rather hard gray iris. They didn't look past him, or at either side of him, or at his chin or his forehead. They looked right at his own eyes. The skin around

lans to go to some great city once in a lifetime and dreams about it of nights, but rather often the Death that is every one's next-door neighbor in the wilderness comes in and cheats him out of the trip. Few of the breed had ever come to Gitcheapolis. Yet all his life, Dan felt, he had known this straight, gray-eyed mountain breed even better than he knew the boys that went to college with him. At th

ng's grandson, aren't you?" he asked. "I'm Silas Lennox, who used to know him when

his grandfather. But this hope was shot to earth at once. His telegram had explained about his malady, and of course the mountaineer had picked him out simply because he ha

as far as mortal man could tame it-had a skin that was rather the color of old leather. The face of this young man was wholly without tinge of color. Because of the thick glasses, Lennox could not see the young man's eyes; but he didn't think it likely they were at all like the eyes with which the elder Failing saw his w

iry automobile that waited beside the st

n't afford to drive horses any more where a car will go. This time of year I can make it fairly easy-only abou

starting up the long, curve

about the frontiersman that had been Dan's grandfather. A mountain man does not use profuse adjectives. He talks very simpl

bly be kind enough to deplore his death. He never need fear any actual expressions of scorn. Lennox had a natural refinement that forbade it. Dan never knew a more intense desire than that to make good in the eyes of these mountain men. Far back, they had been his own people; and all men know that the upholding of a family's name and honor has been one of the greatest impulses for good conduct and great deeds since the beginnings of civilization. But Dan pushed the

f a powerful, tireless physique; of moral and physical strength that was seemingly without limit. Then, as the foothills began to give way to the higher ridges, and the shadow of th

e is a feeling of insignificance, a sensation that is particularly insistent in the winter snows. No man can feel like talking very loudly when he is the only living creature within endless miles. The trees, towering and old, seem to ignore him as a being too unimportant to notice. And besides, the silence of the forest itsel

one and one, perfect, dark-limbed, and only the carpet of their needles lay between. The change was evidenced in the streams, too. They seemingly had not suffered from the drought that had sucked up the valley streams. They were faster,

than to furnish food for the larger forest creatures. They give a note of sociability, of companionship, that is sorely needed to dull the edge of the utter, stark lonesomene

ne with wild animals; and it is the same instinct that makes a domestic cow almost invariably cross the road in front of a motorist. And it also explains why certain cowardly animals, such as the wolf or cougar, will sometimes seemingly without a cause on earth, make a desperate charge on a hunter. They thin

was almost kin to exultation, over the constant stir and movement of the forest life. He didn't know that a bird dog feels the same when it gets to the uplands where the quai

tain stream, Lennox looked at him with sudden curiosity. "You ar

it was a hopeful tone, too. He

s in the presence of some great wonder. "Good H

told him joyously, "you may occasionall

f the wilderness. It was not that he had inherited any of the traits of his grandfather. It was absurd to hope that he had. And he would soon get t

ow myself, how I would feel about it. I

n't mea

he coughed instead. "But I couldn't if I wa

amazement. "You mean that you're a-a goner

weaker than I was when the doctor said I had six months. Those four will take me all through the fall and t

pointed to what looked to Dan like a brown streak that melted into the thick brush. "That was a deer," he said slowly. "Just a glimpse, but your grandfather could have got hi

o be gropin

Mr. Lennox?

heir own kind to die. That deer we just saw-he's your people, and so are all these ranchers that grub their lives out of the forests-they are your people too. The bears and the elk, and even the porcupines. Though you likely wo

t dimly to Dan's perceptions. The words were strange, yet Dan intuitively understood. It was as if a prodigal son had returned at last, and although his birth