The Black Wolf Pack

m the nearest human habitation and in a howling wilderness it might be considered anything but pleasant. Yet, strange as it may appear, among the most pleasant and precious memo

the snow-capped mountains of Darlinkel's Park. I made friends with our little neighbors the rock-chuck, whose home was in the base of the cliff back of the spring, and b

onifera cones, which Pete said was the squirrel's dining room. This mound contained at least four good cart-loads of fr

unable to calculate, but the mound was as large as some of the shell heaps made by t

heir beautiful piebald plumage and to take every opportunity to s

mination in the choice of my friends among the forest folk, and he could see no re

taining and I laughed when the "tallow-head" jay swooped down and snatched a tid-bit from Pete's plate just as he was about to eat it, and when t

stle, and whenever I attempted to mimic him he would send back a ringing answer. The charm

by banging on a tin plate meant dough-god and other good things at our camp, and as they came rustling among

over the mountain tops to see what was doing in the park, the birds and chipmunks were quiet, but then

en laughed to see the shadow of a comical little body toboggan down the canvas. Our pocket-knives, compasses an

e afterward married unconscious under an overturned wagon of an emigrant train that had been raided by the Indians, and after nursing her back to health in his mining shack, had married her. With money he had worked from the "diggin's" he had acquired, by grants from the government, the beautiful and expansive mountain park where he had planned to develop a ranch. He never went very far with his project, however, for a raiding party of Indians caught him alone in the mountains and his wife found

t mostly our conversation turned to this old man of the mountains who was such a mystery to everyone, even to

down to supper that evening I could hear the rumbling of distant thunder. I knew it was thunder for, although the fall of avalanches makes the same noise, avalanches choose the noon time to fall whe

. The wind went down and the air seemed to have lost its vivacity and life; it

r came down in such torrents that on account of the spray we could not see thirty feet; then came hailstones as large as hen's eggs. There was some lightning and thunder, but either the splashing of the water drowned the rumbling or the electric

ake!" I

Pete, "hit's

hrough my brain like a hot

" I sh

needn't holler so loud," he answ

big brawny shoulders, and with my face close to his I wh

d that-a-way," admi

"that butte has cav

. I don't reckon I can go to York with you just yet," drawled my comrade in a most provokingly imperturbable manner, as he slowly freed himself from my grasp and made for the camp fire, which being to a great extent sheltered by an overhanging rock, was still smouldering in spi

out prospectors, tramps and Injuns." With that

by mixing tobacco with the inside bark of red willow, which is

way to the gate, to discover that my worst fears were realized; a large section of the cliff had split off the Mesa and slid down into the narrow gateway c

r all there was more to Big Pete's superstitions about the Wild Hunter than I dared to admit, else why should th

lost in thought. When at length I looked up it was to see Big Pete with folded arms silently gazing at the

n. The gate air shut sure 'nuff. Our horses ain't like

l we ever get out? Must we spend

s hyer holler between the mountains all fills with water agin like it was onct be

end. But seriously I think we might move o