A thousand generations of breeding ugliness out of Black Forest wolves to make them tractable sheep guardians could not fail to eradicate some of the wolf instincts from the nature of these age-long leaders of rapine. Features, appearance, physique remained the same, but by breeding in the docile and friendly dog types while breeding out the lupine frames of mind came down at last to Queen, who belonged at the Cougar Den Club.
Queen was a tall, narrow, smiling dog, that gave returns in friendly interest to the sportsmen who had organized the Cougar Den away out on the edge of things. There they went to revert for a few days or weeks to the killing of wild beasts enduring the privations of a land where only the trails of animals led through the gaps.
Queen stretched with long dignity before the fireplace. She ate at her own bowl, never deigning to come to the table to beg a bite from the humans. She strolled around the camp, corral, and along the banks of Skipping Creek with her head and tail low, catching game to show that a thousand generations of domestic habits had not cost her any of the wolf skill of her wild ancestry back in the nomadic days of humanity.
She also knew where the trout had their spawning beds of sand. Wading in the shoals she would plunge her open jaws into the water and bring up great flopping fish, some of which she ate. Others she carried nonchalantly into the camp kitchen for the sportsmen, making them envy her for the capture of such monsters, their own fish-rod luck bringing no like rewards.
Queen would go to a near-by knoll and sit on her haunches, surveying the surrounding country. She kept her nose horizontal, however, and no coyote howl ever tempted her to point her jaws up, howling in answer. It remained for a dog-wolf, a gray roamer of perhaps her own age, to come by at last; and between suns she vanished from the sportsmen’s camp. The men knew she had eloped with the wolf. They found the tracks where they romped away together up the dry sand bed of Thirsty Creek.
The wolf was a traveler when he took Queen with him. And she had the gray hide and the magnificent carriage, the swagger and the gait, the silhouette and the voice of a wolf; a thousand humans wise to police or German sheep or Belgian wagon dogs might see her and yet not notice that she was dog instead of wolf.
Of her wild range no one could make even a plausible guess. Whenever in this or that desert terrain, along timber belts, in the lakes or streams regions word was heard of a pair of wandering wolves who played as they ran, and spent their time chasing jackrabbits, hunting squirrels, turning porcupines over to bite them in the bellies, and other familiar pursuits, the sportsmen were glad that Queen had survived the poison bait, the traps, and the far-reaching rifles of hunters eager to slay the savage pair, though they were much more interesting alive than dead.
But when it began to be said that Queen and her mate, who was called President, to fit him in name for so fine a companion, had a superior intelligence, and were too good for trappers and hunters to slay, champion killers of “varmints” made a dead set to stretch the hides of President or Queen just to show how much smarter they were than even a run-wild dog.
The two never occupied the same den twice in succession until Queen went into retirement, to issue presently with a litter of wolf pups. She lived one spring in the Linkum Hills, another in the Goggle timber belt, and a third up at the head of Diamond waters.
She did her duty by the pups. She raised them till they were racing around. Then, with President, she trained the youngsters to hunt game for themselves, taught them according to their ability to learn, and then, when the pups were able to care for themselves, catching cottontails and eating grasshoppers, chewing grass, berries, and nuts for their health and hunger, she would slip away with her mate to run again, untrammeled by matronly cares, during the autumn and winter, through courtship affairs of February and March, again to go into retirement in late spring.
Inklings of her travels and habits were obtained when from time to time she passed through the Cougar Den country.
She had ways of letting the sportsmen at the camp know that she had come there. She was wild and savage, now, and slunk away from men whenever she came upon them. Rifle bullets spraying around her and President as they ran or slipped away, had taught her to shun humanity.
At the same time she still could not quite forego the memories of the sportsman camp ranch, and she would come down among the two or three dogs who had taken—but not filled—her own place in the camp and its traditions. She could nose the dogs without jeopardy, and she would leave a fish on the porch or lug in a big antelope jackrabbit, just for old-times’ sake, and the dogs left her tribute of friendship alone, as though she had warned them of the consequences if they didn’t.
Summer and autumn in that country was beautiful. She would come with President, who hung back in the junipers, probably anxious and angry that she took such chances around a human cabin. She was clever, however, and the pair steered clear of all camps, ranches, trappers’ cabins, and places where men traveled. When they crossed a wagon road they would jump twenty-five feet or so, and high in trajectory. They had no use for humans, and the coming of hunters or fugitives from justice in their temporary locale would see them hurtling for some other place as far away as possible from mankind.
The man who had brought Queen from the kennels when a few months old was Roland Danvers. Danvers was a manufacturer of brass and copper implements, making a large income and a fine name for the excellence of his products. He overdid his job, however, and a day came when the doctors told him he had nerve, lung, and muscular ailments, and he must retire into some far, high place to regret his industry and bemoan the meagerness of his sins.
Danvers had always been so proud of his strength. He had been tireless in his mountain climbings. He had braved the precipices and conquered the fastnesses. Now, when he went to the Cougar Den, scene of his wildcraft triumphs, he had to hobble around and stop for breath.
He caught the sidelong glances of pity, and heard the false note of assurance and delight that he looked so well. His friends knew that he was done for, so he had himself built a cabin away back up in the timber belt, and as he was not wholly helpless, he ordered his guides down to the main camp, and warned them that if they came to him oftener than once a week he would shoot them.
There, in his cabin, he sat for hours in the sunshine, and learned to watch and know the wild life around him, instead of shooting the big game and ignoring the small.
He asked his old friends not to shoot anything in this particular valley, and so the deer and bears came around his cabin, feeding on his middens and licking salt. At night he heard the coyotes howl, and by day he learned the languages of ravens, grouse, and other birds.
A long autumn passed. The people wanted him to come down to the main camp, but he refused. Instead, he ordered up enough supplies to last him all winter, when deep, loose snow might keep the guides from coming in to him as often as they ought to, looking after his safety.
Elk and deer went by him on their way into the winter feeding country. Mountain sheep came down into his valley. Blizzards shut him in. Instead of being alone for a week, he was alone for a month at a time. He set out a prodigal feast there every day for the birds. Although most of the big animals had gone away, mountain sheep came to feed at stacks of hay he had harvested for them on the meadow spreading wide at his feet, lifting into gorgeous granite ranges across the way.
Weak, lonely and yet hopeful, Danvers studied the passers-by through powerful binoculars as well as close at hand. He had never known rest when youth or man, having begun work on leaving the grammar grades, and had carried on steadily. Now that time seemed more precious than ever to him, he relaxed and enjoyed the passing hours as never before. He forgot his ailments. He lived watching the creatures which fed on his bounty. Even a cougar came strolling by his silent figure, stopped to look him in the eyes and then slipped on his way.
There was a scoundrel who lived away up beyond where Danvers had had his retreat built. His real name was unknown to any one. He was suspected of being a fugitive from justice. That he was bad was obvious when one saw the greenish hue of his sullen eyes, watched the twisting of his lips, and noticed how quickly his hand went to his big revolver at a strange sound or at the fall of a shadow on the ground within his view.
At his door had been laid cattle stealing, a murder on the other side of the mountains, and robberies. Now and again a Carcajou detective made the circuit of the settlements and ranches which encircled the Tehawus country, and the man back in the mountains knew about that, attaching to it the significance it deserved.
The detectives knew him, but the region’s population did not know. He went by the name of Skyline Pete, because he was seen so often silhouetted against the horizon along the crests of the bare Alpine heights above the timber stand.
The rumor went around that Roland Danvers had in his peeled log cabin unusual luxuries and supplies of the most tasty kinds. This was near the truth, for the doctors had prescribed for him a great many luxuries to assuage his physical condition. He had a fortune from which he could scarcely spend the income.
His cabin was finely furnished, but he would have been glad to exchange all that he had for the robust health and easy habits of mind of most of those who dwelt far away and in humbler surroundings than his mountain retreat, where at times despair could not fail to mingle its voice with his most determined resolutions. Never before had his courage been so sorely tried.
Drawn into an unnatural shape by his illness, he daily worked against the strains, exercising, reading in the great literature that inspires heroes and records the transition of human despair into supreme confidence, generally he was content. Though winter was upon him, he refused to obey the portents of the migration of the wild life from the high ranges down into the lower belts.
“No,” he shook his head, “leave me here alone. I’ve enough to eat, more than three pounds a day for the length of the winter season, and a ton of grain and a cord of dried meats to hang out for my wild neighbors. There’s plenty of fuel in the woodshed, and lots of oil for my lamps. No! If man can’t help me it may be I’ll find here in these mountains the faith of mind that ’ll overcome my physical ailments.”
“We prob’ly cain’t git to come up more’n once or twicet this winter, if the snow’s loose!” the club superintendent warned him.
“Don’t worry about me, boys,” he replied. “It doesn’t matter what happens. If I go back down now, I’m retreating. I want to stay here and fight it out.”
With forebodings they left him, and well they might dislike to leave a man alone like that in such a remote fastness. Danvers was a good fellow. When he had been a stalwart, like his camp mates, he had been one of the kindliest men in the world. Now he was even finer and gentler.
They left him firearms and ammunition. They made sure of every detail, from fire extinguishers to matches, and from venison jerky to long rows of canned fruit. His own solicitude was that he should have plenty of grain and dried meats, great sticks of beef and mutton kidney fats to be hung out for his bird friends, who like himself would rather enjoy the great mountains, despite the cold, than go down to milder climes.
When two of the guides fought their way into the cabin to spend Christmas with the self-exiled man, they found him about the same. He was putting records through his phonograph when they came up to the cabin in the evening. The timber above the cabin was splitting with the terrific frost, the ground shaking as the solid granite shrank to the shriveling touch. But within, a red fire blazed cheerily in the sitting room, a heating stove insuring the cabin the ample warmth of comfort. At their hail from without the man threw wide the door.
“Why, boys, you’ve come?” he exclaimed.
“Sure thing—Merry Christmas!” they laughed, and unloaded bundles of mail, magazines and remembrances which had been sent to him by his friends.
“Thank you, boys!” he said, brokenly, stirred by the affection which was willing to undertake that tremendous trip through the hard going when every step of the snowshoes on the loose fluff let them down nearly two feet in it.
The visitors remained four days. Danvers visibly cheered up under their presence. He was not sorry to have them leave, but from every word that had come to him he knew that his friends were pulling for him. They wanted him to swing up instead of slide down. They couldn’t afford to lose him. At the same time they knew he was the captain of his own destiny, and that he must find himself there alone or not at all.
New Year’s, January and February were magnificent phenomena in that land. Storms swept the mountains and added snow on the deeps already inundated. There were days so cold that the birds could not face it, and the watcher saw a raven, flying along, suddenly collapse and fall into the snow, frozen to death on the wing.
Wiser birds buried themselves in the loose snow, waiting for the freeze to moderate, and when they came out at last they swarmed in flocks around the great chunks of suet and lean meat which hung in Danvers’s trees and scratched and ate the grain till their crops stuck out like pouters. All of them, when stuffed, came with shining eyes to cock their heads to right or left, staring at the muffled human who attended them in their wants.
He even set out dishes of warm water at which they drank dramatically. Now and then a foolish young one plunged in to take a bath, requiring thawing operations quickly.
Skyline Pete, improvident and a thief, came prowling into the winter hermit’s valley. He had failed to lay in enough food to see him through the winter, and, hungry as a bear, emerging from its hibernating, Skyline Pete took advantage of hard snow and bare streaks to sneak out of his own fastnesses into the domain of Roland Danvers.
He arrived near the cabin after dusk. He circled around it, peering through the windows into the fire-lit comfort of the sitting room, where the recluse sat listening to the music of his records, of which he had brought so many that perhaps some had never yet been played. The skulker went, cat-like, to the porch to look in. Ravenous, he broke off a chunk of jerky, careless whether it was beef or horse, gnawing it, jealous and envious of the birds, who there had all they needed.
Skyline Pete knew well enough that just one word of his own hungry predicament would give him a back load of supplies, and another lot when he should return. Sportsmen were like that, prodigal in their liberality. He knew that Danvers was one of the best fellows in the world. He hated him for the contrast with his own surly and brutal instincts.
There was loot of firearms, of money, probably, and of innumerable trinkets and valuables. He even saw sparkling on the man’s hand the beautiful stone which marked Danvers’s allegiance to his wife and sweetheart, now gone.
The visitor turned raider. He slipped to the door and softly tried it. Of course, no one locked a camp in that remote place! Skyline Pete quietly opened the hewn plank barrier and walked in on his toes, feline in his invasion. The cool draft rolling through the room gave the man who had spent the winter there his first warning of the intrusion.
Roland Danvers straightened from the rack of records to look. He saw the whiskery, long-haired scoundrel, who was patched about with furs and hides, the accumulated results of repugnance to cold water, visible to his looks. Skyline Pete had picked up a club of firewood as he came along the porch from looking at the window. Under his grizzly brows his eyes glowed green in their sunken pits. Perhaps he was demented or a reversion to the cave man era of intelligence and habits. In any event murder was his intention, unmistakably.
Roland Danvers straightened up, his brows lifting with surprise. His soul had been tried by his long vigil alone in that high back land. There had been times when he had bent weakly in dejection before the fireplace on gloomy nights, but courage had never failed him. Weak or strong, he was no quitter. He took a step toward the scamp with such a serene and blue-eyed contempt that Skyline Pete flinched, hesitated and took a slight step backward.
The intruder was a much heavier man than his intended victim. He was armed with a club, revolvers, and a knife in his belt. He had every advantage, it seemed, over the slender gentleman who stood with such a feeling of expectant exultation as he had not felt in twenty years, as though youth itself had returned to bless him with its stalwart joy in the beginning of some great feat.
Angered that he had betrayed his own cowardice, the raider surged forward with a savage, incoherent growl, shrill and high in its timbre, raising his club to beat down the smaller man with famine-inspired blows. Side-stepping, Danvers slipped from under, and the knot struck a dent in the flooring.
Danvers leaped in, driving home a fist blow. Its strength surprised him. He had not known he was that nearly fit.
His physique cleared with his mind. He was largely himself again. He had scant chance against that antagonist, but he took it cheerfully, as though any possibility, however slight, was all he asked.
Much quicker than Skyline Pete, he must, if he would win, keep clear of the club, duck out of the fellow’s bear-like arms, and stay on his feet. If caught and seized, he did not forget the guns and knife whose butts jutted out of the bearskin hair at the fellow’s waist. Cool against increasing and baffled rage, Danvers had some advantage of which he took the full measure.
Mere cornered defense increased to lively hope for a while, but the ursine quickness and the cat-like bounds of the assailant were soon apparent. Time and again Danvers just slipped clear, and one blow grazed his shoulder, numbing it.
Courage hardly availed in that kind of a contest with the odds so much against him. Cornered, Danvers found himself trying to duck under, but he was thwarted. The next instant they were in a clinch and the chortling exultation of the savage man as he wrapped himself around his victim was accompanied by Danvers’s gasping cry—still brave but despairing.
With a glance toward the open door, Danvers gave fleeting thought to the chance of a miracle, and one happened on the instant. He saw a great, fanged, wolf-like creature coming in absolute, instantaneous answer to his shout. The beast was fluffed of fur and white-fanged, light on its paws, with lowered head and tail.
With two short, puppyish springs, as if in play, the animal nipped in, snapping a chunk out of the ham of Skyline Pete. Leaping in again, as the man shrank away screaming at that unexpected anguish, the beast tore open the white flesh of Skyline Pete’s upper arm, which had been bared in the struggle.
And then the rescuer tore in and slashed with faster and more fancy bites and wrenches. Skyline Pete struggled clear of Danvers, trying to seize the wolfish assailant. Then he reached to snatch his revolvers which he seemed to have forgotten or felt he didn’t need in the fight with the man.
Danvers flung himself and balked his attempt to use the firearms. Then Danvers caught up the club from the floor and with a terrific blow smashed the invader’s big hand, while the animal charged in, tearing open the calf of a leg.
Skyline Pete surged toward the doorway. He was tripped by a grab in the heel. He managed to get outdoors and go tumbling and rolling headlong, end over end, down the steep slope in front of the cabin. The rescuer stood in the open, breathing swiftly with tongue out, smiling.
“Queen!” Roland Danvers shouted as the voice of the whipped man died away in the distance, cursing and wrathful in fear and agony.
“Queen! It’s you, Queen!”
She turned with her eyes shining to look at the man who had brought her into this lofty sky-land. She licked in her long tongue, and walked with dignity to him as he dropped on his knees to wrap her in his arms, glad and grateful beyond words.
It seemed to him as though in just these few minutes of terrific struggle his weakness and his hopelessness of ever recovering had both departed. He had fought a good fight, and then a friendliness and a companionship out of the old days had brought him succor in the moment of his great need.
“Queen!” he exclaimed. “Good old girl! What can I do for you!”
As if for answer she strolled along the front veranda and lifting her voice, yelped and uttered a long-drawn howl. From yonder there came an answer in kind, and presently the answering was farther away.
“Tell him to come in, Queen!” the man urged. “Bring him in, old girl! He’s welcome!”
But the wolf mate would not accept that invitation. He lay out in the ridges and back in the timber, that night and in the weeks that followed. Queen took her place by hearth and in the kitchen. She was there when the guides broke through into the big country to the cabin, fearful for what they might find, and delighted when they were welcomed by a man in whose eyes were the full recovery and exuberance of well-being, mind and body.
Toward these other men Queen lifted her nose and lips, and they respected her feelings of aloofness—instantly. Yet presently she let the hair lie down along her back and curtained her fangs again, reassured by the voice and explanation Danvers gave her. She did not know or love them.
Roland Danvers would have gone down to the main camp, but the dog drew back from making the journey even when the way was clear and the avalanches of the spring melt had stopped coiling and growling in smoking devastation down the mountain steeps.
She would not leave the remote cabin, and so Danvers stayed with her. She let him play with her pups when they presently came. She romped with them herself before the cabin, like a wolf bitch before her den, watchful, wild and happy. They grew apace and if she let them feed on the dishes which Danvers prepared for them with fond efforts and varied recipes, she would also go away alone and bring back a jackrabbit or marmot or other wild meat for them to gum with their funny mouthings and their squeaking little yelps.
Later she took the pups for short runs with her, and then Danvers would see her mate, always wild and keeping his distance, go to join and run with them, the plump youngsters bobbing along, while with lithe, swift leaps the parents set the pace. And after a time Danvers would hear them circling back, their voices shrill in eager hunting cries, lifting in the wind like wandering wraiths.
A morning came when the family pack did not return. A day or two later Queen came running by, flirting her tail, yelping and on the romp, looking over her shoulder at the man who stood leaning against a post on the veranda. He knew by her refusal to come within a hundred yards that she had gone wolf again.
She was on her way over her long range, jubilant, happy, and wild, not sorry that a thousand generations of civilization had urged her to show gratitude nor regretting that she had turned a man’s cabin into her spring wolf-den; but now she would be joining her mate for the jeopardies and the delights of feral freedom on her way! And Danvers with joy headed into his own world to resume his old life.
