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The sight and scent of such a land of plenty almost wholly overcame the drooping spirits of Caleb. "The devil's in the peddling tub-coopering carl!" muttered Caleb, in all the envy of astonishment; "it's a shame to see the like o' them gusting their gabs at sic a rate. But if some o' that gude cheer does not find its way to Wolf's Crag this night, my name is not Caleb Balderstone."
When, with the best of motives, one is on a wolf's errand, it is not nice to hear a hyena say to the shepherd's dog, "I am your friend," and see him contemptuously shoot the eye of a rattlesnake at one's self. The misgiving, however, was but momentary; Meadows respected his own motives and felt his own power; an old Jew's wild fury could not shake his confidence.
Night came down as black as the inside of a wolf's mouth; the air was thick and heavy, difficult to breathe, and surcharged with electricity; and to Drake, intimately acquainted as he was with these seas, it seemed that a typhoon was more than probably brewing.
I shall go mad thinking! Man, what is left to you? A hiding-place like a wolf's lonely silent days, lonely nights with phantoms! Or the trail and the road with their bloody tracks, and then the hard ride, the sleepless, hungry ride to some hole in rocks or brakes. What hellish thing drives me? Why can't I end it all? What is left?
By such sounds as we have described, Little Wolf's meditations were at length disturbed. Indistinctly at first, but soon with unmistakable clearness, she recognized approaching footsteps. Daddy's room overlooked the stable, and in that quarter, a human figure was just visible.
And woe unto any other creature of flesh and blood that dared approach the windfall in these first days of Gray Wolf's motherhood! But peace had spread its wings of sunshine and plenty over the swamp. There were no intruders, unless the noisy whisky-jacks, the big-eyed moose-birds, the chattering bush sparrows, and the wood-mice and ermine could be called such.
Women, after all, he assured himself, were necessary for the perpetuation of the species; and, resolving for the future to view these weakly, big-hipped and slope-shouldered makeshifts of Nature's with larger tolerance, he cocked his hat at a devil-may-carish angle, and strode up the walk, whistling jauntily and having, it must be confessed, to the unprejudiced observer very much the air of a sheep in wolf's clothing.
His nose was that of a Roman centurion bold, cruel as a hawk's beak, strong-nostriled as a wolf's muzzle. His firm white teeth, as they crunched on the cracker suggested, even stronger, the semblance to a carnivorous animal of prey.
He advanced toward the Texan sneeringly. The others gathered about to see what would happen. Something in Kid Wolf's eyes warned them of impending trouble. "What's the idea now?" Modoc snarled, showing his stained teeth like a wolf. "Has this four-flusher been up to his tricks again?" Kid Wolf's voice came cool and calm. "Modoc," he drawled, "what color will the moon be to-night?"
The Queen would have preferred that a religious piece should commence the musical performance, but assented to Wolf's proposal.
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