Chapter 4

[3]Copyright, 1922, by International Magazine Co. (Cosmopolitan Magazine)

JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

There must be some sentiment attached to an author's choice of what he considers his "best story" if he can reach any such decision at all. Frankly, I cannot, and so I have chosen the story which has always lived closest to my heart. It is really not a short story complete in itself but is one of ten stories, or instalments, which make up my novel "Kazan."

This individual story I like best because in it I bid good-by to Kazan and Gray Wolf, two dogs whose memories will live with me long after the memories of many of my two-legged friends have faded away. Kazan died up near Fort MacPherson, a little this side of the Arctic Circle; Gray Wolf near Norway House. Gray Wolf was a dog with an undoubted strain of wolf in her, and was blinded when very young. She did not belong to me, but was owned by a man who claimed to be a relative of the Bishop of the Yukon. Kazan was mine. He was a one-man dog. It was his friendship for blind Gray Wolf, when we were on one of our adventures near Norway House, that led to the writing of my novel "Kazan."

Kazan, the quarter-strain wolf-dog, lay at the end of a fine steel chain, watching little Professor McGill mixing a pail of tallow and bran. A dozen yards from him lay a big Dane, his huge jaws drooling in anticipation of the unusual feast which McGill was preparing. The Dane showed signs of pleasure when McGill approached him with a quart of the mixture, and as he gulped it down the little man with the cold blue eyes and the gray-blond hair stroked his back without fear. But his attitude was different when he turned to Kazan. His movements were filled with caution, and yet his eyes and his lips were smiling, and he gave the wolf-dog no evidence of his fear, if it could be called fear.

The little professor was up in the north country for the Smithsonian Institution and had spent a third of his life among dogs. He loved them, and understood them. He had written a number of magazine articles on dog intellect which had attracted wide attention among naturalists. It was largely because he loved dogs, and understood them more than most men, that he had bought Kazan and the big Dane on a night when Sandy McTrigger and his partner had tried to get them to fight to the death in a Red Gold City saloon. The refusal of the two splendid beasts to kill each other for the pleasure of the three hundred men who had assembled to witness the fight delighted the professor. He had already planned a paper on the incident.

Sandy had told McGill the story of Kazan's capture, and of his wild mate, Gray Wolf, and the professor had asked him a thousand questions. But each day Kazan puzzled him more. No amount of kindness on his part could bring a responsive gleam in Kazan's eyes. Not once did Kazan signify a willingness to become friends. And yet he did not snarl at McGill, or snap at his hands when they came within reach. Quite frequently Sandy McTrigger came over to the little cabin where McGill was staying, and three times Kazan leaped at the end of his chain to get at him, and the wolf-dog's white fangs gleamed as long as Sandy was in sight. Alone with McGill he became quiet.

Something told Kazan that McGill had come as a friend that night when he and the big Dane stood shoulder to shoulder in the cage that had been built for a slaughter pen. Away down in his brute heart he held McGill apart from other men. He had no desire to harm him. He tolerated him, but showed none of the growing affection of the huge Dane. It was this fact that puzzled McGill. He had never before known a dog that he could not make love him.

Today he placed the tallow and bran before Kazan, and the smile in his face gave way to a look of perplexity. Kazan's lips had drawn suddenly back. A fierce snarl rolled deep in his throat. The hair along his spine stood up. His muscles twitched. Instinctively the professor turned. Sandy McTrigger had come up quietly behind him. His brutal face wore a grin as he looked at Kazan.

"It's a fool job—tryin' to make friends with him," he said. Then he added, with a sudden interested gleam in his eyes, "When you startin'?"

"With the first frost," replied McGill. "It ought to come soon. I'm going to join Sergeant Conroy and his party at Fond du Lac by the first of October."

"And you're going up to Fond du Lac—alone?" queried Sandy. "Why don't you take a man?"

The little professor laughed softly.

"Why?" he asked. "I've been through the Athabasca waterways a dozen times, and know the trail as well as I know Broadway. Besides, I like to be alone. And the work isn't too hard, with the currents all flowing to the north and east."

Sandy was looking at the Dane, with his back to McGill. An exultant gleam shot for an instant into his eyes.

"You're taking the dogs?"

"Yes."

Sandy lighted his pipe, and spoke like one strangely curious.

"Must cost a heap to take these trips o' yourn, don't it?"

"My last cost about seven thousand dollars. This will cost five," said McGill.

"Gawd!" breathed Sandy. "An' you carry all that along with you! Ain't you afraid—something might happen——"

The little professor was looking the other way now. The carelessness in his face and manner changed. His blue eyes grew a shade darker. A hard smile which Sandy did not see hovered about his lips for an instant. Then he turned, laughing.

"I'm a very light sleeper," he said. "A footstep at night rouses me. Even a man's breathing awakens me, when I make up my mind that I must be on guard. And, besides,"—he drew from his pocket a blue-steel automatic pistol,—"I know how to usethis." He pointed to a knot in the wall of the cabin. "Observe," he said. Five times he fired, at twenty paces, and when Sandy went up to look at the knot he gave a gasp. There was one jagged hole where the knot had been.

"Pretty good," he grinned; "most men couldn't do better'n that with a rifle."

When Sandy left, McGill followed him with a suspicious gleam in his eyes, and a curious smile on his lips. Then he turned to Kazan.

"Guess you've got him figgered out about right, old man," he laughed softly. "I don't blame you very much for wanting to get him by the throat. Perhaps——"

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, and went into the cabin. Kazan dropped his head between his paws, and lay still, with wide-open eyes. It was early in September, and each night brought now the first chill breaths of autumn. Kazan watched the last glow of the sun as it faded out of the southern skies. Darkness always followed swiftly after that, and with darkness came more fiercely his wild longing for freedom. For Kazan was remembering.

Ever since that terrible day when the brute prospector, Sandy McTrigger, had first beaten him sick and then chained him in the wake of his canoe till every splendid muscle in his bruised body seemed bursting with pain and he was choked with water, Kazan had never for one minute ceased to remember and hate and mourn. He hated Sandy McTrigger with all the hatred of a dog and a wolf, and he mourned for his blind mate, Gray Wolf, with as much intensity as he hated. But with all the longing and sorrow in him he could not know how much more awful their separation was for his faithful mate.

Never had the terror and loneliness of blindness fallen upon Gray Wolf as in the days that followed Kazan's capture. For hours after the shot, she had crouched in the bush back from the river, waiting for him to come to her. She had faith that he would come, as he had come a thousand times before, and she lay close on her belly, sniffing the air, and whining when it brought no scent of her mate. Day and night were alike an endless chaos of darkness to her now, but she knew when the sun went down. She sensed the first deepening shadows of evening, and she knew that the stars were out, and that the river lay in moonlight. It was a night to roam, and after a time she had moved restlessly about in a small circle on the plain, and sent out her first inquiring call for Kazan.

Up from the river came the pungent odor of smoke, and instinctively she knew that it was this smoke, and the nearness of men, that was keeping Kazan from her. But she went no nearer than that, first circle made by her padded feet. Blindness had taught her to wait. Since the day of the battle on the Sun Rock, when the lynx had destroyed her eyes, Kazan had never failed her. Three times she called for him in the early night. Then she made herself a nest under a Banksian shrub, and waited until dawn.

Just as she knew when night blotted out the last glow of the sun, so without seeing she knew when day came. Not until she felt the warmth of the sun on her back did her anxiety overcome her caution. Slowly she moved toward the river, sniffing the air, and whining. There was no longer the smell of smoke in the air, and she could not catch the scent of man. She followed her own trail back to the sand bar, and in the fringe of thick bush overhanging the white shore of the stream she stopped and listened.

After a little she scrambled down and went straight to the spot where she and Kazan were drinking when Sandy's shot came. And there her nose struck the sand still wet and thick with Kazan's blood. She sniffed the trail of his body to the edge of the stream, where Sandy had dragged him to the canoe. And then she came upon one of the two clubs that Sandy had used to beat wounded Kazan into submission. It was covered with blood and hair, and all at once Gray Wolf lay back on her haunches and turned her blind face to the sky, and there rose from her throat a cry for Kazan that drifted for miles on the wings of the south wind. Never had Gray Wolf given quite that cry before. It was not the "call" that comes with moonlit nights, and neither was it the hunt cry, nor the she-wolf's yearning for matehood. It carried with it the lament of death. And after that one cry Gray Wolf slunk back to the fringe of bush over the river, and lay with her face turned to the stream.

A strange terror fell upon her. She had grown accustomed to darkness, but never before had she beenalonein that darkness. Always there had been the guardianship of Kazan's presence. She heard the clucking sound of a spruce hen in the bush a few yards away, and now that sound came to her as if from out of another world. A ground-mouse rustled through the grass close to her forepaws, and she snapped at it—and closed her teeth on a rock. The muscles of her shoulders twitched tremulously, and she shivered as if stricken by intense cold. She was terrified by the darkness that shut out the world from her, and she pawed at her closed eyes, as if she might open them to light.

Early in the afternoon, she wandered back on the plain. It was different. It frightened her, and soon she returned to the beach, and snuggled down under the tree where Kazan had lain. She was not so frightened here. The smell of Kazan was strong about her. For an hour she lay motionless, with her head resting on the club clotted with his hair and blood. Night found her still there. And when the moon and stars came out she crawled back into the pit in the white sand that Kazan's body had made under the tree.

With dawn she went down to the edge of the stream to drink. She could not see that the day was almost as dark as night, and that the gray-black sky was a chaos of slumbering storm. But she could smell the presence of it in the thick air, and couldfeelthe forked flashes of lightning that rolled up with the dense pall from the south and west. The distant rumbling of thunder grew louder, and she huddled herself again under the tree. For hours the storm crashed over her, and the rain fell in a deluge. When it had finished, she slunk out from her shelter, like a thing beaten. Vainly she sought for one last scent of Kazan. The club was washed clean. Again the sand was white where Kazan's blood had reddened it. Even under the tree there was no sign of him left.

Until now only the terror of being alone in the pit of darkness that enveloped her had oppressed Gray Wolf. With afternoon came hunger. It was this hunger that drew her from the sandbar, and she wandered back into the plain. A dozen times she scented game, and each time it evaded her. Even a ground-mouse that she cornered under a root escaped her fangs.

That night she slept again where Kazan had lain, and three times she called for him without answer. But still through the day that followed, and the day that followed that, blind Gray Wolf clung to the narrow rim of white sand. On the fourth day her hunger reached a point where she gnawed the bark from willow bushes. It was on this day that she made a discovery. She was drinking, when her sensitive nose touched something in the water's edge that was smooth, and bore a faint fleshy odor. It was one of the big northern river clams. She pawed it ashore, sniffing at the hard shell. Then she crunched it between her teeth. She had never tasted sweeter meat than that which she found inside, and she began hunting for other clams. She found many of them, and ate until she was no longer hungry.

For three days more Gray Wolf remained on the bar. And then, one night the Call came to her. It set her quivering with a strange, new excitement—something that may have been a new hope—and in the moonlight she trotted nervously up and down the shining strip of sand, facing now the north, and now the south, and then the east and the west—her head flung up, listening, as if in the soft wind of the night she was trying to locate the whispering lure of a wonderful voice. And whatever it was that came to her, came from out of the south and east. Off there—across the barren, far beyond the outer edge of the northern timber line—was home. And off there, in her brute way, she reasoned that she must find Kazan.

The Call did not come from their old windfall home in the swamp. It came from beyond that, and in a flashing vision there rose through her blindness a picture of the towering Sun Rock, of the winding trail that led to it, and the cabin on the plain where the man and the woman and the baby lived. It was there that blindness had come to her. It was there that day had ended, and eternal night had begun. And it was there that she had given birth to her first-born. Nature had registered these things so that they could never be wiped out of her memory.

And to that Call she responded, leaving the river and its food behind her—straight out into the face of darkness and starvation, no longer fearing death or the emptiness of the world she could not see; for ahead of her, two hundred miles away, she could see the Sun Rock, the winding trail, the nest of her first-born between the two big rocks—and Kazan!

And sixty miles farther north Kazan, night after night, gnawed at his steel chain. Night after night he had watched the stars, and the moon, and had listened for Gray Wolf's call, while the big Dane lay sleeping. Tonight it was colder than usual, and the keen tang of the wind that came fresh from the west stirred him strangely. It set his blood afire with what the Indians call the Frost Hunger. Lethargic summer was gone and the sharp-winded days and nights of hunting were at hand. He wanted to leap out into freedom and run until he was exhausted, with Gray Wolf at his side. He knew that Gray Wolf was off there—where the stars hung low in the clear sky—and that she was waiting.

All that night he was restless—more restless than he had been at any time before. Once, in the far distance, he heard a cry that he thought was the cry of Gray Wolf, and his answer roused McGill from deep sleep. It was dawn, and the little professor dressed himself and came out of the cabin. With satisfaction he noted the exhilarating snap in the air. He wet his fingers and held them above his head, chuckling when he found the wind had swung into the north. He went to Kazan, and talked to him. Among other things he said: "This'll put the black flies to sleep, Kazan. A day or two more of it and we'll start."

Five days later McGill led first the Dane, and then Kazan, to a packed canoe. Sandy McTrigger saw them off, and Kazan watched for a chance to leap at him. Sandy kept his distance, and McGill watched the two with a thought that set the blood running swiftly behind the mask of his careless smile. They had slipped a mile downstream when he leaned over and laid a fearless hand on Kazan's head. Something in the touch of that hand, and in the professor's voice, kept Kazan from a desire to snap at him. He tolerated the friendship with expressionless eyes and a motionless body.

"I was beginning to fear I wouldn't have much sleep, old boy," chuckled McGill ambiguously, "but I guess I can take a nap now and then with you along!"

For three days the journey continued without mishap along the shore of Lake Athabasca. On the fourth night McGill pitched his tent in a clump of Banksian pine a hundred yards back from the water. All that day the wind had come steadily from behind them, and for at least a half of the day the professor had been watching Kazan closely. From the west there had now and then come a scent that stirred Kazan uneasily. Since noon he had sniffed that wind. Twice McGill had heard him growling deep in his throat, and once, when the scent had come stronger than usual, he had bared his fangs, and the bristles stood up along his spine.

For an hour after striking camp the professor did not build a lire, but sat looking up the shore of the lake through his hunting glass. It was dusk when he returned to where he had put up his tent and chained the dogs. For a few moments he stood unobserved, looking at the wolf-dog. Kazan was still uneasy. He layfacingthe west. McGill made note of this, for the big Dane lay behind Kazan—to the east.

Behind a rock McGill built a very small fire, and prepared supper. After this he went into the tent, and when he came out he carried a blanket under his arm. He chuckled as he stood for a moment over Kazan.

"We're not going to sleep in there tonight, old boy," he said. "I don't like what you've found in the west wind." He laughed and buried himself in a clump of stunted Banksians thirty paces from the tent. Here he rolled himself in his blanket, and went to sleep.

It was a quiet, starlit night, and hours afterward Kazan dropped his nose between his forepaws and drowsed. It was the snap of a twig that roused him. The sound did not awaken the sluggish Dane, but instantly Kazan's head was alert, his keen nostrils sniffing the air. What he had smelled all day was heavy about him now.

Slowly, from out of the Banksians behind the tent, there came a figure. It was not that of the professor. It approached cautiously, with lowered head and hunched shoulders, and the starlight revealed the murderous face of Sandy McTrigger. Kazan crouched low. He laid his head flat between his forepaws. His long fangs gleamed. But he made no sound that betrayed his concealment under a thick Banksian shrub. Step by step Sandy approached, and at last he reached the flap of the tent. He did not carry a club or a whip in his hand now. In the place of either of those was the glitter of steel. At the door to the tent he paused, and peered in, his back to Kazan.

Silently, swiftly—the wolf now, in every movement—Kazan came to his feet. He forgot the chain that held him. Ten feet away stood the enemy he hated above all others he had ever known. Every ounce of strength in his splendid body gathered itself for the spring. And then he leaped. This time the chain did not pull him back, almost neck-broken. Age and the elements had weakened the leather collar he had worn since the days of his slavery in the traces, and it gave way with a snap. Sandy turned, and in a second leap Kazan's fangs sank into the flesh of his arm. With a startled cry the man fell, and as they rolled over on the ground the big Dane's deep voice rolled out in thunderous alarm.

In the fall Kazan's hold was broken. In an instant he was on his feet, ready for another attack. And then the change came. He wasfree.The collar was gone from his neck. The forest, the stars, the whispering wind were all about him.Herewere men, and off there was—Gray Wolf! His ears dropped, and he turned swiftly, and slipped like a shadow back into the glorious freedom of his world.

A hundred yards away something stopped him for an instant. It was not the big Dane's voice, but the sharpcrack—crack—crackof the little professor's automatic. And above that sound there rose the voice of Sandy McTrigger in a weird and terrible cry.

Mile after mile Kazan went on. For a time he was oppressed by the shivering note of death that had come to him in Sandy McTrigger's cry, and he slipped through the Banksians like a shadow, his ears flattened, his tail trailing, his hind quarters betraying that curious slinking quality of the wolf and dog stealing away from danger. Then he came out upon a plain, and the stillness, the billion stars in the clear vault of the sky, and the keen air that carried with it a breath of the Arctic barrens brought him alert and questing. He faced in the direction of the wind. Somewhere off there, far to the south and west, was Gray Wolf. For the first time in many weeks he sat back on his haunches and gave the deep and vibrant call that echoed weirdly for miles about him. Back in the Banksians the big Dane heard it, and whined. From over the still body of Sandy McTrigger the little professor looked up with a white, tense face, and listened for a second cry.

But to that first call instinct told Kazan that there would be no answer, and now he struck out swiftly, galloping mile after mile, as a dog follows the trail of its master home. He did not turn back to the lake, nor was his direction toward Red Gold City. As straight as he might have followed a road blazed by the hand of man, he cut across the forty miles of plain and swamp and forest and rocky ridge that lay between him and the McFarlane. All that night he did not call again for Gray Wolf. With him, reasoning was a process brought about by habit—by precedent, and as Gray Wolf had waited for him many times before, he believed that she would be waiting for him now somewhere near the sandbar.

By dawn he had reached the river, within three miles of the sandbar. Scarcely was the sun up when he stood on the white strip of sand where he and Gray Wolf had come down to drink. Expectantly and confidently he looked about him for Gray Wolf, whining softly and wagging his tail. He began to search for her scent, but rains had washed even her footprints from the clean sand. All that day he searched for her along the river and out on the plain. Again and again he sat back on his haunches and sent out his mating cry to her.

And slowly, as he did these things, nature was working in him that miracle of the wild which the Crees have named the "spirit call." As it had worked in Gray Wolf, so now it stirred the blood of Kazan. With the going of the sun, and the sweeping about him of shadowy night, he turned more and more to the south and east. His whole world was made up of the trails over which he had hunted. That world, in his comprehension of it, ran from the McFarlane in a narrow trail through the forest and over the plains to the little valley from which the beavers had driven them. If Gray Wolf was not here—she was there, and tirelessly he resumed his quest of her.

Not until the stars were fading out of the sky again, and gray day was giving place to night, did exhaustion and hunger stop him. He killed a rabbit, and for hours after he had feasted, he lay dose to his kill, and slept. Then he went on.

The fourth night he came to the little valley between the two ridges, and under the stars, more brilliant now in the chill clearness of the early autumn nights, he followed the creek down into their old swamp home. It was broad day when he reached the edge of the great beaver pond that now completely surrounded the windfall under which Gray Wolf's second-born had come into the world. Broken Tooth and the other beavers had wrought a big change in what had once been his home and Gray Wolf's, and for many minutes Kazan stood silent and motionless at the edge of the pond, sniffing the air heavy with the unpleasant odor of the usurpers.

Until now his spirit had remained unbroken. Footsore, with thinned sides and gaunt head, he circled slowly through the swamp. All that day he searched. And his crest lay flat now, and there was a hunted look in the droop of his shoulders and in the shifting look in his eyes. Gray Wolf was gone. Slowly nature was impinging that fact upon him. She had passed out of his world and out of his life, and he was filled with a loneliness and a grief so great that the forest seemed strange, and the stillness of the wild a thing that now oppressed and frightened him.

Once more the dog in him was mastering the wolf. With Gray Wolf he had possessed the world of freedom. Without her, that world was so big and strange and empty that it appalled him.

That night he slunk under a log. Deep in the night he grieved in his slumber, like a child. And day after day, and night after night, Kazan remained a slinking creature of the big swamp, mourning for the one creature that had brought him out of chaos into light, who had filled his world for him, and who, in going from him, had taken from this world even the things that Gray Wolf had lost in her blindness.

In the golden glow of the autumn sun there one day came up the stream overlooked by the Sun Rock a man, a woman, and a child. Almost two years had passed since Joan, the girl-wife, had left these regions with her trapper husband for a taste of that distant world which is known as Civilization. All her life, except the years she had passed at a Mission school over at Fort Churchill, she had lived in the forests—a wild flower of nature as truly as the velvetybakneeshflowers among the rocks. And civilization had done for her what it had done for many another wild flower transplanted from the depths of the wilderness. She did not look as she did in the days when she was Kazan's mistress, and when the wolf-dog's loyalty was divided between Gray Wolf, on the Sun Rock, and Joan, in the cabin half a mile away. Her cheeks were thin. Her blue eyes had lost their luster. She coughed, and when she coughed the man looked at her with love and fear in his eyes.

But now, slowly, the man had begun to see the transformation, and on the day their canoe pointed up the stream and into the wonderful valley that had been their home before the call of the distant city came to them, he noted the flush gathering once more in her cheeks, the fuller redness of her lips, and the gathering glow of happiness and content in her eyes. He laughed softly as he saw these things, and he blessed the forests.

"You are happy again, Joan," he said joyously. "The doctors were right. You are a part of the forests."

"Yes, I am happy," she whispered, and suddenly there came a little thrill into her voice, and she pointed to a white finger of sand running out into the stream. "Do you remember—years and years ago, it seems—that Kazan left us here? She was on the sand over there, calling to him. Do you remember?" There came a little tremble to her mouth. "I wonder—where they—have gone."

The cabin was as they had left it. Only the crimsonbakneeshhad grown up about it, and shrubs and tall grass had sprung up near its walls. Once more it took on life, and day by day the color came deeper into Joan's cheeks, and her voice was filled with its old wild sweetness of song. Joan's husband cleared the trails over his old trap-lines, and Joan and the little Joan, who romped and talked now, transformed the cabin intohome.One night the man returned to the cabin late, and when he came in there was a glow of excitement in Joan's blue eyes.

"Did you hear it?" she asked. "Did you hear—the call?"

He nodded, stroking her soft hair.

"I was a mile back in the creek swamp," he said. "I heard it!"

Joan's hands clutched his arms.

"It wasn't Kazan," she said. "I would recognize his voice. But it seemed to me it was like the other—the call that came that morning from the sandbar, his mate's."

The man was thinking. Joan's fingers tightened. She was breathing a little quickly.

"Will you promise me this?" she asked. "Will you promise me that you will never hunt or trap for wolves?"

"I had thought of that," he replied. "I thought of it—after I heard the call. Yes, I will promise."

Joan's arms stole up about his neck.

"We loved Kazan," she whispered. "And you might kill him—or her."

Suddenly she stopped. Both listened. The door was a little ajar, and to them there came again the wailing mate-call of the wolf. Joan ran to the door. Her husband followed. Together they stood silent, and with tense breath Joan pointed over the starlit plain.

"Listen! Listen!" she commanded. "It's her cry,and it came from the Sun Rock!"

She ran out into the night, forgetting that the man was close behind her now, forgetting that little Joan was alone in her bed. And to them, from miles and miles across the plain, there came a wailing cry in answer—a cry that seemed a part of the wind, and that thrilled Joan until her breath broke in a strange sob.

Farther out on the plain she went, and then stopped, with the golden glow of the autumn moon and the stars shimmering in her hair and eyes. It was many minutes before the cry came again, and then it was so near that Joan put her hands to her mouth, and her cry rang out over the plain as of old:

"Kazan! Kazan! Kazan!"

At the top of the Sun Rock, Gray Wolf—gaunt and thinned by starvation—heard the woman's cry, and the call that was in her throat died away in a whine. And to the north a swiftly moving shadow stopped for a moment, and stood like a thing of rock under the starlight. It was Kazan. A strange fire leaped through his body. Every fiber of his brute understanding was afire with the knowledge that here was home. It was here, long ago, that he had lived, and loved, and fought—and all at once the dreams that had grown faded and indistinct in his memory came back to him as real, living things. For, coming to him faintly over the plain,he heard Joan's voice!

In the starlight Joan stood, tense and white, when from out of the pale mists of the moon-glow he came to her, cringing on his belly, panting and wind-run, and with a strange whining note in his throat. To Joan, Kazan was more than mere dog. Next to her husband and baby she loved him. There passed through her mind a day when he had saved her and the baby from the wolves—and again the scene of that other day when he had leaped upon the giant husky that was at the throat of little Joan. . . . As her arms hugged Kazan's great shaggy head up to her, the man heard the whining, gasping joy of the beast.

And then there came once more across the plain Gray Wolf's mate-seeking cry of grief and of loneliness. Swiftly, as though struck by a lash, Kazan was on his feet. In another instant he was gone.

"Nowdo you believe?" cried Joan pantingly. "Nowdo you believe in the God of my world—the God I have lived with, the God that gives souls to the wild things, the God that—that has brought—us all—together—once more—home!"

His arms closed gently about her.

"I believe, my Joan," he whispered. Afterward they sat in the starlight in front of the cabin. But they did not hear again that lonely cry from the Sun Rock. Joan and her husband understood. "He'll visit us again tomorrow," the man said at last. "Come, Joan, let us go to bed." Together they entered the cabin. And that night, side by side, Kazan and Gray Wolf hunted again on the moonlit plain.

MEREDITH NICHOLSON

I ALWAYS find myself uncomfortable in the company of those who delight in literary shop-talk. Nothing I have ever heard or read on the subject of writing has seemed to me of any value to a practitioner of the art in so far as methods, hours of work and such matters are concerned. One writes or one doesn't, and that seems to me the end on't. In the domain of style there is, of course, a valuable and fascinating literature, but the ability to write English prose of beauty and power pertains to the higher branches of the craft.

The choice and use of a subject is a thing apart. Here we enter a no-man's land "where all is possible and all unknown." Pretending to no special knowledge of this matter, I will, however, acknowledge myself a firm believer in the operation of subconscious processes that assist in the development of ideas. Once an idea takes root in the mind and has a fertile germ in it, it immediately begins to grow. And as the plant matures it thrusts its way through the crust teasingly from time to time, until finally it stands up in full bloom in the conscious mind. It is obviously difficult for anyone engaged in the creative arts to take himself as a subject for psychological analysis. For the mind's operation is a mystery. The origin of ideas belongs in the realm of the unfathomable. If it were not for arousing the ire of trained psychologists, there are a good many things that I could suggest from my own experience that hint of forces at work in all of us that lure us to a twilight borderland beyond which nothing is quite real but all is touched with mystery.

Nothing is more interesting than the manner in which the inevitable form in which a thing should be written is instantly evident when the idea itself—the device—becomes clear and definite. When I was a newspaper reporter and had got my facts on some assignment, I found myself visualizing the story as it would appear in print, even to the first sentence and the arrangement of paragraphs, on my way back to the office. There is, beyond question, a journalistic sense that enables one instantaneously to appraise material and determine its treatment. I have written almost everything from five-line news items, newspaper editorial, verse, history, essays and short stories to novels of various kinds, and I have always found that first instinctive sense of value and form a pretty safe guide.

When a short-story idea strikes me I draw a line like the flight of a rocket across a piece of paper and write across it a few words indicating the chief incidents of the story. The back of an envelope suffices for this; I never make elaborate notes even for a novel, trusting to the merry little imps in the subconscious cellar to keep me supplied with material. And they are wilful little devils, who are likely to go on a strike at times; but as nothing can be done to stimulate their efforts, it's the wiser plan to try to forget what it is you want to fashion and mold until, some day when you are watching a ball game or hearing a symphony or doing something else utterly unrelated to the particular idea that has tormented you, the whole thing stands there before your eyes quite as unexpectedly as though a magician had waved his wand and wrought a miracle you can't explain—and need not.

"The Third Man" struck me one day in a hotel room where, beside the telephone, was a tablet on which some scribbling of the last guest remained—a curious geometric cal figure roughly outlined all over the sheet. I had often noticed the habit men have—women seem less addicted to it—of marking with a pencil while the mind is engaged with something wholly alien. As I reflected upon this I found not only that I myself drew symbols or scrawled words when preoccupied, but that I constantly repeated the same signs and words. It occurred to me that a man might leave incriminating testimony by such idle pencilings. The idea having interested me for an hour, I forgot all about it until one day the whole story of "The Third Man" rose out of the subcellar and demanded to be written.

I employed in this story a character I have used frequently in short stories—a banker with an adventurous, quixotic strain and a sincere interest in helping the underdog. The idea of giving a dinner and placing at every plate a tablet and pencil and (no one being in the secret) waiting to see whether a certain man, never suspected of a murder, would not from habit draw a certain figure which the host had found on a scrap of paper at the scene of the crime, gives an opportunity for that suspensive interest which is essential to a mystery tale.

I may add that I never have found a device for a story, long or short, when I was consciously seeking it. Others no doubt have a very different experience, and they are luckier than those of us who are obliged to wait for the subconscious imps to throw up the trapdoor and disclose something. There are well-known instances of writers dreaming a plot, but only once have I been so favored. The thing looked quite splendid while I slept, but it dissolved so quickly at the moment of waking that I was unable to piece it together.

It may be of interest to the student of such matters that practically every idea that I have ever developed came to me at some place which I always identify with it. And further, when this has happened on the street or in some room of a house, I never revisit the place without an odd feeling—a curious, disturbing uneasiness. There is a street corner in my home town that I avoid, for there, I remember distinctly, the device for a story occurred to me. The story was, I may say, one of the most successful I ever wrote, and yet by some freakish and inexplicable association of ideas I don't like to pass that corner! I should add that neither the corner nor anything pertaining to it figured in the story or was in any way related to it.

So it will readily be seen that I am unlikely to be of service to students or beginners, for in very plain terms I must admit that I do not know how I do things. It is because the whole business is so enveloped in mystery that I enjoy writing and try to keep myself in a receptive state for those happy surprises, without which I should quickly find myself without material and seeking other occupation.

When Webster G. Burgess asked ten of his cronies to dine with him at the University Club on a night in January they assumed that the president of the White River National had been indulging in another adventure which he wished to tell them about.

In spite of their constant predictions that if he didn't stop hiding crooks in his house and playing tricks on the Police Department he would ultimately find himself in jail, Mr. Burgess continued to find amusement in frequent dallyings with gentlemen of the underworld. In a town of approximately three hundred thousand people a banker is expected to go to church on Sundays and otherwise conduct himself as a decent, orderly, and law-abiding citizen, but the president of the White River National did not see things in that light. As a member of the Board of Directors of the Released Prisoners' Aid Society he was always ready with the excuse that his heart was deeply moved by the misfortunes of those who keep to the dark side of the street, and that sincere philanthropy covered all his sins in their behalf.

When his friends met at the club and found Governor Eastman one of the dinner party, they resented the presence of that dignitary as likely to impose restraints upon Burgess, who, for all his jauntiness, was not wholly without discretion. But the governor was a good fellow, as they all knew, and a story-teller of wide reputation. Moreover, he was taking his job seriously, and, being practical men, they liked this about him. It was said that no governor since Civil War times had spent so many hours at his desk or had shown the same zeal and capacity for gathering information at first hand touching all departments of the State government. Eastman, as the country knows, is an independent character, and it was this quality, which he had shown first as a prosecuting attorney, that had attracted attention and landed him in the seat of the Hoosier governors.

"I suppose," remarked Kemp as they sat down, "that these tablets are scattered around the table so we can make notes of the clever things that will be said here tonight. It's a good idea and gives me a chance to steal some of your stories, governor."

A scratch pad with pencil attached had been placed at each plate, and the diners spent several minutes in chaffing Burgess as to the purpose of this unusual table decoration.

"I guess," said Goring, "that Web is going to ask us to write limericks for a prize and that the governor is here to judge the contest. Indoor winter sports don't appeal to me; I pass."

"I'm going to write notes to the House Committee on mine," said Fanning; "the food in this club is not what it used to be, and it's about time somebody kicked."

"As I've frequently told you," remarked Burgess, smiling upon them from the head of the table, "you fellows have no imagination. You'd never guess what those tablets are for, and maybe I'll never tell you."

"Nothing is so innocent as a piece of white paper," said the governor, eyeing his tablet. "We'd better be careful not to jot down anything that might fly up and hit us afterward. For all we know, it may be a scheme to get our signatures for Burgess to stick on notes without relief from valuation or appraisement laws. It's about time for another Bohemian oats swindle, and our friend Burgess may expect to work us for the price of the dinner."

"Web's bound to go to jail some day," remarked Ramsay, the surgeon, "and he'd better do it while you're in office, governor. You may not know that he's hand in glove with all the criminals in the country: he quit poker so he could give all his time to playing with crooks."

"The warden of the penitentiary has warned me against him," replied the governor easily. "Burgess has a man at the gate to meet convicts as they emerge, and all the really bad ones are sent down here for Burgess to put up at this club."

"I never did that but once," Burgess protested, "and that was only because my mother-in-law was visiting me and I was afraid she wouldn't stand for a burglar as a fellow guest. My wife's got used to 'em. But the joke of putting that chap up here at the club isn't on me, but on Ramsay and Colton. They had luncheon with him one day and thanked me afterward for introducing them to so interesting a man. I told them he was a manufacturer from St. Louis, and they swallowed it whole. Pettit was the name, but he has string of aliases as long as this table, and there's not a rogues' gallery in the country where he isn't indexed. You remember, Colton, he talked a good deal of his travels, and he could do so honestly, as he'd cracked safes all the way from Boston to Seattle."

Ramsay and Colton protested that this could not be so; that the man they had luncheon with was a shoe manufacturer and had talked of his business as only an expert could.

The governor and Burgess exchanged glances, and both laughed.

"He knew the shoe business all right enough," said Burgess, "for he learned it in the penitentiary and proved so efficient that they made him foreman of the shop!"

"I suppose," said Kemp, "that you've got another crook coming to take that vacant chair. You'd better tell us about him so we won't commit any social errors."

At the governor's right there was an empty place, and Burgess remarked carelessly that they were shy a man, but that he would turn up later.

"I've asked Tate, a banker at Lorinsburg, to join us and he'll be along after a while. Any of you know Tate? One of our scouts recently persuaded him to transfer his account to us, and as this is the first time he's been in town since the change I thought it only decent to show him some attention. We're both directors in a company that's trying to develop a tile factory in his town, so you needn't be afraid I'm going to put anything over on you. Tate's attending a meeting tonight from which I am regrettably absent! He promised to be here before we got down to the coffee."

As the dinner progressed the governor was encouraged to tell stories, and acceded good-naturedly by recounting some amusing things that had happened in the course of his official duties.

"But it isn't all so funny," he said gravely after keeping them in a roar for half an hour. "In a State as big as this a good many disagreeable things happen, and people come to me every day with heartbreaking stories. There's nothing that causes me more anxiety than the appeals for pardon; if the pardoning power were taken away from me, I'd be a much happier man. The Board of Pardons winnows out the cases, but even at that there's enough to keep me uncomfortable. It isn't the pleasantest feeling in the world that as you go to bed at night somebody may be suffering punishment unjustly, and that it's up to you to find it out. When a woman comes in backed by a child or two and cries all over your office about her husband who's doing time and tells you he wasn't guilty, it doesn't cheer you much; not by a jugful! Wives, mothers, and sisters: the wives shed more tears, the sisters put up the best argument, but the mothers give you more sleepless nights."

"If it were up to me," commented Burgess, "I'm afraid I'd turn 'em all out!"

"You would," chorused the table derisively, "and when you'd emptied the penitentiaries you'd burn 'em down!"

"Of course there's bound to be cases of flagrant injustice," suggested Kemp. "And the feelings of a man who is locked up for a crime he never committed must be horrible. We hear now and then of such cases and it always shakes my faith in the law."

"The law does the best it can," replied the governor a little defensively, "but, as you say, mistakes do occur. The old saying that murder will out is no good; we can all remember cases where the truth was never known. Mistakes occur constantly, and it's the fear of not rectifying them that's making a nervous wreck of me. I have in my pocket now a blank pardon that I meant to sign before I left my office, but I couldn't quite bring myself to the point. The Pardon Board has made the recommendation, not on the grounds of injustice—more, I'm afraid, out of sympathy than anything else—and we have to be careful of our sympathies in these matters. And here again there's a wife to reckon with. She's been at my office nearly every day for a year, and she's gone to my wife repeatedly to enlist her support. And it's largely through Mrs. Eastman's insistence that I've spent many weeks studying the case. It's a murder: what appeared to be a heartless, cold-blooded assassination. And some of you may recall it—the Avery case, seven years ago, in Salem County."

Half the men had never heard of it and the others recalled it only vaguely.

"It was an interesting case," Burgess remarked, wishing to draw the governor out. "George Avery was a man of some importance down there and stood high in the community. He owned a quarry almost eleven miles from Torrenceville and maintained a bungalow on the quarry land where he used to entertain his friends with quail-hunting and perhaps now and then with a poker party. He killed a man named Reynolds who was his guest. As I remember, there seemed to be no great mystery about it, and Avery's defense was a mere disavowal and a brilliant flourish of character witnesses."

"For all anybody ever knew, it was a plain case, as Burgess says," the governor began. "Avery and Reynolds were business acquaintances and Avery had invited Reynolds down there to discuss the merging of their quarry interests. Reynolds was found dead a little way from the bungalow by some of the quarry laborers. He had been beaten on the head with a club in the most barbarous fashion. Reynolds's overcoat was torn off and the buttons ripped from his waistcoat, pointing to a fierce struggle before his assailant got him down and pounded the life out of him. The purpose was clearly not robbery, as Reynolds had a considerable sum of money on his person that was left untouched. When the men who found the body went to rouse Avery he collapsed when told that Reynolds was dead. In fact, he lay in a stupor for a week, and they could get nothing out of him. Tracks? No; it was a cold December night and the ground was frozen.

"Reynolds had meant to take a midnight train for Chicago, and Avery had wired for special orders to stop at the quarry station, to save Reynolds the trouble of driving into Torrenceville. One might have supposed that Avery would accompany his visitor to the station, particularly as it was not a regular stop for night trains and the way across the fields was a little rough. I've personally been over all the ground. There are many difficult and inexplicable things about the case, the absence of motive being one of them. The State asserted business jealousy and substantiated it to a certain extent, and the fact that Avery had taken the initiative in the matter of combining their quarry interests and might have used undue pressure on Reynolds to force him to the deal to be considered."

The governor lapsed into silence, seemingly lost in reverie. With his right hand he was scribbling idly on the tablet that lay by his plate. The others, having settled themselves comfortably in their chairs, hoping to hear more of the murder, were disappointed when he ceased speaking. Burgess's usual calm, assured air deserted him. He seemed unwontedly restless, and they saw him glance furtively at his watch.

"Please, governor, won't you go on with the story?" pleaded Colton. "You know that nothing that's said at one of Web's parties ever goes out of the room."

"That," laughed the governor, "is probably unfortunate, as most of his stories ought to go to the grand jury. But if I may talk here into the private ear of you gentlemen I will go on a little further. I've got to make up my mind, in the next hour or two about this case, and it may help me to reach a conclusion to think aloud about it."

"You needn't be afraid of us," said Burgess encouragingly. "We've been meeting here—about the same crowd—once a month for five years, and nobody has ever blabbed anything."

"All right; we'll go a bit further. Avery's stubborn silence was a contributing factor in his prompt conviction. A college graduate, a high-strung, nervous man, hard-working and tremendously ambitious; successful, reasonably prosperous, happy in his marriage, and with every reason for living straight: there you have George Avery as I make him out to have been when this calamity befell him. There was just one lapse, one error, in his life, but that didn't figure in the case, and I won't speak of it now. His conduct from the moment of his arrest, a week following the murder, and only after every other possible clue had been exhausted by the local authorities, was that of a man mutely resigned to his fate. I find from the records that he remained at the bungalow in care of a physician, utterly dazed, it seemed, by the thing he had done, until a warrant was issued and he was put in jail. He's been a prisoner ever since, and his silence has been unbroken to this day. His wife assures me that he never, not even to her, said one word about the case more than to declare his innocence. I've seen him at the penitentiary on two occasions, but could get nothing out of him. In fact, I exhausted any ingenuity I may have in attempting to surprise him into some admission that would give me ground for pardoning him, but without learning anything that was not in the State's case. They're using him as a bookkeeper, and he's made a fine record: a model convict. The long confinement has told seriously on his health, which is the burden of his wife's plea for his release, but he wouldn't even discuss that.

"There was no one else at the bungalow on the night of the murder," the governor continued. "It was Avery's habit to get his meals at the house of the quarry superintendent, about five hundred yards away, and the superintendent's wife cared for the bungalow, but the men I've had at work couldn't find anything in that to hang a clue on. You see, gentlemen, after seven years it's not easy to work up a case, but two expert detectives that I employed privately to make some investigations along lines I suggested have been of great assistance. Failing to catch the scent where the trail started, I set them to work backward from a point utterly remote from the scene. It was a guess, and ordinarily it would have failed, but in this case it has brought results that are all but convincing."

The tablets and pencils that had been distributed along the table had not been neglected. The guests, without exception, had been drawing or scribbling; Colton had amused himself by sketching the governor's profile. Burgess seemed not to be giving his undivided attention to the governor's review of the case. He continued to fidget, and his eyes swept the table with veiled amusement. Then he tapped a bell and a waiter appeared.

"Pardon me a moment, governor, till the cigars are passed again."

In his round with the cigar tray the Jap, evidently by prearrangement, collected the tablets and laid them in front of Burgess.

"Changed your mind about the limerick contest, Web?" asked someone.

"Not at all," said Burgess carelessly; "the tablets have fulfilled their purpose. It was only a silly idea of mine anyhow." They noticed, however, that a tablet was left at the still vacant place that awaited the belated guest, and they wondered at this, surmising that Burgess had planned the dinner carefully and that the governor's discussion of the Avery case was by connivance with their host. With a quickening of interest they drew their chairs closer to the table.

"The prosecuting attorney who represented the State in the trial is now a judge of the Circuit Court," the governor resumed when the door closed upon the waiter. "I have had many talks with him about this case. He confesses that there are things about it that still puzzle him. The evidence was purely circumstantial, as I have already indicated; but circumstantial evidence, as Thoreau once remarked, may be very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk! But when two men have spent a day together in the house of one of them, and the other is found dead in a lonely place not far away, and suspicion attaches to no one but the survivor—not even the tramp who usually figures in such speculations—a jury of twelve farmers may be pardoned for taking the State's view of the matter."

"The motive you spoke of, business jealousy, doesn't seem quite adequate unless it could be established that they had quarreled and that there was a clear showing of enmity," suggested Fullerton, the lawyer.

"You are quite right, and the man who prosecuted Avery admits it," the governor answered.

"There may have been a third man in the affair," suggested Ramsay, "and I suppose the cynical must have suggested the usual woman in the case."

"I dare say those possibilities were thrashed out at the time," the governor replied; "but the only woman in this case is Avery's wife, and she and Reynolds had never met. I have found nothing to sustain any suspicion that there was a woman in the case. Avery's ostensible purpose in asking Reynolds to visit him at that out-of-the-way place was merely that they could discuss the combination of their quarry interests privately, and close to Avery's plant. It seems that Avery had undertaken the organization of a big company to take over a number of quarries whose product was similar, and that he wished to confer secretly with Reynolds to secure his sanction to a selling agreement before the others he wanted to get into the combination heard of it. That, of course, is perfectly plausible; I could make a good argument justifying that. Reynolds, like many small capitalists in country towns, had a number of irons in the fire and had done some promoting on his own hook. All the financial genius and all the financial crookedness aren't confined to Wall Street, though I forget that sometimes when I'm on the stump! I'm disposed to think from what I've learned of both of them that Avery wasn't likely to put anything over on Reynolds, who was no child in business matters. And there was nothing to show that Avery had got him down there for any other purpose than to effect a merger of quarry interests for their mutual benefit."

"There probably were papers to substantiate that," suggested Fullerton; "correspondence and that sort of thing."

"Certainly; I have gone into that," the governor replied. "All the papers remain in the office of the prosecuting attorney, and I have examined them carefully. Now, if Avery had been able to throw suspicion on some one else you'd think he'd have done so. And if there had been a third person at the bungalow that night you'd imagine that Avery would have said so; it's not in human nature for one man to take the blame for another's crime, and yet we do hear of such things, and I have read novels and seen plays built upon that idea. But here is Avery with fifteen years more to serve, and, if he's been bearing the burden and suffering the penalty of another's, sin, I must say that he's taking it all in an amazing spirit of self-sacrifice."

"Of course," said Fullerton, "Reynolds may have had an enemy who followed him there and lay in wait for him. Or Avery may have connived at the crime without being really the assailant. That is conceivable."

"We'll change the subject for a moment," said the governor, "and return to our muttons later."

He spoke in a low tone to Burgess, who looked at his watch and answered audibly:

"We have half an hour more."

The governor nodded and, with a whimsical smile, began turning over the tablets.

"These pads were placed before you for a purpose which I will now explain. I apologize, for taking advantage of you, but you will pardon me, I'm sure, when I tell you my reason. I've dipped into psychology lately with a view to learning something of the mind's eccentricities. We all do things constantly without conscious effort, as you know; we perform acts automatically without the slightest idea that we are doing them. At meetings of our State boards I've noticed that nobody ever uses the pads that are always provided except to scribble on. Many people have that habit of scribbling on anything that's handy. Hotel keepers, knowing this, provide pads of paper ostensibly for memoranda that guests may want to make while at the telephone, but really to keep them from defacing the wall. Left alone with pencil and paper, most of us will scribble something or draw meaningless figures.

"Sometimes it's indicative of a deliberate turn of mind; again it's sheer nervousness. After I had discussed this with a well-known psychologist I began watching myself and found that I made a succession of figure eights looped together in a certain way—I've been doing it here!

"And now," he went on with a chuckle, "you gentlemen have been indulging this same propensity as you listened to me. I find on one pad the word Napoleon written twenty times with a lot of flourishes; another has traced a dozen profiles of a man with a bulbous nose: it is the same gentleman, I find, who honored me by drawing me with a triple chin—for which I thank him. And here's what looks like a dog kennel repeated down the sheet. Still another has sketched the American flag all over the page. If the patriotic gentleman who drew the flag will make himself known, I should like to ask him whether he's conscious of having done that before?"

"I'm guilty, governor," Fullerton responded. "I believe it is a habit of mine. I've caught myself doing it scores of times."

"I'm responsible for the man with the fat nose," confessed Colton; "I've been drawing him for years without ever improving my draftsmanship."

"That will do," said the governor, glancing at the door. "We won't take time to speak of the others, though you may be relieved to know that I haven't got any evidence against you. Burgess, please get these works of art out of the room. We'll go back to the Avery case. In going over the papers I found that the prosecuting attorney in his search of the bungalow the morning after the murder found a number of pieces of paper that bore an odd, irregular sort of sketch. I'm going to pass one of them round, but please send it back to me immediately."

He produced a sheet of letter paper that bore traces of hasty crumpling but had been smoothed out again, and held it up. It bore the lithographed name of the Avery Quarry Company. On it was drawn this device:

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