Raymond S. Spears

“ Nevertheless, he hesitated to say one word to this silent, slender and most efficient rider. The better the worker in the pasture, the quicker he would resent an insult of any kind. Conklin could eat as long as the owner himself and get away with it. But knowing the fitness of things, the cowboy went out first to the corral, caught a gaunt brute known as Many Devils and was giving him the necessary morning gentling when Wool-Head came charging out to saddle his own huge quarter-Belgian draft mare.
“Conklin,” Plack turned to the rider, “find out where them —— wolves live, will ye?” ”

“ I am a Cherokee, and Sequoyah who invented the alphabet of our language was my mother’s great-grandfather.”
“What are you doing here!”
“Cooking for the Bell Brand outfit,” she laughed.
“I beg your pardon,” he said contritely, “I am not minding my own business.”
“True!” she mocked him. “You are an industrious cowboy. You are very dirty, with dust behind your ears. You, too, have been a college graduate. On you was spent the years of a family, giving its best. For some poor devil the job you hold as cowboy would be a great opportunity. ”

“ No one is more faithful when cutting or branding. You earn your wages. But your heart is not in the cattle business. You are never so industrious as when you are sent to ride the rims of the valley to estimate the herds, find the cows and their calves, or report the damage of Lop-Ear’s raids. ”

“ The primitive desolation fascinated Delos Conklin, who loved its difficulties, dangers and beauty. Wool-Head Plack could have paid him no more satisfactory compliment than to send him out to find the wolf den, or dens. Only a good man could hope to discover Lop-Ear’s home country. ”

“ The wolf always runs in sand. It cleans the dirt from his paws. A cat, the little lynx or the great cougar always walks along the foot of a great precipice if she can. We caught plenty of fur and some good hides when we, my husband, Running Voice, and I lived in that stone house. ”

“ He is not yet my enemy. He and his pack came in after my husband died. You know I saw them all passing by this spring? I told no one that, Lop-Ear now limps a little as he runs. He perhaps knows steel traps. He is difficult to fool. It may be no human yet knows enough to inveigle him into jaws of death.”
“That’s so!” Conklin exclaimed. “I noticed he favors his left forepaw as he runs; he doesn’t let his weight fall on it; it’ll take a wise trapper to catch him.” ”

“ Years before it had been a Land of Hope into which ventured a good many thousand home-seekers, but for twenty years it had been steadily losing population, becoming more and more a Desert of Lonely Men. ”

“ Here, cooking for all your hungry teeth, I work from star-light before dawn till star-light after sunset. My husband, a successful trapper, was a good man. He had no enemies, yet some one shot him down, leaving no trace but the empty .33 caliber shell where he lay in ambush. I found my dead man where he fell on the trap-line up the inlet above Falling Leaves pond. I brought him down here. He lies buried under the mound of stones there on the little hill beyond the ranch corral, near me now. ”

“ A woman who’d work as steady as she had for come three years had no business quitting, but ought to keep at it, indefinitely. Still, it was useless to argyfy with a woman. He brought her in gold the wages for thirty-odd months. ”