Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/101

Rh dripping feasts to the buzzards in the sky. Only the coyotes and such low-caste people remained to hunt; and they didn't stay from choice. With them it was a simple matter of hunting all the time, of seeking tirelessly with never a rest, that kept them fed at all.

The reason went back to a curse that Manitou put upon the coyotes in the young days of the earth. No one knows just what their offense was—whether they were once dogs who betrayed men, or the fathers of dogs that betrayed the wild by selling their sons into the bondage of men—but not even a tenderfoot can doubt the severity of their punishment and the depths of their remorse. Many of the voices of the forest are dim and small, many of them are inaudible except to those who give their lives and their souls to the wild, but the curse upon Running Feet the coyote is usually made clear in one night at the twilight hour. For the coyotes do not keep their afflictions to themselves. Their voice suddenly shudders out of the half-darkness, a long wail broken by half-sobs,—infinitely despairing and sad.

Very few of the wilderness voices are joyful. Even the whistling of the birds—close observers find out at last—have a plaintive note that seems never entirely absent. No man can doubt the sadness in the wailing cries of the passing geese,—telling of the bleak, glooming marshes where they live and die. The winter song of the pack,