Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/122

104 his mind. He saw the winter snows, the spirits of Cold and Famine walking over them. He saw Fear in many guises—in the forest fire, in the landslide, in the lightning cleaving the sky. In the song were centered and made clear all the many lesser voices with which the forest had spoken to him these two months and which he had but dimly understood,—the passion, the exultation, the blood-lust, the strength, the cruelty, the remorseless, unceasing struggle for existence that makes the wilderness an eternal battle ground. But over it all was sadness. He could n't doubt that. He heard it all too plainly. The wild was revealed to him as it never had been before.

"It's the wolf pack," Lennox told him softly. "As long as I have been in the mountains, it always hits me the same. The wolves have just joined together for the fall rutting. There's not another song like it in the whole world."

Dan could readily believe it. The two men sat still a long time, hoping that they might hear the song again. And then they got up and moved across the cleared field to the ridge beyond. The silence closed deeper around them.

"Then it means the end of the summer?" Dan asked.