Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/133

 answered from above. An owl on the rim-rocks overhead hooted his whereabouts to a far off mate. These sounds, the very essence of loneliness to most men, were the voices of old friends to Moran. He read in them more of primitive love and understanding of savagery.

There was a sudden hush, and for a space of minutes no living creature raised its voice. Moran had heard no sound to indicate the reason for this but he knew that the wild things of the hills could hear things much too distant to be detected by the ear of man. This sudden suspension of all animal communications, the absolute cessation of every note, meant but one thing to Moran. As unerringly as if he himself had heard it he knew that somewhere a wolf had howled. Yet Moran knew too, that this high country was not infested with wolves. This one must be a straggler passing through.

Moran had stopped for the night at the lower edge of the snow line and when he rolled his pack in the morning it took him less than an hour to climb out of the spruce belt above: the timberline. He worked his way on up the divide and before noon he stood in the Rampart Pass. The serrated masses of the Rainbow Peaks, the ragged