Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/178

 He could unravel the past history of this cabin, and its meaning in her life. He recalled vague tales that Kinney had long ago ridden with the wild bunch; that when law and order claimed the west and divided its citizens by approving some lines of occupation while others were frowned upon, Kinney had been one of those who remained outside.

Flash rose and stretched, yawned widely, and trotted off along the rim, turning where the game trail dipped down into the canyon.

“He’s off again,” Moran observed. “He’ll turn wolf again for the next hour or two.”

“Would he ever turn all wolf?” she asked. “Leave us and never come back?”

“Not unless he lost us,” said Moran. “Then he would. The hold most men have on him is small. He might even leave us for a while in midwinter, the mating time of wolves. It’s hard to say.”

She turned the glasses on the lower country to search for Flash. Through an opening of the trees she could see the sheen of water, a beaver pond where a colony of them had dammed a stream until the water backed up and flooded a thicket of willows and birch. She saw the ripple as one