at slash in the
mountains. The wind, caught between the walls, moaned as in the
day, and he knew perfectly well what if was, but it had all the
nature of a dirge, nevertheless. Overhead a few dim stars
wavered in a dusky sky.

Dick forced himself to go on. It required now moral, as well as
physical, courage to approach that lost battlefield lying under
its pall of night. Never was the boy a greater hero than at that
moment. He advanced slowly. A bush caught him by the coat and
held him an instant. He felt as if he had been seized in a man's
grasp. He reached the first wagon, and it seemed to him, broken
and rifled, an emblem of desolation. As he passed it a strange,
low, whining cry made his backbone turn to ice. But he recovered
and forced an uneasy little laugh at himself. It was only a
wolf, the mean coyote of the prairies!

He came now into the space where the mass of the wagons and the
fallen lay. Dark figures, low and skulking, darted away. More
wolves! But one, a huge timber wolf, with a powerful body and
long fangs, stood up boldly and stared at him with red eyes.
Dick's own eyes were used to the darkness now, and he stared back
at the wolf, which seemed to be giving him a challenge. He half
raised his rifle, but the monster did not move. It was a
stranger to guns, and this wilderness was its own.

It was Dick's first impulse to fire at the space between the red
eyes, but he restrained it. He had not come there to fight with
wolves, nor to send the report of a shot through the mountains.
He picked up a stone and threw it at the wolf, striking him on
the flank. The monster turned and stalked sullenly away, showing
but little sign of fear. Dick pursued his task, and as he advanced
something rose and, flapping heavily, sailed away. The shiver came
again, but his will stopped it.

He was now in the center of the wreckage, which in the darkness
looked as if it had all happened long ago. Nearly every wagon
had been turned over, and now and then dark forms lay between the
wheels. The wind moaned incessantly down the pass and over the
ruin.

Overcoming his repulsion, Dick went to work. The moon was now
coming out and he could see well enough for his task. There was
still much gleaning left by the quick raiders, and everything would
be of use to Albert and himself, even to the very gear on the
fallen animals. He cut off a great quantity of this at once and
put it in a heap at the foot of