72 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



deep silence spelled wolf. The black-tailed jacks 

 jumped wolf as they flashed from the jaws of 

 our own stalking car. And they ran as from 

 wolves, when, over a smooth alkali bottom, we 

 pushed up the throttle and sent the swift-footed 

 machine hard at their heels. But it was the air, 

 the aspect of things, rather, the sense of indescrib- 

 able remoteness, withdrawal, and secrecy ever re- 

 treating before us, that seemed to take on form as 

 something watchful, suspicious, inherently wild, 

 something wolf-like. This was the wildest stretch 

 of land, the most alien, that I had ever seen, and 

 it must be here, if anywhere in the Northwest, 

 that I should see the coyote, the desert wolf. 



And I could see one, if anybody could, for I had 

 the help of all the imagination necessary. I had 

 grown up on wolves book wolves. How many 

 scores of times have I been treed by them ! How 

 many more than scores of times have I been 

 forced to cut loose my lead-horse for the pack to fall 

 upon, while I galloped ahead through the snowy 

 forest toward the settlement! The homesteader 

 and the trapper have had small wolf experience 

 compared with mine. For night after night I have 

 heard the curdling cry of the pack, have been 



