Love of the Wild

by Archie P. McKishnie

From far ahead there came again the long, low cry of a wolf; not the undulating cry; but the long-drawn, unvarying note that bespoke the rejoining of the pack. Hallibut lifted his head and half-reined in his horse.

“Howl, you devils,” he cried. Then he slapped the horse’s neck with the rein. “If it were mid-winter now,” he soliloquized, shrugging his shoulders, “I wouldn’t just feel safe in this place.”

Miles of the trail still lay before him—miles of lonely land. But the man was inured to the Wild; he had ridden the night trail many, many times. Still the life had taught him caution. He knew that in mid-winter, when the food was scarce, the timber-wolves grew fearless and were bad company. In winter he would not have thought of journeying on this trail alone. But it was barely autumn now, and he gave himself not the slightest thought of danger, but rode boldly on.

The Colonel was the big man of his particular day. The village of St. Thomas, miles onward, he practically owned, as well as the greater portion of the partly cleared land surrounding it. St. Thomas was simply a drab-colored blotch on the Wild as yet, but the lake lay close to it and its natural resources promised to make of the half-cleared country about it a great land some day not far future. Hallibut owned the grand home of the country-side; a big, rambling house of planed boards, with wide rooms and oiled hardwood floors. It sat on the crest of a hill among a grove of butternuts, and near it stood the stables and kennels, famous far and near.

Horses were a rarity in those old days, but in Colonel Hallibut’s stables were some of the best blood-horses of the time. He loved riding and he loved the chase. Being of English birth he had adopted the customs of his homeland and carried them to the limit. His cellar contained bitter ale, beer, and choice wines. He loved to sit beside his wide fireplace with his long pipe alight, a mug at his elbow, and hounds snoozing about him, and there dream, with his pets, of the events of the day’s chase. He was a power in his land. No man dared to gainsay his command. He held more than money-power; he represented the law as well. He was a monopolist. He had secured land for the asking; land for a pittance; land for an hour or two of patient head-work. He owned thousands of acres. The scarcity of hard timber, occasioned by heavy northern forest fires, had recently enhanced its price so materially that one thousand acres of prime hardwood was worth a small fortune, provided there were facilities for shipping the timber. Hallibut owned the facilities in the shape of a trim schooner, which he now felt he could use to advantage; for he had long realized the wealth resident in those beautifully timbered ridges of the Bushwhackers. Having seen the great maple and beech, the magnificent walnut and the yellow and black and white oak, now worth many dollars a thousand, Hallibut was willing to pay a good price for the timber. He had purchased a strip of timber along Lee Creek across from the Bushwhackers, and erected a portable mill there.

In order to show the Bushwhackers that he wished to be neighborly, the big man had built them a schoolhouse and supplied a teacher for it, in doing which he felt that he had been actuated by pure magnanimity, without thought of gain.

But the Colonel was finding out that the Bushwhackers resented his advances of friendship, and he wondered why. Now they were threatening him, and they must learn that he did not fear them.

The Colonel had never married, but kept as his housekeeper an old-country woman of advanced years. Her name was Davis, and her grown-up son, Dick, lived with them and looked after the kennels and stables.

Austere as he appeared to be to the people in village and country-side, Colonel Hallibut was in reality a man of great and generous impulses. He was a man of reserve, for in his heart rested a pitiful little story—pitiful because so simple.

Years ago, on a fine estate in England, he had possessed a little sister who was all the kin he could claim in the world. He more than loved the girl—he worshiped her as few men have been known to do. She could not make a wish he would not gratify. And the girl—she loved the big brother better than anything in the world, until that other love awakened within her. One day she forsook the brother, leaving a brief note behind. She had married a man who was beneath her station in life, and fled with him across the ocean. Hallibut faced his grief and went the way alone. From that day his world had been a lonely world. Change of scenes, excitement, or even the chase could never make him forget. The sister’s face was always there. He sold the estate and sought forgetfulness in travel. Then he did what he should have done at first—he sought the girl. But he found her not. He joined the army, but even the thrill of the fight gave him no respite from sad memories. At last he turned for solace to the Wild; and in the big house, with one old family servant, he had lived for years now. Out in the open all day long, and at night by his fireplace with a picture in the glowing coals and a portrait looking from the wall—this was the man’s life as it was lived.