“Why, what’s the matter with him?” I asked.
“Shot.”
“W-h-a-a-t!”
“Yes, got into a row over the Montana line. They say it was accidental. Some one dropped his six-shooter on the floor. It exploded. No more Jerry Lane.”
·········
That night I walked out to a lonely rock and gazed at the brilliant stars. It was the true West, after all, the West that I had always read about but had never seen until now. I thought of the sandy-haired, blue-eyed sheriff who had gone to the Great Beyond. I thought of poor Jerry Lane: that lithe, active figure in buckskins; that devil-may-care manner; that fresh, pink-cheeked face. Yes, the West still held her tragedies, and the low wail of a coyote far off on the plain sounded ominously dreary, while the hand of death lay over the great wild wastes of the rolling, sagebrush-covered prairie.
THE SONG OF THE MOOSE
This the song which the trapper heard,