"Wonder what waked me?" he muttered to himself. He was not in the least sleepy, as he would have been if he had wakened naturally.
"I don't think I was dreaming," he continued to mumble to himself. "And it wasn't a noise. Must have been a hunch. Guess I'll get up and see if there's anything wrong about here."
He slipped swiftly into his clothes, and sauntered through the living room.
It was just beginning to get light outside, and the windows were gray, while all else in the room was still dark.
He opened the door and stepped out into the chill morning.
Then he heard a noise, but so faint that it couldn't have been that which had disturbed him from his sound sleep, he thought.
But as the sound came nearer on the clear, thin morning air, and he recognized it and realized its significance, he knew that it was this fine, almost indistinguishable sound that had penetrated in some mysterious manner to his inner ear and called him from his sleep.
It was the cry of a hungry and angry wolf.
At last he located the sound off to the east, but as yet he could see nothing, for it was not yet light enough, and a thin mist, like a mirage, hung over the surface of the sandy prairie and obscured the view.
For a long time he stood listening to the long-drawn and savage howl, thinned out by the distance and mist, but he knew that it was coming nearer, and that the animal that was making it was not only hungry, but that it was a master wolf. It was none of the gaunt, half-starved, cowardly brutes that follow in the pack and take what the master wolf leaves of the scraps of the murdered calf or sick cow or sheep which the leaders of the pack have pulled down.