But Stella was gone, and the drive settled down to a steady thing.
We will leave the herd for the present to follow the fortunes of Stella, whose ride that afternoon had so much to do with fashioning the immediate fortunes of Ted Strong and the broncho boys.
As Stella was borne exultingly along through the clear, sharp air of the Montana uplands, she was singing in a high, sweet voice the cowboy song, "The Wolf Hunt."
"Over the hills on a winter's morn,
In the rosy glow of a day just born,
With the eager hounds so fleet and strong,
On the gray wolf's track we jog along."
As she paused at the end of the first verse she thought she heard an echo of it. It seemed that off to the north somewhere she had heard an eerie "Ai-i-e!" But she listened attentively, bringing Magpie to a stop, and hearing it no more, concluded that she had been mistaken.
Then she galloped on, still singing at the top of her voice from sheer happiness and good spirits, the other verses of the wolf song, and, although she paused frequently for the repetition of the cry, she did not hear it until she had sung the refrain for the last time:
"The race is o'er, the battle won,
The wolf lies dying in the sun;
His midnight raids are of the past,
He's met the conquering foe at last.
Well done, brave hounds! Thy savage prey
Was shrewdly caught and killed to-day."
As she stopped and looked around her at the brown, rocky hills, once more she heard that shrill and heart-searching wail.
"What can it be?" muttered Stella, reining in her horse. "Is it a woman, or is it a beast trying to lure me on? It sounds like a woman in distress, and yet cougars can cry like that, also."
She meditated a moment, and then decided to take a chance.