Читать книгу Timber-Wolf онлайн

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And then, all of a sudden, she was set shivering. For the voice had done with the song and, at the end, with a great unexpected upgathering of sound was poured forth into a long-drawn-out call that was like nothing on earth save the howling of a wolf. The night call throbbed and billowed across the disturbed silences and all of a sudden was gone and the night was again hushed and still.

"There you have one of the two good reasons why men call him Timber-Wolf," said Deveril with a grunt.

She scarcely heard. Somewhere, deep down within her, that golden outpouring, that rush of fierceness at the end, echoed and lived on.

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Bruce Standing—Timber-Wolf, as he exulted in being called—was a man of few friends and many enemies. In and about Big Pine men disliked him wholeheartedly; many hated him so that they would have been glad to know that he was dead. And this was chiefly because he jeered at them and overrode them; because at every opportunity, going out of his way to make opportunity more often than not, he thrust them aside and trod his unobstructed path through and over them, setting his heel upon many; because he spat upon their laws and made his own. And he, in his turn, held them in high contempt simply because always they stood aside for him. Those few who did not hate him were the handful of hard men whom, in the working out of his wide, overweening ambitions, he had drawn to him like so many feudal henchmen; they were, in their lesser degrees, of his stamp; they belonged in their hearts to an older day and a wider frontier; there were scores taking his pay whose blood ran hot and lawless.