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[Illustration: _Drawn by F. E. Schoonover_ THE RACE WITH THE FIRE _See “The Nemesis of the Deuces,” page 300_]
“_In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud._”
New York: John Lane Company, MCMVII London: John Lane, The Bodley Head
_The stories in this volume have appeared in the following magazines: Munsey’s, The American Magazine, The Smart Set, The Scrap Book, The All-Story, Watson’s, Overland Monthly. The author gratefully acknowledges permission to republish._
XVIII. A POLITICAL COUP AT LITTLE OMAHA 255
_O Mourner in the silence of the hills, O Thing of ancient griefs, art thou a wolf? I heard a cry that shook me—was it thine?_
_Low in the mystic purple of the west The weird moon hangs, a tarnished silver slug: Vast, vast the hollow empty night curves down, Stabbed with the glass-like glinting of the stars, And, save when that wild cry grows up anon, No sound but this dull murmur of the hush— The winter hush._
_Hark! once again thy cry!_ _Thy strange, sharp, ice-like, tenuous complaint, As though the spirit of this frozen waste Pinched with the cruel frost yearned summerward!_
_I know thou art a wolf that criest so: Though hidden in the shadow, I can see Thy four feet huddled in the numbing frost, Thy snout, breath-whitened, pointing to the sky: Poor pariah of the plains, I know ’tis thou._
_And yet—and yet—I heard a kinsman shout! Down through the intricate centuries it came, A far-blown cry! From old-world graves it grew, Up through the tumbled walls of ancient realms, Up through the lizard-haunted heaps of stone, Up through the choking ashes of old fanes, The pitiful debris where Grandeur dwelt, Out of the old-world wilderness it grew— The cry I know! And I have heard my Kin!_