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By Alice Phillips

NOTE. The Klamath Indians Believed that they Descended from the Gray Wolf, and Many Beautiful Legends are told of this Animal. The Nighthawk, or Whip-poor-will, was said to Guard their Tobacco Patch. Loleeta was a Quarter Indian.

PRELUDE

Flow on, Oh River of my dream! Where'er they silv'ry course may gleam,

Signs of a vanish'd race remain,
Tho, gone for'er their noble strain;

Their songs heard only in echoes
Chanted by thy stream, as it flows
Onward into the golden west,
The sunset harbor of thy rest!
Stories and songs manifold,
That ne'er in summer were told,
Repeat'd in accents drifting low,
By the winter fire's glow.

So, with a sad and solemn voice,
Spoken in words of her choice,
Repeat'd the legend of her race
With all its wondrous grace.

LOLEETA

In some sunlit forest grove,
Where the gentle south winds rove,
The first violet lifts its head,
Ere yet the April storms are fled.
Born of the sun and winter's rain,
It rears its modest head again,
And breathes upon the virgin air
Its fragrant offering of pray'r.
And thus, within the forest glade,
Loleeta, fair, the Indian maid
Dwelt, with heart untaint'd by love
And pure as the heavens above.

As fleet as the woodland fawn,
Often seen at early dawn
Bounding thro' the dewy vale,
She ran with the wild March gale.

But when the stars shone overhead,
Her white blood strove with the red,
And a longing, wild and sad,
Filled her soul where all was glad.

When a wolf, all gray and lean,
Crossed the starlight path between,

Loleeta in her olden tongue

Began with words half spok'n, half sung:

Listen, in the still cold moonlight,
Thro' the lone hours of winter's night!
Hear you his wild, defiant cry—
His song of Ages long gone by?

A time there was, when beasts alone
Liv'd here, before we came to own
Hunting grounds and fishing streams-
Alas, that time is come again, it
seems!

Our race is fallen, we are gone, Like Autumn's golden leaves. are flown.

Yet unlike them, we come no more When spring calls, laughing at our door.

When earth was void and with no light,

When o'er the deep reign'd blank night,

Ten moons rose in the western sky,
And as each tipt the Cade on high,
The wolf, with arrows and his bow,
Slew all of them, save one, from far
below.

Thus you can see but one moon now
Rising above the mountain's brow!

A glowing orb, all cold and still,
It hangs above the distant hill,
Where the night-hawk, with coarse
sound,

Guards the weed on coal-burnt ground.
And the cricket all night long
Is chirping its lonesome song:
"Chiteep-chiteep!" far and near,
A song it sings to charm the deer!

All day hiding its black head,
The cricket still mourns the dead;
But at night the hunter again
Hears the chirp of its magic strain!

The Volunteer

By Robert Wingate

|H, I don't see why you need to Tom! Ain't there plenty of others to go?" Mrs. Stirling pushed away her plate and gazed at her tall son through eyes suddenly afflicted with an unaccustomed dimness. Then turning swiftly to her husband

"There ain't no call for it, is there Abner? Tom's got a plenty to do right at home without going off to that terrible war."

Mr. Stirling had not moved since his son's announcement. Now he drew a long breath and said slowly: "It don't seem's if he was needed right now for the army. But we can't tell, Sarah. These things ain't for us to decide. Maybe it looks to him like his duty."

"Oh, but when there's so many others I don't believe it's duty at all. Why should he go and let them stay?"

A grim smile now overspread Tom's homely and earnest countenance. "I guess if everyone said that, we wouldn't have much of an army to beat the Germans. They're not much afraid of the fellows that ought to go but don't."

"The President's called for volunteers," said his father, "but he's also said how important it is to keep up farmin' at the highest notch. Maybe you can do more good right here, Tom."

"Oh, I probably should be some good here, if I stayed," returned that square-jawed youth, "There's work enough between the farm and the lumber mill, but you know we haven't but forty acres anyway, and Buddy's gettin' to be about the same as a man. He's sixteen this spring, and he can

drive the farm machinery just as well as anybody. You could get along pretty well."

"It ain't so bad as it would 'a be'n two or three years ago," said his father. "We've had two mighty good crops and good prices for 'em. The mortgage is lifted, and we've got quite a lot of things we needed."

"How 'bout Chet Thayer?" said Mrs. Stirling suddenly. "Has he got any idea of going?"

"I don't know, I'm sure," returned Tom, reddening, "He ain't said anything to me."

"He might git drafted," said his father, "they're talkin' of that in Congress, ain't they?"

"No, they wouldn't get him," replied Tom. "He's a skilled mechanic. He's buildin' him a pretty nice house in the village, and they say he's bought out Jim Wilson's garage."

"Oh, I'll warrant you he'll find some way out of it. He likes to drive that new, shiny car too well," cried Mrs. Stirling. Then turning suddenly to her son,-"Tom, why don't you go over this afternoon and talk this all over with Lily?"

Tom's face flushed yet more deeply under the tan, and his throat seemed badly obstructed when he answered

"Oh, I guess she wouldn't be at home. She's rather likely to be out on a Sunday afternoon."

"Yes," said Mr. Stirling, "I see her go by in the automobile with young Thayer, half an hour ago."

"Well, now!" exclaimed Tom's mother, "I think it's just a shame. I ain't never said anything before - I think young folks ought to manage these things themselves, if they show

any sense. But here you are going off to the war because Lily's taken a kind of a fancy that won't last six months for that young sprig with his pretty neckties and his shiny automobile. I s'pose he has got some money too, but nobody knows how long he will have. And you'll leave the field all clear for him; and he'll prob'ly marry her, and she'll be good and sorry ever after. She comes of good stock, Lily does, and really deserves better'n she's got sense enough to understand."

"Why! said Tom glumly. "I don't know as we've got any right to call Chet Thayer names just because he's a better looking fellow than I am, and has got more money, and the girls like him better."

as much your fault as his. Oh, that was just like you."

"Well," said Tom, "crying never gathered up any spilt milk. But that's neither here nor there. I'm going

over to Morton tomorrow, and I shall probably try, anyway, to enlist. You might tell Buddy when he comes in." And, taking his hat from the nail, he went out by the back way and crossed the orchard into the woods.

The heart of any recruiting sergeant would be made glad by the sight of Tom Stirling. Tall and broad-shouldered and clear-eyed, moving with the nervous vigor that Europe has come to associate with American youth, he was the perfect type of the men of whom were to be formed the armies of the Republic. Labor on the

"He ain't better lookin,'" returned farm and in the mill had hardened Mrs. Stirling fiercely.

Tom laughed. "I guess you're just about the only one that'd say so, Mother, and you're a terribly prejudiced witness. Anyway, we don't know a thing against him except that he wears a white collar on week days and is the best dancer that ever comes to the Grange Hall. It don't seem's if a regular fellow could spare the time to learn to dance as well as he does but maybe that's just a countryman's idea. Perhaps he'll volunteer too, and make a better soldier than I will."

"Oh, I know you, Tom Stirling," cried his mother in a voice in which laughter and sorrow and pride were mingled. "Nobody'll ever know how much anything hurts you from anything you let on. You're just the same today as you was that time fifteen years ago when you and little Danny Smith got mad and got to throwin' stones. You've got the scar now on your forehead where one of 'em hit you. And you come home with your face all bloody, and said that you hit your head against a stone. And you never let on how it happened or that it hurt any, and when we found out from Danny, himself, a month afterward, you said you didn't tell about it because you warn't goin' to have him licked for somethin' that was just

his muscles, and temperate and contented living had given him nerves fit for the endurance of hardship and peril. No shadow of doubt as to the righteousness of the cause had ever crossed his mind, and now the motive so quickly divined by his mother added its deciding weight. All questions of his duty to the country and all his personal problems should be solved by one act. For this he claimed no credit and desired no sympathy.

The shadows were cool under the pine trees. As he slowly paced the familiar path that led by the side of the brook and beyond to the chestnut woods, the pulses which had been pounding at his temples like the steam hammers of the forge shops. gradually subsided. At the delicious call of a bluebird Tom stopped to locate the songster, as by long established habit, and forgot his intention of the previous moment of pulling off the starched Sunday collar which had seemed to be stifling him. From the half-formed leaves and buds came the medicinal odors of the forest; the familiar flowers of May made their offerings of beauty; the brook sank still the song he had always known and which had accompanied so many of his childish musings.

The pathway led down past the

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Fort Rock, scene of boyish campaigns of desperate attack and defense-through the birch thicket that had sheltered many an ambuscade, and up into the grove of giant chestnuts where, on frosty October mornings, Tom and his mates had so often gathered cherished stores in gay defiance of the squirrels' chattered protests.

As he walked on his heart grew lighter than it had been for weeks. All the arguments and uncertainties, all the self-questionings and condemnings, all the fiery, leaping hatred of his successful rival were gone or fast going. His country needed him, and he would go. Lily should have her happiness undisturbed by him, and he I would live out the brief and lurid career of his boyhood dreams, the camp, the voyage and the field,—battle, victory and defeat, glorious struggle and the singing messenger of death.

For an hour he strode along halfovergrown forest ways. Through the interlacing branches the sky overhead was of an entrancing blue. From the lowlands at the right came the liquid notes of a thrush. Tom walked on with such a glow of happiness in his breast as he had thought never to know again. No longer the awkward lout he had called himself,-with no choice but a pretended indifference in the face of defeat, no longer the . helpless and ridiculous spectator of another's triumph-the guest-to-be at Lily's wedding, with smiling face and clumsily-expressed good wishes that would deceive no one-but a soldier of the Republic,-one of those whose names would appear in those ominous lists with the heading-Killed in Action-as in the old papers of Civil War times he had found long ago in the garret. Perhaps they would raise another Soldiers' Monument in the town square, and amongst the names to be read by every passer would be that of Thomas Stirling

Would she read it sometimes, perhaps? Would she pause when crossing the square with her husband, or

possibly her children - Here Tom's heart gave a most painful wrench, and his new-found happiness threatened to desert him utterly-and read that name, cut so clearly and evenly in the granite, and perhaps - wipe away a tear, as she passed on? He could see her now, before his eyes, hurrying along beneath a bleak December sky of low-hung clouds a little shawl about her shoulders, her face lined and aged before its time and her dark hair streaked with grey

Tom sat down on a fallen tree and began to call himself bitter names,— quite in the old manner of the days before his decision. The glory had gone from the day. The sun was hidden by a cloud, and one of the chill winds of inconstant May came sighing through the valley.

After a few minutes he rose and started briskly on. He had come a long way, but now he planned to return by a different and longer route. He told himself that the woods along the North Branch were fine at this time of year, and maybe he would get some of the haw blossoms that Mother liked so, in the Mansfield pasture. Anyway he had plenty of time today, and might not be going that way again for a long while. Already his willing feet were carrying him along a wellknown path.

An hour later Tom was sitting on the Spring Rock under a clump of oaks, a quarter mile from the roadway. The setting sun was shining cheerily again, and the scattered trees of the pasture sheltered a full-throated choir of feathered songsters. Half visible through the orchard trees, was the abode of the one girl of any consequence in the world, and off to the left lay the path across the field that had often proved such a long shortcut on the way home from church or singing school.

Tom had just decided in the negative, for the third time, the question whether he should go to the Mansfield house to bid Lily good-bye. He would stop on his way to Morton in the morning. She would be in the

kitchen with her mother; he would call her out to the gate, and tell her what little there was to be told. It would look queer for him to go away and never say a word. Folks would probably talk a whole lot anyway. There was no need of making any more of it.

She might ask him to write to her from over there. If she did, should he promise to do so? If he did write, would she reply? Wouldn't any such letters serve to keep his mind entangled with all the jealousy and misery that he meant to leave behind with his civilian clothes? No, he wouldn't write to her. He would have a reduction made from the photograph he still had hidden in his desk at home, and keep it in the back of his watch. That would have to suffice.

Still he made no homeward move, and the question of going to the Mansfield house was just coming up for a fourth decision, when suddenly a voice was heard at the pasture bars.

"Co-boss, Co-boss."

Shrill-voiced Jimmy Mansfield usually escorted old Dapple back and forth from barn to pasture, but though this call was surely of treble pitch, Tom never for a moment believed it proceeded from the throat of that young mischief-maker. Cautiously pulling a bough aside, he could see Lily standing by the bars, a dozen rods away, impatience plainly written on her face.

"Oh, plague take it!" she said, all unconscious of any auditor, "Where is that old cow? I s'pose she's way down in the swamp, and doesn't intend to come in till morning." And, noisily throwing down the bars, she came down the slope, straight toward Tom's hiding place

"Hello, Lily!"

"Goodness! Tom Stirling, how you startled me! What are you doing there?"

"Oh, just resting a bit," said Tom as he came forward, "I've been over by the North Branch. Say Lily, I was just thinking of stopping to see you tomorrow. Maybe though I could

tell you what I had in mind just as well now."

Lily's dark eyes twinkled maliciously. She had never looked so distractingly pretty.

"Oh, I've got to hurry and get that cow. It'll soon be dark."

"I'll get your cow for you all right,” said Tom, "but for now I'd very much appreciate it if you'd sit down here for a minute. I've got a little piece of news for you."

"Now see here, Tom," said Lily, more seriously, "it really won't do any good to tell me your news. I know what it is anyway. And I've got to hurry back. I'm expecting company this evening."

"If you know what I was going to tell you," said Tom, considerably taken aback, "you must be a mind-reader —unless—unless Mother's been over to see you this afternoon."

"No, she hasn't been here, but I know just the same what a great man you're going to be. I'm glad as I can be for you. Father says you'll surely do well. But really its no use to go over again the things that we talked of when you were at my house the last time. You surely know me better than to think I'm going to change my mind on account of a thing like this."

"How does your father know what I was planning? And how do you know? If you'll please tell me," said Tom humbly.

"Oh, we knew before you did yourself. Mr. Ormsby was over yesterday to get Father's advice, and Father told him you were exactly the man for the place, that the only fault. you had was being so young, and that you would probably outgrow that in time."

Tom's eyes opened wide with astonishment. "Mr. Ormsby!" he exclaimed. "Now I know you're talking about something altogether different from what I am. What is it that Mr. Ormsby is planning to put me into ?"

"Oh, Tom Stirling! Don't you know really? I thought of course you were going to tell me about the new place

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