CHAPTER XXXVI
Winter came on in its delectable way in the Valley of the Moon.
The last Mariposa lily vanished from the burnt grasses as the
California Indian summer dreamed itself out in purple mists on the
windless air. Soft rain-showers first broke the spell. Snow fell
on the summit of Sonoma Mountain. At the ranch house the morning
air was crisp and brittle, yet midday made the shade welcome, and
in the open, under the winter sun, roses bloomed and oranges,
grape-fruit, and lemons turned to golden yellow ripeness. Yet, a
thousand feet beneath, on the floor of the valley, the mornings
were white with frost.
And Michael barked twice. The first time was when Harley Kennan,
astride a hot-blooded sorrel colt, tried to make it leap a narrow
stream. Villa reined in her steed at the crest beyond, and,
looking back into the little valley, waited for the colt to
receive its lesson. Michael waited, too, but closer at hand. At
first he lay down, panting from his run, by the stream-edge. But
he did not know horses very well, and soon his anxiety for the
welfare of Harley Kennan brought him to his feet.
Harley was gentle and persuasive and all patience as he strove to
make the colt take the leap. The urge of voice and rein was of
the mildest; but the animal balked the take-off each time, and the
hot thoroughbredness in its veins made it sweat and lather. The
velvet of young grass was torn up by its hoofs, and its terror of
the stream was such, that, when fetched to the edge at a canter,
it stiffened and crouched to an abrupt stop, then reared on its
hind-legs. Which was too much for Michael.
He sprang at the horse's head as it came down with fore-feet to
earth, and as he sprang he barked. In his bark was censure and
menace, and, as the horse reared again, he leaped into the air
after it, his teeth clipping together as he just barely missed its
nose.
Villa rode back down the slope to the opposite bank of the stream.
"Mercy!" she cried. "Listen to him! He's actually barking."
"He thinks the colt is trying to do some damage to me," Harley
said. "That's his provocation. He hasn't forgotten how to bark.
He's reading the colt a lecture."
"If he gets him by the nose it will be more than a lecture," Villa
warned. "Be careful, Harley, or he will."
"Now, Michael, lie down and be good," Harley commanded. "It's all
right, I tell you. It's an right. Lie down."
Michael sank down obediently, but protestingly; and he had eyes
only for the horse's antics, while all his muscles were gathered
tensely to spring in case the horse threatened injury to Harley
again.
"I can't give in to him now, or he never will jump anything,"
Harley said to his wife, as he whirled about to gallop back to a
distance. "Either I lift him over or I take a cropper."
He came back at full speed, and the colt, despite himself, unable
to stop, lifted into the leap that would avoid the stream he
feared, so that he cleared it with a good two yards to spare on
the other side.
The next time Michael barked was when Harley, on the same hot-
blood mount, strove to close a poorly hung gate on the steep pitch
of a mountain wood-road. Michael endured the danger to his man-
god as long as he could, then flew at the colt's head in a frenzy
of barking.
"Anyway, his barking helped," Harley conceded, as he managed to
close the gate. "Michael must certainly have told the colt that
he'd give him what-for if he didn't behave."
"At any rate, he's not tongue-tied," Villa laughed, "even if he
isn't very loquacious."
And Michael's loquacity never went farther. Only on these two
occasions, when his master-god seemed to be in peril, was he known
to bark. He never barked at the moon, nor at hillside echoes, nor
at any prowling thing. A particular echo, to be heard directly
from the ranch-house, was an unfailing source of exercise for
Jerry's lungs. At such times that Jerry barked, Michael, with a
bored expression, would lie down and wait until the duet was over.
Nor did he bark when he attacked strange dogs that strayed upon
the ranch.
"He fights like a veteran," Harley remarked, after witnessing one
such encounter. "He's cold-blooded. There's no excitement in
him."
"He's old before his time," Villa said. "There is no heart of
play left in him, and no desire for speech. Just the same I know
he loves me, and you--"
"Without having to be voluble about it," her husband completed for
her.
"You can see it shining in those quiet eyes of his," she
supplemented.
"Reminds me of one of the survivors of Lieutenant Greeley's
Expedition I used to know," he agreed. "He was an enlisted
soldier and one of the handful of survivors. He had been through
so much that he was just as subdued as Michael and just as
taciturn. He bored most people, who could not understand him. Of
course, the truth was the other way around. They bored him. They
knew so little of life that he knew the last word of. And one
could scarcely get any word out of him. It was not that he had
forgotten how to speak, but that he could not see any reason for
speaking when nobody could understand. He was really crusty from
too-bitter wise experience. But all you had to do was look at him
in his tremendous repose and know that he had been through the
thousand hells, including all the frozen ones. His eyes had the
same quietness of Michael's. And they had the same wisdom. I'd
give almost anything to know how he got his shoulder scarred. It
must have been a tiger or a lion."
The man, like the mountain lion whom Michael had encountered up
the mountain, had strayed down from the wilds of Mendocino County,
following the ruggedest mountain stretches, and, at night,
crossing the farmed valley spaces where the presence of man was a
danger to him. Like the mountain lion, the man was an enemy to
man, and all men were his enemies, seeking his life which he had
forfeited in ways more terrible than the lion which had merely
killed calves for food.
Like the mountain lion, the man was a killer. But, unlike the
lion, his vague description and the narrative of his deeds was in
all the newspapers, and mankind was a vast deal more interested in
him than in the lion. The lion had slain calves in upland
pastures. But the man, for purposes of robbery, had slain an
entire family--the postmaster, his wife, and their three children,
in the upstairs over the post office in the mountain village of
Chisholm.
For two weeks the man had eluded and exceeded pursuit. His last
crossing had been from the mountains of the Russian River, across
wide-farmed Santa Rosa Valley, to Sonoma Mountain. For two days
he had laired and rested, sleeping much, in the wildest and most
inaccessible precincts of the Kennan Ranch. With him he had
carried coffee stolen from the last house he had raided. One of
Harley Kennan's angora goats had furnished him with meat. Four
times he had slept the clock around from exhaustion, rousing on
occasion, like any animal, to eat voraciously of the goat-meat, to
drink large quantities of the coffee hot or cold, and to sink down
into heavy but nightmare-ridden sleep.
And in the meantime civilization, with its efficient organization
and intricate inventions, including electricity, had closed in on
him. Electricity had surrounded him. The spoken word had located
him in the wild canyons of Sonoma Mountain and fringed the
mountain with posses of peace-officers and detachments of armed
farmers. More terrible to them than any mountain lion was a man-
killing man astray in their landscape. The telephone on the
Kennan Ranch, and the telephones on all other ranches abutting on
Sonoma Mountain, had rung often and transmitted purposeful
conversations and arrangements.
So it happened, when the posses had begun to penetrate the
mountain, and when the man was compelled to make a daylight dash
down into the Valley of the Moon to cross over to the mountain
fastnesses that lay between it and Napa Valley, that Harley Kennan
rode out on the hot-blooded colt he was training. He was not in
pursuit of the man who had slain the postmaster of Chisholm and
his family. The mountain was alive with man-hunters, as he well
knew, for a score had bedded and eaten at the ranch house the
night before. So the meeting of Harley Kennan with the man was
unplanned and eventful.
It was not the first meeting with men the man had had that day.
During the preceding night he had noted the campfires of several
posses. At dawn, attempting to break forth down the south-western
slopes of the mountain toward Petaluma, he had encountered not
less than five separate detachments of dairy-ranchers all armed
with Winchesters and shotguns. Breaking back to cover, the chase
hot on his heels, he had run full tilt into a party of village
youths from Glen Ellen and Caliente. Their squirrel and deer
rifles had missed him, but his back had been peppered with
birdshot in a score of places, the leaden pellets penetrating
maddeningly in a score of places just under the skin.
In the rush of his retreat down the canyon slope, he had plunged
into a bunch of shorthorn steers, who, far more startled than he,
had rolled him on the forest floor, trampled over him in their
panic, and smashed his rifle under their hoofs. Weaponless,
desperate, stinging and aching from his superficial wounds and
bruises, he had circled the forest slopes along deer-paths,
crossed two canyons, and begun to descend the horse-trail he found
in the third canyon.
It was on this trail, going down, that he met the reporter coming
up. The reporter was--well, just a reporter, from the city,
knowing only city ways, who had never before engaged in a man-
hunt. The livery horse he had rented down in the valley was a
broken-kneed, jaded, and spiritless creature, that stood calmly
while its rider was dragged from its back by the wild-looking and
violently impetuous man who sprang out around a sharp turn of the
trail. The reporter struck at his assailant once with his riding-
whip. Then he received a beating, such as he had often written up
about sailor-rows and saloon-frequenters in his cub-reporter days,
but which for the first time it was his lot to experience.
To the man's disgust he found the reporter unarmed save for a
pencil and a wad of copy paper. Out of his disappointment in not
securing a weapon, he beat the reporter up some more, left him
wailing among the ferns, and, astride the reporter's horse, urging
it on with the reporter's whip, continued down the trail.
Jerry, ever keenest on the hunting, had ranged farther afield than
Michael as the pair of them accompanied Harley Kennan on his early
morning ride. Even so, Michael, at the heels of his master's
horse, did not see nor understand the beginning of the
catastrophe. For that matter, neither did Harley. Where a steep,
eight-foot bank came down to the edge of the road along which he
was riding, Harley and the hot-blood colt were startled by an
eruption through the screen of manzanita bushes above. Looking
up, he saw a reluctant horse and a forceful rider plunging in mid-
air down upon him. In that flashing glimpse, even as he reined
and spurred to make his own horse leap sidewise out from under,
Harley Kennan observed the scratched skin and torn clothing, the
wild-burning eyes, and the haggardness under the scraggly growth
of beard, of the man-hunted man.
The livery horse was justifiably reluctant to make that leap out
and down the bank. Too painfully aware of the penalty its broken
knees and rheumatic joints must pay, it dug its hoofs into the
steep slope of moss and only sprang out and clear in the air in
order to avoid a fall. Even so, its shoulder impacted against the
shoulder of the whirling colt below it, overthrowing the latter.
Harley Kennan's leg, caught under against the earth, snapped, and
the colt, twisted and twisting as it struck the ground, snapped
its backbone.
To his utter disgust, the man, pursued by an armed countryside,
found Harley Kennan, his latest victim, like the reporter, to be
weaponless. Dismounted, he snarled in his rage and disappointment
and deliberately kicked the helpless man in the side. He had
drawn back his foot for the second kick, when Michael took a hand-
-or a leg, rather, sinking his teeth into the calf of the back-
drawn leg about to administer the kick.
With a curse the man jerked his leg clear, Michael's teeth
ribboning flesh and trousers.
"Good boy, Michael!" Harley applauded from where he lay helplessly
pinioned under his horse. "Hey! Michael!" he continued, lapsing
back into beche-de-mer, "chase 'm that white fella marster to hell
outa here along bush!"
"I'll kick your head off for that," the man gritted at Harley
through his teeth.
Savage as were his acts and utterance, the man was nearly ready to
cry. The long pursuit, his hand against all mankind and all
mankind against him, had begun to break his stamina. He was
surrounded by enemies. Even youths had risen up and peppered his
back with birdshot, and beef cattle had trod him underfoot and
smashed his rifle. Everything conspired against him. And now it
was a dog that had slashed down his leg. He was on the death-
road. Never before had this impressed him with such clear
certainty. Everything was against him. His desire to cry was
hysterical, and hysteria, in a desperate man, is prone to express
itself in terrible savage ways. Without rhyme or reason he was
prepared to carry out his threat to kick Harley Kennan to death.
Not that Kennan had done anything to him. On the contrary, it was
he who had attacked Kennan, hurling him down on the road and
breaking his leg under his horse. But Harley Kennan was a man,
and all mankind was his enemy; and, in killing Kennan, in some
vague way it appeared to him that he was avenging himself, at
least in part, on mankind in general. Going down himself in
death, he would drag what he could with him into the red ruin.
But ere he could kick the man on the ground, Michael was back upon
him. His other calf and trousers' leg were ribboned as he tore
clear. Then, catching Michael in mid-leap with a kick that
reached him under the chest, he sent him flying through the air
off the road and down the slope. As mischance would have it,
Michael did not reach the ground. Crashing through a scrub
manzanita bush, his body was caught and pinched in an acute fork a
yard above the ground.
"Now," the man announced grimly to Harley, "I'm going to do what I
said. I'm just going to kick your head clean off."
"And I haven't done a thing to you," Harley parleyed. "I don't so
much mind being murdered, but I'd like to know what I'm being
murdered for."
"Chasing me for my life," the man snarled, as he advanced. "I
know your kind. You've all got it in for me, and I ain't got a
chance except to give you yours. I'll take a whole lot of it out
on you."
Kennan was thoroughly aware of the gravity of his peril. Helpless
himself, a man-killing lunatic was about to kill him and to kill
him most horribly. Michael, a prisoner in the bush, hanging head-
downward in the manzanita from his loins squeezed in the fork, and
struggling vainly, could not come to his defence.
The man's first kick, aimed at Harley's face, he blocked with his
fore-arm; and, before the man could make a second kick, Jerry
erupted on the scene. Nor did he need encouragement or direction
from his love-master. He flashed at the man, sinking his teeth
harmlessly into the slack of the man's trousers at the waist-band
above the hip, but by his weight dragging him half down to the
ground.
And upon Jerry the man turned with an increase of madness. In
truth all the world was against him. The very landscape rained
dogs upon him. But from above, from the slopes of Sonoma
Mountain, the cries and calls of the trailing poses caught his
ear, and deflected his intention. They were the pursuing death,
and it was from them he must escape. With another kick at Jerry,
hurling him clear, he leaped astride the reporter's horse which
had continued to stand, without movement or excitement, in utter
apathy, where he had dismounted from it.
The horse went into a reluctant and stiff-legged gallop, while
Jerry followed, snarling and growling wrath at so high a pitch
that almost he squalled.
"It's all right, Michael," Harley soothed. "Take it easy. Don't
hurt yourself. The trouble's over. Anybody'll happen along any
time now and get us out of this fix."
But the smaller branch of the two composing the fork broke, and
Michael fell to the ground, landing in momentary confusion on his
head and shoulders. The next moment he was on his feet and
tearing down the road in the direction of Jerry's noisy pursuit.
Jerry's noise broke in a sharp cry of pain that added wings to
Michael's feet. Michael passed him rolling helplessly on the
road. What had happened was that the livery horse, in its stiff-
jointed, broken-kneed gallop, had stumbled, nearly fallen, and, in
its sprawling recovery, had accidentally stepped on Jerry,
bruising and breaking his fore-leg.
And the man, looking back and seeing Michael close upon him,
decided that it was still another dog attacking him. But he had
no fear of dogs. It was men, with their rifles and shot-guns,
that might bring him to ultimate grief. Nevertheless, the pain of
his bleeding legs, lacerated by Jerry and Michael, maintained his
rage against dogs.
"More dogs," was his bitter thought, as he leaned out and brought
his whip down across Michael's face.
To his surprise, the dog did not wince under the blow. Nor for
that matter did he yelp or cry out from the pain. Nor did he bark
or growl or snarl. He closed in as though he had not received the
blow, and as though the whip was not brandished above him. As
Michael leaped for his right leg he swung the whip down, striking
him squarely on the muzzle midway between nose and eyes.
Deflected by the blow, Michael dropped back to earth and ran on
with his longest leaps to catch up and make his next spring.
But the man had noticed another thing. At such close range,
bringing his whip down, he could not help noting that Michael had
kept his eyes open under the blow. Neither had he winced nor
blinked as the whip slashed down on him. The thing was uncanny.
It was something new in the way of dogs. Michael sprang again,
the man timed him again with the whip, and he saw the uncanny
thing repeated. By neither wince nor blink had the dog
acknowledged the blow.
And then an entirely new kind of fear came upon the man. Was this
the end for him, after all he had gone through? Was this deadly
silent, rough-coated terrier the thing destined to destroy him
where men had failed? He did not even know that the dog was real.
Might it not be some terrible avenger, out of the mystery beyond
life, placed to beset him and finish him finally on this road that
he was convinced was surely the death-road? The dog was not real.
It could not be real. The dog did not live that could take a
full-arm whip-slash without wince or flinch.
Twice again, as the dog sprang, he deflected it with accurately
delivered blows. And the dog came on with the same surety and
silence. The man surrendered to his terror, clapping heels to his
horse's old ribs, beating it over the head and under the belly
with the whip until it galloped as it had not galloped in years.
Even on that apathetic steed the terror descended. It was not
terror of the dog, which it knew to be only a dog, but terror of
the rider. In the past its knees had been broken and its joints
stiffened for ever, by drunken-mad riders who had hired him from
the stables. And here was another such drunken-mad rider--for the
horse sensed the man's terror--who ached his ribs with the weight
of his heels and beat him cruelly over face and nose and ears.
The best speed of the horse was not very great, not great enough
to out-distance Michael, although it was fast enough to give the
latter only infrequent opportunities to spring for the man's leg.
But each spring was met by the unvarying whip-blow that by its
very weight deflected him in the air. Though his teeth each time
clipped together perilously close to the man's leg, each time he
fell back to earth he had to gather himself together and run at
his own top speed in order to overtake the terror-stricken man on
the crazy-galloping horse.
Enrico Piccolomini saw the chase and was himself in at the finish;
and the affair, his one great adventure in the world, gave him
wealth as well as material for conversation to the end of his
days. Enrico Piccolomini was a wood-chopper on the Kennan Ranch.
On a rounded knoll, overlooking the road, he had first heard the
galloping hoofs of the horse and the crack of the whip-blows on
its body. Next, he had seen the running battle of the man, the
horse, and the dog. When directly beneath him, not twenty feet
distant, he saw the dog leap, in its queer silent way, straight up
and in to the down-smash of the whip, and sink its teeth in the
rider's leg. He saw the dog, with its weight, as it fell back to
earth, drag the man half out of the saddle. He saw the man, in an
effort to recover his balance, put his own weight on the bridle-
reins. And he saw the horse, half-rearing, half-tottering and
stumbling, overthrow the last shred of the man's balance so that
he followed the dog to the ground.
"And then they are like two dogs, like two beasts," Piccolomini
was wont to tell in after-years over a glass of wine in his little
hotel in Glen Ellen. "The dog lets go the man's leg and jumps for
the man's throat. And the man, rolling over, is at the dog's
throat. Both his hands--so--he fastens about the throat of this
dog. And the dog makes no sound. He never makes sound, before or
after. After the two hands of the man stop his breath he can not
make sound. But he is not that kind of a dog. He will not make
sound anyway. And the horse stands and looks on, and the horse
coughs. It is very strange all that I see.
"And the man is mad. Only a madman will do what I see him do. I
see the man show his teeth like any dog, and bite the dog on the
paw, on the nose, on the body. And when he bites the dog on the
nose, the dog bites him on the check. And the man and the dog
fight like hell, and the dog gets his hind legs up like a cat.
And like a cat he tears the man's shirt away from his chest, and
tears the skin of the chest with his claws till it is all red with
bleeding. And the man yow-yowls, and makes noises like a wild
mountain lion. And always he chokes the dog. It is a hell of a
fight.
"And the dog is Mister Kennan's dog, a fine man, and I have worked
for him two years. So I will not stand there and see Mister
Kennan's dog all killed to pieces by the man who fights like a
mountain lion. I run down the hill, but I am excited and forget
my axe. I run down the hill, maybe from this door to that door,
twenty feet or maybe thirty feet. And it is nearly all finished
for the dog. His tongue is a long ways out, and his eyes like
covered with cobwebs; but still he scratches the man's chest with
his hind-feet and the man yow-yowls like a hen of the mountains.
"What can I do? I have forgotten the axe. The man will kill the
dog. I look for a big rock. There are no rocks. I look for a
club. I cannot find a club. And the man is killing the dog. I
tell you what I do. I am no fool. I kick the man. My shoes are
very heavy--not like shoes I wear now. They are the shoes of the
woodchopper, very thick on the sole with hard leather, with many
iron nails. I kick the man on the side of the face, on the neck,
right under the ear. I kick once. It is a good kick. It is
enough. I know the place--right under the ear.
"And the man lets go of the dog. He shuts his eyes, and opens his
mouth, and lies very still. And the dog begins once more to
breathe. And with the breath comes the life, and right away he
wants to kill the man. But I say 'No,' though I am very much
afraid of the dog. And the man begins to become alive. He opens
his eyes and he looks at me like a mountain lion. And his mouth
makes a noise like a mountain lion. And I am afraid of him like I
am afraid of the dog. What am I to do? I have forgotten the axe.
I tell you what I do. I kick the man once again under the ear.
Then I take my belt, and my bandana handkerchief, and I tie him.
I tie his hands. I tie his legs, too. And all the time I am
saying 'No,' to the dog, and that he must leave the man alone.
And the dog looks. He knows I am his friend and am tying the man.
And he does not bite me, though I am very much afraid. The dog is
a terrible dog. Do I not know? Have I not seen him take a strong
man out of the saddle?--a man that is like a mountain lion?
"And then the men come. They all have guns-rifles, shotguns,
revolvers, pistols. And I think, first, that justice is very
quick in the United States. Only just now have I kicked a man in
the head, and, one-two-three, just like that, men come with guns
to take me to jail for kicking a man in the head. At first I do
not understand. The many men are angry with me. They call me
names, and say bad things; but they do not arrest me. Ah! I
begin to understand! I hear them talk about three thousand
dollars. I have robbed them of three thousand dollars. It is not
true. I say so. I say never have I robbed a man of one cent.
Then they laugh. And I feel better and I understand better. The
three thousand dollars is the reward of the Government for this
man I have tied up with my belt and my bandana. And the three
thousand dollars is mine because I kicked the man in the head and
tied his hands and his feet.
"So I do not work for Mister Kennan any more. I am a rich man.
Three thousand dollars, all mine, from the Government, and Mister
Kennan sees that it is paid to me by the Government and not robbed
from me by the men with the guns. Just because I kicked the man
in the head who was like a mountain lion! It is fortune. It is
America. And I am glad that I have left Italy and come to chop
wood on Mister Kennan's ranch. And I start this hotel in Glen
Ellen with the three thousand dollars. I know there is large
money in the hotel business. When I was a little boy, did not my
father have a hotel in Napoli? I have now two daughters in high
school. Also I own an automobile."
"Mercy me, the whole ranch is a hospital!" cried Villa Kennan, two
days later, as she came out on the broad sleeping-porch and
regarded Harley and Jerry stretched out, the one with his leg in
splints, the other with his leg in a plaster cast. "Look at
Michael," she continued. "You're not the only ones with broken
bones. I've only just discovered that if his nose isn't broken,
it ought to be, from the blow he must have received on it. I've
had hot compresses on it for the last hour. Look at it!"
Michael, who had followed in at her invitation, betrayed a
ridiculously swollen nose as he sniffed noses with Jerry, wagged
his bobtail to Harley in greeting, and was greeted in turn with a
blissful hand laid on his head.
"Must have got it in the fight," Harley said. "The fellow struck
him with the whip many times, so Piccolomini says, and, naturally,
it would be right across the nose when he jumped for him."
"And Piccolomini says he never cried out when he was struck, but
went on running and jumping," Villa took up enthusiastically.
"Think of it! A dog no bigger than Michael dragging out of the
saddle a man-killing outlaw whom scores of officers could not
catch!"
"So far as we are concerned, he did better than that," Harley
commented quietly. "If it hadn't been for Michael, and for Jerry,
too--if it hadn't been for the pair of them, I do verily believe
that that lunatic would have kicked my head off as he promised."
"The blessed pair of them!" Villa cried, with shining eyes, as her
hand flashed out to her husband's in a quick press of heart-
thankfulness. "The last word has not been said upon the wonder of
dogs," she added, as, with a quick winking of her eyelashes to
overcome the impending moistness, she controlled her emotion.
"The last word of the wonder of dogs will never be said," Harley
spoke, returning the pressure of her hand and releasing it in
order to help her.
"And just for that were going to say something right now," she
smiled. "Jerry, and Michael, and I. We've been practising it in
secret for a surprise for you. You just lie there and listen.
It's the Doxology. Don't Laugh. No pun intended."
She bent forward from the stool on which she sat, and drew Michael
to her so that he sat between her knees, her two hands holding his
head and jowls, his nose half-buried in her hair.
"Now Jerry!" she called sharply, as a singing teacher might call,
so that Jerry turned his head in attention, looked at her, smiled
understanding with his eyes, and waited.
It was Villa who started and pitched the Doxology, but quickly the
two dogs joined with their own soft, mellow howling, if howling it
may be called when it was so soft and mellow and true. And all
that had vanished into the Nothingness was in the minds of the two
dogs as they sang, and they sang back through the Nothingness to
the land of Otherwhere, and ran once again with the Lost Pack, and
yet were not entirely unaware of the present and of the
indubitable two-legged god who was called Villa and who sang with
them and loved them.
"No reason we shouldn't make a quartette of it," remarked Harley
Kennan, as with his own voice he joined in.
