The Black Wolf Pack | Page 5

and we three came to this country after our parents died. You come of
an honest, worthwhile people on my side, and of the best American
blood on your mother's, Donald, and I ask only that you live an honest,
honorable life and have faith in your country and your God, and He
will be with you to the end.
Good-bye, boy.
Lovingly, YOUR FATHER.

I read the letter aloud but I confess that my voice broke toward the end
and I choked up until reading was difficult.
For some time after I finished, we three sat in silence. The thoughts and
mental pictures of that broken man parting with his baby son seventeen
years before made me most unhappy.
Dad broke the silence.
"Well, now you are acquainted with the whole situation, what do you
think?"
"I scarcely know what to think," said I. "It does not appear natural for a
man to abandon his own son in the manner he did. It seems heartless
and cruel. I cannot understand it; yet I wish I could see my poor father.
I wonder if he is still alive. Certainly with the information at hand it
should not be impossible for me to trace him or some relatives of my
mother. Don't you think so?"
"That is what I thought, Don, for when you were three years old I
began to wonder about your father's whereabouts. I wanted to meet him
and perhaps help him if I could. Do not think that your poor father was
cruel, for it is evident that the man was suffering from a nervous
breakdown and consequently more or less irresponsible; I think he
acted wonderfully well under the circumstances. In order to help him I
began a search and for ten years I have had detectives and private
individuals following up every possible lead. Yet, with all my efforts,
the search has amounted to nothing. Your father's trail ended at a
Spokane outfitting store. I could not locate anyone nearer to you than
an old maiden great-aunt of your mother's although I have had every
clue investigated.
"The only relative of your father's that I could get any information
about was his youngest brother, Patrick Mullen, your uncle and a
famous gunsmith of Maiden Lane, New York. He is dead now but his
reputation for making an exceptionally fine hand-forged gun lives on
even to-day. Patrick Mullen died just before I began my search for your
father, but in digging around for facts about him, I learned that he had

made a limited number of very fine guns, on each of which he had
stamped his full name, 'Patrick Mullen.' Other guns of an inferior
quality that he made bore the simple stamp of 'P. Mullen.' The old man
was very proud of each 'Patrick Mullen' that he turned out and like the
true artist that he was he kept track of each one, sold them only to men
he knew and when the owner died he bought the gun back himself so
that he always knew its whereabouts.
"In that way all of the 101 'Patrick Mullen's' he made came back to him,
save one. There is one of the complete number still missing and no one
seems to know where it is. This is more remarkable because the
missing gun is a flint-lock rifle of the style of seventy years ago. That
gun has always struck me as being a valuable clue in our search,
because it is the only rifle ever made by the old gunsmith and I have a
feeling that that missing 'Patrick Mullen' may have been given to your
father by the brother, and that may account for the fact that among the
papers of Patrick Mullen there is no record of its whereabouts; this is in
a measure confirmed by the report that the man outfitting at Spokane
had a long old-fashioned rifle, and collectors say there used to be an
expert in antique arms by the name of Mullen."
The suggestion made me tremendously excited. Beyond a doubt in my
mind that missing "Patrick Mullen" was my father's gun. I imagined
him parting with everything else save the unique gun his famous
brother had made for him. Why he should wish for a flint-lock rifle was
an unanswerable question, but someone wanted that sort of a gun or it
would not have been made, and my father's letters showed him to be a
man of sentiment, and impractical, just the sort of fellow to use a
flint-lock when he might just as well have had a modern breech-loading
high-power rifle.
"I believe you've hit it, dad. Hot dog!" I exclaimed. "Bet a cookie that
that gun does belong to my father and if we can find it we will