THE WHITE WOLF by Franklin Gregory Page A

Marcus place. The west line was the State highway. Bowling Creek, cutting down from north, crossed Lacey’s Lane, a half mile north of the Tilson buildings which fronted the county road. The creek skirted the farmyard, meandering south through the Tilson land and beyond, finally to join with the Neshaminy.
     
    The last evening of November was fair and warm. And Leroy, who was four, was playing in the farmyard near the creek after supper. Near-by in the barns, his father—big, redhaired Henry—and his eldest son, Frank, were at chores.
     
    It was dark, but the lights from the house and the electric bulb atop the barn gable illuminated the yard. And there was more light, too, when Mrs. Tilson threw open the kitchen door and stood, looking to her right, and then to her left.
     
    “Leroy!” she called. “Leroy! Bedtime!”
     
    There was no answer.
     
    Mrs. Tilson's eyes sought the shadows of the shrubbery. Her voice rose:
     
    “Leroy!”
     
    She waited a moment. Then:
     
    “Now where’s that little dickens gone?”
     
    She descended the steps and began touring the yard. She walked around to the front of the house, where the floodlight from the barn did not penetrate. She stood a moment, listening.
     
    “Leroy!”
     
    Her voice was tired. A car rolled out from the village and sped west. It passed the Marcus place and slowed down for the bridge in front of the Tilson house. The headlights glared on the lawn, erasing shadows of shrubbery and trees, and then replanting the shadows at bizarre and shifting angles. Mamie Tilson took the opportunity to glance all ways at once about the lawn.
     
    Seeing her there in the white blaze of the lamps, you would have said she looked careworn and tired. She was not a large woman: she was not strongly built. Work or a farm is hard—and Mamie Tilson had borne six children.
     
    “Leroy!” she called once more, and then continued on around the other side of the house where the lawn ended at the creek's bank.
     
    She walked slowly to the bam and stood at the wide doorway. Tilson and Frank, seated on little one-legged stools, were milking the two Guernseys. The milk purred in rhythmic jets into the pails.
     
    “I can’t find Leroy,” Mrs. Tilson said wearily. She passed the back of a thin, blue- veined hand across her forehead.
     
    “Just about through,” Tilson said. “Help you look, Mama.”
     
    He got up. He poured the milk into another pail. He walked into the tool room and returned with a flashlight.
     
    “I thought he was with you,” Mrs. Tilson said. “I wouldn’t worry—but that thing and all”
     
    “Now, now, Mama. . . .”
     
    But Hank Tilson couldn’t find Leroy either. And so he returned for Frank, who lit a lantern. They began searching along the creek.
     
    “Little cuss, always wanderin’ around,” Frank said impatiently. He was eighteen and he had a date that night with the Potts girl.
     
    They searched down the creek and through the woods till they came to the fence between their land and the Waterman’s.
     
    “Don’t seem’s he coulda gone this fur,” Hank Tilson said. He stood in a clearing of the wood and swung the beam of his flashlight from one clump of bushes to another. He called out:
     
    “Leroy!”
     
    An echo replied. Then Frank exclaimed:
     
    “Listen!”
     
    He held his lantern higher and its circle of light widened. He looked downstream into the Waterman land. Hank Tilson sent the beam of his flashlight in that direction.
     
    “Thought I heard a rustle,” Frank explained. “Like. . . .”
     
    “Pheasants maybe,” Hank Tilson said. “Lots of ’em down here.”
     
    Margaret Potts didn’t have her date that night. Hank Tilson went back to the house and he called two of his neighbors. And they told neighbors, and within two hours a score of men were beating through the woods and fields.
     
    They spread out. Some, just on a hunch, went upstream till they reached Lacey’s Lane. And some went as far west