The Cattle-Baron's Daughter by Harold Bindloss

Events of no apparent moment have extensive issues now and then, and while cattle-man and homesteader braced themselves for the conflict which they felt would come, the truce might have lasted longer but for the fact that one night Muller slept indifferently in the new house he had built. He was never quite sure what made him restless, or prompted him to open and lean out of his window; and, when he had done this, he saw and heard nothing unusual for a while.

On one hand the birch bluff rose, a dusky wall, against the indigo of the sky, and in front of him the prairie rolled away, silent and shadowy. There was scarcely a sound but the low ripple of the creek, until, somewhere far off in the distance, a coyote howled. The drawn-out wail had in it something unearthly, and Muller, who was by no means an imaginative man, shivered a little. The deep silence of the great empty land emphasized by the sound reacted upon him and increased his restlessness.