“What’s the reason of it?” queried
Sam helplessly. “The damn wolf let us take
Dan off the hoss without makin’ any fuss.”
“Sure he did,” assented Buck, “but
he ain’t sure of me yet, an’ every time
he comes near me he sends the cold chills up my back.”
Having decided that he might safely trust them to
touch Dan’s body, the great wolf went the round
and sniffed them carefully, his hair bristling and
the forbidding growl lingering in his throat.
In the end he apparently decided that they might be
tolerated, though he must keep an eye upon their actions.
So he sat down beside the bed and followed with an
anxious eye every movement of Mrs. Daniels. The
men went back to the stallion. He still stood
with legs braced far apart, and head hanging low.
Another mile of that long race and he would have dropped
dead beneath his rider.
Nevertheless at the coming of the strangers he reared
up his head a little and tried to run away. Buck
caught the dangling reins near the bit. Satan
attempted to strike out with his forehoof. It
was a movement as clumsy and slow as the blow of a
child, and Buck easily avoided it. Realizing
his helplessness Satan whinnied a heart-breaking appeal
for help to his unfailing friend, Black Bart.
The wail of the wolf answered dolefully from the house.
“Good Lord,” groaned Buck. “Now
we’ll have that black devil on our hands again.”
“No, we won’t,” chuckled Sam, “the
wolf won’t leave Dan. Come on along, old
hoss.”
Nevertheless it required hard labour to urge and drag
the stallion to the stable. At the end of that
time they had the saddle off and a manger full of
fodder before him. They went back to the house
with the impression of having done a day’s work.
“Which it shows the fool nature of a hoss,”
moralized Sam. “That stallion would be
willin’ to lay right down and die for the man
that’s jest rode him up to the front door of
death, but he wishes everlastingly that he had the
strength to kick the daylight out of you an’
me that’s been tryin’ to take care of him.
You jest write this down inside your brain, Buck:
a hoss is like a woman. They jest nacherally
ain’t no reason in ’em!”
They found Dan in a heavy sleep, his breath coming
irregularly. Mrs. Daniels stated that it was
the fever which she had feared and she offered to
sit up with the sick man through the rest of that night.
Buck lifted her from the chair and took her place beside
the bed.
“No one but me is goin’ to take care of
Whistlin’ Dan,” he stated.
So the vigil began, with Buck watching Dan, and Black
Bart alert, suspicious, ready at the first wrong move
to leap at the throat of Buck.
NOBODY LAUGHS
That night the power which had sent Dan into Elkhead,
Jim Silent, stood his turn at watch in the narrow
canyon below the old Salton place. In the house
above him sat Terry Jordan, Rhinehart, and Hal Purvis
playing poker, while Bill Kilduff drew a drowsy series
of airs from his mouth-organ. His music was getting
on the nerves of the other three, particularly Jordan
and Rhinehart, for Purvis was winning steadily.
