“Shut up,” muttered Silent, and the words
were formed by the motion of his lips rather than
through any sound. “That damned whistling
again.”
Every face changed. At a rustling in a near-by
willow, Terry Jordan started and then cursed softly
to himself. That broke the spell.
“It’s the whisperin’ of the willows,”
said Purvis.
“You lie,” said Silent hoarsely.
“I hear the sound growing closer.”
“Barry is dead,” said Haines.
Silent whipped out his revolver—and then
shoved it back into the holster.
“Stand by me, boys,” he pleaded.
“It’s his ghost come to haunt me!
You can’t hear it, because he ain’t come
for you.”
They stared at him with a fascinated horror.
“How do you know it’s him?” asked
Shorty Rhinehart.
“There ain’t no sound in the whole world
like it. It’s a sort of cross between the
singing of a bird an’ the wailin’ of the
wind. It’s the ghost of Whistlin’
Dan.”
The tall roan raised his head and whinnied softly.
It was an unearthly effect—as if the animal
heard the sound which was inaudible to all but his
master. It changed big Jim Silent into a quavering
coward. Here were five practised fighters who
feared nothing between heaven and hell, but what could
they avail him against a bodiless spirit? The
whistling stopped. He breathed again, but only
for a moment.
It began again, and this time much louder and nearer.
Surely the others must hear it now, or else it was
certainly a ghost. The men sat with dilated eyes
for an instant, and then Hal Purvis cried, “I
heard it, chief! If it’s a ghost, it’s
hauntin’ me too!”
Silent cursed loudly in his relief.
“It ain’t a ghost. It’s Whistlin’
Dan himself. An’ Terry Jordan has been
carryin’ us lies! What in hell do you mean
by it?”
“I ain’t been carryin’ you lies,”
said Jordan, hotly. “I told you what I
heard. I didn’t never say that there was
any one seen his dead body!”
The whistling began to die out. A babble of conjecture
and exclamation broke out, but Jim Silent, still sickly
white around the mouth, swung up into the saddle.
“That Whistlin’ Dan I’m leavin’
to you, Haines,” he called. “I’ve
had his blood onct, an’ if I meet him agin there’s
goin’ to be another notch filed into my shootin’
iron.”
THE STRENGTH OF WOMEN
He rode swiftly into the dark of the willows, and
the lack of noise told that he was picking his way
carefully among the bended branches.
“It seems to me,” said Terry Jordan, “which
I’m not suggestin’ anything—but
it seems to me that the chief was in a considerable
hurry to leave the camp.”
“He was,” said Hal Purvis, “an’
if you seen that play in Morgan’s place you
wouldn’t be wonderin’ why. If I was
the chief I’d do the same.”
“Me speakin’ personal,” remarked
Shorty Rhinehart, “I ain’t layin’
out to be no man-eater like the chief, but I ain’t
seen the man that’d make me take to the timbers
that way. I don’t noways expect there is
such a man!”
