The Untamed eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 291 pages of information about The Untamed.

The Untamed eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 291 pages of information about The Untamed.

“That’s why I know he’s not forgotten it.  Anyway, Kate, I locked him in his room, but he wouldn’t promise not to run away.  Then I got an inspiration.  You was jest a little toddlin’ thing then.  That day you was cryin’ an awful lot an’ I suddenly thought of puttin’ you in Dan’s room.  I did it.  I jest unlocked the door quick and then shoved you in an’ locked it again.  First of all you screamed terrible hard.  I was afraid maybe you’d hurt yourself yellin’ that way.  I was about to take you out again when all at once I heard Dan start whistlin’ and pretty quick your cryin’ stopped.  I listened an’ wondered.  After that I never had to lock Dan in his room.  I was sure he’d stay on account of you.  But now, honey, I’m gettin’ to the end of the story, an’ I’m goin’ to give you the straight idea the way I see it.

“I’ve watched Dan like—­like a father, almost.  I think he loves me, sort of—­but I’ve never got over being afraid of him.  You see I can’t forget how he smiled when I licked him!  But listen to me, Kate, that fear has been with me all the time—­an’ it’s the only time I’ve ever been afraid of any man.  It isn’t like being scared of a man, but of a panther.

“Now we’ll jest nacherally add up all the points we’ve made about Dan—­the queer way I found him without a home an’ without wantin’ one—­that strength he has that’s like the power of a mule compared with a horse—­that funny control he has over wild animals so that they almost seem to know what he means when he simply looks at them (have you noticed him with Black Bart and Satan?)—­then there’s the yellow light that comes in his eyes when he begins to get real mad—­you an’ I have both seen it only once, but we don’t want to see it again!  More than this there’s the way he handles either a knife or a gun.  He hasn’t practiced much with shootin’ irons, but I never seen him miss a reasonable mark—­or an unreasonable one either, for that matter.  I’ve spoke to him about it.  He said:  ’I dunno how it is.  I don’t see how a feller can shoot crooked.  It jest seems that when I get out a gun there’s a line drawn from the barrel to the thing I’m shootin’ at.  All I have to do is to pull the trigger—­almost with my eyes closed!’ Now, Kate, do you begin to see what these here things point to?”

“Tell me what you see,” she said, “and then I’ll tell you what I think of it all.”

“All right,” he said.  “I see in Dan a man who’s different from the common run of us.  I read in a book once that in the ages when men lived like animals an’ had no weapons except sticks and stones, their muscles must have been two or three times as strong as they are now—­more like the muscles of brutes.  An’ their hearin’ an’ their sight an’ their quickness an’ their endurance was about three times more than that of ordinary men.  Kate, I think that Dan is one of those men the book described!  He knows animals because he has all the powers that they have.  An’ I know from the way his eyes go yellow that

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Project Gutenberg
The Untamed from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.