CHAPTER

I. Pan of the Desert

II.  The Panther

III.  Silent Shoots

IV.  Something Yellow

V. Four in the Air

VI.  Laughter

VII.  The Mute Messenger

VIII.  Red Writing

IX.  The Phantom Rider

X. The Strength of Women

XI.  Silent Bluffs

XII.  Partners

XIII.  The Lone Riders Entertain

XIV.  Delilah

XV.  The Cross Roads

XVI.  The Three of us

XVII.  The Panther’s Paw

XVIII.  Cain

XIX.  Real Men

XX.  One Trail Ends

XXI.  One Way Out

XXII.  The Woman’s Way

XXIII.  Hell Starts

XXIV.  The Rescue

XXV.  The Long Ride

XXVI.  Black Bart Turns Nurse

XXVII.  Nobody Laughs

XXVIII.  Whistling Dan, Desperado

XXIX.  “Werewolf”

XXX.  “The Manhandling”

XXXI.  “Laugh, Damn it!”

XXXII.  Those who See in the Dark

XXXIII.  The Song of the Untamed

XXXIV.  The Coward

XXXV.  Close in!

XXXVI.  Fear

XXXVII.  Death

XXXVIII.  The Wild Geese

THE UNTAMED

CHAPTER I

PAN OF THE DESERT

Even to a high-flying bird this was a country to be passed over quickly.  It was burned and brown, littered with fragments of rock, whether vast or small, as if the refuse were tossed here after the making of the world.  A passing shower drenched the bald knobs of a range of granite hills and the slant morning sun set the wet rocks aflame with light.  In a short time the hills lost their halo and resumed their brown.  The moisture evaporated.  The sun rose higher and looked sternly across the desert as if he searched for any remaining life which still struggled for existence under his burning course.

And he found life.  Hardy cattle moved singly or in small groups and browsed on the withered bunch grass.  Summer scorched them, winter humped their backs with cold and arched up their bellies with famine, but they were a breed schooled through generations for this fight against nature.  In this junk-shop of the world, rattlesnakes were rulers of the soil.  Overhead the buzzards, ominous black specks pendant against the white-hot sky, ruled the air.

It seemed impossible that human beings could live in this rock-wilderness.  If so, they must be to other men what the lean, hardy cattle of the hills are to the corn-fed stabled beeves of the States.

Over the shoulder of a hill came a whistling which might have been attributed to the wind, had not this day been deathly calm.  It was fit music for such a scene, for it seemed neither of heaven nor earth, but the soul of the great god Pan come back to earth to charm those nameless rocks with his wild, sweet piping.  It changed to harmonious phrases loosely connected.  Such might be the exultant improvisations of a master violinist.