Only phrases at first, but now it rose more distinct, the song of the untamed; the terror and beauty of the mountain-desert; a plea and a threat.

The clock struck, sharp, hurried, brazen—­one, two, three!  Before the last quick, unmusical chime died out Black Bart stood in the entrance to the saloon.  His eyes were upon Jim Silent, who stretched out his arms on either side and gripped the edge of the bar.  Yet even when the wolf glided silently across the room and crouched before the bandit, at watch, his lips grinned back from the white teeth, the man had no eyes for him.  Instead, his stare held steadily upon that open door and on his raised face there was still the terror of that whistling which swept closer and closer.

It ceased.  A footfall crossed the porch.  How different from the ponderous stride of Jim Silent!  This was like the padding step of the panther.  And Whistling Dan stood in the door.  He did not fill it as the burly shoulders of Silent had done.  He seemed almost as slender as a girl, and infinitely boyish in his grace—­a strange figure, surely, to make all these hardened fighters of the mountain-desert crouch, and stiffen their fingers around the butts of their revolvers!  His eyes were upon Silent, and how they lighted!  His face changed as the face of the great god Pan must have altered when he blew into the instrument of reeds and made perfect music, the first in the world.

“Bart,” said the gentle voice, “go out to Satan.”

The wolf turned and slipped from the room.  It was a little thing, but, to the men who saw it, it was terrible to watch an untamed beast obey the voice of a man.

Still with that light, panther-step he crossed the barroom, and now he was looking up into the face of the giant.  The huge long rider loomed above Dan.  That was not terror which set his face in written lines—­it was horror, such as a man feels when he stands face to face with the unearthly in the middle of night.  This was open daylight in a room thronged with men, yet in it nothing seemed to live save the smile of Whistling Dan.  He drew out the two revolvers and slipped them onto the bar.  They stood unarmed, yet they seemed no less dangerous.

Silent’s arms crept closer to his sides.  He seemed gathering himself by degrees.  The confidence in his own great size showed in his face, and the blood-lust of battle in his eyes answered the yellow light in Dan’s.

Dan spoke.

“Silent, once you put a stain of blood on me.  I’ve never forgot the taste.  It’s goin’ to be washed out today or else made redder.  It was here that you put the stain.”

He struck the long rider lightly across the mouth with the back of his hand, and Silent lunged with the snarl of a beast.  His blow spent itself on thin air.  He whirled and struck again.  Only a low laughter answered him.  He might as well have battered away at a shadow.

“Damnation!” he yelled, and leaped in with both arms outspread.