“Because they know fighting won’t help them!”

“Maybe so, maybe so,” he said quietly, “but it’s kind of queer, Kate, that after most a hundred men on the best hosses in these parts had ridden in relays after Satan an’ couldn’t lay a rope on him, Dan could jest go out on foot with a halter an’ come back in ten days leadin’ the wildest devil of a mustang that ever hated men.”

“It was a glorious thing to do!” she said.

Old Cumberland sighed and then shook his head.

“It shows more’n that, honey.  There ain’t any man but Dan that can sit the saddle on Satan.  If Dan should die, Satan wouldn’t be no more use to other men than a piece of haltered lightnin’.  An’ then tell me how Dan got hold of that wolf, Black Bart, as he calls him.”

“It isn’t a wolf, Dad,” said Kate, “it’s a dog.  Dan says so himself.”

“Sure he says so,” answered her father, “but there was a lone wolf prowlin’ round these parts for a considerable time an’ raisin’ Cain with the calves an’ the colts.  An’ Black Bart comes pretty close to a description of the lone wolf.  Maybe you remember Dan found his ‘dog’ lyin’ in a gully with a bullet through his shoulder.  If he was a dog how’d he come to be shot—­”

“Some brute of a sheep herder may have done it.  What could it prove?”

“It only proves that Dan is queer—­powerful queer!  Satan an’ Black Bart are still as wild as they ever was, except that they got one master.  An’ they ain’t got a thing to do with other people.  Black Bart’d tear the heart out of a man that so much as patted his head.”

“Why,” she cried, “he’ll let me do anything with him!”

“Humph!” said Cumberland, a little baffled; “maybe that’s because Dan is kind of fond of you, gal, an’ he has sort of introduced you to his pets, damn ’em!  That’s just the pint!  How is he able to make his man-killers act sweet with you an’ play the devil with everybody else.”

“It wasn’t Dan at all!” she said stoutly, “and he isn’t queer.  Satan and Black Bart let me do what I want with them because they know I love them for their beauty and their strength.”

“Let it go at that,” growled her father.  “Kate, you’re jest like your mother when it comes to arguin’.  If you wasn’t my little gal I’d say you was plain pig-headed.  But look here, ain’t you ever felt that Dan is what I call him—­different?  Ain’t you ever seen him get mad—­jest for a minute—­an’ watched them big brown eyes of his get all packed full of yellow light that chases a chill up and down your back like a wrigglin’ snake?”

She considered this statement in a little silence.

“I saw him kill a rattler once,” she said in a low voice.  “Dan caught him behind the head after he had struck.  He did it with his bare hand!  I almost fainted.  When I looked again he had cut off the head of the snake.  It was—­it was terrible!”

She turned to her father and caught him firmly by the shoulders.