“‘Then supposin’ you come along with me,’ says I, ‘an’ I’ll send you home in a buckboard tomorrow?’

“So the end of it was me ridin’ home with the little kid sittin’ up before me, whistlin’ his heart out!  When I got him home I tried to talk to him again.  He couldn’t tell me, or he wouldn’t tell me where his folks lived, but jest kept wavin’ his hand liberal to half the points of the compass.  An’ that’s all I know of where he come from.  I done all I could to find his parents.  I inquired and sent letters to every rancher within a hundred miles.  I advertised it through the railroads, but they said nobody’d yet been reported lost.  He was still mine, at least for a while, an’ I was terrible glad.

“I give the kid a spare room.  I sat up late that first night listenin’ to the wild geese honkin’ away up in the sky an’ wonderin’ why I was so happy.  Kate, that night there was tears in my eyes when I thought of how that kid had been out there on the hills walkin’ along so happy an’ independent.

“But the next mornin’ he was gone.  I sent my cowpunchers out to look for him.

“‘Which way shall we ride?’ they asked.

“I don’t know why, but I thought of the wild geese that Dan had seemed to be followin’.

“‘Ride north,’ I said.

“An’ sure enough, they rode north an’ found him.  After that I didn’t have no trouble with him about runnin’ away—­at least not durin’ the summer.  An’ all those months I kept plannin’ how I would take care of this boy who had come wanderin’ to me.  It seemed like he was sort of a gift of God to make up for me havin’ no son.  And everythin’ went well until the next fall, when the geese began to fly south.

“Sure enough, that was when Dan ran away again, and when I sent my cowpunchers south after him, they found him and brought him back.  It seemed as if they’d brought back half the world to me, when I seen him.  But I saw that I’d have to put a stop to this runnin’ away.  I tried to talk to him, but all he’d say was that he’d better be movin’ on.  I took the law in my hands an’ told him he had to be disciplined.  So I started thrashin’ him with a quirt, very light.  He took it as if he didn’t feel the whip on his shoulders, an’ he smiled.  But there came up a yellow light in his eyes that made me feel as if a man was standin’ right behind me with a bare knife in his hand an’ smilin’ jest like the kid was doin’.  Finally I simply backed out of the room, an’ since that day there ain’t been man or beast ever has put a hand on Whistlin’ Dan.  To this day I reckon he ain’t quite forgiven me.”

“Why!” she cried, “I have never heard him mention it!”