The Untamed

The Untamed, by Max Brand

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Title: The Untamed
Author: Max Brand
Release Date: January 31, 2004 [EBook #10886]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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UNTAMED ***

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THE UNTAMED
BY MAX BRAND
1919

CONTENTS
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.
A great wolf, or a dog as tall and rough coated as a wolf, trotted around
the hillside. He paused with one foot lifted and lolling, crimson tongue,
as he scanned the distance and then turned to look back in the direction
from which he had come. The weird music changed to whistled notes
as liquid as a flute. The sound drew closer. A horseman rode out on the
shoulder and checked his mount. One could not choose him at first
glance as a type of those who fight nature in a region where the
thermometer moves through a scale of a hundred and sixty degrees in
the year to an accompaniment of cold-stabbing winds and sweltering
suns. A thin, handsome face with large brown eyes and black hair, a
body tall but rather slenderly made--he might have been a descendant
of some ancient family of Norman nobility; but could such proud
gentry be found riding the desert in a tall-crowned sombrero with chaps
on his legs and a red bandana handkerchief knotted around his throat?
That first glance made the rider seem strangely out of place in such
surroundings. One might even smile at the contrast, but at the second
glance the smile would fade, and at the third, it would be replaced with
a stare of interest. It was impossible to tell why one respected this man,
but after a time there grew a suspicion of unknown strength in this lone
rider, strength like that of a machine which