The Untamed | Page 3

but since I've come back I begin to feel that it's
shameful to treat Dan in this way."
Her eyes brightened and she shook her golden head for emphasis. Her
father watched her with a faintly quizzical smile and made no reply.
The dignity of ownership of many thousand cattle kept the old rancher's
shoulders square, and there was an antique gentility about his thin face
with its white goatee. He was more like a quaint figure of the
seventeenth century than a successful cattleman of the twentieth.
"It is shameful, Dad," she went on, encouraged by his silence, "or you
could tell me some reason."

"Some reason for not letting him have a gun?" asked the rancher, still
with the quizzical smile.
"Yes, yes!" she said eagerly, "and some reason for treating him in a
thousand ways as if he were an irresponsible boy."
"Why, Kate, gal, you have tears in your eyes!"
He drew her onto a stool beside him, holding both her hands, and
searched her face with eyes as blue and almost as bright as her own.
"How does it come that you're so interested in Dan?"
"Why, Dad, dear," and she avoided his gaze, "I've always been
interested in him. Haven't we grown up together?"
"Part ways you have."
"And haven't we been always just like brother and sister?"
"You're talkin' a little more'n sisterly, Kate."
"What do you mean?"
"Ay, ay! What do I mean! And now you're all red. Kate, I got an idea
it's nigh onto time to let Dan start on his way."
He could not have found a surer way to drive the crimson from her face
and turn it white to the lips.
"Dad!"
"Well, Kate?"
"You wouldn't send Dan away!"
Before he could answer she dropped her head against his shoulder and
broke into great sobs. He stroked her head with his calloused,
sunburned hand and his eyes filmed with a distant gaze.

"I might have knowed it!" he said over and over again; "I might have
knowed it! Hush, my silly gal."
Her sobbing ceased with magic suddenness.
"Then you won't send him away?"
"Listen to me while I talk to you straight," said Joe Cumberland, "and
accordin' to the way you take it will depend whether Dan goes or stays.
Will you listen?"
"Dear Dad, with all my heart!"
"Humph!" he grunted, "that's just what I don't want. This what I'm goin'
to tell you is a queer thing--a mighty lot like a fairy tale, maybe. I've
kept it back from you years an' years thinkin' you'd find out the truth
about Dan for yourself. But bein' so close to him has made you sort of
blind, maybe! No man will criticize his own hoss."
"Go on, tell me what you mean. I won't interrupt."
He was silent for a moment, frowning to gather his thoughts.
"Have you ever seen a mule, Kate?"
"Of course!"
"Maybe you've noticed that a mule is just as strong as a horse--"
"Yes."
"--but their muscles ain't a third as big?"
"Yes, but what on earth--"
"Well, Kate, Dan is built light an' yet he's stronger than the biggest men
around here."
"Are you going to send him away simply because he's strong?"

"It doesn't show nothin'," said the old man gently, "savin' that he's
different from the regular run of men--an' I've seen a considerable pile
of men, honey. There's other funny things about Dan maybe you ain't
noticed. Take the way he has with hosses an' other animals. The wildest
man-killin', spur-hatin' bronchos don't put up no fight when them long
legs of Dan settle round 'em."
"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