The Untamed | Page 5

brush the dust from his clothes,
looking down as if he were ashamed. He asked me if the dog had hurt
me when he snapped. I could not speak for a moment. Then came the
most horrible part. Black Bart, who must have been nearly killed,
dragged himself to Dan on his belly, choking and whining, and licked
the boots of his master!"
"Then you do know what I mean when I say Dan is--different?"
She hesitated and blinked, as if she were shutting her eyes on a fact. "I
don't know. I know that he's gentle and kind and loves you more than
you love him." Her voice broke a little. "Oh, Dad, you forget the time
he sat up with you for five days and nights when you got sick out in the
hills, and how he barely managed to get you back to the house alive!"
The old man frowned to conceal how greatly he was moved.
"I haven't forgot nothin', Kate," he said, "an' everything is for his own
good. Do you know what I've been tryin' to do all these years?"
"What?"
"I've been tryin' to hide him from himself! Kate, do you remember how
I found him?"
"I was too little to know. I've heard you tell a little about it. He was lost
on the range. You found him twenty miles south of the house."
"Lost on the range?" repeated her father softly. "I don't think he could
ever have been lost. To a hoss the corral is a home. To us our ranch is a
home. To Dan Barry the whole mountain-desert is a home! This is how
I found him. It was in the spring of the year when the wild geese was
honkin' as they flew north. I was ridin' down a gulley about sunset and
wishin' that I was closer to the ranch when I heard a funny, wild sort of
whistlin' that didn't have any tune to it that I recognized. It gave me a
queer feelin'. It made me think of fairy stories--an' things like that!

Pretty soon I seen a figure on the crest of the hill. There was a triangle
of geese away up overhead an' the boy was walkin' along lookin' up as
if he was followin' the trail of the wild geese.
"He was up there walkin' between the sunset an' the stars with his head
bent back, and his hands stuffed into his pockets, whistlin' as if he was
goin' home from school. An' such whistlin'."
"Nobody could ever whistle like Dan," she said, and smiled.
"I rode up to him, wonderin'," went on Cumberland.
"'What're you doin' round here?' I says.
"Says he, lookin' at me casual like over his shoulder: 'I'm jest takin' a
stroll an' whistlin'. Does it bother you, mister?'
"'It doesn't bother me none,' says I. 'Where do you belong, sonny?'
"'Me?' says he, lookin' sort of surprised, 'why, I belong around over
there!' An' he waved his hand careless over to the settin' sun.
"There was somethin' about him that made my heart swell up inside of
me. I looked down into them big brown eyes and wondered--well, I
don't know what I wondered; but I remembered all at once that I didn't
have no son.
"'Who's your folks?' says I, gettin' more an' more curious.
"He jest looked at me sort of bored.
"'Where does your folks live at?' says I.
"'Oh, they live around here,' says he, an' he waved his hand again, an'
this time over towards the east.
"Says I: 'When do you figure on reachin' home?'
"'Oh, most any day,' says he.

"An' I looked around at them brown, naked hills with the night comin'
down over them. Then I stared back at the boy an' there was something
that come up in me like hunger. You see, he was lost; he was alone; the
queer ring of his whistlin' was still in my ears; an' I couldn't help
rememberin' that I didn't have no son.
"'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,