t Black Bart, you know, and then he went out with a halter
and captured Satan. Think of capturing a wild mustang with nothing but a
halter! He played around with them so much that I was jealous of them.
So I kept with them until Bart and Satan were rather used to me. Bart
would even play with me now and then when Dan wasn't near. And so
finally Dan and I were to be married.

"Dad didn't like the idea. He was afraid of what Dan might become. And
he was right. One day, in a saloon that used to stand on that hill over
there, Dan had a fight--his first fight--with a man who had struck him
across the mouth for no good reason. That man was Jim Silent. Of course
you've heard of him?"

"Never."

"He was a famous long-rider--an outlaw with a very black record. At the
end of that fight he struck Dan down with a chair and escaped. I went
down to Dan when I heard of the fight--Black Bart led me down, to be
exact--but Dan would not come back to the house, and he'd have no more
to do with anyone until he had found Jim Silent. I can't tell you
everything that happened. Finally he caught Jim Silent and killed
him--with his bare hands. Buck Daniels saw it. Then Dan came back to us,
but on the first night he began to grow restless. It was last Fall--the
wild geese were flying south--and while they were honking in the sky Dan
got up, said good-bye, and left us. We have never seen him again until
to-night. All we knew was that he had ridden south--after the wild
geese."

A long silence fell between them, for the doctor was thinking hard.

"And when he came back," he said, "Barry did not know you? I mean you
were nothing to him?"

"You were there," said the girl, faintly.

"It is perfectly clear," said Byrne. "If it were a little more
commonplace it might be puzzling, but being so extraordinary it clears
itself up. Did you really expect the dog, the wolf-dog, Black Bart, to
remember you?"

"I may have expected it."

"But you were not surprised, of course!"

"Naturally not."

"Yet you see that Dan Barry--Whistling Dan, you call him--was closer to
Black Bart than he was to you?"

"Why should I see that?"

"You watched him a moment ago when he was leaning over the dog."

He watched her draw her dressing gown closer about her, as though the
cold bit more keenly then.

She said simply: "Yes, I saw."

"Don't you see that he is simply more in tune with the animal world? And
it's really no more reasonable to expect Black Bart