ot even
shuddering at the pain.

It had seemed to her that this was the great test. If she could make the
wolf lie like this for her, then, truly, she might feel herself in some
measure admitted to that mystic fellowship of the three--the man, the
stallion, and the wolf. If she could, with her own unaided hands, remove
the bandages and apply that solution, then she could know many things,
and she could feel that she was nearer to Whistling Dan than ever
before.

So she had come, time and again, with the basin and the roll of cloth
in her arm, and she had approached with infinite patience, step by step,
and then inch by inch. Once it had taken a whole hour for her to come
within a yard of the beast. And all that time Black Bart had lain with
closed eyes. But at the critical instant always there was the silent
writhing up of the lips and the gleam of hate--or the terrible snarl
while the eyes fastened on her throat. Her heart had stopped in
mid-beat; and that day she ran back into the house and threw herself on
her bed, and would not come from her room till the following morning.

Now, as she watched from the shadow of the house, with the basin of
antiseptic under her arm, the gambler's desperation rose stronger and
stronger. She came out, at length, and walked steadily towards Black
Bart. She had grown almost heedless of fear at this moment, but when she
was within a pace, once more the head reared back; the teeth flashed.
And the heart of Kate Cumberland, as always, stopped. Yet she did not
retreat this time. All the colour left her face, so that her eyes seemed
amazingly blue and wide. One foot drew back, tremblingly ready to spring
to safety; yet she held her place. She moved--and it was towards Black
Bart.

At that came a snarl that would have made the heart of a lone grizzly
quake and leave his new-found nuts. One further pace she made--and the
beast plunged up, and braced itself with its one strong fore leg. A
devil of yellow-green gleamed in either eye, and past the grinning
fangs she saw the hot, red throat, and she saw the flattened ears, the
scars on the bony forehead, the muscles that bulged on the base of the
jaw. Ay, strength to drive those knife-like teeth through flesh and bone
at a single snap. More--she had seen their effect, and the throat of a
bull cut at a single slash. And yet--she sank on her knees beside the
monster.

His head was well nigh as high as hers, then; if he attacked there could
b