e wind
to carry him. A light creak of leather as he halted, a glimmer of star
light on Satan as he wheeled, a clink of steel, and then Dan was coming
up the path.

She knew him perfectly even before she could make out the details of the
form; she knew him by the light, swift, almost noiseless step, like
the padding footfall of a great cat--a sense of weight without sound.
Another form skulked behind him--Black Bart.

He was close, very close, before he stopped, or seemed to see her,
though she felt that he must have been aware of her since he first rode
up. He was so close, indeed, that the starlight--the brim of his hat
standing up somewhat from the swift riding--showed his face quite
clearly to her. It was boyish, almost, in its extreme youth, and so
thinly molded, and his frame so lightly made, that he seemed one risen
from a wasting bed of sickness. The wind fluttered his shirt and she
wondered, as she had wondered so often before, where he gained that
incredible strength in so meager a body. In all her life she had never
loved him as she loved him now. But her mind was as fixed as a star.

"You can't have her, Dan. You can't have her! Don't you see how terrible
a thing you'd make her? She's my blood, my pain, my love, and you want
to take her up yonder to the mountains and the loneliness--I'll die to
keep her!"

Now the moon, which had been buried in a drift of clouds, broke through
them, and seemed in an instant to slide a vast distance towards the
earth, a crooked half moon with its edges eaten by the mist. Under this
light she could see him more clearly, and she became aware of the thing
she dreaded, the faint smile which barely touched at the corners of his
mouth; and in his eyes a swirl of yellow light, half guessed at, half
real. All her strength poured out of her. She felt her knees buckle,
felt the fingers about the light revolver butt relax, felt every nerve
grow slack. She was helpless, and it was not fear of the man, but of
something which stalked behind him, inhuman, irresistible; not the
wolf-dog, but something more than Satan, and Bart, and Whistling Dan,
something of which they were only a part.

He began to whistle, thoughtfully, like one who considers a plan of
action and yet hesitates to begin. She felt his eyes run over her, as
if judging how he should put her most gently to one side; then from the
house, very lightly, hardly more than an echo of Dan's whistling, came
an answer--the very sa