swerved to one side and
caught Black Bart by the throat and drove him into the dust, falling
with him.

"I couldn't move. I was weak with horror. It wasn't a struggle between
a man and a beast. It was like a fight between a panther and a wolf.
Black Bart was fighting hard but fighting hopelessly. Those hands were
settling tighter on his throat. His big red tongue lolled out; his
struggles almost ceased. Then Dan happened to glance at me. What he
saw in my face sobered him. He got up, lifting the dog with him, and
flung away the lifeless weight of Bart. He began to 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 w