t watch, his lips grinned back from the white teeth, the man had no
eyes for him. Instead, his stare held steadily upon that open door and
on his raised face there was still the terror of that whistling which
swept closer and closer.

It ceased. A footfall crossed the porch. How different from the
ponderous stride of Jim Silent! This was like the padding step of the
panther. And Whistling Dan stood in the door. He did not fill it as
the burly shoulders of Silent had done. He seemed almost as slender as
a girl, and infinitely boyish in his grace--a strange figure, surely,
to make all these hardened fighters of the mountain-desert crouch, and
stiffen their fingers around the butts of their revolvers! His eyes
were upon Silent, and how they lighted! His face changed as the
face of the great god Pan must have altered when he blew into the
instrument of reeds and made perfect music, the first in the world.

"Bart," said the gentle voice, "go out to Satan."

The wolf turned and slipped from the room. It was a little thing, but,
to the men who saw it, it was terrible to watch an untamed beast obey
the voice of a man.

Still with that light, panther-step he crossed the barroom, and now he
was looking up into the face of the giant. The huge long rider loomed
above Dan. That was not terror which set his face in written lines--it
was horror, such as a man feels when he stands face to face with the
unearthly in the middle of night. This was open daylight in a room
thronged with men, yet in it nothing seemed to live save the smile of
Whistling Dan. He drew out the two revolvers and slipped them onto the
bar. They stood unarmed, yet they seemed no less dangerous.

Silent's arms crept closer to his sides. He seemed gathering himself
by degrees. The confidence in his own great size showed in his face,
and the blood-lust of battle in his eyes answered the yellow light in
Dan's.

Dan spoke.

"Silent, once you put a stain of blood on me. I've never forgot the
taste. It's goin' to be washed out today or else made redder. It was
here that you put the stain."

He struck the long rider lightly across the mouth with the back of
his hand, and Silent lunged with the snarl of a beast. His blow spent
itself on thin air. He whirled and struck again. Only a low laughter
answered him. He might as well have battered away at a shadow.

"Damnation!" he yelled, and leaped in with both arms outspread.

The impetus of his rush drove them both t