tles clashing. He
severed the head deftly and tossed the twisting mass back on the
rocks.

Then, as if he had performed the most ordinary act, he rubbed his
gloves in the sand, cleansed his knife in a similar manner, and
stepped back to his horse. Contrary to the rules of horse-nature, the
stallion had not flinched at sight of the snake, but actually advanced
a high-headed pace or two with his short ears laid flat on his
neck, and a sudden red fury in his eyes. He seemed to watch for an
opportunity to help his master. As the man approached after killing
the snake the stallion let his ears go forward again and touched his
nose against his master's shoulder. When the latter swung into the
saddle, the wolf-dog came to his side, reared, and resting his
forefeet on the stirrup stared up into the rider's face. The man
nodded to him, whereat, as if he understood a spoken word, the dog
dropped back and trotted ahead. The rider touched the reins and
galloped down the easy slope. The little episode had given the effect
of a three-cornered conversation. Yet the man had been as silent as
the animals.

In a moment he was lost among the hills, but still his whistling came
back, fainter and fainter, until it was merely a thrilling whisper
that dwelt in the air but came from no certain direction.

His course lay towards a road which looped whitely across the hills.
The road twisted over a low ridge where a house stood among a grove of
cottonwoods dense enough and tall enough to break the main force of
any wind. On the same road, a thousand yards closer to the rider of
the black stallion, was Morgan's place.

CHAPTER II

THE PANTHER

In the ranch house old Joseph Cumberland frowned on the floor as he
heard his daughter say: "It isn't right, Dad. I never noticed it
before I went away to school, but since I've come back I begin to feel
that it's shameful to treat Dan in this way."

Her eyes brightened and she shook her golden head for emphasis. Her
father watched her with a faintly quizzical smile and made no reply.
The dignity of ownership of many thousand cattle kept the old
rancher's shoulders square, and there was an antique gentility about
his thin face with its white goatee. He was more like a quaint
figure of the seventeenth century than a successful cattleman of the
twentieth.

"It _is_ shameful, Dad," she went on, encouraged by his silence, "or
you could tell me some reason."

"Some reason for not letting hi