power. He caught up a heavy chair and drove it with all
his desperate strength at Dan.

It cracked distinctly against his head and the weight of it fairly
drove him into the floor. He fell with a limp thud on the boards.
Silent, reeling and blind, staggered to and fro in the centre of the
room. Morgan and Lee Haines reached Dan at the same moment and kneeled
beside him.

CHAPTER VII

THE MUTE MESSENGER

Almost at once Haines raised a hand and spoke to the crowd: "He's all
right, boys. Badly cut across the head and stunned, but he'll live."

There was a deep gash on the upper part of the forehead. If the
cross-bar of the chair had not broken, the skull might have been
injured. The impact of the blow had stunned him, and it might be many
minutes before his senses returned.

As the crowd closed around Dan, a black body leaped among them,
snarling hideously. They sprang back with a yell from the rush of this
green-eyed fury; but Black Bart made no effort to attack them. He sat
crouching before the prostrate body, licking the deathly white face,
and growling horribly, and then stood over his fallen master and
stared about the circle. Those who had seen a lone wolf make its stand
against a pack of dogs recognized the attitude. Then without a sound,
as swiftly as he had entered the room, he leaped through the door and
darted off up the road. Satan, for the first time deserted by this
wolfish companion, turned a high head and neighed after him, but he
raced on.

The men returned to their work over Dan's body, cursing softly. There
was a hair-raising unearthliness about the sudden coming and departure
of Black Bart. Jim Silent and his comrades waited no longer, but took
to their saddles and galloped down the road.

Within a few moments the crowd at Morgan's place began to thin out.
Evening was coming on, and most of them had far to ride. They might
have lingered until midnight, but this peculiar accident damped their
spirits. Probably not a hundred words were spoken from the moment
Silent struck Dan to the time when the last of the cattlemen took to
the saddle. They avoided each other's eyes as if in shame. In a short
time only Morgan remained working over Dan.

In the house of old Joe Cumberland his daughter sat fingering the keys
of the only piano within many miles. The evening gloom deepened as she
played with upward face and reminiscent eyes. The tune was uncertain,
weird--for she was trying to recall one