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Yet she laid her hand on the bandage across the shoulder of Black Bart. His head whirled. With those ears flattened, with that long, lean neck, it was like the head of a striking snake. Her sleeve was rolled up to the elbow, and over the bare skin the teeth of the wolf-dog were set.
With an effort the Canadian obeyed, the wolf-dog trotting beside him, Houston following, one hand locked about the buckle of the thinner man's belt, the other half supporting him as he limped and reeled through the snow. "It's my hip " The man's mind had gone to trivial things. "I sprained it about ten days ago. I'd been living over here with her up till the storm. Then I had to be at camp.
He has dogs of spies among the settlers of the pale flag, but the tomahawk of the red skins will find them out, and they shall perish even as the Saganaw themselves. Two nights ago, when the warriors of the Ottawas were returning from their scout upon the common, they heard the voice of Onondato, the great wolf-dog of the friend of the Ottawa chief.
She knew where they were going now; it was the old cave upon which she and Dan had come one day in their rides, and Dan had prowled for a long time through the shadowy recesses. From the moment Joan gave the name of Daddy Dan, the wolf-dog kept to the trail with arrowy straightness.
"You have taught me a lesson," was all that Glenister said, and with that he pushed through the crowd and out into the cool night air. Overhead the arctic stars winked at him, and the sea smells struck him, clean and fresh. As he went homeward he heard the distant, full-throated plaint of a wolf-dog. It held the mystery and sadness of the North.
"Do you suppose that one of the men from the bunk-house could have shot him?" But Dan seemed no longer aware of the doctor's presence. He slipped here and there with the wolf-dog among the ash-heaps, pausing when Bart paused, talking to the brute continually. Sometimes he pointed out to Bart things which the doctor did not perceive and Bart whined with a terrible, slavering, blood-eagerness.
A dozen feet away, full in the moonlight, three figures sat on the edge of the cliff, as motionless as though hewn out of rock. Instinctively Philip's hand slipped to his revolver holster, but he drew it back when he saw that one of the three figures was that of a woman. Beside her crouched a huge wolf-dog; on the other side of the dog sat a man.
Well he knew that rise in the stirrups, that leaning forward, and his heart rose in unison and went back to the blue grass of Kentucky glittering in the sun. Before them went the wolf-dog, skimming low, reached the fence, and shot over it in a graceful, high-arched curve. Then the shout of the rider: "Up! Up!" And the stallion reared and leaped.
He laid a hand upon her head, and she felt the tremor of his fingers; the wolf-dog lay down at her feet and looked up in her face; Satan, from the shadows beyond, whinnied again. After that there was not a word spoken, for Kate looked at the picture of the three, saw the pity in the eyes of Whistling Dan, saw the wonder in the eyes of Joan, saw the truth of all she had lost.
Later that evening, Sundown straggled out to the corral and stood watching the saddle-stock of the Concho pull hay from the long feed-rack and munch lazily. Suddenly he jerked up his hand and jumped round. The men, loafing in front of the bunk-house, laughed. Chance, the great wolf-dog, was critically inspecting the tramp's legs. Sundown was a self-confessed coward, physically.
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