the head.

"Been an ordinary feller, and he wouldn't of lived to talk about it
afterwards, but seein' it was Shorty, he jest goes up in the air and
lands about ten yards away, and rolls over and hits his feet without
once gettin' off his stride--and then he _did_ start runnin', and he
didn't stop runnin' nor hollerin' till he got plumb back to the house!"

Buck Daniels sat back in his chair and guffawed at the memory. In the
excitement of the tale he had quite forgotten Kate, but when he
remembered her, she sat with her head craned a little to one side, her
hand raised for silence, and a smile, indeed, upon her lips, but never a
glance for Buck Daniels. He knew at once.

"Is it him?" he whispered. "D'you hear him?"

"Hush!" commanded two voices, and then he saw that old Joe Cumberland
also was listening.

"No," said the girl suddenly, "it was only the wind."

As if in answer, a far, faint whistling broke upon them. She drew her
hands slowly towards her breast, as if, indeed, she drew the sound in
with them.

"He's coming!" she cried. "Oh, Dad, listen! Don't you hear?"

"I do," answered the rancher, "but what I'm hearin' don't warm my blood
none. Kate, if you're wise you'll get up and go to your room and don't
pay no heed to anything you might be hearin' to-night."

CHAPTER XLII

THE JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

There was no doubting the meaning of Joe Cumberland. It grew upon them
with amazing swiftness, as if the black stallion were racing upon the
house at a swift gallop, and the whistling rose and rang and soared in a
wild outburst. Give the eagle the throat of the lark, and after he has
struck down his prey in the centre of the sky and sent the ragged
feathers and the slain body falling down to earth, what would be the
song of the eagle rising again and dwindling out of sight in the heart
of the sky? What terrible pean would he send whistling down to the dull
earth far below? And such was the music that came before the coming of
Dan Barry. It did not cease, as usual, at a distance, but it came closer
and closer, and it swelled around them. Buck Daniels had risen from his
chair and stolen to a corner of the room where not a solitary shaft of
light could possibly reach him; and Kate Cumberland slipped farther into
the depths of the big chair.

So that, in their utter silence, in spite of the whistling that blew in
upon them, they could hear the dull ticking of the tall clock, and by a
wretched freak of f