strong and be a curse in her? Don't
you see it growing? It's in her eyes! Her step is too light. She's lost
her fear of the dark. She's drifting back into wildness. Dan, she has to
go with me back to the cabin!"

At that she saw him start again, and his hand went out with a swift,
subtle gesture towards Joan.

"Let me have her! I have to have her! She's mine!" Then more gently:
"You can come to see her whenever you will. And, finally pray God you
will come and stay with us always."

He had stepped to Joan while she spoke, and his hands made a quick
movement of cherishing about her golden head, without touching it. For
the first and the last time in her life, she saw something akin to fear
in his eyes.

"Kate, I can't come back. I got things to do--out here!"

"Then let me take her."

She watched the wavering in him.

"Things would be kind of empty if she was gone, Kate."

"Why?" she asked bitterly. "You say you have your work to do--out here?"

He considered this gravely.

"I dunno. Except that I sort of need her."

She knew from of old that such questions only puzzled him, and soon he
would cast away the attempt to decide, and act. Action was his sphere.
There was only one matter in which he was unfailingly, relentlessly the
same, and that was justice. To that sense in him she would make her last
appeal.

"Dan, I can't take her. I only ask you to see that I'm right. She
belongs to me, I bought her with pain."

It was a staggering blow to Whistling Dan. He took off his sombrero and
passed his hand slowly across his forehead, then looked at her with a
dumb appeal.

"I only want you to do the thing you think is square, Dan."

Once more he winced.

Then, slowly: "I'm tryin' to be square. Tryin' hard. I know you got a
claim in her. But it seems like I have, too. She's like a part of me,
mostly. When she's happy, I feel like smilin' sort of. When she cries it
hurts me so's I can't hardly stand it."

He paused, looking wistfully from the staring child to Kate.

He said with sudden illumination: "Let her do the judgin'! You ask her
to go to you, and I'll ask her to come to me. Ain't that square?"

For a moment Kate hesitated, but as she looked at Joan it seemed to her
that when she stretched out her arms to her baby nothing in the world
could keep them apart.

"It's fair," she answered. Dan dropped to one knee.

"Joan, you got to make up your mind. If you want to stay with, with
Satan--speak up, Sa