cattle from the range next to mine. Dene got away with about
a hundred head. The barefaced robber sold them in Lund to a buying
company from Salt Lake."

"Is he openly an outlaw, a rustler?" inquired Hare.

"Everybody knows it, and he's finding White Sage and vicinity warmer
than it was. Every time he comes in he and his band shoot up things
pretty lively. Now the Mormons are slow to wrath. But they are
awakening. All the way from Salt Lake to the border outlaws have come
in. They'll never get the power on this desert that they had in the
places from which they've been driven. Men of the Holderness type are
more to be dreaded. He's a rancher, greedy, unscrupulous, but hard to
corner in dishonesty. Dene is only a bad man, a gun-fighter. He and all
his ilk will get run out of Utah. Did you ever hear of Plummer, John
Slade, Boone Helm, any of those bad men?"

"No."

"Well, they were men to fear. Plummer was a sheriff in Idaho, a man high
in the estimation of his townspeople, but he was the leader of the most
desperate band of criminals ever known in the West; and he instigated
the murder of, or killed outright, more than one hundred men. Slade was
a bad man, fatal on the draw. Helm was a killing machine. These men all
tried Utah, and had to get out. So will Dene have to get out. But I'm
afraid there'll be warm times before that happens. When you get in the
thick of it you'll appreciate Silvermane."

"I surely will. But I can't see that wild stallion with a saddle and a
bridle, eating oats like any common horse, and being led to water."

"Well, he'll come to your whistle, presently, if I'm not greatly
mistaken. You must make him love you, Jack. It can be done with any wild
creature. Be gentle, but firm. Teach him to obey the slightest touch of
rein, to stand when you throw your bridle on the ground, to come at your
whistle. Always remember this. He's a desert-bred horse; he can live on
scant browse and little water. Never break him of those best virtues in
a horse. Never feed him grain if you can find a little patch of browse;
never give him a drink till he needs it. That's one-tenth as often as
a tame horse. Some day you'll be caught in the desert, and with these
qualities of endurance Silvermane will carry you out."

Silvermane snorted defiance from the cedar corral next morning when the
Naabs, and Indians, and Hare appeared. A half-naked sinewy Navajo with
a face as changeless as a bronze mask sat astride August'