from the guns. He crossed the room to the bar and nodded his
head at the bartender.

"Drink!" he said, and his voice was only a whisper without body of
sound.

The bartender, with pasty face, round and blank, did not move either
his hand or his fascinated eyes. There was a twitch of the outlaw's
hand and naked steel gleamed. Instantly revolvers showed in every
hand. A youngster moaned. The sound seemed to break the charm.

Silent put back his great head and burst into a deep-throated
laughter. The gun whirled in his hand and the butt crashed heavily on
the bar.

"Drink, damn you!" he thundered. "Step up an' drink to the health of
Jim Silent!"

The wavering line slowly approached the bar. Silent pulled out his
other gun and shoved them both across the bar.

"Take 'em," he said. "I don't want 'em to get restless an' muss up
this joint."

The bartender took them as if they were covered with some deadly
poison, and the outlaw stood unarmed! It came suddenly to Buck what
the whole manoeuvre meant. He gave away his guns in order to tempt
someone to arrest him. Better the hand of the law than the yellow
glare of those following eyes. Yet not a man moved to apprehend him.
Unarmed he still seemed more dangerous than six common men.

The long rider jerked a whisky bottle upside down over a glass. Half
the contents splashed across the bar. He turned and faced the crowd,
his hand dripping with the spilled liquor.

"Whose liquorin'?" he bellowed.

Not a sound answered him.

"Damn your yaller souls! Then all by myself I'll drink to--"

He stopped short, his eyes wild, his head tilted back. One by one the
cowpunchers gave back, foot by foot, softly, until they stood close to
the opposite wall of the saloon. All the bar was left to Silent. The
whisky glass slipped from his hand and crashed on the floor. In his
face was the meaning of the sound he heard, and now it came to their
own ears--a whistle thin with distance, but clear.

Only phrases at first, but now it rose more distinct, the song of the
untamed; the terror and beauty of the mountain-desert; a plea and a
threat.

The clock struck, sharp, hurried, brazen--one, two, three! Before the
last quick, unmusical chime died out Black Bart stood in the entrance
to the saloon. His eyes were upon Jim Silent, who stretched out his
arms on either side and gripped the edge of the bar. Yet even when the
wolf glided silently across the room and crouched before the bandit,
a