"You don't need no guide," she replied. "Listen to that, will you?"
And as he hearkened obediently Buck Daniels heard a strain of whistling, needle-sharp with distance.
"That's him," nodded the woman. "He's always goin' about whistling to himself. Kind of a nut, he is."
"It's him!" cried Buck Daniels. "It's him!"
And with this ungrammatical burst of joy he bolted from the room.
CHAPTER XIII
THE THREE
The whistling came from behind the hotel, and although it ended as soon as he reached the veranda of the building, Buck Daniels hurried to the rear of the place. There were the long, low sheds of the barn, and behind these, he knew, must be the corrals. He raced around the corner of the shed and there came to a halt, for he saw a thing that turned his blood to ice.
One of those rare rains of the mountain-desert had recently fallen and the corrals behind the barn were carpeted with a short, thick grass. In the small corral nearest him he beheld, rolling on that carpet of grass, a great wolf—or a dog as large and as rough-coated as a wolf, and a man; and they were engaged in a desperate and silent struggle for mastery. Their movements were so lightning fast that Buck Daniels could not make out distinct forms from the tangle. But he saw the great white teeth of the wolf flash in the sun one instant, and the next the man had whirled on top. It was Dan and Bart at play.
No outcry from Dan; no growl from the wolf. Buck felt the old chill which never left him when he saw the fierce game of the wolf and the wolf-man. All this passed in the twinkling of an eye, and then Dan, by a prodigious effort, had thrown the great beast away from him, so that Bart fell upon its back. Dan leaped with outstretched arms upon the fallen animal, and buried his clutching hands in the throat of the beast.