His course lay towards a road which looped whitely across the hills. The road twisted over a low ridge where a house stood among a grove of cottonwoods dense enough and tall enough to break the main force of any wind. On the same road, a thousand yards closer to the rider of the black stallion, was Morgan's place. CHAPTER II THE PANTHER In the ranch house old Joseph Cumberland frowned on the floor as he heard his daughter say: "It isn't right, Dad. I never noticed it before I went away to school, but since I've come back I begin to feel that it's shameful to treat Dan in this way." Her eyes brightened and she shook her golden head for emphasis. Her father watched her with a faintly quizzical smile and made no reply. The dignity of ownership of many thousand cattle kept the old rancher's shoulders square, and there was an antique gentility about his thin face with its white goatee. He was more like a quaint figure of the seventeenth century than a successful cattleman of the twentieth. "It _is_ shameful, Dad," she went on, encouraged by his silence, "or you could tell me some reason." "Some reason for not letting him have a gun?" asked the rancher, still with the quizzical smile. "Yes, yes!" she said eagerly, "and some reason for treating him in a thousand ways as if he were an irresponsible boy." "Why, Kate, gal, you have tears in your eyes!" He drew her onto a stool beside him, holding both her hands, and searched her face with eyes as blue and almost as bright as her own. "How does it come that you're so interested in Dan?" "Why, Dad, dear," and she avoided his gaze, "I've always been interested in him. Haven't we grown up together?" "Part ways you have." "And haven't we been always just like brother and sister?" "You're talkin' a little more'n sisterly, Kate." "What do you mean?" "Ay, ay! What do I mean! And now you're all red. Kate, I got an idea it's nigh onto time to let Dan start on his way." He could not have found a surer way to drive the crimson from her face and turn it white to the lips. "Dad!" "Well, Kate?" "You wouldn't send Dan away!" Before he could answer she dropped her head against his shoulder and broke into great sobs. He stroked her head with his calloused, sunburned hand and his eyes filmed with a distant gaze. "I might have knowed it!" he said over and over again; "I might have knowed it! Hush, my silly gal." Her sobbing ceased with magic suddenness. "Then you won't send him away?" "Listen to me while I talk to you straight," said Joe Cumberland, "and accordin' to the way you take it will depend whether Dan goes or stays. Will you listen?" "Dear Dad, with all my heart!"