"Humph!" he grunted, "that's just what I don't want. This what I'm goin' to tell you is a queer thing--a mighty lot like a fairy tale, maybe. I've kept it back from you years an' years thinkin' you'd find out the truth about Dan for yourself. But bein' so close to him has made you sort of blind, maybe! No man will criticize his own hoss." "Go on, tell me what you mean. I won't interrupt." He was silent for a moment, frowning to gather his thoughts. "Have you ever seen a mule, Kate?" "Of course!" "Maybe you've noticed that a mule is just as strong as a horse--" "Yes." "--but their muscles ain't a third as big?" "Yes, but what on earth--" "Well, Kate, Dan is built light an' yet he's stronger than the biggest men around here." "Are you going to send him away simply because he's strong?" "It doesn't show nothin'," said the old man gently, "savin' that he's different from the regular run of men--an' I've seen a considerable pile of men, honey. There's other funny things about Dan maybe you ain't noticed. Take the way he has with hosses an' other animals. The wildest man-killin', spur-hatin' bronchos don't put up no fight when them long legs of Dan settle round 'em." "Because they know fighting won't help them!" "Maybe so, maybe so," he said quietly, "but it's kind of queer, Kate, that after most a hundred men on the best hosses in these parts had ridden in relays after Satan an' couldn't lay a rope on him, Dan could jest go out on foot with a halter an' come back in ten days leadin' the wildest devil of a mustang that ever hated men." "It was a glorious thing to do!" she said. Old Cumberland sighed and then shook his head. "It shows more'n that, honey. There ain't any man but Dan that can sit the saddle on Satan. If Dan should die, Satan wouldn't be no more use to other men than a piece of haltered lightnin'. An' then tell me how Dan got hold of that wolf, Black Bart, as he calls him." "It isn't a wolf, Dad," said Kate, "it's a dog. Dan says so himself." "Sure he says so," answered her father, "but there was a lone wolf prowlin' round these parts for a considerable time an' raisin' Cain with the calves an' the colts. An' Black Bart comes pretty close to a description of the lone wolf. Maybe you remember Dan found his 'dog' lyin' in a gully with a bullet through his shoulder. If he was a dog how'd he come to be shot--" "Some brute of a sheep herder may have done it. What could it prove?" "It only proves that Dan is queer--powerful queer! Satan an' Black Bart are still as wild as they ever was, except that they got one master. An' they ain't got a thing to do with other people. Black Bart'd tear the heart out of a man that so much as patted his head." "Why," she cried, "he'll let me do anything with him!"