It was sufficient destination for him, it was sufficient explanation now for the child.

She remembered how she, herself a child then, had sat at her father's table and watched the brown face of the strange boy with fascination, and the wild, quick eyes which went everywhere and rested in no one place.

They were the eyes which looked up to her now from Joan's face, and she felt suddenly divorced from her baby, as if all the blood in Joan were the blood of her father.
"He left you here alone ?" she murmured.
The child looked at her with a sort of curious amazement.
"Joan isn't alone." She whistled softly, and around the corner of the rock peered two tiny, beady-bright eyes, and the sharp nose of a coyote puppy.

It disappeared at once at the sight of the stranger, and now all the strength went from Kate.

She slipped helplessly down, and sat on a boulder trying to think, trying to master the panic which chilled her; for she thought of the day when Whistling Dan brought home to the Cumberland Ranch the wounded wolf-dog, Black Bart.