I know that he's gentle and kind and loves you more
than you love him." Her voice broke a little. "Oh, Dad, you forget the
time he sat up with you for five days and nights when you got sick out
in the hills, and how he barely managed to get you back to the house
alive!"
The old man frowned to conceal how greatly he was moved.
"I haven't forgot nothin', Kate," he said, "an' everything is for his
own good. Do you know what I've been tryin' to do all these years?"
"What?"
"I've been tryin' to hide him from himself! Kate, do you remember how
I found him?"
"I was too little to know. I've heard you tell a little about it. He
was lost on the range. You found him twenty miles south of the house."
"Lost on the range?" repeated her father softly. "I don't think he
could ever have been lost. To a hoss the corral is a home. To us our
ranch is a home. To Dan Barry the whole mountain-desert is a home!
This is how I found him. It was in the spring of the year when the
wild geese was honkin' as they flew north. I was ridin' down a gulley
about sunset and wishin' that I was closer to the ranch when I heard a
funny, wild sort of whistlin' that didn't have any tune to it that
I recognized.
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