Black Bart would have his teeth in her throat if she made another movement toward the entrance.

A city child would have either gone mad with terror or else made that fatal struggle to reach the forbidden place, but Joan had learned many things among the mountains, and among others, she knew the difference between the tame and the free.

The old dappled cow was tame, for instance; and the Maltese cat, which came too close to Bart the year before and received a broken back for its carelessness, had been tame; and the brown horse with the white face and the dreary eyes was tame.

They could be handled, and teased, and petted and bossed about at will.

Other creatures were different.