The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Night Horseman, by Max Brand

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Title: The Night Horseman

Author: Max Brand

Release Date: May 26, 2004 [EBook #12436]
Last Updated: August 13, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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By Max Brand

The Untamed Trailin'
The Night Horseman




THE NIGHT HORSEMAN

BY

MAX BRAND

1920




CONTENTS

I.--THE SCHOLAR

II.--WORDS AND BULLETS

III.--THE DOCTOR RIDES

IV.--THE CHAIN

V.--THE WAITING

VI.--THE MISSION STARTS

VII.--JERRY STRANN

VIII.--THE GIFT-HORSE

IX.--BATTLE LIGHT

X.--"SWEET ADELINE"

XI.--THE BUZZARD

XII.--FINESSE

XIII.--THE THREE

XIV.--MUSIC FOR OLD NICK

XV.--OLD GARY PETERS

XVI.--THE COMING OF NIGHT

XVII.--BUCK MAKES HIS GET-AWAY

XVIII.--DOCTOR BYRNE ANALYSES

XIX.--SUSPENSE

XX.--THE COMING

XXI.--MAC STRANN DECIDES TO KEEP THE LAW

XXII.--PATIENCE

XXIII.--HOW MAC STRANN KEPT THE LAW

XXIV.--DOCTOR BYRNE LOOKS INTO THE PAST

XXV.--WEREWOLF

XXVI.--THE BATTLE

XXVII.--THE CONQUEST

XXVIII.--THE TRAIL

XXIX.--TALK

XXX.--THE VOICE OF BLACK BART

XXXI.--THE MESSAGE

XXXII.--VICTORY

XXXIII.--DOCTOR BYRNE SHOWS THE TRUTH

XXXIV.--THE ACID TEST

XXXV.--PALE ANNIE

XXXVI.--THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE

XXXVII.--THE PIEBALD

XXXVIII.--THE CHALLENGE

XXXIX.--THE STORM

XL.--THE ARROYO

XLI.--THE FALLING OF NIGHT

XLII.--THE JOURNEY INTO NIGHT




THE NIGHT HORSEMAN




CHAPTER I

THE SCHOLAR


At the age of six Randall Byrne could name and bound every state in the
Union and give the date of its admission; at nine he was conversant with
Homeric Greek and Caesar; at twelve he read Aristophanes with perfect
understanding of the allusions of the day and divided his leisure
between Ovid and Horace; at fifteen, wearied by the simplicity of Old
English and Thirteenth Century Italian, he dipped into the history of
Philosophy and passed from that, naturally, into calculus and the higher
mathematics; at eighteen he took an A.B. from Harvard and while idling
away a pleasant summer with Hebrew and Sanscrit he delved lightly into
biology and its kindred sciences, having reached the conclusion that
Truth is greater than Goodness or Beauty, because it comprises both, and
the whole is greater than any of its parts; at twenty-one he pocketed
his Ph.D. and was touched with the fever of his first practical
enthusiasm--surgery. At twenty-four he was an M.D. and a distinguished
diagnostician, though he preferred work in his laboratory in his
endeavor to resolve the elements into simpler forms; also he published
at this time a work on anthropology whose circulation was limited to two
hundred copies, and he received in return two hundred letters of
congratulation from great men who had tried to read his book; at
twenty-seven he collapsed one fine spring day on the floor of his
laboratory. That afternoon he was carried into the presence of a great
physician who was also a very vulgar man. The great physician felt his
pulse and looked into his dim eyes.

"You have a hundred and twenty horsepower brain and a runabout body,"
said the great physician.

"I have come," answered Randall Byrne faintly, "for the solution of a
problem, not for the statement thereof."

"I'm not through," said the great physician. "Among other things you are
a damned fool."

Randall Byrne here rubbed his eyes.

"What steps do you suggest that I consider?" he queried.

The great physician spat noisily.

"Marry a farmer's daughter," he said brutally.

"But," said Randall Byrne vaguely.

"I am a busy man and you've wasted ten minutes of my time," said the
great physician, turning back to his plate glass window. "My secretary
will send you a bill for one thousand dollars. Good-day."

And therefore, ten days later, Randall Byrne sat in his room in the
hotel at Elkhead.

He had just written (to his friend Swinnerton Loughburne, M.A., Ph.D.,
L.L.D.): "Incontrovertibly the introduction of the personal equation
leads to lamentable inversions, and the perceptive faculties when
contemplating phenomena through the lens of ego too often conceive an
accidental connotation or manifest distortion to be actuality, for the
physical (or personal) too often beclouds that power of inner vision
which so unerringly penetrates to the inherent truths of incorporeity
and the extramundane. Yet this problem, to your eyes, I fear, not
essentially novel or peculiarly involute, holds for my contemplative
faculties an extraordinary fascination, to wit: wherein does the mind,
in itself a muscle, escape from the laws of the physical, and wherein
and wherefore do the laws of the physical exercise so inexorable a
jurisdiction over the processes of the mind, so that a disorder of the
visual nerve actually distorts the asomatous and veils the
pneumatoscopic?

"Your pardon, dear Loughburne, for these lapses from the general to the
particular, but in a lighter moment of idleness, I pray you give some
careless thought to a problem now painfully my own, though rooted
inevitably so deeply in the dirt of the commonplace.

"But you have asked me in letter of recent date for the particular
physical aspects of my present environment, and though (as you so well
know) it is my conviction that the physical fact is not and only the
immaterial is, yet I shall gladly look about me--a thing I have not yet
seen occasion to do--and describe to you the details of my present
condition."

Accordingly, at this point Randall Byrne removed from his nose his thick
glasses and holding them poised he stared through the window at the view
without. He had quite changed his appearance by removing the spectacles,
for the owlish touch was gone and he seemed at a stroke ten years
younger. It was such a face as one is glad to examine in detail, lean,
pale, the transparent skin stretched tightly over cheekbones, nose, and
chin. That chin was built on good fighting lines, though somewhat
over-delicate in substance and the mouth quite colourless, but oddly
enough the upper lip had that habitual appearance of stiff compression
which is characteristic of highly strung temperaments; it is a
noticeable feature of nearly every great actor, for instance. The nose
was straight and very thin and in a strong sidelight a tracery of the
red blood showed through at the nostrils. The eyes were deeply buried
and the lower lids bruised with purple--weak eyes that blinked at a
change of light or a sudden thought--distant eyes which missed the
design of wall paper and saw the trees growing on the mountains. The
forehead was Byrne's most noticeable feature, pyramidal, swelling
largely towards the top and divided in the centre into two distinct
lobes by a single marked furrow which gave his expression a hint of the
wistful. Looking at that forehead one was strangely conscious of the
brain beneath. There seemed no bony structure; the mind, undefended,
was growing and pushing the confining walls further out.

And the fragility which the head suggested the body confirmed, for he
was not framed to labor. The burden of the noble head had bowed the
slender throat and crooked the shoulders, and when he moved his arm it
seemed the arm of a skeleton too loosely clad. There was a differing
connotation in the hands, to be sure. They were thin--bones and sinews
chiefly, with the violet of the veins showing along the backs; but they
were active hands without tremor--hands ideal for the accurate scalpel,
where a fractional error means death to the helpless.

After a moment of staring through the window the scholar wrote again:
"The major portion of Elkhead lies within plain sight of my window. I
see a general merchandise store, twenty-seven buildings of a
comparatively major and eleven of a minor significance, and five
saloons. The streets--"

The streets, however, were not described at that sitting, for at this
juncture a heavy hand knocked and the door of Randall Byrne's room was
flung open by Hank Dwight, proprietor of Elkhead's saloon--a versatile
man, expert behind the bar or in a blacksmith shop.

"Doc," said Hank Dwight, "you're wanted." Randall Byrne placed his
spectacles more firmly on his nose to consider his host.

"What--" he began, but Hank Dwight had already turned on his heel.

"Her name is Kate Cumberland. A little speed, doc. She's in a hurry."

"If no other physician is available," protested Byrne, following slowly
down the stairs, "I suppose I must see her."

"If they was another within ten miles, d'you s'pose I'd call on you?"
asked Hank Dwight.

So saying, he led the way out onto the veranda, where the doctor was
aware of a girl in a short riding skirt who stood with one gloved hand
on her hip while the other slapped a quirt idly against her riding
boots.




CHAPTER II

WORDS AND BULLETS


"Here's a gent that calls himself a doc," said Hank Dwight by way of an
introduction. "If you can use him, Miss Cumberland, fly to it!"

And he left them alone.

Now the sun lay directly behind Kate Cumberland and in order to look at
her closely the doctor had to shade his weak eyes and pucker his brows;
for from beneath her wide sombrero there rolled a cloud of golden hair
as bright as the sunshine itself--a sad strain upon the visual nerve of
Doctor Randall Byrne. He repeated her name, bowed, and when he
straightened, blinked again. As if she appreciated that strain upon his
eyes she stepped closer, and entered the shadow.

"Doctor Hardin is not in town," she said, "and I have to bring a
physician out to the ranch at once; my father is critically ill."

Randall Byrne rubbed his lean chin.

"I am not practicing at present," he said reluctantly. Then he saw that
she was watching him closely, weighing him with her eyes, and it came to
the mind of Randall Byrne that he was not a large man and might not
incline the scale far from the horizontal.

"I am hardly equipped--" began Byrne.

"You will not need equipment," she interrupted. "His trouble lies in his
nerves and the state of his mind."

A slight gleam lighted the eyes of the doctor.

"Ah," he murmured. "The mind?"

"Yes."

He rubbed his bloodless hands slowly together, and when he spoke his
voice was sharp and quick and wholly impersonal. "Tell me the symptoms!"

"Can't we talk those over on the way to the ranch? Even if we start now
it will be dark before we arrive."

"But," protested the doctor, "I have not yet decided--this
precipitancy--"

"Oh," she said, and flushed. He perceived that she was on the verge of
turning away, but something withheld her. "There is no other physician
within reach; my father is very ill. I only ask that you come as a
diagnostician, doctor!"

"But a ride to your ranch," he said miserably. "I presume you refer to
riding a horse?"

"Naturally."

"I am unfamiliar with that means of locomotion," said the doctor with
serious eyes, "and in fact have not carried my acquaintance with the
equine species beyond a purely experimental stage. Anatomically I have a
superficial knowledge, but on the one occasion on which I sat in a
saddle I observed that the docility of the horse is probably a poetic
fallacy."

He rubbed his left shoulder thoughtfully and saw a slight tremor at the
corners of the girl's mouth. It caused his vision to clear and
concentrate; he found that the lips were, in fact, in the very act of
smiling. The face of the doctor brightened.

"You shall ride my own horse," said the girl. "She is perfectly gentle
and has a very easy gait. I'm sure you'll have not the slightest trouble
with her."

"And you?"

"I'll find something about town; it doesn't matter what."

"This," said the doctor, "is most remarkable. You choose your mounts at
random?"

"But you will go?" she insisted.

"Ah, yes, the trip to the ranch!" groaned the doctor. "Let me see: the
physical obstacles to such a trip while many are not altogether
insuperable, I may say; in the meantime the moral urge which compels me
towards the ranch seems to be of the first order." He sighed. "Is it not
strange, Miss Cumberland, that man, though distinguished from the lower
orders by mind, so often is controlled in his actions by ethical
impulses which override the considerations of reason? An observation
which leads us towards the conclusion that the passion for goodness is a
principle hardly secondary to the passion for truth. Understand that I
build the hypothesis only tentatively, with many reservations, among
which--"

He broke off short. The smile was growing upon her lips.

"I will put together a few of my things," said the doctor, "and come
down to you at once."

"Good!" said the girl, "I'll be waiting for you with two horses before
you are ready."

He turned away, but had taken hardly a step before he turned, saying:
"But why are you so sure that you will be ready before I--" but she was
already down the steps from the veranda and stepping briskly down the
street.

"There is an element of the unexplainable in woman," said the doctor,
and resumed his way to his room. Once there, something prompted him to
act with the greatest possible speed. He tossed his toilet articles and
a few changes of linen into a small, flexible valise and ran down the
stairs. He reached the veranda again, panting, and the girl was not in
sight; a smile of triumph appeared on the grave, colourless lips of the
doctor. "Feminine instinct, however, is not infallible," he observed to
himself, and to one of the cowboys, lounging loosely in a chair nearby,
he continued his train of thoughts aloud: "Though the verity of the
feminine intuition has already been thrown in a shade of doubt by many
thinkers, as you will undoubtedly agree."

The man thus addressed allowed his lower jaw to drop but after a moment
he ejaculated: "Now what in hell d'you mean by that?"

The doctor already turned away, intent upon his thoughts, but he now
paused and again faced the cowboy. He said, frowning: "There is
unnecessary violence in your remark, sir."

"Duck your glasses," said the worthy in question. "You ain't talkin' to
a book, you're talking to a man."

"And in your attitude," went on the doctor, "there is an element of
offense which if carried farther might be corrected by physical
violence."

"I don't foller your words," said the cattleman, "but from the drift of
your tune I gather you're a bit peeved; and if you are--"

His voice had risen to a ringing note as he proceeded and he now slipped
from his chair and faced Randall Byrne, a big man, brown, hard-handed.
The doctor crimsoned.

"Well?" he echoed, but in place of a deep ring his words were pitched in
a high squeak of defiance.

He saw a large hand contract to a fist, but almost instantly the big man
grinned, and his eyes went past Byrne.

"Oh, hell!" he grunted, and turned his back with a chuckle.

For an instant there was a mad impulse in the doctor to spring at this
fellow but a wave of impotence overwhelmed him. He knew that he was
white around the mouth, and there was a dryness in his throat.

"The excitement of imminent physical contest and personal danger," he
diagnosed swiftly, "causing acceleration of the pulse and attendant
weakness of the body--a state unworthy of the balanced intellect."

Having brought back his poise by this quick interposition of reason, he
went his way down the long veranda. Against a pillar leaned another tall
cattleman, also brown and lean and hard.

"May I inquire," he said, "if you have any information direct or casual
concerning a family named Cumberland which possesses ranch property in
this vicinity?"

"You may," said the cowpuncher, and continued to roll his cigarette.

"Well," said the doctor, "do you know anything about them?"

"Sure," said the other, and having finished his cigarette he introduced
it between his lips. It seemed to occur to him instantly, however, that
he was committing an inhospitable breach, for he produced his Durham and
brown papers with a start and extended them towards the doctor.

"Smoke?" he asked.

"I use tobacco in no form," said the doctor.

The cowboy stared with such fixity that the match burned down to his
fingertips and singed them before he had lighted his cigarette.

"'S that a fact?" he queried when his astonishment found utterance.
"What d'you do to kill time? Well, I been thinking about knocking off
the stuff for a while. Mame gets sore at me for having my fingers all
stained up with nicotine like this."

He extended his hand, the first and second fingers of which were
painted a bright yellow.

"Soap won't take it off," he remarked.

"A popular but inexcusable error," said the doctor. "It is the tarry
by-products of tobacco which cause that stain. Nicotine itself, of
course, is a volatile alkaloid base of which there is only the merest
trace in tobacco. It is one of the deadliest of nerve poisons and is
quite colourless. There is enough of that stain upon your fingers--if it
were nicotine--to kill a dozen men."

"The hell you say!"

"Nevertheless, it is an indubitable fact. A lump of nicotine the size of
the head of a pin placed on the tongue of a horse will kill the beast
instantly."

The cowpuncher pushed back his hat and scratched his head.

"This is worth knowin'," he said, "but I'm some glad that Mame ain't
heard it."

"Concerning the Cumberlands," said the doctor, "I--"

"Concerning the Cumberlands," repeated the cattleman, "it's best to
leave 'em to their own concerns." And he started to turn away, but the
thirst for knowledge was dry in the throat of the doctor.

"Do I understand," he insisted, "that there is some mystery connected
with them?"

"From me," replied the other, "you understand nothin'." And he lumbered
down the steps and away.

Be it understood that there was nothing of the gossip in Randall Byrne,
but now he was pardonably excited and perceiving the tall form of Hank
Dwight in the doorway he approached his host.

"Mr. Dwight," he said, "I am about to go to the Cumberland ranch. I
gather that there is something of an unusual nature concerning them."

"There is," admitted Hank Dwight.

"Can you tell me what it is?"

"I can."

"Good!" said the doctor, and he almost smiled. "It is always well to
know the background of a case which has to do with mental states. Now,
just what do you know?"

"I know--" began the proprietor, and then paused and eyed his guest
dubiously. "I know," he continued, "a story."

"Yes?"

"Yes, about a man and a hoss and a dog."

"The approach seems not quite obvious, but I shall be glad to hear it."

There was a pause.

"Words," said the host, at length, "is worse'n bullets. You never know
what they'll hit."

"But the story?" persisted Randall Byrne.

"That story," said Hank Dwight, "I may tell to my son before I die."

"This sounds quite promising."

"But I'll tell nobody else."

"Really!"

"It's about a man and a hoss and a dog. The man ain't possible, the
hoss ain't possible, the dog is a wolf."

He paused again and glowered on the doctor. He seemed to be drawn two
ways, by his eagerness to tell a yarn and his dread of consequences.

"I know," he muttered, "because I've seen 'em all. I've seen"--he looked
far, as though striking a silent bargain with himself concerning the sum
of the story which might safely be told--"I've seen a hoss that
understood a man's talk like you and me does--or better. I've heard a
man whistle like a singing bird. Yep, that ain't no lie. You jest
imagine a bald eagle that could lick anything between the earth and the
sky and was able to sing--that's what that whistlin' was like. It made
you glad to hear it, and it made you look to see if your gun was in good
workin' shape. It wasn't very loud, but it travelled pretty far, like it
was comin' from up above you."

"That's the way this strange man of the story whistles?" asked Byrne,
leaning closer.

"Man of the story?" echoed the proprietor, with some warmth. "Friend, if
he ain't real, then I'm a ghost. And they's them in Elkhead that's got
the scars of his comin' and goin'."

"Ah, an outlaw? A gunfighter?" queried the doctor.

"Listen to me, son," observed the host, and to make his point he tapped
the hollow chest of Byrne with a rigid forefinger, "around these parts
you know jest as much as you see, and lots of times you don't even know
that much. What you see is sometimes your business, but mostly it
ain't." He concluded impressively: "Words is worse'n bullets!"

"Well," mused Byrne, "I can ask the girl these questions. It will be
medically necessary."

"Ask the girl? Ask her?" echoed the host with a sort of horror. But he
ended with a forced restraint: "That's _your_ business."




CHAPTER III

THE DOCTOR RIDES


Hank Dwight disappeared from the doorway and the doctor was called from
his pondering by the voice of the girl. There was something about that
voice which worried Byrne, for it was low and controlled and musical and
it did not fit with the nasal harshness of the cattlemen. When she began
to speak it was like the beginning of a song. He turned now and found
her sitting a tall bay horse, and she led a red-roan mare beside her.
When he went out she tossed her reins over the head of her horse and
strapped his valise behind her saddle.

"You won't have any trouble with that mare," she assured him, when the
time came for mounting. Yet when he approached gingerly he was received
with flattened ears and a snort of anger. "Wait," she cried, "the left
side, not the right!"

He felt the laughter in her voice, but when he looked he could see no
trace of it in her face. He approached from the left side, setting his
teeth.

"You observe," he said, "that I take your word at its full value," and
placing his foot in the stirrup, he dragged himself gingerly up to the
saddle. The mare stood like a rock. Adjusting himself, he wiped a sudden
perspiration from his forehead.

"I quite believe," he remarked, "that the animal is of unusual
intelligence. All may yet be well!"

"I'm sure of it." said the girl gravely. "Now we're off."

And the horses broke into a dog trot. Now the gait of the red roan mare
was a dream of softness, and her flexible ankles gave a play of whole
inches to break the jar of every step, the sure sign of the good
saddle-horse; but the horse has never been saddled whose trot is really
a smooth pace. The hat of Doctor Byrne began to incline towards his
right eye and his spectacles towards his left ear. He felt a peculiar
lightness in the stomach and heaviness in the heart.

"The t-t-t-trot," he ventured to his companion, "is a d-d-d-dam--"

"Dr. Byrne!" she cried.

"Whoa!" called Doctor Byrne, and drew mightily in upon the reins. The
red mare stopped as a ball stops when it meets a stout wall; the doctor
sprawled along her neck, clinging with arms and legs. He managed to
clamber back into the saddle.

"There are vicious elements in the nature of this brute," he observed to
the girl.

"I'm very sorry," she murmured. He cast a sidelong glance but found not
the trace of a smile.

"The word upon which I--"

"Stopped?" she suggested.

"Stopped," he agreed, "was not, as you evidently assumed, an oath. On
the contrary, I was merely remarking that the trot is a damaging gait,
but through an interrupted--er--articulation--"

His eye dared her, but she was utterly grave. He perceived that there
was, after all, a certain kinship between this woman of the
mountain-desert and the man thereof. Their silences were filled with
eloquence.

"We'll try a canter," she suggested, "and I think you'll find that
easier."

So she gave the word, and her bay sprang into a lope from a standing
start. The red mare did likewise, nearly flinging the doctor over the
back of the saddle, but by the grace of God he clutched the pommel in
time and was saved. The air caught at his face, they swept out of the
town and onto a limitless level stretch.

"Sp-p-p-peed," gasped the doctor, "has never been a p-p-passion with
me!"

He noted that she was not moving in the saddle. The horse was like the
bottom of a wave swinging violently back and forth. She was the calm
crest, swaying slightly and graciously with a motion as smooth as the
flowing of water. And she spoke as evenly as if she were sitting in a
rocking chair.

"You'll be used to it in a moment," she assured him.

He learned, indeed, that if one pressed the stirrups as the shoulders of
the horse swung down and leaned a trifle forward when the shoulders rose
again, the motion ceased to be jarring; for she was truly a matchless
creature and gaited like one of those fabulous horses of old, sired by
the swift western wind. In a little time a certain pride went beating
through the veins of the doctor, the air blew more deeply into his
lungs, there was a different tang to the wind and a different feel to
the sun--a peculiar richness of yellow warmth. And the small head of the
horse and the short, sharp, pricking ears tossed continually; and now
and then the mare threw her head a bit to one side and glanced back at
him with what he felt to be a reassuring air. Life and strength and
speed were gripped between his knees--he flashed a glance at the girl.

But she rode with face straightforward and there was that about her
which made him turn his eyes suddenly away and look far off. It was a
jagged country, for in the brief rainy season there came sudden and
terrific downpours which lashed away the soil and scoured the face of
the underlying rock, and in a single day might cut a deep arroyo where
before had been smooth plain. This was the season of grass, but not the
dark, rank green of rich soil and mild air--it was a yellowish green, a
colour at once tender and glowing. It spread everywhere across the
plains about Elkhead, broken here and there by the projecting boulders
which flashed in the sun. So a great battlefield might appear,
pockmarked with shell-holes, and all the scars of war freshly cut upon
its face. And in truth the mountain desert was like an arena ready to
stage a conflict--a titanic arena with space for earth-giants to
struggle--and there in the distance were the spectator mountains. High,
lean-flanked mountains they were, not clad in forests, but rather
bristling with a stubby growth of the few trees which might endure in
precarious soil and bitter weather, but now they gathered the dignity of
distance about them. The grass of the foothills was a faint green mist
about their feet, cloaks of exquisite blue hung around the upper masses,
but their heads were naked to the pale skies. And all day long, with
deliberate alteration, the garb of the mountains changed. When the
sudden morning came they leaped naked upon the eye, and then withdrew,
muffling themselves in browns and blues until at nightfall they covered
themselves to the eyes in thickly sheeted purple--Tyrian purple--and
prepared for sleep with their heads among the stars.

Something of all this came to Doctor Randall Byrne as he rode, for it
seemed to him that there was a similarity between these mountains and
the girl beside him. She held that keen purity of the upper slopes under
the sun, and though she had no artifice or careful wiles to make her
strange, there was about her a natural dignity like the mystery of
distance. There was a rhythm, too, about that line of peaks against the
sky, and the girl had caught it; he watched her sway with the gallop of
her horse and felt that though she was so close at hand she was a
thousand miles from him. She concealed nothing, and yet he could no more
see her naked soul than he could tear the veils of shadow from the
mountains. Not that the doctor phrased his emotions in words. He was
only conscious of a sense of awe and the necessity of silence.

A strange feeling for the doctor! He came from the region of the mind
where that which is not spoken does not exist, and now this girl was
carrying him swiftly away from hypotheses, doubts, and polysyllabic
speech into the world--of what? The spirit? The doctor did not know. He
only felt that he was about to step into the unknown, and it held for
him the fascination of the suspended action of a statue. Let it not be
thought that he calmly accepted the sheer necessity for silence. He
fought against it, but no words came.

It was evening: the rolling hills about them were already dark; only the
heads of the mountains took the day; and now they paused at the top of a
rise and the girl pointed across the hollow. "There we are," she said.
It was a tall clump of trees through which broke the outlines of a
two-storied house larger than any the doctor had seen in the
mountain-desert; and outside the trees lay long sheds, a great barn, and
a wide-spread wilderness of corrals. It struck the doctor with its
apparently limitless capacity for housing man and beast. Coming in
contrast with the rock-strewn desolation of the plains, this was a great
establishment; the doctor had ridden out with a waif of the desert and
she had turned into a princess at a stroke. Then, for the first time
since they left Elkhead, he remembered with a start that he was to care
for a sick man in that house.

"You were to tell me," he said, "something about the sickness of your
father--the background behind his condition. But we've both forgotten
about it."

"I have been thinking how I could describe it, every moment of the
ride," she answered. Then, as the gloom fell more thickly around them
every moment, she swerved her horse over to the mare, as if it were
necessary that she read the face of the doctor while she spoke.

"Six months ago," she said, "my father was robust and active in spite of
his age. He was cheerful, busy, and optimistic. But he fell into a
decline. It has not been a sudden sapping of his strength. If it were
that I should not worry so much; I'd attribute it to disease. But every
day something of vitality goes from him. He is fading almost from hour
to hour, as slowly as the hour hand of a clock. You can't notice the
change, but every twelve hours the hand makes a complete revolution.
It's as if his blood were evaporating and nothing we can do will supply
him with fresh strength."

"Is this attended by irritability?"

"He is perfectly calm and seems to have no care for what becomes of
him."

"Has he lost interest in the things which formerly attracted and
occupied him?"

"Yes, he minds nothing now. He has no care for the condition of the
cattle, or for profit or loss in the sales. He has simply stepped out of
every employment."

"Ah, a gradual diminution of the faculties of attention."

"In a way, yes. But also he is more alive than he has ever been. He
seems to hear with uncanny distinctness, for instance."

The doctor frowned.

"I was inclined to attribute his decline to the operation of old age,"
he remarked, "but this is unusual. This--er--inner acuteness is
accompanied by no particular interest in any one thing?".

As she did not reply for the moment he was about to accept the silence
for acquiescence, but then through the dimness he was arrested by the
lustre of her eyes, fixed, apparently, far beyond him.

"One thing," she said at length. "Yes, there is one thing in which he
retains an interest."

The doctor nodded brightly.

"Good!" he said. "And that--?"

The silence fell again, but this time he was more roused and he fixed
his eyes keenly upon her through the gloom. She was deeply troubled; one
hand gripped the horn of her saddle strongly; her lips had parted; she
was like one who endures inescapable pain. He could not tell whether it
was the slight breeze which disturbed her blouse or the rapid panting of
her breath.

"Of that," she said, "it is hard to speak--it is useless to speak!"

"Surely not!" protested the doctor. "The cause, my dear madame, though
perhaps apparently remote from the immediate issue, is of the utmost
significance in diagnosis."

She broke in rapidly: "This is all I can tell you: he is waiting for
something which will never come. He has missed something from his life
which will never come back into it. Then why should we discuss what it
is that he has missed."

"To the critical mind," replied the doctor calmly, and he automatically
adjusted his glasses closer to his eyes, "nothing is without
significance."

"It is nearly dark!" she exclaimed hurriedly. "Let us ride on."

"First," he suggested, "I must tell you that before I left Elkhead I
heard a hint of some remarkable story concerning a man and a horse and a
dog. Is there anything--"

But it seemed that she did not hear. He heard a sharp, low exclamation
which might have been addressed to her horse, and the next instant she
was galloping swiftly down the slope. The doctor followed as fast as he
could, jouncing in the saddle until he was quite out of breath.




CHAPTER IV

THE CHAIN


They had hardly passed the front door of the house when they were met by
a tall man with dark hair and dark, deep-set eyes. He was tanned to the
bronze of an Indian, and he might have been termed handsome had not his
features been so deeply cut and roughly finished. His black hair was
quite long, and as the wind from the opened door stirred it, there was a
touch of wildness about the fellow that made the heart of Randall Byrne
jump. When this man saw the girl his face lighted, briefly; when his
glance fell on Byrne the light went out.

"Couldn't get the doc, Kate?" he asked.

"Not Doctor Hardin," she answered, "and I've brought Doctor Byrne
instead."

The tall man allowed his gaze to drift leisurely from head to foot of
Randall Byrne.

Then: "H'ware you, doc?" he said, and extended a big hand. It occurred
to Byrne that all these men of the mountain-desert were big; there was
something intensely irritating about their mere physical size; they
threw him continually on the defensive and he found himself making
apologies to himself and summing up personal merits. In this case there
was more direct reason for his anger. It was patent that the man did
not weight the strange doctor against any serious thoughts.

"And this," she was saying, "is Mr. Daniels. Buck, is there any change?"

"Nothin' much," answered Buck Daniels. "Come along towards evening and
he said he was feeling kind of cold. So I wrapped him up in a rug. Then
he sat some as usual, one hand inside of the other, looking steady at
nothing. But a while ago he began getting sort of nervous."

"What did he do?"

"Nothing. I just _felt_ he was getting excited. The way you know when
your hoss is going to shy."

"Do you want to go to your room first, doctor, or will you go in to see
him now?"

"Now," decided the doctor, and followed her down the hall and through a
door.

The room reminded the doctor more of a New England interior than of the
mountain-desert. There was a round rag rug on the floor with every
imaginable colour woven into its texture, but blended with a rude
design, reds towards the centre and blue-greys towards the edges. There
were chairs upholstered in green which looked mouse-coloured where the
high lights struck along the backs and the arms--shallow-seated chairs
that made one's knees project foolishly high and far. Byrne saw a
cabinet at one end of the room, filled with sea-shells and knicknacks,
and above it was a memorial cross surrounded by a wreath inside a glass
case. Most of the wall space thronged with engravings whose subjects
ranged from Niagara Falls to Lady Hamilton. One entire end of the room
was occupied by a painting of a neck and neck finish in a race, and the
artist had conceived the blooded racers as creatures with tremendous
round hips and mighty-muscled shoulders, while the legs tapered to a
faun-like delicacy. These animals were spread-eagled in the most amazing
fashion, their fore-hoofs reaching beyond their noses and their rear
hoofs striking out beyond the tips of the tails. The jockey in the lead
sat quite still, but he who was losing had his whip drawn and looked
like an automatic doll--so pink were his cheeks. Beside the course, in
attitudes of graceful ease, stood men in very tight trousers and very
high stocks and ladies in dresses which pinched in at the waist and
flowed out at the shoulders. They leaned upon canes or twirled parasols
and they had their backs turned upon the racetrack as if they found
their own negligent conversation far more exciting than the breathless,
driving finish.

Under the terrific action and still more terrific quiescence of this
picture lay the sick man, propped high on a couch and wrapped to the
chest in a Navajo blanket.

"Dad," said Kate Cumberland, "Doctor Hardin was not in town. I've
brought out Doctor Byrne, a newcomer."

The invalid turned his white head slowly towards them, and his shaggy
brows lifted and fell slightly--a passing shadow of annoyance. It was a
very stern face, and framed in the long, white hair it seemed
surrounded by an atmosphere of Arctic chill. He was thin, terribly
thin--not the leanness of Byrne, but a grim emaciation which exaggerated
the size of a tall forehead and made his eyes supernally bright. It was
in the first glance of those eyes that Byrne recognized the restlessness
of which Kate had spoken; and he felt almost as if it were an inner fire
which had burned and still was wasting the body of Joseph Cumberland. To
the attentions of the doctor the old man submitted with patient
self-control, and Byrne found a pulse feeble, rapid, but steady. There
was no temperature. In fact, the heat of the body was a trifle
sub-normal, considering that the heart was beating so rapidly.

Doctor Byrne started. Most of his work had been in laboratories, and the
horror of death was not yet familiar, but old Joseph Cumberland was
dying. It was not a matter of moment. Death might be a week or a month
away, but die soon he inevitably must; for the doctor saw that the fire
was still raging in the hollow breast of the cattleman, but there was no
longer fuel to feed it.

He stared again, and more closely. Fire without fuel to feed it!

Doctor Byrne gave what seemed to be an infinitely muffled cry of
exultation, so faint that it was hardly a whisper; then he leaned closer
and pored over Joe Cumberland with a lighted eye. One might have thought
that the doctor was gloating over the sick man.

Suddenly he straightened and began to pace up and down the room,
muttering to himself. Kate Cumberland listened intently and she thought
that what the man muttered so rapidly, over and over to himself, was:
"Eureka! Eureka! I have found it!"

Found what? The triumph of mind over matter!

On that couch was a dead body. The flutter of that heart was not the
strong beating of the normal organ; the hands were cold; even the body
was chilled; yet the man lived.

Or, rather, his brain lived, and compelled the shattered and outworn
body to comply with its will. Doctor Byrne turned and stared again at
the face of Cumberland. He felt as if he understood, now, the look which
was concentrated so brightly on the vacant air. It was illumined by a
steady and desperate defiance, for the old man was denying his body to
the grave.

The scene changed for Randall Byrne. The girl disappeared. The walls of
the room were broken away. The eyes of the world looked in upon him and
the wise men of the world kept pace with him up and down the room,
shaking their heads and saying: "It is not possible!"

But the fact lay there to contradict them.

Prometheus stole fire from heaven and paid it back to an eternal death.
The old cattleman was refusing his payment. It was no state of coma in
which he lay; it was no prolonged trance. He was vitally, vividly alive;
he was concentrating with a bitter and exhausting vigour day and night,
and fighting a battle the more terrible because it was fought in
silence, a battle in which he could receive no aid, no reinforcement, a
battle in which he could not win, but in which he might delay defeat.

Ay, the wise men would smile and shake their heads when he presented
this case to their consideration, but he would make his account so
accurate and particular and so well witnessed that they would have to
admit the truth of all he said. And science, which proclaimed that
matter was indestructible and that the mind was matter and that the
brain needed nourishment like any other muscle--science would have to
hang the head and wonder!

The eyes of the girl brought him to halt in his pacing, and he stopped,
confronting her. His excitement had transformed him. His nostrils were
quivering, his eyes were pointed with light, his head was high, and he
breathed fast. He was flushed as the Roman Conqueror. And his excitement
tinged the girl, also, with colour.

She offered to take him to his room as soon as he wished to go. He was
quite willing. He wanted to be alone, to think. But when he followed her
she stopped him in the hall. Buck Daniels lumbered slowly after them in
a clumsy attempt at sauntering.

"Well?" asked Kate Cumberland.

She had thrown a blue mantle over her shoulders when she entered the
house, and the touch of boyish self-confidence which had been hers on
the ride was gone. In its place there was something even more difficult
for Randall Byrne to face. If there had been a garish brightness about
her when he had first seen her, the brilliancy of a mirror playing in
the sun against his feeble eyes, there was now a blending of pastel
shades, for the hall was dimly illumined and the shadow tarnished her
hair and her pallor was like cold stone; even her eyes were misted by
fear. Yet a vital sense of her nearness swept upon Byrne, and he felt as
if he were surrounded--by a danger.

"Opinions," said the doctor, "based on so summary an examination are
necessarily inexact, yet the value of a first impression is not
negligible. The best I can say is that there is probably no immediate
danger, but Mr. Cumberland is seriously ill. Furthermore, it is _not_
old age."

He would not say all he thought; it was not yet time.

She winced and clasped her hands tightly together. She was like a child
about to be punished for a crime it has not committed, and it came
vaguely to the doctor that he might have broached his ill tidings more
gently.

He added: "I must have further opportunities for observance before I
give a detailed opinion and suggest a treatment."

Her glance wandered past him and at once the heavy step of Buck Daniels
approached.

"At least," she murmured, "I am glad that you are frank. I don't want to
have anything kept from me, please. Buck, will you take the doctor up to
his room?" She managed a faint smile. "This is an old-fashioned house,
Doctor Byrne, but I hope we can make you fairly comfortable. You'll ask
for whatever you need?"

The doctor bowed, and was told that they would dine in half an hour,
then the girl went back towards the room in which Joe Cumberland lay.
She walked slowly, with her head bent, and her posture seemed to Byrne
the very picture of a burden-bearer. Then he followed Daniels up the
stairs, led by the jingling of the spurs, great-rowelled spurs that
might grip the side of a refractory horse like teeth.

A hall-light guided them, and from the hall Buck Daniels entered a room
and fumbled above him until he had lighted a lamp which was suspended by
two chains from the ceiling, a circular burner which cast a glow as keen
as an electric globe. It brought out every detail of the old-fashioned
room--the bare, painted floor; the bed, in itself a separate and
important piece of architecture with its four tall posts, a relic of the
times when beds were built, not simply made; and there was a chest of
drawers with swelling, hospitable front, and a rectangular mirror above
with its date in gilt paint on the upper edge. A rising wind shook the
window and through some crack stirred the lace curtains; it was a very
comfortable retreat, and the doctor became aware of aching muscles and a
heavy brain when he glanced at the bed.

The same gust of wind which rattled the window-pane now pushed, as with
invisible and ghostly hand, a door which opened on the side of the
bedroom, and as it swung mysteriously and gradually wide the doctor
found himself looking into an adjoining chamber. All he could see
clearly was a corner on which struck the shaft of light from the lamp,
and lying on the floor in that corner was something limp and brown. A
snake, he surmised at first, but then he saw clearly that it was a chain
of formidable proportions bolted against the wall at one end and
terminating at the other in a huge steel collar. A chill started in the
boots of the doctor and wriggled its uncomfortable way up to his head.

"Hell!" burst out Buck Daniels. "How'd _that_ door get open?" He slammed
it with violence. "She's been in there again, I guess," muttered the
cowpuncher, as he stepped back, scowling.

"Who?" ventured the doctor.

Buck Daniels whirled on him.

"None of your--" he began hotly, but checked himself with choking
suddenness and strode heavily from the room.




CHAPTER V

THE WAITING


The doctor removed his coat with absent-minded slowness, and all the
time that he was removing the dust and the stains of travel, he kept
narrowing the eye of his mind to visualise more clearly that cumbersome
chain which lay on the floor of the adjoining room. Now, the doctor was
not of a curious or gossipy nature, but if someone had offered to tell
him the story of that chain for a thousand dollars, the doctor at that
moment would have thought the price ridiculously small.

Then the doctor went down to the dinner table prepared to keep one eye
upon Buck Daniels and the other upon Kate Cumberland. But if he expected
to learn through conversation at the table he was grievously
disappointed, for Buck Daniels ate with an eye to strict business that
allowed no chatter, and the girl sat with a forced smile and an absent
eye. Now and again Buck would glance up at her, watch her for an
instant, and then turn his attention back to his plate with a sort of
gloomy resolution; there were not half a dozen words exchanged from the
beginning to the end of the meal.

After that they went in to the invalid. He lay in the same position,
his skinny hands crossed upon his breast, and his shaggy brows were
drawn so low that the eyes were buried in profound shadow. They took
positions in a loose semi-circle, all pointing towards the sick man, and
it reminded Byrne with grim force of a picture he had seen of three
wolves waiting for the bull moose to sink in the snows: they, also, were
waiting for a death. It seemed, indeed, as if death must have already
come; at least it could not make him more moveless than he was. Against
the dark wall his profile was etched by a sharp highlight which was
brightest of all on his forehead and his nose; while the lower portion
of the face was lost in comparative shadow.

So perfect and so detailed was the resemblance to death, indeed, that
the lips in the shadow smiled--fixedly. It was not until Kate Cumberland
shifted a lamp, throwing more light on her father, that Byrne saw that
the smile was in reality a forcible compression of the lips. He
understood, suddenly, that the silent man on the couch was struggling
terribly against an hysteria of emotion. It brought beads of sweat out
upon the doctor's tall forehead; for this perfect repose suggested an
agony more awful than yells and groans and struggles. The silence was
like acid; it burned without a flame. And Byrne knew, that moment, the
quality of the thing which had wasted the rancher. It was this acid of
grief or yearning which had eaten deep into him and was now close to his
heart. The girl had said that for six months he had been failing. Six
months! Six eternities of burning at the stake!

He lay silent, waiting; and his resignation meant that he knew death
would come before that for which he waited. Silence, that was the
key-note of the room. The girl was silent, her eyes dark with grief; yet
they were not fixed upon her father. It came thrilling home to Byrne
that her sorrow was not entirely for her dying parent, for she looked
beyond him rather than at him. Was she, too, waiting? Was that what gave
her the touch of sad gravity, the mystery like the mystery of distance?

And Buck Daniels. He, also, said nothing. He rolled cigarettes one after
another with amazing dexterity and smoked them with half a dozen Titanic
breaths. His was a single-track mind. He loved the girl, and he bore the
sign of his love on his face. He wanted her desperately; it was a hunger
like that of Tantalus, too keen to be ever satisfied. Yet, still more
than he looked at the girl, he, also, stared into the distance. He,
also, was waiting!

It was the deep suspense of Cumberland which made him so silently alert.
He was as intensely alive as the receiver of a wireless apparatus; he
gathered information from the empty air.

So that Byrne was hardly surprised, when, in the midst of that grim
silence, the old man raised a rigid forefinger of warning. Kate and
Daniels stiffened in their chairs and Byrne felt his flesh creep. Of
course it was nothing. The wind, which had shaken the house with several
strong gusts before dinner, had now grown stronger and blew with
steadily increasing violence; perhaps the sad old man had been attracted
by the mournful chorus and imagined some sound he knew within it.

But now once more the finger was raised, the arm extended, shaking
violently, and Joe Cumberland turned upon them a glance which flashed
with a delirious and unhealthy joy.

"Listen!" he cried. "Again!"

"What?" asked Kate.

"I hear them, I tell you."

Her lips blanched, and parted to speak, but she checked the impulse and
looked swiftly about the room with what seemed to Byrne an appeal for
help. As for Buck Daniels, he changed from a dark bronze to an unhealthy
yellow; fear, plain and grimly unmistakable, was in his face. Then he
strode to the window and threw it open with a crash. The wind leaped in
and tossed the flame in the throat of the chimney, so that great shadows
waved suddenly through the room, and made the chairs seem afloat. Even
the people were suddenly unreal. And the rush of the storm gave Byrne an
eerie sensation of being blown through infinite space. For a moment
there was only the sound of the gale and the flapping of a loose picture
against the wall, and the rattling of a newspaper. Then he heard it.

First it was a single note which he could not place. It was music, and
yet it was discordant, and it had the effect of a blast of icy wind.

Once he had been in Egypt and had stood in a corridor of Cheops'
pyramid. The torch had been blown out in the hand of his guide. From
somewhere in the black depths before them came a laugh, made unhuman by
echoes. And Byrne had visioned the mummied dead pushing back the granite
lids of their sarcophagi and sitting upright.

But that was nothing compared with this. Not half so wild or strange.

He listened again, breathless, with the sharp prickling running up and
down his spine. It was the honking of the wild geese, flying north. And
out of the sound he builded a picture of the grey triangle cleaving
through the cold upper sky, sent on a mission no man could understand.

"Was I right? Was I right?" shrilled the invalid, and when Byrne turned
towards him, he saw the old man sitting erect, with an expression of
wild triumph. There came an indescribable cry from the girl, and a deep
throated curse from Buck Daniels as he slammed down the window.

With the chill blast shut off and the flame burning steadily once more
in the lamp, a great silence besieged the room, with a note of
expectancy in it. Byrne was conscious of being warm, too warm. It was
close in the room, and he was weighted down. It was as if another
presence had stepped into the room and stood invisible. He felt it with
unspeakable keenness, as when one knows certainly the thoughts which
pass in the mind of another. And, more than that, he knew that the
others in the room felt what he felt. In the waiting silence he saw that
the old man lay on his couch with eyes of fire and gaping lips, as if
he drank the wine of his joyous expectancy. And big Buck Daniels stood
with his hand on the sash of the window, frozen there, his eyes bulging,
his heart thundering in his throat. And Kate Cumberland sat with her
eyes closed, as she had closed them when the wind first rushed upon her,
and she still smiled as she had smiled then. And to Byrne, more terrible
than the joy of Joseph Cumberland or the dread of Buck Daniels was the
smile and the closed eyes of the girl.

But the silence held and the fifth presence was in the room, and not one
of them dared speak.




CHAPTER VI

THE MISSION STARTS


Then, with a shifting of the wind, a song was blown to them from the
bunk-house, a cheerful, ringing chorus; the sound was like daylight--it
drove the terror from the room. Joe Cumberland asked them to leave him.
That night, he said, he would sleep. He felt it, like a promise. The
other three went out from the room.

In the hall Kate and Daniels stood close together under a faint light
from the wall-lamp, and they talked as if they had forgotten the
presence of Byrne.

"It had to come," she said. "I knew it would come to him sooner or
later, but I didn't dream it would be as terrible as this. Buck, what
are we going to do?"

"God knows," said the big cowpuncher. "Just wait, I s'pose, same as
we've been doing."

He had aged wonderfully in that moment of darkness.

"He'll be happy now for a few days," went on the girl, "but
afterwards--when he realises that it means nothing--what then, Buck?"

The man took her hands and began to pat them softly as a father might
soothe a child.

"I seen you when the wind come in," he said gently. "Are you going to
stand it, Kate? Is it going to be hell for you, too, every time you hear
'em?"

She answered: "If it were only I! Yes, I could stand it. Lately I've
begun to think that I can stand anything. But when I see Dad it breaks
my heart--and you--oh, Buck, it hurts, it hurts!" She drew his hands
impulsively against her breast. "If it were only something we could
fight outright!"

Buck Daniels sighed.

"Fight?" he echoed hopelessly. "Fight? Against him? Kate, you're all
tired out. Go to bed, honey, and try to stop thinkin'--and--God help us
all!"

She turned away from him and passed the doctor--blindly.

Buck Daniels had set his foot on the stairs when Byrne hurried after him
and touched his arm; they went up together.

"Mr. Daniels," said the doctor, "it is necessary that I speak with you,
alone. Will you come into my room for a few moments?"

"Doc," said the cattleman, "I'm short on my feed and I don't feel a pile
like talkin'. Can't you wait till the morning?"

"There has been a great deal too much waiting, Mr. Daniels," said the
doctor. "What I have to say to you must be said now. Will you come in?"

"I will," nodded Buck Daniels. "But cut it short."

Once in his room the doctor lighted the lamp and then locked the door.

"What's all the mystery and hush stuff?" growled Daniels, and with a
gesture he refused the proffered chair. "Cut loose, doc, and make it
short."

The little man sat down, removed his glasses, held them up to the light,
found a speck upon them, polished it carefully away, replaced the
spectacles upon his nose, and peered thoughtfully at Buck Daniels.

Buck Daniels rolled his eyes towards the door and then even towards the
window, and then, as one who accepts the inevitable, he sank into a
chair and plunged his hands into his pockets, prepared to endure.

"I am called," went on the doctor dryly, "to examine a case in which the
patient is dangerously ill--in fact, hopelessly ill, and I have found
that the cause of his illness is a state of nervous expectancy on the
part of the sufferer. It being obviously necessary to know the nature of
the disease and its cause before that cause may be removed, I have asked
you to sit here this evening to give me whatever explanation you may
have for it."

Buck Daniels stirred uneasily. At length he broke out: "Doc, I size you
up as a gent with brains. I got one piece of advice for you: get the
hell away from the Cumberland Ranch and never come back again!"

The doctor flushed and his lean jaw thrust out.

"Although," he said, "I cannot pretend to be classed among those to whom
physical fear is an unknown, yet I wish to assure you, sir, that with me
physical trepidation is not an overruling motive."

"Oh, hell!" groaned Buck Daniels. Then he explained more gently: "I
don't say you're yellow. All I say is: this mess ain't one that you can
straighten out--nor no other man can. Give it up, wash your hands, and
git back to Elkhead. I dunno what Kate was thinkin' of to bring you out
here!"

"The excellence of your intention," said the doctor, "I shall freely
admit, though the assumption that difficulty in the essential problem
would deter me from the analysis is an hypothesis which I cannot leave
uncontested. In the vulgar, I may give you to understand that I am in
this to stay!"

Buck Daniels started to speak, but thinking better of it he shrugged his
shoulders and sat back, resigned.

"Well," he said, "Kate brought you out here. Maybe she has a reason for
it. What d'you want to know?"

"What connection," said the doctor, "have wild geese with a man, a
horse, and a dog?"

"What in hell d'you know about a horse and a man and a dog--and wild
geese?" inquired Buck in a strained voice.

"Rumour," said the doctor, "has been in this instance, unfortunately, my
only teacher. But, sir, I have ascertained that Mr. Cumberland, his
daughter, and you, sir, are all waiting for a certain thing to come to
this ranch, and that thing I naturally assume to be a man."

"Doc," said the cowpuncher sarcastically, "there ain't no doubt you got
a wonderful brain!"

"Mockery," pronounced the man of learning, "is a use of the mental
powers which is both unworthy and barren and does not in this case
advance the argument, which is: Who and what is this man for whom you
wait?"

"He came," said Buck Daniels, "out of nowhere. That's all we know about
who he is. What is he? I'll tell you easy: He's a gent that looks like a
man, and walks like a man, and talks like a man--but he _ain't_ a man."

"Ah," nodded the philosopher, "a crime of extraordinary magnitude has,
perhaps, cut off this unfortunate fellow from communication with others
of his kind. Is this the case?"

"It ain't," replied Buck. "Doc, tell me this: Can a wolf commit a
crime?"

"Admitting this definition: that crime is the breaking of law, and that
law is a force created by reason to control the rational, it may be
granted that the acts of the lower animals lie outside of categories
framed according to ethical precepts. To directly answer your not
incurious question: I believe that a wolf cannot commit a crime."

Buck Daniels sighed.

"D'you know, doc," he said gravely, "that you remind me of a side-hill
goat?"

"Ah," murmured the man of learning, "is it possible? And what, Mr.
Daniels, is the nature of a side-hill goat?"

"It's a goat that's got the legs of one side shorter than the legs on
the other side, and the only way he can get to the top of a hill is to
keep trottin' around and around the hill like a five per cent. grade. He
goes a mile to get ten feet higher."

"This fact," said Byrne, and he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "is not
without interest, though I fail to perceive the relation between me and
such a creature, unless, perhaps, there are biologic similarities of
which I have at present no cognition."

"I didn't think you'd follow me," replied Buck with an equal gravity.
"But you can lay to this, Doc; this gent we're waitin' for ain't
committed any more crimes than a wolf has."

"Ah, I see," murmured the doctor, "a man so near the brute that his
enormities pass beyond--"

"Get this straight," said Buck, interrupting with a sternly pointed
finger: "There ain't a kinder or a gentler man in the mountain-desert
than him. He's got a voice softer than Kate Cumberland's, which is some
soft voice, and as for his heart--Doc, I've seen him get off his horse
to put a wounded rabbit out of its pain!"

A ring of awe came in the throat of Daniels as he repeated the
incredible fact.

He went on: "If I was in trouble, I'd rather have him beside me than ten
other men; if I was sick I'd rather have him than the ten best doctors
in the world; if I wanted a pal that would die for them that done him
good and go to hell to get them that done him bad, I'd choose him first,
and there ain't none that come second."

The panegyric was not a burst of imagination. Buck Daniels was speaking
seriously, hunting for words, and if he used superlatives it was because
he needed them.

"Extraordinary!" murmured the doctor, and he repeated the word in a
louder tone. It was a rare word for him; in all his scholastic career
and in all of his scientific investigations he had found occasion to use
so strong a term not more than half a dozen times at the most. He went
on, cautiously, and his weak eyes blinked at Daniels: "And there is a
relation between this man and a horse and dog?"

Buck Daniels shuddered and his colour changed.

"Listen!" he said, "I've talked enough. You ain't going to get another
word out of me except this: Doc, have a good sleep, get on your hoss
to-morrow mornin', and beat it. Don't even wait for breakfast. Because,
if you _do_ wait, you may get a hand in this little hell of ours. You
may be waiting, too!" A sudden thought brought him to his feet. He stood
over the doctor. "How many times," he thundered, "have you seen Kate
Cumberland?"

"To-day, for the first time."

"Well," said Daniels, growling with relief, "you've seen her enough. I
_know_." And he turned towards the door. "Unlock," he commanded. "I'm
tired out--and sick--of talking about _him_."

But the doctor did not move.

"Nevertheless," he stated, "you will remain. There is something further
which you know and which you will communicate to me."

Buck Daniels turned at the door; his face was not pleasant.

"While observing you as you talked with the girl," Byrne said, "it
occurred to me that you were holding information from her. The exact
nature of that information I cannot state, but it is reasonable to
deduce that you could, at the present moment, name the place where the
man for whom Mr. Cumberland and his daughter wait is now located."

Buck Daniels made no reply, but he returned to his chair and slumped
heavily into it, staring at the little doctor. And Byrne realised with a
thrill of pleasure that he was not afraid of death.

"I may further deduct," said the doctor, "that you will go in person to
the place where you know this man may be found and induce him to come to
this ranch."

The silent anger of Daniels died away. He smiled, and at length he
laughed without mirth.

"Doc," he said, "if you knew where there was a gun, would that make you
want to put it up agin your head and pull the trigger?"

But the doctor proceeded inexorably with his deductions: "Because you
are aware, Mr. Daniels, that the presence of this man may save the life
of Mr. Cumberland, a thought, to be sure, which might not be accepted by
the medical fraternity, but which may without undue exaggeration
devolve from the psychological situation in this house."

"Doc," said Daniels huskily, "you talk straight, and you act straight,
and I think you are straight, so I'll take off the bridle and talk free.
I know where Whistling Dan is--just about. But if I was to go to him and
bring him here I'd bust the heart of Kate Cumberland. D'you understand?"
His voice lowered with an intense emotion. "I've thought it out sideways
and backwards. It's Kate or old Joe. Which is the most important?"

The doctor straightened in the chair, polished his glasses, and peered
once more at the cowpuncher.

"You are quite sure, also, that the return of this man, this strange
wanderer, might help Mr. Cumberland back to health?"

"I am, all right. He's sure wrapped up in Whistlin' Dan."

"What is the nature of their relations; what makes him so oddly
dependent upon the other?"

"I dunno, doc. It's got us all fooled. When Dan is here it seems like
old Cumberland jest nacherally lives on the things Dan does and hears
and sees. We've seen Cumberland prick up his ears the minute Dan comes
into the room, and show life. Sometimes Dan sits with him and tells him
what he's been doin'--maybe it ain't any more than how the sky looks
that day, or about the feel of the wind--but Joe sits with his eyes
dreamin', like a little kid hearin' fairy stories. Kate says it's been
that way since her dad first brought Dan in off'n the range. He's been
sort of necessary to old Joe--almost like air to breathe. I tell you,
it's jest a picture to see them two together."

"Very odd, very odd," brooded the doctor, frowning, "but this seems to
be an odd place and an odd set of people. You've no real idea why Dan
left the ranch?"

"Ask the wild geese," said Buck bitterly. He added: "Maybe you'd better
ask Dan's black hoss or his dog, Bart. They'd know better'n anything
else."

"But what has the man been doing since he left? Have you any idea?"

"Get a little chatter, now and then, of a gent that's rid into a town on
a black hoss, prettier'n anything that was ever seen before.

"It's all pretty much the same, what news we get. Mostly I guess he jest
wanders around doin' no harm to nobody. But once in a while somebody
sicks a dog on Bart, and Bart jest nacherally chaws that dog in two.
Then the owner of the dog may start a fight, and Dan drops him and rides
on."

"With a trail of dead men behind him?" cried the doctor, hunching his
shoulders as if to shake off a chill.

"Dead? Nope. You don't have to shoot to kill when you can handle a gun
the way Dan does. Nope, he jest wings 'em. Plants a chunk of lead in a
shoulder, or an arm, or a leg. That's all. They ain't no love of blood
in Dan--except-----"

"Well?"

"Doc," said Buck with a shudder, "I ain't goin' to talk about the
exceptions. Mostly the news we gets of Dan is about troubles he's had.
But sometimes we hear of gents he's helped out when they was sick, and
things like that. They ain't nobody like Dan when a gent is down sick,
I'll tell a man!"

The doctor sighed.

He said: "And do I understand you to say that the girl and this
man--Whistling Dan, as you call him--are intimately and sentimentally
related?"

"She loves him," said Daniels slowly. "She loves the ground he walks on
and the places where he's been."

"But, sir, it would seem probable from your own reasoning that the
return of the man, in this case, will not be unwelcome to her."

"Reason?" broke out Daniels bitterly. "What the hell has reason got to
do with Whistling Dan? Man, man! if Barry was to come back d'you suppose
he'd remember that he'd once told Kate he loved her? Doc, I know him as
near as any man can know him. I tell you, he thinks no more of her
than--than the wild geese think of her. If old Joe dies because Dan is
away--well, Cumberland is an old man anyway. But how could I stand to
see Barry pass Kate by with an empty eye, the way he'd do if he come
back? I'd want to kill him, and I'd get bumped off tryin' it, like as
not. And what would it do to Kate? It'd kill her, Doc, as sure as you're
born."

"Your assumption being," murmured the doctor, "that if she never sees
the man again she will eventually forget him."

"D'you forget a knife that's sticking into you? No, she won't forget
him. But maybe after a while she'll be able to stand thinkin' about him.
She'll get used to the hurt. She'll be able to talk and laugh the way
she used to. Oh, doc, if you could of seen her as I've seen her in the
old days----"

"When the man was with her?" cut in the doctor.

Buck Daniels caught his breath.

"Damn your eternal soul, doc!" he said softly.

And for a time neither of them spoke. Whatever went on in the mind of
Daniels, it was something that contorted his face. As for Byrne, he was
trying to match fact and possibility and he was finding a large gap
between the two; for he tried to visualise the man whose presence had
been food to old Joe Cumberland, and whose absence had taken the oil
from the lamp so that the flame now flickered dimly, nearly out. But he
could build no such picture. He could merely draw together a vague
abstraction of a man to whom the storm and the wild geese who ride the
storm had meaning and relationship. The logic which he loved was
breaking to pieces in the hands of Randall Byrne.

Silence, after all, is only a name, never a fact. There are noises in
the most absolute quiet. If there is not even the sound of the cricket
or the wind, if there are not even ghost whispers in the house, there is
the sigh of one's own breathing, and in those moments of deadly waiting
the beat of the heart may be as loud and as awful as the rattle of the
death-march. Now, between the doctor and the cowpuncher, such a silence
began. Buck Daniels wanted nothing more in the world than to be out of
that room, but the eye of the doctor held him, unwilling. And there
began once more that eternal waiting, waiting, waiting, which was the
horror of the place, until the faint creakings through the windshaken
house took on the meaning of footsteps stalking down the hall and
pausing at the door, and there was the hushing breath of one who
listened and smiled to himself! Now the doctor became aware that the eye
of Buck Daniels was widening, brightening; it was as if the mind of the
big man were giving way in the strain. His face blanched. Even the lips
had no colour, and they moved, gibberingly.

"Listen!" he said.

"It is the wind," answered the doctor, but his voice was hardly audible.

"Listen!" commanded Daniels again.

The doctor could hear it then. It was a pulse of sound obscure as the
thudding of his heart. But it was a human sound and it made his throat
close up tightly, as if a hand were settling around his wind-pipe. Buck
Daniels rose from his chair; that half-mad, half-listening look was
still in his eyes--behind his eyes. Staring at him the doctor
understood, intimately, how men can throw their lives away gloriously in
battle, fighting for an idea; or how they can commit secret and foul
murder. Yet he was more afraid of that pulse of sound than of the face
of Buck Daniels. He, also, was rising from his chair, and when Daniels
stalked to the side door of the room and leaned there, the doctor
followed.

Then they could hear it clearly. There was a note of music in the voice;
it was a woman weeping in that room where the chain lay on the floor,
coiled loosely like a snake. Buck Daniels straightened and moved away
from the door. He began to laugh, guarding it so that not a whisper
could break outside the room, and his silent laughter was the most
horrible thing the doctor had ever seen. It was only for a moment. The
hysteria passed and left the big man shaking like a dead leaf.

"Doc," he said, "I can't stand it no longer. I'm going out and try to
get him back here. And God forgive me for it."

He left the room, slamming the door behind him, and then he stamped down
the hall as if he were trying to make a companion out of his noise.
Doctor Randall Byrne sat down to put his thoughts in order. He began at
the following point: "The physical fact is not; only the immaterial is."
But before he had carried very far his deductions from this premise, he
caught the neighing of a horse near the house; so he went to the window
and threw it open. At the same time he heard the rattle of galloping
hoofs, and then he saw a horseman riding furiously into the heart of the
wind. Almost at once the rider was lost from sight.




CHAPTER VII

JERRY STRANN


The wrath of the Lord seems less terrible when it is localised, and the
world at large gave thanks daily that the range of Jerry Strann was
limited to the Three B's. As everyone in the mountain-desert knows, the
Three B's are Bender, Buckskin, and Brownsville; they make the points of
a loose triangle that is cut with canyons and tumbled with mountains,
and that triangle was the chosen stamping ground of Jerry Strann. Jerry
was not born in the region of the Three B's and why it should have been
chosen specially by him was matter which the inhabitants could not
puzzle out; but they felt that for their sins the Lord had probably put
his wrath among them in the form of Jerry Strann.

He was only twenty-four, this Jerry, but he was already grown into a
proverb. Men of the Three B's reckoned their conversational dates by the
visits of the youth; if a storm hung over the mountains someone might
remark: "It looks like Jerry Strann is coming," and such a remark was
always received in gloomy silence; mothers had been known to hush their
children by chanting: "Jerry Strann will get you if you don't watch
out." Yet he was not an ogre with a red knife between his teeth. He
stood at exactly the perfect romantic height; he was just six feet tall;
he was as graceful as a young cotton-wood in a windstorm and he was as
strong and tough as the roots of the mesquite. He was one of those rare
men who are beautiful without being unmanly. His face was modelled with
the care a Praxiteles would lavish on a Phoebus. His brown hair was
thick and dark and every touch of wind stirred it, and his hazel eyes
were brilliant with an enduring light--the inextinguishable joy of life.

Consider that there was no malice in Jerry Strann. But he loved strife
as the young Apollo loved strife--or a pure-blooded bull terrier. He
fought with distinction and grace and abandon and was perfectly willing
to use fists or knives or guns at the pleasure of the other contracting
party. In another age, with armour and a golden chain and spurs, Jerry
Strann would have been--but why think of that? Swords are not
forty-fives, and the Twentieth Century is not the Thirteenth. He was, in
fact, born just six hundred years too late. From his childhood he had
thirsted for battle as other children thirst for milk: and now he rode
anything on hoofs and threw a knife like a Mexican--with either
hand--and at short range he did snap shooting with two revolvers that
made rifle experts sick at heart.

However, the men of the Three B's, as everyone understands, are not
gentle or long-enduring, and you will wonder why this young destroyer
was allowed to range at large so long. There was a vital reason. Up in
the mountains lived Mac Strann, the hermit-trapper, who hated everything
in the wide world except his young brother, the beautiful, wild, and
sunny Jerry Strann. And Mac Strann loved his brother as much as he hated
everything else; it is impossible to state it more strongly. It was not
long before the men of the Three B's discovered how Mac Strann felt
about his brother. After Jerry's famous Hallowe'en party in Buckskin,
for instance, Williamson, McKenna, and Rath started out to rid the
country of the disturber. They went out to hunt him as men go out to
hunt a wild mustang. And they caught him and bent him down--those three
stark men--and he lay in bed for a month; but before the month was over
Mac Strann came down from his mountain and went to Buckskin and gathered
Williamson and McKenna and Rath in one public place. And when the
morning came Williamson and McKenna and Rath had left this vale of tears
and Mac Strann was back on his mountain. He was not even arrested. For
there was a devilish cunning about the fellow and he made his victims,
without exception, attack him first; then he destroyed them, suddenly
and surely, and retreated to his lair. Things like this happened once or
twice and then the men of the Three B's understood that it was not wise
to lay plots for Jerry Strann. They accepted him, as I have said before,
as men accept the wrath of God.

Let it not be thought that Jerry Strann was a solitary like his brother.
When he went out for a frolic the young men of the community gathered
around him, for Jerry paid all scores and the red-eye flowed in his path
like wine before the coming of Bacchus; where Jerry went there was never
a dull moment, and young men love action. So it happened that when he
rode into Brownsville this day he was the leader of a cavalcade. Rumour
rode before them, and doors were locked and windows were darkened, and
men sat in the darkness within with their guns across their knees. For
Brownsville lay at the extreme northern tip of the triangle and it was
rarely visited by Jerry; and it is well established that men fear the
unfamiliar more than the known.

As has been said, Jerry headed the train of revellers, partially because
it was most unwise to cut in ahead of Jerry and partially because there
was not a piece of horseflesh in the Three B's which could outfoot his
chestnut. It was a gelding out of the loins of the north wind and sired
by the devil himself, and its spirit was one with the spirit of Jerry
Strann; perhaps because they both served one master. The cavalcade came
with a crash of racing hoofs in a cloud of dust. But in the middle of
the street Jerry raised his right arm stiffly overhead with a whoop and
brought his chestnut to a sliding stop; the cloud of dust rolled lazily
on ahead. The young men gathered quickly around the leader, and there
was silence as they waited for him to speak--a silence broken only by
the wheezing of the horses, and the stench of sweating horseflesh was
in every man's nostrils.

"Who owns that hoss?" asked Jerry Strann, and pointed.

He had stopped just opposite O'Brien's hotel, store, blacksmith shop,
and saloon, and by the hitching rack was a black stallion. Now, there
are some men who carry tidings of their inward strength stamped on their
foreheads and written in their eyes. In times of crises crowds will turn
to such men and follow them as soldiers follow a captain; for it is
patent at a glance that this is a man of men. It is likewise true that
there are horses which stand out among their fellows, and this was such
a horse. He was such a creature that, if he had been led to a barrier,
the entire crowd at the race track would rise as one man and say: "What
is that horse?" There were points in which some critics would find
fault; most of the men of the mountain-desert, for instance, would have
said that the animal was too lightly and delicately limbed for long
endurance; but as the man of men bears the stamp of his greatness in his
forehead and his eyes, so it was with the black stallion. When the
thunder of the cavalcade had rushed upon him down the street he had
turned with catlike grace and raised his head to see; and his forehead
and his eyes arrested Jerry Strann like a levelled rifle. Looking at
that proud head one forgot the body of the horse, the symmetry of curves
exquisite beyond the sculptor's dream, the arching neck and the steel
muscles; one was only conscious of the great spirit. In Human beings we
refer to it as "personality."

After a little pause, seeing that no one offered a suggestion as to the
identity of the owner, Strann said, softly: "That hoss is mine."

It caused a stir in the crowd of his followers. In the mountain-desert
one may deal lightly with a man's wife and lift a random cow or two and
settle the score, at need, with a snug "forty-five" chunk of lead. But
with horses it is different. A horse in the mountain-desert lies outside
of all laws--and above all laws. It is greater than honour and dearer
than love, and when a man's horse is taken from him the men of the
desert gather together and hunt the thief whether it be a day or whether
it be a month, and when they have reached him they shoot him like a dog
and leave his flesh to the buzzards and his bones to the merciless
stars. For all of this there is a reason. But Jerry Strann swung from
his mount, tossed the reins over the head of the chestnut, and walked
towards the black with hungry eyes. He was careless, also, and venturing
too close--the black whirled with his sudden, catlike agility, and two
black hoofs lashed within a hair's breadth of the man's shoulder. There
was a shout from the crowd, but Jerry Strann stepped back and smiled so
that his teeth showed.

"Boys," he said, but he was really speaking to himself, "there's nothing
in the world I want as bad as I want that hoss. Nothing! I'm going to
buy him; where's the owner?"

"Don't look like a hoss a man would want to sell, Jerry," came a
suggestion from the cavalcade, who had dismounted and now pressed behind
their leader.

Jerry favoured the speaker with another of his enigmatic smiles: "Oh,"
he chuckled, "he'll sell, all right! Maybe he's inside. You gents stick
out here and watch for him; I'll step inside."

And he strode through the swinging doors of the saloon.

It was a dull time of day for O'Brien, so he sat with his feet on the
edge of the bar and sipped a tall glass of beer; he looked up at the
welcome click of the doors, however, and then was instantly on his feet.
The good red went out of his face and the freckles over his nose stood
out like ink marks.

"There's a black hoss outside," said Jerry, "that I'm going to buy.
Where's the owner?"

"Have a drink," said the bartender, and he forced an amiable smile.

"I got business on my hands, not drinking," said Jerry Strann.

"Lost your chestnut?" queried O'Brien in concern.

"The chestnut was all right until I seen the black. And now he ain't a
hoss at all. Where's the gent I want?"

The bartender had fenced for time as long as possible.

"Over there," he said, and pointed.

It was a slender fellow sitting at a table in a corner of the long
room, his sombrero pushed back on his head. He was playing solitaire and
his back was towards Jerry Strann, who now made a brief survey, hitched
his cartridge belt, and approached the stranger with a grin. The man did
not turn; he continued to lay down his cards with monotonous regularity,
and while he was doing it he said in the gentlest voice that had ever
reached the ear of Jerry Strann: "Better stay where you are, stranger.
My dog don't like you."

And Jerry Strann perceived, under the shadow of the table, a blacker
shadow, huge and formless in the gloom, and two spots of incandescent
green twinkling towards him. He stopped; he even made a step back; and
then he heard a stifled chuckle from the bartender.

If it had not been for that untimely mirth of O'Brien's probably nothing
of what followed would have passed into the history of the Three B's.




CHAPTER VIII

THE GIFT-HORSE


"Your dog is your own dog," remarked Jerry Strann, still to the back of
the card-laying stranger, "but this ain't your back-yard. Keep your eye
on him, or I'll fix him so he won't need watching!"

So saying he made another step forward, and it brought a snarl from the
dog; not one of those high-whining noises, but a deep guttural that
sounded like indrawn breath. The gun of Jerry Strann leaped into his
hand.

"Bart," said the gentle-voiced stranger, "lie down and don't talk." And
he turned in his chair, pulled his hat straight, and looked mildly upon
the gunman. An artist would have made much of that picture, for there
was in this man, as in Strann, a singular portion of beauty. It was not,
however, free from objection, for he had not the open manliness of the
larger of the two. Indeed, a feminine grace and softness marked him; his
wrists were as round as a girl's, and his hands as slender and as
delicately finished. Whether it be the white-hot sun of summer or the
hurricane snows of winter, the climate of the mountain-desert roughens
the skin, and it cuts away spare flesh, hewing out the face in angles;
but with this man there were no rough edges, but all was smoothed over
and rounded with painful care; as if nature had concentrated in that
birth to show what she could do. Such fine workmanship, perhaps, would
be appreciated more by women than by men; for men like a certain weight
and bulk of bone and muscle--whereas this fellow seemed as light of body
as he was of hand. He sat now watching Strann with the utmost gravity.
He had very large brown eyes of a puzzling quality; perhaps that was
because there seemed to be no thought behind them and one caught the
mystery and the wistfulness of some animals from a glance at him.

The effect of that glance on Strann was to make him grin again, and he
at once banished the frown from his forehead and put away his gun; the
big dog had slunk deeper into the shadow and closer to his master.

"I'm Strann. Maybe you've heard of me."

"My name is Barry," said the other. "I'm sorry that I haven't heard of
you before."

And the sound of his voice made Jerry Strann grin again; it was such a
low, soft voice with the velvet of a young girl's tone in it; moreover,
the brown eyes seemed to apologise for the ignorance concerning Strann's
name.

"You got a hoss out in front."

A nod of agreement.

"What's your price?"

"None."

"No price? Look here," argued Strann, "everything's got a price, and I
got to have that hoss, understand? _Got_ to! I ain't bargaining. I won't
try to beat you down. You just set a figger and I'll cover it. I guess
that's square!"

"He ain't a gentle hoss," said Barry. "Maybe you wouldn't like him."

"Oh, that's all right about being gentle," chuckled Strann. Then he
checked his mirth and stared piercingly at the other to make out if
there were a secret mockery. It could not, however, be possible. The
eyes were as gravely apologetic as ever. He continued: "I seen the
hell-fire in him. That's what stopped me like a bullet. I like 'em that
way. Much rather have 'em with a fight. Well, let's have your price.
Hey, O'Brien, trot out your red-eye; I'm going to do some business
here!"

O'Brien came hastily, with drinks, and while they waited Strann queried
politely: "Belong around these parts?"

"No," answered the other softly.

"No? Where you come from?"

"Over there," said Barry, and waved a graceful hand towards half the
points of the compass.

"H-m-m!" muttered Strann, and once more he bent a keen gaze upon his
companion. The drinks were now placed before them. "Here," he concluded,
"is to the black devil outside!" And he swallowed the liquor at a gulp,
but as he replaced the empty glass on the table he observed, with
breathless amazement, that the whiskey glass of the stranger was still
full; he had drunk his chaser!

"Now, by God!" said Strann in a ringing voice, and struck a heavy hand
upon the top of the table. He regained his control, however, instantly.
"Now about that price!"

"I don't know what horses are worth," replied Barry.

"To start, then--five hundred bucks in cold cash--gold!--for
your--what's his name?"

"Satan."

"Eh?"

"Satan."

"H-m-m!" murmured Strann again. "Five hundred for Satan, then. How about
it?"

"If you can ride him," began the stranger.

"Oh, hell," smiled Strann with a large and careless gesture, "I'll
_ride_ him, all right."

"Then I would let you take him for nothing," concluded Barry.

"You'd--what?" said Strann. Then he rose slowly from his chair and
shouted; instantly the swinging doors broke open and a throng of faces
appeared at the gap. "Boys, this gent here is going to give me the
black--ha, ha, ha!--if I can ride him!" He turned back on Barry.
"They've heard it," he concluded, "and this bargain is going to stick
just this way. If your hoss can throw me the deal's off. Eh?"

"Oh, yes," nodded the brown-eyed man.

"What's the idea?" asked one of Jerry's followers as the latter stepped
through the doors of the saloon onto the street.

"I dunno," said Jerry. "That gent looks kind of simple; but it ain't my
fault if he made a rotten bargain. Here, you!"

And he seized the bridle-reins of the black stallion. Speed, lightning
speed, was what saved him, for the instant his fingers touched the
leather Satan twisted his head and snapped like an angry dog. The teeth
clicked beside Strann's shoulder as he leaped back. He laughed savagely.

"That'll be took out of him," he announced, "and damned quick!"

Here the voice of Barry was heard, saying: "I'll help you mount, Mr.
Strann." And he edged his way through the little crowd until he stood at
the head of the stallion.

"Look out!" warned Strann in real alarm, "or he'll take your head off!"

But Barry was already beside his horse, and, with his back towards those
vicious teeth, he drew the reins over its head. As for the stallion, it
pricked one ear forward and then the other, and muzzled the man's
shoulder confidingly. There was a liberal chorus of astonished oaths
from the gathering.

"I'll hold his head while you get on," suggested Barry, turning his mild
eyes upon Strann again.

"Well," muttered the big man, "may I be eternally damned!" He added:
"All right. Hold his head, and I'll ride him without pulling leather. Is
that square?"

Barry nodded absently. His slender fingers were patting the velvet nose
of the stallion and he was talking to it in an affectionate
undertone--meaningless words, perhaps, such as a mother uses to soothe a
child. When Strann set his foot in the stirrup and gathered up the reins
the black horse cringed and shuddered; it was not a pleasant thing to
see; it was like a dog crouching under the suspended whip. It was worse
than that; it was almost the horror of a man who shivers at the touch of
an unclean animal. There was not a sound from the crowd; and every grin
was wiped out. Jerry Strann swung into the saddle lightly.

There he sat, testing the stirrups. They were too short by inches but he
refused to have them lengthened. He poised his quirt and tugged his hat
lower over his eyes.

"Turn him loose!" he shouted. "Hei!"

And his shrill yell went down the street and the echoes sent it barking
back from wall to wall; Barry stepped back from the head of the black.
But for an instant the horse did not stir. He was trembling violently,
but his blazing eyes were fixed upon the face of his owner. Barry raised
his hand.

And then it happened. It was like the release of a coiled watch-spring;
the black whirled as a top spins and Strann sagged far to the left;
before he could recover the stallion was away in a flash, like a racer
leaving the barrier and reaching full speed in almost a stride. Not
far--hardly the breadth of the street--before he pitched up in a long
leap as if to clear a barrier, landed stiff-legged with a sickening jar,
whirled again like a spinning top, and darted straight back. And Jerry
Strann pulled leather--with might and main--but the short stirrups were
against him, and above all the suddenness of the start had taken him off
guard for all his readiness. When the stallion dropped stiff-legged
Jerry was thrown forward and an unlucky left foot jarred loose from the
stirrup; and when the horse whirled Strann was flung from the saddle. It
was a clean fall. He twisted over in the air as he fell and landed in
deep dust. The black stallion had reached his master and now he turned,
in that same catlike manner, and watched with pricking ears as Strann
dragged himself up from the dust.

There was no shout of laughter--no cheer for that fall, and without a
smile they watched Strann returning. Big O'Brien had seen from his open
door and now he laid a hand on the shoulder of one of the men and
whispered at his ear: "There's going to be trouble; bad trouble, Billy.
Go for Fatty Matthews--he's a deputy marshal now--and get him here as
quick as you can. Run!"

The other spared time for a last glance at Strann and then hurried down
the street.

Now, a man who can lose and smile is generally considered the most
graceful of failures, but the smile of Jerry Strann as he walked slowly
back worried his followers.

"We all hit dust sometime," he philosophized. "But one try don't prove
nothin'. I ain't near through with that hoss!"

Barry turned to Strann. If there had been mockery in his eyes or a
smile on his lips as he faced Jerry there would have been a gun play on
the spot; but, instead, the brown eyes were as dumbly apologetic as
ever.

"We didn't talk about two tries," he observed.

"We talk about it now," said Strann.

There was one man in the crowd a little too old to be dangerous and
therefore there was one man who was in a position to speak openly to
Strann. It was big O'Brien.

"Jerry, you named your game and made your play and lost. I guess you
ain't going to turn up a hard loser. Nobody plays twice for the same
pot."

The hazel eye of Strann was grey with anguish of the spirit as he looked
from O'Brien to the crowd and from the crowd to Satan, and from Satan to
his meek-eyed owner. Nowhere was there a defiant eye or a glint of scorn
on which he could wreak his wrath. He stood poised in his anger for the
space of a breath; then, in the sharp struggle, his better nature
conquered.

"Come on in, all of you," he called. "We'll liquor, and forget this."




CHAPTER IX

BATTLE LIGHT


O'Brien pressed close to Barry.

"Partner," he said rapidly, "you're clear now--you're clear of more hell
that you ever dream. Now climb that hoss of yours and feed him leather
till you get clear of Brownsville--and if I was you I'd never come
within a day's ride of the Three B's again."

The mild, brown eyes widened.

"I don't like crowds," murmured Barry.

"You're wise, kid," grinned the bartender--"a hell of a lot wiser than
you know right now. On your way!"

And he turned to follow the crowd into the saloon. But Jerry Strann
stood at the swinging doors, watching, and he saw Barry linger behind.

"Are you coming?" he called.

"I got an engagement," answered the meek voice.

"You got another engagement here," mocked Strann. "Understand?"

The other hesitated for an instant, and then sighed deeply. "I suppose
I'll stay," he murmured, and walked into the bar. Jerry Strann was
smiling in the way that showed his teeth. As Barry passed he said
softly: "I see we ain't going to have no trouble, you and me!" and he
moved to clap his strong hand on the shoulder of the smaller man. Oddly
enough, the hand missed, for Barry swerved from beneath it as a wolf
swerves from the shadow of a falling branch. No perceptible effort--no
sudden start of tensed muscles, but a movement so smooth that it was
almost unnoticeable. But the hand of Strann fell through thin air.

"You're quick," he said. "If you was as quick with your hands as you are
with your feet----"

Barry paused and the melancholy brown eyes dwelt on the face of Strann.

"Oh, hell!" snorted the other, and turned on his heel to the bar. "Drink
up!" he commanded.

A shout and a snarl from the further end of the room.

"A wolf, by God!" yelled one of the men.

The owner of the animal made his way with unobtrusive swiftness the
length of the room and stood between the dog and a man who fingered the
butt of his gun nervously.

"He won't hurt you none," murmured that softly assuring voice.

"The hell he won't!" responded the other. "He took a pass at my leg just
now and dam' near took it off. Got teeth like the blades of a
pocket-knife!"

"You're on a cold trail, Sam," broke in one of the others. "That ain't
any wolf. Look at him now!"

The big, shaggy animal had slunk to the feet of his master and with
head abased stared furtively up into Barry's face. A gesture served as
sufficient command, and he slipped shadow-like into the corner and
crouched with his head on his paws and the incandescent green of his
eyes glimmering; Barry sat down in a chair nearby.

O'Brien was happily spinning bottles and glasses the length of the bar;
there was the chiming of glass and the rumble of contented voices.

"Red-eye all 'round," said the loud voice of Jerry Strann, "but there's
one out. Who's out? Oh, it's _him_. Hey O'Brien, lemonade for the lady."

It brought a laugh, a deep, good-natured laugh, and then a chorus of
mockery; but Barry stepped unconfused to the bar, accepted the glass of
lemonade, and when the others downed their fire-water, he sipped his
drink thoughtfully. Outside, the wind had risen, and it shook the hotel
and carried a score of faint voices as it whirred around corners and
through cracks. Perhaps it was one of those voices which made the big
dog lift its head from its paws and whine softly! surely it was
something he heard which caused Barry to straighten at the bar and cant
his head slightly to one side--but, as certainly, no one else in the
barroom heard it. Barry set down his glass.

"Mr. Strann?" he called.

And the gentle voice carried faintly down through the uproar of the bar.

"Sister wants to speak to you," suggested O'Brien to Strann.

"Well?" roared the latter, "what d'you want?"

The others were silent to listen; and they smiled in anticipation.

"If you don't mind, much," said the musical voice, "I think I'll be
moving along."

There is an obscure little devil living in all of us. It makes the child
break his own toys; it makes the husband strike the helpless wife; it
makes the man beat the cringing, whining dog. The greatest of American
writers has called it the Imp of the Perverse. And that devil came in
Jerry Strann and made his heart small and cold. If he had been by nature
the bully and the ruffian there would have been no point in all that
followed, but the heart of Jerry Strann was ordinarily as warm as the
yellow sunshine itself; and it was a common saying in the Three B's that
Jerry Strann would take from a child what he would not endure from a
mountain-lion. Women loved Jerry Strann, and children would crowd about
his knees, but this day the small demon was in him.

"You want to be moving along" mimicked the devil in Jerry Strann. "Well,
you wait a while. I ain't through with you yet. Maybe--" he paused and
searched his mind. "You've given me a fall, and maybe you can give the
rest of us--a laugh!"

The chuckle of appreciation went up the bar and down it again.

"I want to ask you," went on the devil in Jerry Strann, "where you got
your hoss?"

"He was running wild," came the gentle answer. "So I took a walk, one
day, and brought him in."

A pause.

"Maybe," grinned the big man, "you creased him?"

For it is one of the most difficult things in the world to capture a
wild horse, and some hunters, in their desperation at seeing the
wonderful animals escape, have tried to "crease" them. That is, they
strive to shoot so that the bullet will barely graze the top of the
animal's vertebrae, just behind the ears, stunning the horse and making
it helpless for the capture. But necessarily such shots are made from a
distance, and little short of a miracle is needed to make the bullet
strike true--for a fraction of an inch too low means death. So another
laugh of appreciation ran around the barroom at the mention of creasing.

"No," answered Barry, "I went out with a halter and after a while Satan
got used to me and followed me home."

They waited only long enough to draw deep breath; then came a long yell
of delight. But the obscure devil was growing stronger and stronger in
Strann. He beat on the bar until he got silence. Then he leaned over to
meet the eyes of Barry.

"That," he remarked through his teeth, "is a damned--lie!"

There is only one way of answering that word in the mountain-desert, and
Barry did not take it. The melancholy brown eyes widened; he sighed, and
raising his glass of lemonade sipped it slowly. Came a sick silence in
the barroom. Men turned their eyes towards each other and then flashed
them away again. It is not good that one who has the eyes and the tongue
of a man should take water from another--even from a Jerry Strann. And
even Jerry Strann withdrew his eyes slowly from his prey, and shuddered;
the sight of the most grisly death is not so horrible as cowardice.

And the devil which was still strong in Strann made him look about for a
new target; Barry was removed from all danger by an incredible barrier.
He found that new target at once, for his glance reached to the corner
of the room and found there the greenish, glimmering eyes of the dog. He
smote upon the bar.

"Is this a damned kennel?" he shouted. "Do I got to drink in a barnyard?
What's the dog doin' here?"

And he caught up the heavy little whiskey glass and hurled it at the
crouching dog. It thudded heavily, but it brought no yelp of pain;
instead, a black thunderbolt leaped from the corner and lunged down the
room. It was the silence of the attack that made it terrible, and Strann
cursed and pulled his gun. He could never have used it. He was a whole
half second too late, but before the dog sprang a voice cut in: "Bart!"

It checked the animal in its very leap; it landed on the floor and slid
on stiffly extended legs to the feet of Strann.

"Bart!" rang the voice again.

And the beast, flattening to the floor, crawled backwards, inch by inch;
it was slavering, and there was a ravening madness in its eyes.

"Look at it!" cried Strann. "By God, it's mad!"

And he raised his gun to draw the bead.

"Wait!" called the same voice which had checked the spring of the dog.
Surely it could not have come from the lips of Barry. It held a
resonance of chiming metal; it was not loud, but it carried like a
brazen bell. "Don't do it, Strann!"

And it came to every man in the barroom that it was unhealthy to stand
between the two men at that instant; a sudden path opened from Barry to
Strann.

"Bart!" came the command again. "Heel!"

The dog obeyed with a slinking swiftness; Jerry Strann put up his gun
and smiled.

"I don't take a start on no man," he announced quite pleasantly. "I
don't need to. But--you yaller hearted houn'--get out from between. When
I make my draw I'm goin' to kill that damn wolf."

Now, the fighting face of Jerry Strann was well known in the Three B's,
and it was something for men to remember until they died in a peaceful
bed. Yet there was not a glance, from the bystanders, for Strann. They
stood back against the wall, flattening themselves, and they stared,
fascinated, at the slender stranger. Not that his face had grown ugly by
a sudden metamorphosis. It was more beautiful than ever, for the man was
smiling. It was his eyes which held them. Behind the brown a light was
growing, a yellow and unearthly glimmer which one felt might be seen on
the darkest night.

There was none of the coward in Jerry Strann. He looked full into that
yellow, glimmering, changing light--he looked steadily--and a strange
feeling swept over him. No, it was not fear. Long experience had taught
him that there was not another man in the Three B's, with the exception
of his own terrible brother, who could get a gun out of the leather
faster than he, but now it seemed to Jerry Strann that he was facing
something more than mortal speed and human strength and surety. He could
not tell in what the feeling was based. But it was a giant, dim
foreboding holding dominion over other men's lives, and it sent a train
of chilly-weakness through his blood.

"It's a habit of mine," said Jerry Strann, "to kill mad dogs when I see
'em." And he smiled again.

They stood for another long instant, facing each other. It was plain
that every muscle in Strann's body was growing tense; the very smile was
frozen on his lips. When he moved, at last, it was a convulsive jerk of
his arm, and it was said, afterward, that his gun was all clear of the
leather before the calm stranger stirred. No eye followed what happened.
Can the eye follow such speed as the cracking lash of a whip?

There was only one report. The forefinger of Strann did not touch his
trigger, but the gun slipped down and dangled loosely from his hand. He
made a pace forward with his smile grown to an idiotic thing and a
patch of red sprang out in the centre of his breast. Then he lurched
headlong to the floor.




CHAPTER X

"SWEET ADELINE"


Fatty Matthews came panting through the doors. He was one of those men
who have a leisurely build and a purely American desire for action; so
that he was always hurrying and always puffing. If he mounted a horse,
sweat started out from every pore; if he swallowed a glass of red-eye he
breathed hard thereafter. Yet he was capable of great and sustained
exertions, as many and many a man in the Three B's could testify. He was
ashamed of his fat. Imagine the soul of a Bald Eagle in the body of a
Poland China sow and you begin to have some idea of Fatty Matthews. Fat
filled his boots as with water and he made a "squnching" sound when he
walked; fat rolled along his jowls; fat made his very forehead flabby;
fat almost buried his eyes. But nothing could conceal the hawk-line of
his nose or the gleam of those half-buried eyes. His hair was
short-cropped, grey, and stood on end like bristles, and he was in the
habit of using his panting breath in humming--for that concealed the
puffing. So Fatty Matthews came through the doors and his little,
concealed eyes darted from face to face. Then he kneeled beside Strann.

He was humming as he opened Jerry's shirt; he was humming as he pulled
from his bag--for Fatty was almost as much doctor as he was marshal,
cowpuncher, miner, and gambler--a roll of cotton and another roll of
bandages. The crowd grouped around him, fascinated, and at his
directions some of them brought water and others raised and turned the
body while the marshal made the bandages; Jerry Strann was unconscious.
Fatty Matthews began to intersperse talk in his humming.

"You was plugged from in front--my beauty--was you?" grunted Fatty, and
then running the roll of bandage around the wounded man's chest he
hummed a bar of:

   _"Sweet Adeline, my Adeline,
   At night, dear heart, for you I pine."_

"Was Jerry lookin' the other way when he was spotted?" asked Fatty of
the bystanders. "O'Brien, you seen it?"

O'Brien cleared his throat.

"I didn't see nothin'," he said mildly, and began to mop his bar, which
was already polished beyond belief.

"Well," muttered Fatty Matthews, "all these birds get it. And Jerry was
some overdue. Lew, you seen it?"

"Yep."

"Some drunken bum do it?"

Lew leaned to the ear of the kneeling marshal and whispered briefly.
Fatty opened his eyes and cursed until his panting forced him to break
off and hum.

"Beat him to the draw?" he gasped at length.

"Jerry's gun was clean out before the stranger made a move," asserted
Lew.

"It ain't possible," murmured the deputy, and hummed softly:

   _"In all my dreams, your fair face beams."_

He added sharply, as he finished the bandaging: "Where'd he head for?"

"No place," answered Lew. "He just now went out the door."

The deputy swore again, but he added, enlightened; "Going to plead
self-defense, eh?"

Big O'Brien leaned over the bar.

"Listen, Fatty," he said earnestly, "There ain't no doubt of it. Jerry
had his war-paint on. He tried to kill this feller Barry's wolf."

"Wolf?" cut in the deputy marshal.

"Dog, I guess," qualified the bartender. "I dunno. Anyway, Jerry made
all the leads; this Barry simply done the finishing. I say, don't put
this Barry under arrest. You want to keep him here for Mac Strann."

"That's my business," growled Fatty. "Hey, half a dozen of you gents.
Hook on to Jerry and take him up to a room. I'll be with you in a
minute."

And while his directions were being obeyed he trotted heavily up the
length of the barroom and out the swinging doors. Outside, he found only
one man, and in the act of mounting a black horse; the deputy marshal
made straight for that man until a huge black dog appeared from nowhere
blocking his path. It was a silent dog, but its teeth and eyes said
enough to stop Fatty in full career.

"Are you Barry?" he asked.

"That's me. Come here, Bart."

The big dog backed to the other side of the horse without shifting his
eyes from the marshal. The latter gingerly approached the rider, who sat
perfectly at ease in the saddle; most apparently he was in no haste to
leave.

"Barry," said the deputy, "don't make no play when I tell you who I am;
I don't mean you no harm, but my name's Matthews, and--" he drew back
the flap of his vest enough to show the glitter of his badge of office.
All the time his little beady eyes watched Barry with bird-like
intentness. The rider made not a move. And now Matthews noted more in
detail the feminine slenderness of the man and the large, placid eyes.
He stepped closer and dropped a confidential hand on the pommel of the
saddle.

"Son," he muttered, "I hear you made a clean play inside. Now, I know
Strann and his way. He was in wrong. There ain't a doubt of it, and if I
held you, you'd get clear on self-defense. So I ain't going to lay a
hand on you. You're free: but one thing more. You cut off
there--see?--and bear away north from the Three B's. You got a hoss that
_is_, and believe me, you'll need him before you're through." He
lowered his voice and his eyes bulged with the terror of his tidings:
"Feed him the leather; ride to beat hell; never stop while your hoss can
raise a trot; and then slide off your hoss and get another. Son, in
three days Mac Strann'll be on your trail!"

He stepped back and waved his arms.

"Now, _vamos!_"

The black stallion flicked back its ears and winced from the outflung
hands, but the rider remained imperturbed.

"I never heard of Mac Strann," said Barry.

"You never heard of Mac Strann?" echoed the other.

"But I'd like to meet him," said Barry.

The deputy marshal blinked his eyes rapidly, as though he needed to
clear his vision.

"Son," he said hoarsely. "I c'n see you're game. But don't make a fall
play. If Mac Strann gets you, he'll California you like a yearling. You
won't have no chance. You've done for Jerry, there ain't a doubt of
that, but Jerry to Mac is like a tame cat to a mountain-lion. Lad, I c'n
see you're a stranger to these parts, but ask me your questions and I'll
tell you the best way to go."

Barry slipped from the saddle.

He said: "I'd like to know the best place to put up my hoss."

The deputy marshal was speechless.

"But I s'pose," went on Barry, "I can stable him over there behind the
hotel."

Matthews pushed off his sombrero and rubbed his short fingers through
his hair. Anger and amazement still choked him, but he controlled
himself by a praiseworthy effort.

"Barry," he said, "I don't make you out. Maybe you figure to wait till
Mac Strann gets to town before you leave; maybe you think your hoss can
outrun anything on four feet. And maybe it can. But listen to me: Mac
Strann ain't fast on a trail, but the point about him is that he never
leaves it! You can go through rain and over rocks, but you can't never
shake Mac Strann--not once he gets the wind of you."

"Thanks," returned the gentle-voiced stranger. "I guess maybe he'll be
worth meeting."

And so saying he turned on his heel and walked calmly towards the big
stables behind the hotel and at his heels followed the black dog and the
black horse. As for deputy marshal Matthews, he moistened his lips to
whistle, but when he pursed them, not a sound came. He turned at length
into the barroom and as he walked his eye was vacant. He was humming
brokenly:

   _"Sweet Adeline, my Adeline,
   At night, dear heart, for you I pine."_

Inside, he took firm hold upon the bar with both pudgy hands.

"O'Brien," he said, "red-eye."

He pushed away the small glass which the bartender spun towards him and
seized in its place a mighty water-tumbler.

"O'Brien," he explained, "I need strength, not encouragement." And
filling the glass nearly to the brim he downed the huge potion at a
single draught.




CHAPTER XI

THE BUZZARD


Most animals have their human counterparts, and in that room where Jerry
Strann had fallen a whimsical observer might have termed Jerry, with his
tawny head, the lion, and O'Brien behind the bar, a shaggy bear, and the
deputy marshal a wolverine, fat but dangerous, and here stood a man as
ugly and hardened as a desert cayuse, and there was Dan Barry, sleek and
supple as a panther; but among the rest this whimsical observer must
have noticed a fellow of prodigious height and negligible breadth, a
structure of sinews and bones that promised to rattle in the wind, a
long, narrow head, a nose like a beak, tiny eyes set close together and
shining like polished buttons, and a vast Adam's apple that rolled up
and down the scraggy throat. He might have done for the spirit of Famine
in an old play; but every dweller of the mountain-desert would have
found an apter expression by calling him the buzzard of the scene.
Through his prodigious ugliness he was known far and wide as "Haw-Haw"
Langley; for on occasion Langley laughed, and his laughter was an
indescribable sound that lay somewhere between the braying of a mule and
the cawing of a crow. But Haw-Haw Langley was usually silent, and he
would sit for hours without words, twisting his head and making little
pecking motions as his eyes fastened on face after face. All the
bitterness of the mountain-desert was in Haw-Haw Langley; if his body
looked like a buzzard, his soul was the soul of the vulture itself, and
therefore he had followed the courses of Jerry Strann up and down the
range. He stuffed his gorge with the fragments of his leader's food; he
fed his soul with the dangers which Jerry Strann met and conquered.

In the barroom Haw-Haw Langley had stood turning his sharp little eyes
from Jerry Strann to Dan Barry, and from Dan Barry back to Strann; and
when the shot was fired something like a grin twisted his thin lips; and
when the spot of red glowed on the breast of the staggering man, the
eyes of Haw-Haw blazed as if with the reflection of a devouring fire.
Afterwards he lingered for a few minutes making no effort to aid the
fallen man, but when he had satisfied himself with the extent of the
injury, and when he had noted the froth of bloody bubbles which stained
the lips of Strann, Haw-Haw Langley turned and stalked from the room.
His eyes were points of light and his soul was crammed to repletion with
ill-tidings.

At the hitching rack he stepped into the saddle of a diminutive horse,
whirled it into the street with a staggering jerk of the reins, and
buried the spurs deep in the cow-pony's flanks. The poor brute snorted
and flirted its heels in the air, but Langley wrapped his long legs
around the barrel of his mount and goaded it again.

His smile, which began with the crack of Barry's gun in O'Brien's place,
did not die out until he was many a mile away, headed far up through the
mountains; but as he put peak after peak behind him and as the white
light of the day diminished and puffs of blue shadow drowned the
valleys, the grin disappeared from Haw-Haw's face. He became keenly
intent on his course until, having reached the very summit of a tall
hill, he came to a halt and peered down before him.

It was nearly dusk by this time and the eyes of an ordinary man could
not distinguish a tree from a rock at any great distance; but it seemed
that Haw-Haw was gifted with eyes extraordinary--the buzzard at the top
of its sky-towering circles does not see the brown carcass far below
with more certainty than Haw-Haw sensed his direction. He waited only a
few seconds before he rolled the rowel once more along the scored flanks
of his mustang and then plunged down the slope at a reckless gallop.

His destination was a hut, or rather a lean-to, that pressed against the
side of the mountain, a crazy structure with a single length of stove
pipe leaning awry from the roof. And at the door of this house Haw-Haw
Langley drew rein and stepped to the ground. The interior of the hut was
dark, but Haw-Haw stole with the caution of a wild Indian to the
entrance and reconnoitered the interior, probing every shadowy corner
with his glittering eyes. For several long moments he continued this
examination, and even when he was satisfied that there was no one in the
place he did not enter, but moved back several paces from the door and
swept the sides of the mountains with an uneasy eye. He made out, a
short distance from the door, a picketed horse which now reared up its
head from the miserable scattering of grass on which it fed and stared
at the stranger. The animal must have bulked at least twice as large as
the mount which had brought Langley to the mountain-side. And it was
muscled even out of proportion to its bulk. The head was so tremendously
broad that it gave an almost square appearance, the neck, short and
thick, the forelegs disproportionately small but very sturdy; and the
whole animal was built on a slope towards the hind quarters which seemed
to equal in massiveness all the rest of the body. One would have said
that the horse was a freak meant by nature for the climbing of hills.
And to glance at it no man could suppose that those ponderous limbs
might be moved to a gallop. However, Haw-Haw Langley well knew the
powers of the ugly beast, and he even made a detour and walked about the
horse to view it more closely.

Now he again surveyed the darkening landscape and then turned once more
to the house. This time he entered with the boldness of a possessor
approaching his hearth. He lighted a match and with this ignited a
lantern hanging from the wall to the right of the door. The furnishings
of the dwelling were primitive beyond compare. There was no sign of a
chair; a huddle of blankets on the bare boards of the floor made the
bed; a saddle hung by one stirrup on one side and on the other side
leaned the skins of bob-cats, lynx, and coyotes on their stretching and
drying boards. Haw-Haw took down the lantern and examined the pelts. The
animals had been skinned with the utmost dexterity. As far as he could
see the hides had not been marred in a single place by slips of the
knife, nor were there any blood stains to attest hurried work, or
careless shooting in the first place. The inner surfaces shone with the
pure white of old parchment But Haw-Haw gave his chief attention to the
legs and the heads of the skins, for these were the places where
carelessness or stupidity with the knife were sure to show; but the work
was perfect in every respect. Until even the critical Haw-Haw Langley
was forced to step back and shake his head in admiration. He continued
his survey of the room.

In one corner stood a rifle and a shot-gun; in another was a pile of
provisions--bacon, flour, salt, meal, and little else. Spices and
condiments were apparently unknown to this hermit; nor was there even
the inevitable coffee, nor any of the molasses or other sweets which the
tongue of the desert-mountainer cannot resist. Flour, meat, and water,
it seemed, made up the entire fare of the trapper. For cookery there was
an unboarded space in the very centre of the floor with a number of
rocks grouped around in the hole and blackened with soot. The smoke
must rise, therefore, and escape through the small hole in the centre of
the roof. The length of stove-pipe which showed on the roof must have
been simply the inhabitant's idea of giving the last delicate touch of
civilisation; it was like a tassel to the cap of the Turk.

As Haw-Haw's observations reached this point his sharp ear caught the
faint whinny of the big horse outside. He started like one caught in a
guilty act, and sprang to the lantern. However, with his hands upon it
he thought better of it, and he placed the light against the wall; then
he turned to the entrance and looked anxiously up the hillside.

What he saw was a form grotesque beyond belief. It seemed to be some
gigantic wild beast--mountain lion or great bear, though of a size
beyond credence--which slowly sprawled down the slope walking erect upon
its hind feet with its forelegs stretched out horizontal, as if it were
warning all who might behold it away. Haw-Haw grew pale and
involuntarily reached for his gun as he first beheld this apparition,
but instantly he saw the truth. It was a man who carried a burden down
the mountain-side. The burden was the carcass of a bear; the man had
drawn the forelegs over his shoulders--his jutting elbows making what
had seemed the outstretched arms--and above the head of the
burden-bearer rose the great head of the bear. As the man came closer
the animal's head flopped to one side and a red tongue lolled from its
mouth. Haw-Haw Langley moved back step by step through the cabin until
his shoulders struck the opposite wall, and at the same time Mac Strann
entered the room. He had no ear for his visitor's hail, but cast his
burden to the floor. It dropped with a shock that shook the house from
the rattling stove-pipe to the crackling boards. For a moment Mac Strann
regarded his prey. Then he stooped and drew open the great jaws. The
mouth within was not so red as the bloody hands of Mac Strann; and the
big, white fangs, for some reason, did not seem terrible in comparison
with the hunter. Having completed his survey he turned slowly upon
Haw-Haw Langley and lowered his eyebrows to stare.

So doing, the light for the first time struck full upon his face.
Haw-Haw Langley bit his thin lips and his eyes widened almost to the
normal.

For the ugliness of Mac Strann was that most terrible species of
ugliness--not disfigured features but a discord which pervaded the man
and came from within him--like a sound. Feature by feature his face was
not ugly. The mouth was very large, to be sure, and the jaw too heavily
square, and the nose needed somewhat greater length and less width for
real comeliness. The eyes were truly fine, being very large and black,
though when Mac Strann lowered his bush of brows his eyes were
practically reduced to gleams of light in the consequent shadow. There
was a sharp angle in his forehead, the lines of it meeting in the centre
and shelving up and down. One felt, unpleasantly, that there were heavy
muscles overlaying that forehead. One felt that to the touch it would be
a pad of flesh, and it gave to Mac Strann, more than any other feature,
a peculiar impression of resistless physical power.

In the catalogue of his features, indeed, there was nothing severely
objectionable; but out of it came a feeling of _too much strength!_ A
glance at his body reinsured the first thought. It was not normal. His
shirt bulged tightly at the shoulders with muscles. He was not
tall--inches shorter than his brother Jerry, for instance--but the bulk
of his body was incredible. His torso was a veritable barrel that bulged
out both in the chest and the back. And even the tremendous thighs of
Mac Strann were perceptibly bowed out by the weight which they had to
carry. And there was about his management of his arms a peculiar
awkwardness which only the very strongest of men exhibit--as if they
were burdened by the weight of their mere dangling hands.

This giant, having placed his eyes in shadow, peered for a long moment
at Haw-Haw Langley, but very soon his glance began to waver. It flashed
towards the wall--it came back and rested upon Langley again. He was
like a dog, restless under a steady stare. And as Haw-Haw Langley noted
this a glitter of joy came in his beady eyes.

"You're Jerry's man," said Mac Strann at length.

There was about his voice the same fleshy quality that was in his face;
it came literally from his stomach, and it made a peculiar rustling
sound such as comes after one has eaten sticky sweet things. People
could listen to the voice of Mac Strann and forget that he was speaking
words. The articulation ran together in a sort of glutinous mass.

"I'm a friend of Jerry's," said the other. "I'm Langley."

The big man stretched out his hand. The hair grew black, down to the
knuckles; the blood of the bear still streaked it; it was large enough
to be an organism with independent life. But when Langley, with some
misgiving, trusted his own bony fingers within that grasp, in was only
as if something fleshy, soft, and bloodless had closed over them. When
his hand was released he rubbed it covertly against his trowser leg--to
remove dirt--restore the circulation. He did not know why.

"Who's bothering Jerry?" asked Mac Strann. "And where is he?"

He went to the wall without waiting for an answer and took down the
saddle. Now the cowpuncher's saddle is a heavy mass of leather and
steel, and the saddle of Mac Strann was far larger than the ordinary.
Yet he took down the saddle as one might remove a card from a rack.
Haw-Haw Langley moved towards the door, to give himself a free space for
exit.

"Jerry's hurt," he said, and he watched.

There was a ripple of pain on the face of Mac Strann.

"Hoss kicked him--fall on him?" he asked.

"It weren't a hoss."

"Huh? A cow?"

"It weren't no cow. It weren't no animal."

Mac Strann faced full upon Langley. When he spoke it seemed as if it
were difficult for him to manage his lips. They lifted an appreciable
space before there was any sound.

"What was it?"

"A man."

Langley edged back towards the door.

"What with?"

"A gun."

And Langley saw the danger that was coming even before Mac Strann moved.
He gave a shrill yelp of terror and whirled and sprang for the open. But
Mac Strann sprang after him and reached. His whole body seemed to
stretch like an elastic thing, and his arm grew longer. The hand
fastened on the back of Langley, plucked him up, and jammed him against
the wall. Haw-Haw crumpled to the floor.

He gasped: "It weren't me, Mac. For Gawd's sake, it weren't me!"

His face was a study. There was abject terror in it, and yet there was
also a sort of grisly joy, and his eyes feasted on the silent agony of
Mac Strann.

"Where?" asked Mac Strann.

"Mac," pleaded the vulture who cringed on the floor, "gimme your word
you ain't goin' to hold it agin me."

"Tell me," said the other, and he framed the face of the vulture between
his large hands. If he pressed the heels of those hands together bones
would snap, and Haw-Haw Langley knew it. And yet nothing but a wild
delight could have set that glitter in his little eyes, just as nothing
but a palsy of terror could have set his limbs twitching so.

"Who shot him from behind?" demanded the giant.

"It wasn't from behind," croaked the bearer of ill-tidings. "It was from
the front."

"While he wasn't looking?"

"No. He was beat to the draw."

"You're _lyin'_ to me," said Mac Strann slowly.

"So help me God!" cried Langley.

"Who done it?"

"A little feller. He ain't half as big as me. He's got a voice like
Kitty Jackson, the school-marm; and he's got eyes like a starved
pup. It was him that done it."

The eyes of Mac Strann grew vaguely meditative.

"Nope," he mused, in answer to his own thoughts, "I won't use no rope.
I'll use my hands. Where'd the bullet land?"

A fresh agony of trembling shook Langley, and a fresh sparkle came in
his glance.

"Betwixt his ribs, Mac. And right on through. And it come out his back!"

But there was not an answering tremor in Mac Strann. He let his hands
fall away from the face of the vulture and he caught up the saddle.
Langley straightened himself. He peered anxiously at Strann, as if he
feared to miss something.

"I dunno whether he's livin' right now, or not," suggested Haw-Haw.

But Mac Strann was already striding through the door.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sweat was pouring from the lather-flecked bodies of their horses when
they drew rein, at last, at the goal of their long, fierce ride; and
Haw-Haw slunk behind the broad form of Mac Strann when the latter strode
into the hotel. Then the two started for the room in which, they were
told, lay Jerry Strann.

"There it is," whispered Haw-Haw, as they reached the head of the
stairs. "The door's open. If he was dead the door would be closed, most
like."

They stood in the hall and looked in upon a strange picture, for flat in
the bed lay Jerry Strann, his face very white and oddly thin, and over
him leaned the man who had shot him down.

They heard Dan Barry's soft, gentle voice query: "How you feelin' now,
partner?"

He leaned close beside the other, his fingers upon the wrist of Jerry.

"A pile better," muttered Jerry Strann. "Seems like I got more'n a
fightin' chance to pull through now."

"Jest you keep lyin' here quiet," advised Dan Barry, "and don't stir
around none. Don't start no worryin'. You're goin' to live's long as you
don't lose no more blood. Keep your thoughts quiet. They ain't no cause
for you to do nothin' but jest keep your eyes closed, and breathe, and
think of yaller sunshine, and green grass in the spring, and the wind
lazyin' the clouds along across the sky. That's all you got to think
about. Jest keep quiet, partner."

"It's easy to do it now you're with me. Seems like they's a pile of
strength runnin' into me from the tips of your fingers, my frien'.
And--I was _some_ fool to start that fight with you, Barry."

"Jest forget all that," murmured the other. "And keep your voice down.
I've forgot it; you forget it. It ain't never happened."

"What's it mean?" frowned Mac Strann, whispering to Haw-Haw.

The eyes of the latter glittered like beads.

"That's him that shot Jerry," said Haw-Haw. "Him!"

"Hell!" snarled Mac Strann, and went through the door.

At the first sound of his heavy footfall, the head of Barry raised and
turned in a light, swift movement. The next instant he was on his feet.
A moment before his face had been as gentle as that of a mother leaning
over a sick child; but one glimpse of the threat in the contorted brows
of Mac Strann set a gleam in his own eyes, an answer as distinct as the
click of metal against metal. Not a word had been said, but Jerry, who
had lain with his eyes closed, seemed to sense a change in the
atmosphere of peace which had enwrapped him the moment before. His eyes
flashed open; and he saw his burly brother.

But Mac Strann had no eye for any saving Dan Barry.

"Are you the creepin', sneakin' snake that done--this?"

"You got me figured right," answered Dan coldly.

"Then, by God------" began the roaring voice of Mac, but Jerry Strann
stirred wildly on the bed.

"Mac!" he called, "Mac!" His voice went suddenly horribly thick, a
bubbling, liquid sound. "For God's sake, Mac!"

He had reared himself up on one elbow, his arm stretched out to his
brother. And a foam of crimson stood on his lips.

"Mac, don't pull no gun! It was me that was in wrong!"

And then he fell back in the bed, and into the arms of Mac, who was
beside him, moaning: "Buck up, Jerry. Talk to me, boy!"

"Mac, you've finished the job," came the husky whisper.

Mac Strann raised his head, and his terrible eyes fixed upon Dan Barry.
And there was no pity in the face of the other. The first threat had
wiped every vestige of human tenderness out of his eyes, and now, with
something like a sneer on his lips, and with a glimmer of yellow light
in his eyes, he was backing towards the door, and noiselessly as a
shadow he slipped out and was gone.




CHAPTER XII

FINESSE


"A man talks because he's drunk or lonesome; a girl talks because that's
her way of takin' exercise."

This was a maxim of Buck Daniels, and Buck Daniels knew a great deal
about women, as many a school marm and many a rancher's daughter of the
mountain-desert could testify.

Also Buck Daniels said of women: "It ain't what you say to 'em so much
as the tune you put it to."

Now he sat this day in O'Brien's hotel dining-room. It was the lazy and
idle hour between three and four in the afternoon, and since the men of
the mountain-desert eat promptly at six, twelve, and six, there was not
a soul in the room when he entered. Nor was there a hint of eating
utensils on the tables. Nevertheless Buck Daniels was not dismayed. He
selected a corner-table by instinct and smote upon the surface with the
flat of his hand. It made a report like the spat of a forty-five; heavy
footsteps approached, a door flung open, and a cross-eyed slattern stood
in the opening. At the sight of Buck Daniels sitting with his hands on
his hips and his sombrero pushed back to a good-natured distance on his
head the lady puffed with rage.

"What in hell d'you think this is?" bellowed this gentle creature, and
the tone echoed heavily back from all four walls. "You're three hours
late and you get no chuck here. On your way, stranger!"

Buck Daniels elevated himself slowly from the chair and stood at his
full height. With a motion fully as deliberate he removed his sombrero
and bowed to such a depth that the brim of the hat brushed the floor.

"Lady," he said humbly, "I was thinkin' that some gent run this here
eatin' place. Which if you'll excuse me half a minute I'll ramble
outside and sluice off some of the dust. If I'd known you was here I
wouldn't of thought of comin' in here like this."

The lady with the defective eyes glared fiercely at him. Her judgment
wavered two ways. Her first inclination was to hold that the fellow was
jibing at her covertly, and she followed her original impulse far enough
to clasp a neighboring sugar-bowl in a large, capable hand. A second and
more merciful thought entered her brain and stole slowly through it,
like a faint echo in a great cave.

"You don't have to make yourself pretty to talk to me," she said
thoughtfully. "But if you're here for chow you're too late."

"Ma'am," said Buck Daniels instantly, "when I come in here I was hungry
enough to eat nails; but I'll forget about chuck if you'll sit down an'
chin with me a while."

The large hand of the cross-eyed lady stole out once more and rested
upon the sugar-bowl.

"D'you mind sayin' that over agin?" she queried.

"Lonesomeness is worse'n hunger," said Buck Daniels, and he met her gaze
steadily with his black eyes.

The hand released the sugar-bowl once more; something resembling colour
stole into the brown cheeks of the maiden.

She said, relentingly: "Maybe you been off by yourse'f mining,
stranger?"

Buck Daniels drew a long breath.

"Mines?" he said, and then laughed bitterly. "If that was all I been
doin'--" he began darkly--and then stopped.

The waitress started.

"Maybe this here is my last chance to get chuck for days an' days. Well,
let it go. If I stayed here with you I'd be talkin' too much!"

He turned slowly towards the door. His step was very slow indeed.

"Wait a minute," called the maiden. "There ain't any call for that play.
If you're in wrong somewhere--well, stranger, just take that chair and
I'll have some ham-and in front of you inside of a minute."

She had slammed through the door before Buck turned, and he sat down,
smiling pleasantly to himself. Half of a mirror decorated the wall
beside his table, and into this Buck peered. His black locks were sadly
disarrayed, and he combed them into some semblance of order with his
fingers. He had hardly finished this task when the door was kicked open
with such force that it whacked against the wall, and the waitress
appeared with an armful of steaming food. Before Buck's widening eyes
she swiftly set forth an array of bread, butter in chunks, crisp
French-fried potatoes, a large slab of ham on one plate and several
fried eggs on another, and above all there was a mighty pewter cup of
coffee blacker than the heart of night. Yearning seized upon Buck
Daniels, but policy was stronger than hunger in his subtle mind. He rose
again; he drew forth the chair opposite his own.

"Ma'am," said Buck Daniels, "ain't you going to favor me by sittin'
down?"

The lady blinked her unfocused eyes.

"Ain't I what?" she was finally able to ask.

"I know," said Buck Daniels swiftly, "that you're terrible busy; which
you ain't got time to waste on a stranger like me."

She turned upon Buck those uncertain and wistful eyes. It was a generous
face. Mouth, cheekbones, and jaw were of vast proportions, while the
forehead, eyes, and nose were as remarkably diminutive. Her glance
lowered to the floor; she shrugged her wide shoulders and began to wipe
the vestiges of dishwater from her freckled hands.

"You men are terrible foolish," she said. "There ain't no tellin' what
you mean by what you say."

And she sank slowly into the chair. It gave voice in sharp protest at
her weight. Buck Daniels retreated to the opposite side of the table
and took his place.

"Ma'am," he began, "don't I look honest?" So saying, he slid half a
dozen eggs and a section of bacon from the platter to his plate.

"I dunno," said the maiden, with one eye upon him and the other plunging
into the future. "There ain't no trusting men. Take 'em by the lot and
they're awful forgetful."

"If you knowed me better," said Buck sadly, disposing of a slab of bread
spread thick with the pale butter and following this with a pile of
fried potatoes astutely balanced on his knife. "If you knowed me better,
ma'am, you wouldn't have no suspicions."

"What might it be that you been doin'?" asked the girl.

Buck Daniels paused in his attack on the food and stared at her.

He quoted deftly from a magazine which had once fallen in his way: "Some
day maybe I can tell you. There's something about your eyes that tells
me you'd understand."

At the mention of her eyes the waitress blinked and stiffened in her
chair, while a huge, red fist balled itself in readiness for action. But
the expression of Buck Daniels was as blandly open as the smile of
infancy. The lady relaxed and an unmistakable blush tinged even her nose
with colour.

"It ain't after my nature to be askin' questions," she announced. "You
don't have to tell me no more'n you want to."

"Thanks," said Buck instantly. "I knew you was that kind. It ain't
hard," he went on smoothly, "to tell a lady when you see one. I can tell
you this much to start with. I'm lookin' for a quiet town where I can
settle down permanent. And as far as I can see, Brownsville looks sort
of quiet to me."

So saying, he disposed of the rest of his food by an act akin to
legerdemain, and then fastened a keen eye upon the lady. She was in the
midst of a struggle of some sort. But she could not keep the truth from
her tongue.

"Take it by and large," she said at length, "Brownsville is as peaceable
as most; but just now, stranger, it's all set for a big bust." She
turned heavily in her chair and glanced about the room. Then she faced
Daniels once more and cupped her hands about her mouth. "Stranger," she
said in a stage whisper, "Mac Strann is in town!"

The eyes of Buck Daniels wandered.

"Don't you know him?" she asked.

"Nope."

"Never heard of him?"

"Nope."

"Well," sighed the waitress, "you've had some luck in your life. Take a
cross between a bulldog and a mustang and a mountain-lion--that's Mac
Strann. He's in town, and he's here for killin'."

"You don't say, ma'am. And why don't they lock him up?"

"Because he ain't done nothin' yet to be locked up about. That's the way
with him. And when he does a thing he always makes the man he's after
pull his gun first. Smart? I'll say he's just like an Indian, that Mac
Strann!"

"But who's he after?"

"The feller that plugged his brother, Jerry."

"Kind of looks like he had reason for a killing, then."

"Nope. Jerry had it comin' to him. He was always raising trouble, Jerry
was. And this time, he pulled his gun first. Everybody seen him."

"He run into a gunman?"

"Gunman?" she laughed heartily. "Partner, if it wasn't for something
funny about his eyes, I wouldn't be no more afraid of that gunman than I
am of a tabby-cat. And me a weak woman. The quietest lookin' sort that
ever come to Brownsville. But there's something queer about him. He
knows that Mac Strann is here in town. He knows that Mac Strann is
waiting for Jerry to die. He knows that when Jerry dies Mac will be out
for a killin'. And this here stranger is just sittin' around and waitin'
to be killed! Can you beat that?"

But Buck Daniels had grown strangely excited.

"What did you say there was about his eyes?" he asked sharply.

She grew suddenly suspicious.

"D' you know him?"

"No. But you was talkin' about his eyes?"

"I dunno what it is. I ain't the only one that's seen it. There ain't no
word you can put to it. It's just there. That's all."

The voice of Buck Daniels fell to a whisper.

"It's sort of fire," he suggested. "Ain't it a kind of light _behind_
his eyes?"

But the waitress stared at him in amazement.

"Fire?" she gasped. "A light _behind_ his eyes? M'frien', are you tryin'
to string me?"

"What's his name?"

"I dunno."

"Ma'am," said Daniels, rising hastily. "Here's a dollar if you'll take
me to him."

"You don't need no guide," she replied. "Listen to that, will you?"

And as he hearkened obediently Buck Daniels heard a strain of whistling,
needle-sharp with distance.

"That's him," nodded the woman. "He's always goin' about whistling to
himself. Kind of a nut, he is."

"It's him!" cried Buck Daniels. "It's him!"

And with this ungrammatical burst of joy he bolted from the room.




CHAPTER XIII

THE THREE


The whistling came from behind the hotel, and although it ended as soon
as he reached the veranda of the building, Buck Daniels hurried to the
rear of the place. There were the long, low sheds of the barn, and
behind these, he knew, must be the corrals. He raced around the corner
of the shed and there came to a halt, for he saw a thing that turned his
blood to ice.

One of those rare rains of the mountain-desert had recently fallen and
the corrals behind the barn were carpeted with a short, thick grass. In
the small corral nearest him he beheld, rolling on that carpet of grass,
a great wolf--or a dog as large and as rough-coated as a wolf, and a
man; and they were engaged in a desperate and silent struggle for
mastery. Their movements were so lightning fast that Buck Daniels could
not make out distinct forms from the tangle. But he saw the great white
teeth of the wolf flash in the sun one instant, and the next the man had
whirled on top. It was Dan and Bart at play.

No outcry from Dan; no growl from the wolf. Buck felt the old chill
which never left him when he saw the fierce game of the wolf and the
wolf-man. All this passed in the twinkling of an eye, and then Dan, by a
prodigious effort, had thrown the great beast away from him, so that
Bart fell upon its back. Dan leaped with outstretched arms upon the
fallen animal, and buried his clutching hands in the throat of the
beast.

Yet still there was a thrill to add to these, for now a black horse
appeared in the picture, a miracle of slender, shimmering grace--and he
rushed with flattened ears upon the two twisting, writhing, prostrate
figures. His teeth were bared--he was more like a prodigious dog than a
horse. And those teeth closed on the back of the man's neck--or did they
merely pinch his shirt?--and then Dan was dragged bodily away from the
wolf and thrown through the air by a flirt of the stallion's head.

Horrible! Buck Daniels shuddered and then he grinned shamefacedly in
apology to himself.

"The three of 'em!" he grunted, and stepped closer to the fence to
watch.

The instant the man was torn away by the intercession of the horse, the
wolf regained its feet and rushed upon him; but Dan had landed from his
fall upon his feet, with catlike agility, and now he dodged the rush of
the wolf and the arrowy spring of the creature, and sprang in his turn
towards the stallion.

The black met this attack by rearing, his ears flattened, his teeth
bared, his eyes terrible to behold. As the man raced close the stallion
struck with lightning hoofs, but the blow failed of its mark--by the
breadth of a hair. And the assailant, swerving like a will-o'-the-wisp,
darted to the side of the animal and leaped upon its back. At the same
instant the wolf left the ground with terribly gaping mouth in a spring
for the rider; but Dan flattened himself along the shining back of his
mount and the wolf catapulted harmlessly past.

After this failure the wolf-dog seemed to desire no further active part
in the struggle, but took up a position to one side, and there, with
lolling tongue and red-stained eyes, watched the battle continue. The
stallion, to be sure, kept up the conflict with a whole-hearted energy.
Never had Buck Daniels in a long and varied career seen such wild
pitching. The black leaped here and there, doubling about with the
sinuous speed of a snake, springing high in the air one instant, and
landing the next on stiff legs; dropping to the ground the next second,
and rolling to crush the rider; up again like a leaf jerked up by a gale
of wind, and so the fierce struggle continued, with the wild rider
slapping the neck of the horse as if he would encourage it to more
terrible efforts, and drumming its round barrel with vindictive heels.
His hair blew black; his face flushed; and in his eyes there was the joy
of the sailor, long land-bound, who climbs at last the tallest mast and
feels it pitch beneath him and catches the sharp tang of the travelled
wind.

The struggle ceased as if in obedience to an inaudible command. From the
full frenzy of motion horse and man were suddenly moveless. Then Dan
slipped from his seat and stood before his mount. At once the ears of
the stallion, which had been flat back, pricked sharply forward; the
eyes of the animal grew luminous and soft as the eyes of a woman, and he
dropped the black velvet of his muzzle beneath the master's chin. As for
Dan Barry, he rewarded this outburst of affection with no touch of his
hand; but his lips moved, and he seemed to be whispering a secret to his
horse. The wolf in the meantime had viewed this scene with growing
unrest, and now it trotted up and placed itself at the side of the man.
Receiving no attention in this position, it caught the arm of the man
between its great fangs and drew his hands down. The stallion, angered
by this interruption, raised a delicate forefoot to strike, and was
received with a terrific snarl--the first sound of the entire scene.

"Bart," said the man, and his voice was not raised or harsh, but came as
softly as running water, "if you ain't going to be a gentleman, I got
to teach you manners. Get up on Satan's back and lie down till I tell
you to get off."

The wolf received this command with a snarl even more blood-curdling
than before, but he obeyed, slinking sidewise a reluctant pace or two,
and then springing to the back of the stallion with a single bound.
There he crouched, still snarling softly until his master raised a
significant forefinger. At that he lowered his head and maintained a
fiercely observant silence.

"Dan!" called Buck Daniels.

The other whirled.

"Speakin' of pets," observed Buck Daniels, "I heard tell once about a
gent that had a tame lion. Which you got the outbeatingest pair I ever
see, Dan. Gentle, ain't they, like a stampede of cows!"

But Barry left this remark unanswered. He ran to the tall fence, placed
his hand on the top rail, and vaulted lightly over it. Then he clasped
the hand of the larger man, and his face lighted.

"Buck," he said, "I been sort of lonesome. It feels pretty good to see
you agin."

"Oh man," answered Buck Daniels, "speakin' of bein' lonesome------" He
checked himself. "How about steppin' inside and havin' a talk?"

The other started forward agreeably, but stopped almost at once.

"Heel!" he called, without turning his head.

Black Bart left the back of the stallion in a long bound that carried
him half way to the fence. His next leap brought him over the rail and
beside his master. Buck Daniels moved back a step involuntarily.

"Bart," he said, "d'you know me?"

He stretched out his hand; and was received with a sudden baring of the
fangs.

"Nice dog!" said Buck sarcastically. "Regular house-pet, ain't he?"

The other apparently missed the entire point of this remark. He said in
his gentle, serious way: "He used to be real wild, Buck. But now he
don't mind people. He let the cook feed him a chunk o' meat the other
day; and you remember he don't usually touch stuff that other men have
handled."

"Yep," grunted Buck, "it's sure disgustin' to have a dog as tame as
that. I'd bet he ain't killed another dog for a whole day, maybe!"

And still Barry saw no irony in this.

He answered, as gravely as before: "No, it was the day before yesterday.
Somebody come to town and got drunk. He had two dogs, and sicked 'em on
Bart."

Buck Daniels controlled an incipient shudder.

"Both dead?"

"I was inside the house," said Dan sadly, "and it took me a couple of
seconds to get outside. Of course by that time Bart had cut their
throats."

"Of course. Didn't the drunk guy try to pot Bart?"

"Yes, he got out his gun; but, Mr. O'Brien, the bartender, persuaded him
out of it. I was glad there wasn't no trouble."

"My God!" exclaimed Buck Daniels. And then: "Well, let's go inside.
We'll take your man-eater along, if you want to."

A shadow came in the eyes of Barry.

"Can't we talk jest as well out here?"

"What's the matter with findin' some chairs?"

"Because I don't like to get inside walls. You know how four walls seem
like so many pairs of eyes standin' around you?"

"No," said Buck bluntly, "I don't know nothin' of the kind. What d'you
mean?"

"I dunno," answered Barry, depressed. "It jest seems that way. Ain't you
noticed how sort of close it is in a house? Hard to breathe? Like you had
on a shirt too small for you."

"We'll stay out here, then."

The other nodded, smiled, and made a gesture to the dog behind him.
Black Bart crouched on the ground, and Dan Barry sat down cross-legged,
his shoulders leaning against the shaggy pelt of Bart. Daniels followed
the example with less grace. He was thinking very hard and fast, and he
rolled a Durham cigarette to fill the interlude.

"I s'pose you're bustin' to find out the news about the folks," he said
dryly, at last.

The other sat with his hands loosely clasped in his lap. His wide eyes
looked far away, and there was about his lips that looseness, that lack
of compression, which one sees so often in children. He might have sat,
in that posture, for the statue of thoughtlessness.

"What folks?" he asked at last

Buck Daniels had lighted a match, but now he sat staring blank until the
match burned down to his fingers. With an oath he tossed the remnant
away and lighted another. He had drawn down several long breaths of
smoke to the bottom of his lungs before he could speak again.

"Some people you used to know; I suppose you've forgotten all about 'em,
eh?" His eyes narrowed; there was a spark of something akin to dread in
them. "Kate Cumberland?" he queried.

A light came in the face of Dan Barry.

"Kate Cumberland?" he repeated. "How is she, Buck? Lately, I been
thinkin' about her every day."

A trembling took the body and the voice of Daniels; his errand, after
all, might meet some success.

"Kate?" he repeated. "Oh, ay, she's well enough. But Joe Cumberland
ain't."

"No?"

"He's dyin' Dan."

And Dan replied calmly. "He's kind of old, I s'pose."

"Old?" said Buck, with a sort of horror. "Yes, he's old, right enough.
D'you know why he's dying? It's because you went away the way you done,
Dan. That's what's killin' him."

Something of thought came in the face of Barry.

"Maybe I understand," he said slowly. "If I was to lose Satan, or
Bart--" here the great dog whined at the mention of his name, and Barry
dropped a slender hand across the scarred forehead of his servant. "If I
was to lose 'em, I'd sort of mourn for 'em, maybe."

Buck Daniels set his teeth.

"I don't suppose it seems possible," he said, "that a man could miss
another man the way you could miss your--dog, eh? But it is! Joe
Cumberland is dying for you, Dan, as sure as if you'd put a bullet in
his bowels."

The other hesitated and then frowned and made a gesture of vague
dismissal.

"Don't you figure on doin' nothing about it?" asked Buck softly.

"What could I do?"

"My God A'mighty, ain't you got no human feelin's?"

"I dunno what you mean," said the soft voice.

"This! Can't you git on your hoss and ride back with me to Cumberland
Ranch? Stay with the old man till he gets back on his feet. Ain't that
easy to do? Is your time so damned valuable you can't spare a few days
for that?"

"But I am goin' back," answered Dan, in a rather hurt voice. "They ain't
no need for cussin' me, Buck. I been thinkin' of Kate, every day,
almost."

"Since when?"

"I dunno." Dan stirred uneasily. He looked up, and far above Buck,
following the direction of Dan's eyes, saw a pattern of wild geese. "I
been sort of driftin' North towards the Cumberland Ranch and Kate," went
on Dan. He sighed: "I been thinkin' of her eyes, which is blue, Buck,
and her hair, and the soft sound of her voice. They been hangin' in my
ears, stayin' behind my eyes, lately, and I been driftin' up that way
steady."

"Why, man," cried Buck, "then what's there to keep you here? Jump on
your hoss, and we'll head North in ten minutes."

"I will!" said Dan, full as eagerly. "We'll start full speed."

"Come on, then."

"Wait a minute!" said Dan, his voice growing suddenly cold. "I been
forgettin' something."

Buck Daniels turned and found his companion strangely changed. There was
a set expression of coldness about his face, and a chill glitter in his
eyes.

"I got to wait here for something."

"What's that?"

"They's a man in town that may want to see me."

"Mac Strann! I've heard about him. Dan, are you goin' to let Joe
Cumberland die because you want to stay here and fight it out with a
dirty cutthroat?"

"I don't want to fight," protested Barry. "No, there ain't nothin' I
like less than fightin'!"

Buck Daniels cursed softly and continuously to himself.

"Dan," he said, "can you sit there and lie like that to me? Ain't I seen
you in action? Don't I remember the way you trailed Jim Silent? Don't I
remember how we all got down and prayed you to keep away from Jim? Don't
I remember how you threw everything to hell so's you could get your
hands on Jim? My God A'mighty, man, didn't I see your face when you had
your fingers in Silent's throat?"

An expression of unutterable revulsion rippled over the face of Dan
Barry.

"Stop!" he commanded softly, and raised his slender hand. "Don't keep on
talkin' about it. It makes me sick--all through. Oh, Buck, they's a
tingle in the tips of my fingers still from the time I had 'em in his
throat. And it makes me feel unclean--the sort of uncleanness that won't
wash out with no kind of soap and water. Buck, I'd most rather die
myself than fight a man!"

A vast amazement overspread the countenance of Buck Daniels as he
listened to this outburst; it was as if he had heard a healthy man
proclaim that he had no desire for bread and meat. Something rose to his
lips, but he swallowed it.

"Then it looks kind of simple to me," he said. "You hate fightin'. This
gent Mac Strann likes it; he lives on it; he don't do nothing but wait
from day to day hungerin' for a scrap. What's the out? Jest this! You
hop on your hoss and ride out with me. Young Jerry Strann kicks out--Mac
Strann starts lookin' for you--he hears that you've beat it--he goes off
and forgets about you. Ain't that simple?"

The old uneasiness returned to the far-seeing eyes of Dan Barry.

"I dunno," he said, "maybe----"

Then he paused again.

"Have you got anything to say agin it?" urged Buck, arguing desperately.

"I dunno," repeated Barry, confused, "except that I keep thinking what a
terrible disappointment it'll be to this Mac Strann when his brother
dies and I ain't around."

Buck Daniels stared, blinked, and then burst into unmelodious laughter.
Satan trotted across the corral and raised his head above the fence,
whinnying softly. Barry turned his head and smiled up to the horse.

Then he said: "Seems like if Jerry Strann dies I owe somebody something.
Who? Mac Strann, I reckon. I sort of got to stay and give him his
chance."

"I hope to God," burst out Daniels, smashing his hands together, "that
Mac Strann beats you to a pulp! That's what I hope!"

The eyes of Dan Barry widened.

"Why d'you hope that?" he asked gently.

It brought Daniels again to speechlessness.

"Is it possible?" he growled to himself. "Are you a human bein' and yet
you think more of your hoss and your damned wolf-dog than you do of the
life of a man? Dan, I'm askin' you straight, is that a square thing to
do?"

The fragile hands went out to him, palm up.

"Don't you see, Buck? I don't want to be this way. I jest can't help
it!"

"Then the Lord help poor old Joe Cumberland--him that took you in out of
the desert--him that raised you from the time you was a kid--him that
nursed you like you was his own baby--him that loved you more'n he loved
Kate--him that's lyin' back there now with fire in his eyes, waitin',
waitin', waitin', for you to come back. Dan, if you was to see him you'd
go down on your knees and ask him to forgive you!"

"I s'pose I would," murmured Barry thoughtfully.

"Dan, you're goin' to go with me!"

"I don't somehow think its my time for movin', Buck."

"Is that all you got to say to me?"

"I guess maybe it is, Buck."

"If I was to beg you to come for old-time's sake, and all we been
through together, you and me, wouldn't it make no difference to you?"

The large, gentle eyes focused far beyond Buck Daniels, somewhere on a
point in the pale, hazy blue of the spring sky.

"I'm kind of tired of talkin', Buck," he said at length.

And Buck Daniels rose and walked slowly away, with his head fallen.
Behind him the stallion neighed suddenly and loud, and it was so much
like a blast of defiant triumph that Buck whirled and shook his clenched
fist at Satan.




CHAPTER XIV

MUSIC FOR OLD NICK


A thought is like a spur. It lifts the head of a man as the spur makes
the horse toss his; and it quickens the pace with a subtle addition of
strength. Such a thought came to Buck Daniels as he stepped again on the
veranda of the hotel. It could not have been an altogether pleasant
inspiration, for it drained the colour from his face and made him clench
his broad hands; and next he loosened his revolver in its holster. A
thought of fighting--of some desperate chance he had once taken,
perhaps.

But also it was a thought which needed considerable thought. He slumped
into a wicker chair at one end of the porch and sat with his chin
resting on his chest while he smoked cigarette after cigarette and
tossed the butts idly over the rail. More than once he pressed his hand
against his lips as though there were sudden pains there. The colour did
not come back to his face; it continued as bloodless as ever, but there
was a ponderable light in his eyes, and his jaws became more and more
firmly set. It was not a pleasant face to watch at that moment, for he
seemed to sit with a growing resolve.

Long moments passed before he moved a muscle, but then he heard, far
away, thin, and clear, whistling from behind the hotel. It was no
recognisable tune. It was rather a strange improvisation, with singable
fragments here and there, and then wild, free runs and trills. It was as
if some bird of exquisite singing powers should be taken in a rapture of
song, so that it whistled snatches here and there of its usual melody,
but all between were great, whole-throated rhapsodies. As the sound of
this whistling came to him, Buck raised his head suddenly. And finally,
still listening, he rose to his feet and turned into the dining-room.

There he found the waitress he had met before, and he asked her for the
name of the doctor who took care of the wounded Jerry Strann.

"There ain't no doc," said the waitress. "It's Fatty Matthews, the
deputy marshal, who takes care of that Strann--bad luck to him! Fatty's
in the barroom now. But what's the matter? You seem like you was hearin'
something?"

"I am," replied Daniels enigmatically. "I'm hearin' something that would
be music for the ears of Old Nick."

And he turned on his heel and strode for the barroom. There he found
Fatty in the very act of disposing of a stiff three-fingers of red-eye.
Daniels stepped to the bar, poured his own drink, and then stood toying
with the glass. For though the effect of red-eye may be pleasant enough,
it has an essence which appalls the stoutest heart and singes the most
leathery throat; it is to full-grown men what castor oil is to a child.
Why men drink it is a mystery whose secret is known only to the
profound soul of the mountain-desert. But while Daniels fingered his
glass he kept an eye upon the other man at the bar.

It was unquestionably the one he sought. The excess flesh of the deputy
marshal would have brought his nickname to the mind of an imbecile.
However, Fatty was humming softly to himself, and it is not the habit of
men who treat very sick patients to sing.

"I'll hit it agin," said Fatty. "I need it."

"Have a bad time of it to-day?" asked O'Brien sympathetically.

"Bad time to-day? Yep, an' every day is the same. I tell you, O'Brien,
it takes a pile of nerve to stand around that room expectin' Jerry to
pass out any minute, and the eyes of that devil Mac Strann followin' you
every step you make. D'you know, if Jerry dies I figure Mac to go at my
throat like a bulldog."

"You're wrong, Fatty," replied O'Brien. "That ain't his way about it. He
takes his time killin' a man. Waits till he can get him in a public
place and make him start the picture. That's Mac Strann! Remember
Fitzpatrick? Mac Strann followed Fitz nigh onto two months, but Fitz
knew what was up and he never would make a move. He knowed that if he
made a wrong pass it would be his last. So he took everything and let it
pass by. But finally it got on his nerves. One time--it was right here
in my barroom, Fatty----"

"The hell you say!"

"Yep, that was before your time around these parts. But Fitz had a
couple of jolts of red-eye under his vest and felt pretty strong. Mac
Strann happened in and first thing you know they was at it. Well, Fitz
was a big man. I ain't small, but I had to look up when I talked to
Fitz. Scotch-Irish, and they got fightin' bred into their bone. Mac
Strann passed him a look and Fitz come back with a word. Soon as he got
started he couldn't stop. Wasn't a pretty thing to watch, either. You
could see in Fitz's face that he knew he was done for before he started,
but he wouldn't, let up. The booze had him going and he was too proud to
back down. Pretty soon he started cussing Mac Strann.

"Well, by that time everybody had cleared out of the saloon, because
they knowed that them sort of words meant bullets comin'. But Mac Strann
jest stood there watchin', and grinnin' in his ugly way--damn his soul
black!--and never sayin' a word back. By God, Fatty, he looked sort of
hungry. When he grinned, his upper lip went up kind of slow and you
could see his big teeth. I expected to see him make a move to sink 'em
in the throat of Fitz. But he didn't. Nope, he didn't make a move, and
all the time Fitz ravin' and gettin' worse and worse. Finally Fitz made
the move. Yep, he pulled his gun and had it damned near clean on Mac
Strann before that devil would stir. But when he _did_, it was jest a
flash of light. Both them guns went off, but Mac's bullet hit Fitz's
hand and knocked the gun out of it--so of course his shot went wild.
But Fitz could see his own blood, and you know what that does to the
Scotch-Irish? Makes _some_ people quit cold to see their own blood. I
remember a kid at school that was a whale at fightin' till his nose got
to bleedin', or something, and then he'd quit cold. But you take a
Scotch-Irishman and it works just the other way. Show him his own colour
and he goes plumb crazy.

"That's what happened to Fitz. When he saw the blood on his hand he made
a dive at Mac Strann. After that it wasn't the sort of thing that makes
a good story. Mac Strann got him around the ribs and I heard the bones
crack. God! And him still squeezin', and Fitz beatin' away at Mac's face
with his bleedin' hand.

"Will you b'lieve that I stood here and was sort of froze? Yes, Fatty, I
couldn't make a move. And I was sort of sick and hollow inside the same
way I went one time when I was a kid and seen a big bull horn a
yearlin'.

"Then I heard the breath of Fitz comin' hoarse, with a rattle in it--and
I heard Mac Strann whining like a dog that's tasted blood and is
starvin' for more. A thing to make your hair go up on end, like they say
in the story-books.

"Then Fitz--he was plumb mad--tried to bite Mac Strann. And then Mac let
go of him and set his hands on the throat of Fitz. It happened like a
flash--I'm here to swear that I could hear the bones crunch. And then
Fitz's mouth sagged open and his eyes rolled up to the ceiling, and Mac
Strann threw him down on the floor. Just like that! Damn him! And then
he stood over poor dead Fitz and kicked him in those busted ribs and
turned over to the bar and says to me: 'Gimme!'

"Like a damned beast! He wanted to drink right there with his dead man
beside him. And what was worse, I had to give him the bottle. There was
a sort of haze in front of my eyes. I wanted to pump that devil full of
lead, but I knowed it was plain suicide to try it.

"So there he stood and ups with a glass that was brimmin' full, and
downs it at a swallow--gurglin'--like a hog! Fatty, how long will it be
before there's an end to Mac Strann?"

But Fatty Matthews shrugged his thick shoulders and poured himself
another drink.

"There ain't a hope for Jerry Strann?" cut in Buck Daniels.

"Not one in a million," coughed Fatty, disposing of another formidable
potion.

"And when Jerry dies, Mac starts for this Barry?"

"Who's been tellin' you?" queried O'Brien dryly. "Maybe you been readin'
minds, stranger?"

Buck Daniels regarded the bartender with a mild and steadfast interest.
He was smiling with the utmost good-humour, but there was that about him
which made big O'Brien flush and look down to his array of glasses
behind the bar.

"I been wondering," went on Daniels, "if Mac Strann mightn't come out
with Barry about the way Jerry did. Ain't it possible?"

"No," replied Fatty Matthews with calm decision. "It ain't possible.
Well, I'm due back in my bear cage. Y'ought to look in on me, O'Brien,
and see the mountain-lion dyin' and the grizzly lookin' on."

"Will it last long?" queried O'Brien.

"Somewhere's about this evening."

Here Daniels started violently and closed his hand hard around his
whiskey glass which he had not yet raised towards his lips.

"Are you sure of that, marshal?" he asked. "If Jerry's held on this long
ain't there a chance that he'll hold on longer? Can you date him up for
to-night as sure as that?"

"I can," said the deputy marshal. "It ain't hard when you seen as many
go west as I've seen. It ain't harder than it is to tell when the sand
will be out of an hour glass. When they begin going down the last hill
it ain't hard to tell when they'll reach the bottom."

"Ain't you had anybody to spell you, Fatty?" broke in O'Brien.

"Yep. I got Haw-Haw Langley up there. But he ain't much help. Just sits
around with his hands folded. Kind of looks like Haw-Haw _wanted_ Jerry
to pass out."

And Matthews went humming through the swinging door.




CHAPTER XV

OLD GARY PETERS


For some moments after this Buck Daniels remained at the bar with his
hand clenched around his glass and his eyes fixed before him in the
peculiar second-sighted manner which had marked him when he sat so long
on the veranda.

"Funny thing," began O'Brien, to make conversation, "how many fellers go
west at sunset. Seems like they let go all holts as soon as the dark
comes. Hey?"

"How long before sunset now?" asked Buck Daniels sharply.

"Maybe a couple of hours."

"A couple of hours," repeated Daniels, and ground his knuckles across
his forehead. "A couple of hours!"

He raised his glass with a jerky motion and downed the contents; the
chaser stood disregarded before him and O'Brien regarded his patron with
an eye of admiration.

"You long for these parts?" he asked.

"No, I'm strange to this range. Riding up north pretty soon, if I can
get someone to tell me the lay of the land. D'you know it?"

"Never been further north than Brownsville."

"Couldn't name me someone that's travelled about, I s'pose?"

"Old Gary Peters knows every rock within three day's riding. He keeps
the blacksmith shop across the way."

"So? Thanks; I'll look him up."

Buck Daniels found the blacksmith seated on a box before his place of
business; it was a slack time for Gary Peters and he consoled himself
for idleness by chewing the stem of an unlighted corn-cob, whose bowl
was upside down. His head was pulled down and forward as if by the
weight of his prodigious sandy moustache, and he regarded a vague
horizon with misty eyes.

"Seen you comin' out of O'Brien's," said the blacksmith, as Buck took
possession of a nearby box. "What's the news?"

"Ain't any news," responded Buck dejectedly. "Too much talk; no news."

"That's right," nodded Gary Peters. "O'Brien is the out-talkingest man I
ever see. Ain't nobody on Brownsville can get his tongue around so many
words as O'Brien."

So saying, he blew through his pipe, picked up a stick of soft pine, and
began to whittle it to a point.

"In my part of the country," went on Buck Daniels, "they don't lay much
by a man that talks a pile."

Here the blacksmith turned his head slowly, regarded his companion for
an instant, and then resumed his whittling.

"But," said Daniels, with a sigh, "if I could find a man that knowed
the country north of Brownsville and had a hobble on his tongue I could
give him a night's work that'd be worth while."

Gary Peters removed his pipe from his mouth and blew out his dropping
moustaches. He turned one wistful glance upon his idle forge; he turned
a sadder eye upon his companion.

"I could name you a silent man or two in Brownsville," he said, "but
there ain't only one man that knows the country right."

"That so? And who might he be?"

"Me."

"You?" echoed Daniels in surprise. He turned and considered Gary as if
for the first time. "Maybe you know the lay of the land up as far as
Hawkin's Arroyo?"

"Me? Son, I know every cactus clear to Bald Eagle."

"H-m-m!" muttered Daniels. "I s'pose maybe you could name some of the
outfits from here on a line with Bald Eagle--say you put 'em ten miles
apart?"

"Nothin' easier. I could find 'em blindfold. First due out they's
McCauley's. Then lay a bit west of north and you hit the Circle K
Bar--that's about twelve mile from McCauley's. Hit 'er up dead north
again, by east, and you come eight miles to Three Roads. Go on to--"

"Partner," cut in Daniels, "I could do business with you."

"Maybe you could."

"My name's Daniels."

"I'm Gary Peters. H'ware you?"

They shook hands.

"Peters," said Buck Daniels, "you look square, and I need you in square
game; but there ain't any questions that go with it. Twenty iron men for
one day's riding and one day's silence."

"M'frien'," murmured Peters. "In my day I've gone three months without
speakin' to anything in boots; and I wasn't hired for it, neither."

"You know them people up the line," said Daniels. "Do they know you?"

"I'll tell a man they do! Know Gary Peters?"

"Partner, this is what I want. I want you to leave Brownsville inside of
ten minutes and start riding for Elkhead. I want you to ride, and I want
you to ride like hell. Every ten miles, or so, I want you to stop at
some place where you can get a fresh hoss. Get your fresh hoss and leave
the one you've got off, and tell them to have the hoss you leave ready
for me any time to-night. It'll take you clear till to-morrow night to
reach Elkhead, even with relayin' your hosses?"

"Round about that, if I ride like hell. What do I take with me?"

"Nothing. Nothing but the coin I give you to hire someone at every stop
to have that hoss you've left ready for me. Better still, if you can
have 'em, get a fresh hoss. Would they trust you with hosses that way,
Gary?"

"Gimme the coin and where they won't trust me I'll pay cash."

"I can do it. It'll about bust me, but I can do it."

"You going to try for a record between Brownsville and Elkhead, eh? Got
a bet up, eh?"

"The biggest bet you ever heard of," said Daniels grimly. "You can tell
the boys along the road that I'm tryin' for time. Have you got a fast
hoss to start with?"

"Got a red mare that ain't much for runnin' cattle, but she's greased
lightnin' for a short bust."

"Then get her out. Saddle her up, and be on your way. Here's my
stake--I'll keep back one twenty for accidents. First gimme a list of
the places you'll stop for the relays."

He produced an old envelope and a stub of soft pencil with which he
jotted down Gary Peters' directions.

"And every second," said Buck Daniels in parting, "that you can cut off
your own time will be a second cut off'n mine. Because I'm liable to be
on your heels when you ride into Elkhead."

Gary Peters lifted his eyebrows and then restored his pipe. He spoke
through his teeth.

"You ain't got a piece of money to bet on that, partner?" he queried
softly.

"Ten extra if you get to Elkhead before me."

"They's limits to hoss-flesh," remarked Peters. "What time you ridin'
against?"

"Against a cross between a bullet and a nor'easter, Gary. I'm going
back to drink to your luck."

A promise which Buck Daniels fulfilled, for he had need of even borrowed
strength. He drank steadily until a rattle of hoofs down the street
entered the saloon, and then someone came in to say that Gary Peters had
started out of town to "beat all hell, on his red mare."

After that, Buck started out to find Dan Barry. His quarry was not in
the barn nor in the corral behind the barn. There stood Satan and Black
Bart, but their owner was not in sight. But a thought came to Buck while
he looked, rather mournfully, at the stallion's promise of limitless
speed. "If I can hold him up jest half a minute," murmured Buck to
himself, "jest half a minute till I get a start, I've got a rabbit's
chance of livin' out the night!"

From the door of the first shed he took a heavy chain with the key in
the padlock. This chain he looped about the post and the main timber of
the gate, snapped the padlock, and threw the key into the distance. Then
he stepped back and surveyed his work with satisfaction. It would be a
pretty job to file through that chain, or to knock down those ponderous
rails of the fence and make a gap. A smile of satisfaction came on the
face of Buck Daniels, then, hitching at his belt, and pulling his
sombrero lower over his eyes, he started once more to find Dan Barry.

He was more in haste now, for the sun was dipping behind the mountains
of the west and the long shadows moved along the ground with a
perceptible speed. When he reached the street he found a steady drift of
people towards O'Brien's barroom. They came by ones and twos and idled
in front of the swinging doors or slyly peeked through them and then
whispered one to the other. Buck accosted one of those by the door and
asked what was wrong.

"He's in there," said the other, with a broad and excited grin. "He's in
there--waitin'!"

And when Buck threw the doors wide he saw, at the farther end of the
deserted barroom, Dan Barry, seated at a table braiding a small
horsehair chain. His hat was pushed far back on his head; he had his
back to the door. Certainly he must be quite unaware that all
Brownsville was waiting, breathless, for his destruction. Behind the bar
stood O'Brien, pale under his bristles, and his eyes never leaving the
slender figure at the end of his room; but seeing Buck he called with
sudden loudness: "Come in, stranger. Come in and have one on the house.
There ain't nothing but silence around this place and it's getting on my
nerves."

Buck Daniels obeyed the invitation at once, and behind him, stepping
softly, some of them entering with their hats in their hands and on
tiptoe, came a score of the inhabitants of Brownsville. They lined the
bar up and down its length; not a word was spoken; but every head turned
as at a given signal towards the quiet man at the end of the room.




CHAPTER XVI

THE COMING OF NIGHT


It was not yet full dusk, for the shadows were still swinging out from
the mountains and a ghost of colour lingered in the west, but midnight
lay in the open eyes of Jerry Strann. There had been no struggle, no
outcry, no lifting of head or hand. One instant his eyes were closed,
and then, indeed, he looked like death; the next instant the eyes open,
he smiled, the wind stirred in his bright hair. He had never seemed so
happily alive as in the moment of his death. Fatty Matthews held the
mirror close to the faintly parted lips, examined it, and then drew
slowly back towards the door, his eyes steady upon Mac Strann.

"Mac," he said, "it's come. I got just this to say: whatever you do, for
God's sake stay inside the law!"

And he slipped through the door and was gone.

But Mac Strann did not raise his head or cast a glance after the
marshal. He sat turning the limp hand of Jerry back and forth in his
own, and his eyes wandered vaguely through the window and down to the
roofs of the village.

Night thickened perceptibly every moment, yet still while the eastern
slope of every roof was jet black, the western slopes were bright, and
here and there at the distance the light turned and waned on upper
windows. Sleep was coming over the world, and eternal sleep had come for
Jerry Strann.

It did not seem possible.

Some night at sea, when clouds hurtled before the wind across the sky
and when the waves leaped up mast-high; when some good ship staggered
with the storm, when hundreds were shrieking and yelling in fear or
defiance of death; there would have been a death-scene for Jerry Strann.

Or in the battle, when hundreds rush to the attack with one man in front
like the edge before the knife--there would have been a death-scene for
Jerry Strann. Or while he rode singing, a bolt of lightning that slew
and obliterated at once--such would have been a death for Jerry Strann.

It was not possible that he could die like this, with a smile. There was
something incompleted. The fury of the death-struggle which had been
omitted must take place, and the full rage of wrath and destruction must
be vented. Can a bomb explode and make no sound and do no injury?

Yet Jerry Strann was dead and all the world lived on. Someone cantered
his horse down the street and called gayly to an acquaintance, and
afterwards the dust rose, invisible, and blew through the open window
and stung the nostrils of Mac Strann. A child cried, faintly, in the
distance, and then was hushed by the voice of the mother, making a
sound like a cackling hen. This was all!

There should have been wailing and weeping and cursing and praying, for
handsome Jerry Strann was dead. Or there might have been utter and
dreadful silence and waiting for the stroke of vengeance, for the
brightest eye was misted and the strongest hand was unnerved and the
voice that had made them tremble was gone.

But there was neither silence nor weeping. Someone in a nearby kitchen
rattled her pans and then cursed a dog away from her back-door. Not that
any of the sounds were loud. The sounds of living are rarely loud, but
they run in an endless river--a monotone broken by ugly ripples of noise
to testify that men still sleep or waken, hunger or feed. Another ripple
had gone down to the sea of darkness, yet all the ripples behind it
chased on their way heedlessly and babbled neither louder nor softer.

There should have been some giant voice to peal over the sleeping
village and warn them of the coming vengeance--for Jerry Strann was
dead!

The tall, gaunt figure of Haw-Haw Langley came on tiptoe from behind,
beheld the dead face, and grinned; a nervous convulsion sent a long
ripple through his body, and his Adam's-apple rose and fell. Next he
stole sideways, inch by inch, so gradual was his cautious progress,
until he could catch a glimpse of Mac Strann's face. It was like the
open face of a child; there was in it no expression except wonder.

At length a hoarse voice issued from between the grinning lips of
Haw-Haw.

"Ain't you goin' to close the eyes, Mac?"

At this the great head of Mac Strann rolled back and he raised his
glance to Haw-Haw, who banished the grin from his mouth by a vicious
effort.

"Ain't he got to see his way?" asked Mac Strann, and lowered his glance
once more to the dead man. As for Haw-Haw Langley, he made a long,
gliding step back towards the door, and his beady eyes opened in terror;
yet a deadly fascination drew him back again beside the bed.

Mac Strann said: "Kind of looks like Jerry was ridin' the home trail,
Haw-Haw. See the way he's smilin'?"

The vulture stroked his lean cheeks and seemed once more to swallow his
silent mirth.

"And his hands," said Mac Strann, "is just like life, except that they's
gettin' sort of chilly. He don't look changed, none, does he, Haw-Haw?
Except that he's seein' something off there--away off there. Looks like
he was all wrapped up in it, eh?" He leaned closer, his voice fell to a
murmur that was almost soft. "Jerry, what you seein'?"

Haw-Haw Langley gasped in inaudible terror and retreated again towards
the door.

Mac Strann laid his giant hand on the shoulder of Jerry. He asked in a
raised voice: "Don't you hear me, lad?" Sudden terror caught hold of
him. He plunged to his knees beside the bed, and the floor quaked and
groaned under the shock. "Jerry, what's the matter? Are you mad at me?
Ain't you going to speak to me? Are you forgettin' me, Jerry?"

He caught the dead face between his hands and turned it strongly towards
his own. Then for a moment his eyes plumbed the shadows into which they
looked. He stumbled back to his feet and said apologetically to Haw-Haw
at the door: "I kind of forgot he wasn't livin', for a minute." He
stared fixedly at the gaunt cowpuncher. "Speakin' man to man, Haw-Haw,
d'you think Jerry will forget me?"

The terror was still white upon the face of Haw-Haw, but something
stronger than fear kept him in the room and even drew him a slow step
towards Mac Strann; and his eyes moved from the face of the dead man to
the face of the living and seemed to draw sustenance from both. He
moistened his lips and was able to speak.

"Forget you, Mac? Not if you get the man that fixed him."

"Would you want me to get him, Jerry?" asked Mac Strann. And he waited
for an answer.

"I dunno," he muttered, after a moment. "Jerry was always for fightin',
but he wasn't never for killin'. He never liked the way I done things.
And when he was lyin' here, Haw-Haw, he never said nothin' about me
gettin' Barry. Did he?"

Astonishment froze the lips of Haw-Haw. He managed to stammer: "Ain't
you going to get Barry? Ain't you goin' to bust him up, Mac?"

"I dunno," repeated the big man heavily. "Seems like I've got no heart
for killing. Seems like they's enough death in the world." He pressed
his hand against his forehead and closed his eyes. "Seems like they's
something dead in me. They's an ache that goes ringin' in my head.
They's a sort of hollow feelin' inside me. And I keep thinkin' about
times when I was a kid and got hurt and cried." He drew a deep breath.
"Oh, my God, Haw-Haw, I'd give most anything if I could bust out cryin'
now!"

While Mac Strann stood with his eyes closed, speaking his words slowly,
syllable by syllable, like the tolling of a bell, Haw-Haw Langley stood
with parted lips--like the spirit of famine drinking deep; joy
unutterable was glittering in his eyes.

"If Jerry'd wanted me to get this Barry, he'd of said so," repeated Mac
Strann. "But he didn't." He turned towards the dead face. "Look at Jerry
now. He ain't thinkin' about killin's. Nope, he's thinkin' about some
quiet place for sleep. I know the place. They's a spring that come out
in a holler between two mountains; and the wind blows up the valley all
the year; and they's a tree that stands over the spring. That's where
I'll put him. He loved the sound of runnin' water; and the wind'll be on
his face; and the tree'll sort of mark the place. Jerry, lad, would ye
like that?"

Now, while Mac Strann talked, inspiration came to Haw-Haw Langley, and
he stretched out his gaunt arms to it and gathered it in to his heart.

"Mac," he said, "don't you see no reason why Jerry wouldn't ask you to
go after Barry?"

"Eh?" queried Mac Strann, turning.

But as he turned, Haw-Haw Langley glided towards him, and behind him, as
if he found it easier to talk when the face of Mac was turned away. And
while he talked his hands reached out towards Mac Strann like one who is
begging for alms.

"Mac, don't you remember that Barry beat Jerry to the draw?"

"What's that to do with it?"

"But he beat him bad to the draw. I seen it. Barry _waited_ for Jerry.
Understand?"

"What of that?"

"Mac, you're blind! Jerry knowed you'd be throwing yourself away if you
went up agin Barry."

At this Mac Strann whirled with a suddenness surprising for one of his
bulk. Haw-Haw Langley flattened his gaunt frame against the wall.

"Mac!" he pleaded, "_I_ didn't say you'd be throwin' yourself away. It
was Jerry's idea."

"Did Jerry tell you that?" he asked.

"So help me God!"

"Did Jerry _want_ me to get Barry?"

"Why wouldn't he?" persisted the vulture, twisting his bony hands
together in an agony of alarm and suspense. "Ain't it nacheral, Mac?"

Mac Strann wavered where he stood.

"Somehow," he argued to himself, "it don't seem like killin' is right,
here."

The long hand of Langley touched his shoulder.

He whispered rapidly: "You remember last night when you was out of the
room for a minute? Jerry turned his head to me--jest the way he's lyin'
now--and I says: 'Jerry, is there anything I can do for you?'"

Mac Strann reached up and his big fingers closed over those of Haw-Haw.

"Haw-Haw," he muttered, "you was his frien'. I know that."

Haw-Haw gathered assurance.

He said: "Jerry answers to me: 'Haw-Haw, old pal, there ain't nothin'
you can do for me. I'm goin' West. But after I'm gone, keep Mac away
from Barry.'

"I says: 'Why, Jerry?"

"'Because Barry'll kill him, sure,' says Jerry.

"'I'll do what I can to keep him away from Barry,' says I, 'but don't
you want nothin' done to the man what killed you?'

"'Oh, Haw-Haw,' says Jerry, 'I ain't goin' to rest easy, I ain't goin'
to sleep in heaven--until I know Barry's been sent to hell. But for
God's sake don't let Mac know what I want, or he'd be sure to go after
Barry and get what I got.'"

Mac Strann crushed the hand of Haw-Haw in a terrible grip.

"Partner," he said, "d'you swear this is straight?"

"So help me God!" repeated the perjurer.

"Then," said Mac Strann, "I got to leave the buryin' to other men what
I'll hire. Me--I've got business on hand. Where did Barry run to?"

"He ain't run," cried Haw-Haw, choking with a strange emotion. "The
fool--the damned fool!--is waiting right down here in O'Brien's bar for
you to come. He's _darin'_ you to come!"

Mac Strann made no answer. He cast a single glance at the peaceful face
of Jerry, and then started for the door. Haw-Haw waited until the door
closed; then he wound his arms about his body, writhed in an ecstasy of
silent laughter, and followed with long, shambling strides.




CHAPTER XVII

BUCK MAKES HIS GET-AWAY


Straight from the room of the dead man, Fatty Matthews had hurried down
to the bar, and there he stepped into the silence and found the battery
of eyes all turned upon that calm figure at the end of the room. Upon
this man he trotted, breathing hard, and his fat sides jostled up and
down as he ran. According to Brownsville, there were only two things
that could make Fatty run: a gun or the sight of a drink. But all maxims
err. When he reached Barry he struck him on the shoulder with a heavy
hand. That is, he struck at the shoulder, but as if the shadow of the
falling hand carried a warning before it, at the same time that it
dropped Barry swerved around in his chair. Not a hurried movement, but
in some mysterious manner his shoulder was not in the way of the plump
fist. It struck, instead, upon the back of the chair, and the marshal
cursed bitterly.

"Stranger," he said hotly, "I got one thing to say: Jerry Strann has
just died upstairs. In ten seconds Mac Strann will be down here lookin'
for _you_!"

He stepped back, humming desperately to cover his wheezing, but Barry
continued to braid the horsehair with deft fingers.

"I got a double knot that's kind of new," he said. "Want to watch me
tie it?"

The deputy sheriff turned on the crowd.

"Boys," he exclaimed, waving his arms, "he's crazy. You heard what he
said. You know I've give him fair warning. If we got to dig his grave in
Brownsville, is it my fault? It ain't!" He stepped to the bar and
pounded upon it. "O'Brien, for God's sake, a drink!"

It was a welcome suggestion to the entire nervous crowd, but while the
glasses spun across the bar Buck Daniels walked slowly down the length
of the barroom towards Barry. His face was a study which few men could
have solved; unless there had been someone present who had seen a man
walk to his execution. Beside Dan Barry he stopped and watched the agile
hands at work. There was a change in the position of Barry now, for he
had taken the chair facing the door and the entire crowd; Buck Daniels
stood opposite. The horsehair plied back and forth. And Daniels noted
the hands, lean, tapering like the fingers of a girl of sixteen. They
were perfectly steady; they were the hands of one who had struggled, in
life, with no greater foe than ennui.

"Dan," said Buck, and there was a quiver of excitement in his voice,
like the tremor of a piano string long after it has been struck. "Dan, I
been thinking about something and now I'm ready to tell you what it is."

Barry looked up in slow surprise.

Now the face of Buck Daniels held what men have called a "deadly
pallor," that pallor which comes over one who is cornered and about to
fight for his life. He leaned closer, resting one hand upon the edge of
the table, so that his face was close to Dan Barry.

"Barry," he said, "I'm askin' you for the last time: Will you get your
hoss and ride back to Kate Cumberland with me?"

Dan Barry smiled his gentle, apologetic smile.

"I don't no ways see how I can, Buck."

"Then," said Buck through his teeth, "of all the lyin' hounds in the
world you're the lyin'est and meanest and lowest. Which they ain't words
to tell you what I think of you. Take this instead!"

And the hand which rested on the table darted up and smote Dan Barry on
the cheek, a tingling blow. With the same motion which started his hand
for the blow, Buck Daniels turned on his heel and stepped a pace or two
towards the centre of the room.

There was not a man in the room who had not heard the last words of Buck
Daniels, and not a man who had not seen the blow. Everyone of them had
seen, or heard accurately described, how the slender stranger beat Jerry
Strann to the draw and shot him down in that same place. Such a moan
came from them as when many men catch their breath with pain, and with a
simultaneous movement those who were in line with Buck Daniels and Barry
leaped back against the bar on one side and against the wall on the
other. Their eyes, fascinated, held on the face of Barry, and they saw
the pale outline which the fingers of Daniels had left on the cheek of
the other. But if horror was the first thing they felt, amazement was
the next. For Dan Barry sat bolt erect in his chair, staring in an
astonishment too great for words. His right hand hung poised and
moveless just above the butt of his gun; his whole posture was that of
one in the midst of an action, suspended there, frozen to stone. They
waited for that poised hand to drop, for the slender fingers to clutch
the butt of the gun, for the convulsive jerk that would bring out the
gleaming barrel, the explosion, the spurt of smoke, and Buck Daniels
lurching forward to his face on the floor.

But that hand did not move; and Buck Daniels? Standing there with his
back to the suspended death behind him, he drew out Durham and brown
papers, without haste, rolled a cigarette, and reached to a hip pocket.

At that move Dan Barry started. His hand darted down and fastened on his
gun, and he leaned forward in his chair with the yellow glimmering light
flaring up in his eyes. But the hand of Buck Daniels came out from his
hip bearing a match. He raised his leg, scratched the match, there was a
blue spurt of flame, and Buck calmly lighted his cigarette and started
towards the door, sauntering.

The instant the swinging doors closed Barry started from his chair with
a strange cry--none of them had ever heard the like from human lips--for
there was grief in it, and above all there was a deadly eagerness. So a
hungry man might cry out at the sight of food. Down the length of the
barroom he darted and was drawing his gun as he whipped through the
doors. A common rush followed him, and those who reached the open first
saw Buck Daniels leaning far forward in his saddle and spurring
desperately into the gloom of the night. Instantly he was only a
twinkling figure in the shadows, and the beat of the hoofs rattled back
at them. Dan Barry stood with his gun poised high for a second or more.
Then he turned, dropped the gun into the holster, and with the same
strange, unearthly cry of eagerness, he raced off in the direction of
the barns.

There were some who followed him even then, and this is what they
reported to incredulous ears when they returned. Barry ran straight for
the left hand corral and wrenched at the gate, which appeared to be
secured by a lock and chain. Seeing that it would not give way he ran
around to the barn, and came out again carrying a saddle and bridle.
These he tossed over the high fence into the corral. Then he picked up a
loose scantling and with it pried and wrenched off the top bar of the
fence in one section and vaulted into the enclosure.

The black stallion had whinnied once or twice during this time and the
great black, shaggy dog had come snarling and whining about the feet of
his master. Now the stranger tossed on the saddle and cinched it with
amazing speed, sprang onto his mount, and urged it across to the other
side of the corral. Up to that moment no one in the little crowd of
watchers had suspected the intention of the rider. For the fence, even
after the removal of the top bar, was nearly six feet in height. But
when Barry took his horse to the far side of the corral and then swung
him about facing the derailed section, it was plain that he meant to
attempt to jump at that place. Even then, as O'Brien explained later,
and many a time, the thing was so impossible that he could not believe
his eyes. There was a dreamlike element to the whole event. And like a
phantom in a vision he saw the black horse start into a sharp gallop;
saw the great dog sail across the fence first; saw the horse and rider
shoot into the air against the stars; heard the click of hoofs against
the top rail; heard the thud of hoofs on the near side of the fence, and
then the horseman flashed about the corner of the barn and in an instant
his hoofs were beating a far distant tattoo.

As for the watchers, they returned in a dead silence to the barroom and
they had hardly entered when Mac Strann stalked through the doors behind
them; he went straight to O'Brien.

"Somewhere about," he said in his thick, deep voice, "they's a man named
Dan Barry. Where is he?"

And O'Brien answered: "Mac, he was sittin' down there at that table
until two minutes ago, but where he is now I ain't any idea."

The tall, skeleton form of Haw-Haw Langley materialised behind Mac
Strann, and his face was contorted with anger.

"If he was here two minutes ago," he said, "he ain't more than two
minutes away."

"Which way?" asked Mac Strann.

"North," answered a score of voices.

O'Brien stepped up to Mac Strann. He said: "Mac, we know what you got in
your mind. We know what you've lost, and there ain't any of us that
ain't sorry for Jerry--and for you. But, Mac, I can give you the best
advice you ever heard in your life: Keep off'n the trail of Barry!"

Haw-Haw Langley added at the ear of Mac Strann: "That was Jerry's advice
when he lay dyin'. An' it's my advice, too. Mac, Barry ain't a safe man
to foller!"

"Haw-Haw," answered Mac Strann, "Will you gimme a hand saddlin' my hoss?
I got an appointment, an' I'm two minutes late already."




CHAPTER XVIII

DOCTOR BYRNE ANALYSES


In the room which had been assigned to his use Doctor Randall Byrne sat
down to an unfinished letter and began to write.

"Dinner has interrupted me, my dear Loughburne. I have dined opposite
Miss Cumberland--only the two of us at a great table--with a wide
silence around us--and the Chinese cook padding to and fro from the
kitchen. Have I told you of that room? No, I believe that I have made no
more than casual mention of my environment here, for reasons which are
patent. But to-night I wished that you might look in upon the scene.
Along the walls hang a rope with which Mr. Cumberland won a roping and
tieing contest in his youth--a feat upon which he prides himself highly;
at another place hang the six-shooters of a notorious desperado, taken
from his dead body; there is the sombrero of a Mexican guerilla chief
beside the picture of a prize bull, and an oil painting of Mr.
Cumberland at middle age adjoins an immense calendar on which is
portrayed the head of a girl in bright colours--a creature with amazing
quantities of straw-coloured hair. The table itself is of such size that
it is said all the guests at a round-up--a festival of note in these
barbaric regions--can be easily seated around it. On one side of this
table I sat--and on the other side sat the girl, as far away as if an
entire room had separated us.

"Before going down to the meal I had laid aside my glasses, for I have
observed that spectacles, though often beneficial to the sight, are not
always equally commendable in the opinion of women; and it should
assuredly be one's endeavour to become agreeable to those about us.

"Be it noted at this point, my dear Loughburne, that I have observed
peculiar properties in the eyes of Miss Cumberland. Those of all other
humans and animals that have fallen under my observance were remarkable
only for their use in seeing, whereas the eyes of Miss Cumberland seem
peculiarly designed to be _seen_. This quality I attribute to the
following properties of the said eyes. First, they are in size well
beyond the ordinary. Secondly, they are of a colour restful to behold.
It is, indeed, the colour of the deep, blue evening sky into which one
may stare for an incalculable distance.

"As I have said, then, I noted a glow in these eyes, though they were so
immediately lowered that I could not be sure. I felt, however, an
extraordinary warmth beneath my collar, the suffusion of blood passing
swiftly towards my forehead. I inquired if she had smiled and for what
reason; whereat she immediately assured me that she had not, and smiled
while making the assurance.

"I was now possessed of an unusual agitation, augmented by the manner
in which Miss Cumberland looked at me out of twinkling but not unkindly
eyes. What could have caused this perturbation I leave to your
scientific keenness in analysis.

"I discovered an amazing desire to sing, which indecorous impulse I, of
course, immediately inhibited and transferred the energy into
conversation.

"'The weather,' said I. 'has been uncommonly delightful to-day.'

"I observed that Miss Cumberland greeted this sentence with another
smile.

"Presently she remarked: 'It has seemed a bit windy to me.'

"I recalled that it is polite to agree with ladies and instantly
subjoined with the greatest presence of mind: 'Quite right! A most
abominably stormy day!'

"At this I was astonished to be greeted by another burst of laughter,
even more pronounced than the others.

"'Doctor Byrne,' she said, 'you are absolutely unique.'

"'It is a point,' I said earnestly, 'which I shall immediately set about
to change.'

"At this she raised both hands in a gesture of protest, so that I could
observe her eyes shining behind the slender, brown fingers--observe,
Loughburne, that white skin is falsely considered a thing of beauty in
women--and she remarked, still laughing: 'Indeed, you must not change!'

"I replied with an adroit change of front: 'Certainly not.'

"For some mysterious reason the girl was again convulsed and broke off
her laughter to cry in a voice of music which still tingles through me:
'Doctor Byrne, you are delightful!'

"I should gladly have heard her say more upon this point, but it being
one which I could not gracefully dispute with her, and being unwilling
that she should lapse into one of her usual silences, I ventured to
change the subject from myself to her.

"'Miss Cumberland,' I said, 'I remark with much pleasure that the
anxiety which has recently depressed you seems now in some measure
lessened. I presume Mr. Daniels will be successful in his journey,
though what the return of Mr. Daniels accompanied by Mr. Barry can
accomplish, is, I confess, beyond my computation. Yet you are happier in
the prospect of Mr. Barry's return?'

"I asked this question with a falling heart, though I remain ignorant of
the cause to which I can attribute my sudden depression. Still more
mysterious was the delight which I felt when the girl shook her head
slowly and answered: 'Even if he comes, it will mean nothing.'

"I said: 'Then let us intercept him and send him back!'

"She cried out, as if I had hurt her: 'No, no, no!' and twisted her
fingers together in pain. She added at once: 'What of poor Dad?'

"'Your father,' I confessed, 'had for the moment slipped my mind.'

"It seemed to me, however, that it was not wholly on her father's
account that she was grieved. She wished Mr. Barry to return, and yet
she dreaded his coming. It was most mysterious. However, I had started
Miss Cumberland thinking. She stopped eating and began to stare before
her. Presently she said: 'It is strange that we don't hear from Buck.
What can have held him so long?'

"I regretted extremely that I had introduced the topic and cast about in
my mind for another, but could not find one. I then expressed regret
that I had revived her worries, but received in reply a smile in which
there was no life: the very colour had died out from her cheeks. And she
sat during the rest of the meal without speaking a word.

"Afterwards I went in with her to see Mr. Cumberland. His condition was
not materially changed. The marvel of it grows upon me more and more. It
is a freak which defies medical science. There lies a man at the point
of dissolution. His body has died of old age, and yet the life principle
remains. He does not eat--at least, the nourishment he takes is wholely
negligible. But he still has energy. To be sure, he rarely moves about
and his body remains practically inert. But we must never forget that
the mind is a muscle and calls for continual rebuilding. And the mind
of Mr. Cumberland is never inactive. It works ceaselessly. It will not
permit him to sleep. For three days, now, as far as I can tell, he has
not closed his eyes. It might be assumed that he is in a state of
trance, but by a series of careful experiments, I have ascertained that
he is constantly thinking in the most vigourous fashion.

"What does it mean? There is in the man a flame-like quality; something
is burning in him every instant. But on what does the flame feed? I know
that material cannot be created and that energy means dissolution of
matter: but why does not the life of Joseph Cumberland dissolve?

"The subject possesses me. I dare not ponder it too steadily or my brain
begins to whirl. I make no progress towards any reasonable solution. I
only feel that I am living in the presence of an astounding mystery.

"Strange thoughts possess me. What is the fire that burns but does not
consume Joe Cumberland? What is the thing in the wandering Dan Barry
which Kate Cumberland fears and yet waits for? Why was it that Daniels
trembled with dread when he started out to find a man who, by his own
profession, he holds to be his best friend?

"You see how the mystery assumes shape? It is before me. It is in my
hand. And yet I cannot grasp its elements.

"The story of a man, a horse, and a dog. What is the story?

"To-day I wandered about the great corrals and came to one which was
bounded by a fence of extraordinary height. It was a small corral, but
all the posts were of great size, and the rails were as large as
ordinary posts. I inquired what strange beasts could be kept in such a
pen, and the man-of-all-work of whom I asked replied: 'That's Satan's
corral.'

"I guessed at some odd story. 'The devil?' I cried, 'Do they fence the
devil in a corral?'

"'Oh, ay,' said the fellow, 'he's a devil, right enough. If we'd let him
run with the other hosses he'd have cut 'em to ribbons. That's what kind
of a devil he is!'

"A story of a man, a horse, and a dog. I think I have seen the great
chain which bound the dog. Was that the place where they kept the horse?

"And, if so, what bonds are used for the man? And what sort of man can
he be? One of gigantic size, no doubt, to mate his horse and his dog. A
fierce and intractable nature, for otherwise Kate Cumberland could not
dread him. And yet a man of singular values, for all this place seems to
wait for his return. I catch the fire of expectancy. It eats into my
flesh. Dreams haunt me night and day. What will be the end?

"Now I am going down to see Mr. Cumberland again. I know what I shall
see--the flickering of the fire behind his eyes. The lightning glances,
the gentle, rare voice, the wasted face; and by him will be Kate
Cumberland; and they both will seem to be listening, listening--for
what?

"No more to-night. But, Loughburne, you should be here; I feel that the
like of this has never been upon the earth.

"Byrne."




CHAPTER XIX

SUSPENSE


He found them as he had expected, the girl beside the couch, and the old
man prone upon it, wrapped to the chin in a gaudy Navajo blanket. But
to-night his eyes were closed, a most unusual thing, and Byrne could
look more closely at the aged face. For on occasions when the eyes were
wide, it was like looking into the throat of a searchlight to stare at
the features--all was blurred. He discovered now wrinkled and
purple-stained lids under the deep shadow of the brows--and eyes were so
sunken that there seemed to be no pupils there. Over the cheek bones the
skin was drawn so tightly that it shone, and the cheeks fell away into
cadaverous hollows. But the lips, beneath the shag of grey beard, were
tightly compressed. No, this was not sleep. It carried, as Byrne gazed,
a connotation of swifter, fiercer thinking, than if the gaunt old man
had stalked the floor and poured forth a tirade of words.

The girl came to meet the doctor. She said: "Will you use a narcotic?"

"Why?" asked Byrne. "He seems more quiet than usual."

"Look more closely," she whispered.

And when he obeyed, he saw that the whole body of Joe Cumberland
quivered like an aspen, continually. So the finger of the duellist
trembles on the trigger of his gun before he receives the signal to
fire--a suspense more terrible than the actual face of death.

"A narcotic?" she pleaded. "Something to give him just one moment of
full relaxation?"

"I can't do it," said Byrne. "If his heart were a shade stronger, I
should. But as it is, the only thing that sustains him is the force of
his will-power. Do you want me to unnerve the very strength which keeps
him alive?"

She shuddered.

"Do you mean that if he sleeps it will be--death?"

"I have told you before," said the doctor, "that there are phases of
this case which I do not understand. I predict nothing with certainty.
But I very much fear that if your father falls into a complete slumber
he will never waken from it. Once let his brain cease functioning and I
fear that the heart will follow suit."

They stood on the farther side of the room and spoke in the softest of
whispers, but now the deep, calm voice of the old man broke in: "Doc,
they ain't no use of worryin'. They ain't no use of medicine. All I need
is quiet."

"Do you want to be alone?" asked the girl.

"No, not so long as you don't make no noise. I can 'most hear
something, but your whisperin' shuts it off."

They obeyed him, with a glance at each other. And soon they caught the
far off beat of a horse in a rapid gallop.

"Is it that?" cried Kate, leaning forward and touching her father's
hand. "Is that horse what you hear?"

"No, no!" he answered impatiently. "That ain't what I hear. It ain't no
hoss that I hear!"

The hoof-beats grew louder--stopped before the house--steps sounded loud
and rattling on the veranda--a door squeaked and slammed--and Buck
Daniels stood before them. His hat was jammed down so far that his eyes
were almost buried in the shadow of the brim; the bandana at his throat
was twisted so that the knot lay over his right shoulder; he carried a
heavy quirt in a hand that trembled so that the long lash seemed alive;
a thousand bits of foam had dried upon his vest and stained it; the
rowels of his spurs were caked and enmeshed with horsehair; dust covered
his face and sweat furrowed it, and a keen scent of horse-sweat passed
from him through the room. For a moment he stood at the door, bracing
himself with legs spread wide apart, and stared wildly about--then he
reeled drunkenly across the room and fell into a chair, sprawling at
full length.

No one else moved. Joe Cumberland had turned his head; Kate stood with
her hand at her throat; the doctor had placed his hand behind his head,
and there it stayed.

"Gimme smoke--quick!" said Buck Daniels. "Run out of Durham a thousan'
years ago!"

Kate ran into the next room and returned instantly with papers and a
fresh sack of tobacco. On these materials Buck seized frantically, but
his big fingers were shaking in a palsy, and the papers tore, one after
another, as soon as he started to roll his smoke. "God!" he cried, in a
burst of childish desperation, and collapsed again in the chair.

But Kate Cumberland picked up the papers and tobacco which he had dashed
to the floor and rolled a cigarette with deft fingers. She placed it
between his lips and held the match by which he lighted it. Once, twice,
and again, he drew great breaths of smoke into his lungs, and then he
could open his eyes and look at them. They were not easy eyes to meet.

"You're hungry, Buck," she said. "I can see it at a glance. I'll have
something for you in an instant."

He stopped her with a gesture.

"I done it!" said Buck Daniels. "He's comin'!"

The doctor flashed his glance upon Kate Cumberland, for when she heard
the words she turned pale and her eyes and her lips framed a mute
question; but Joe Cumberland drew in a long breath and smiled.

"I knowed it!" he said softly.

The wind whistled somewhere in the house and it brought Buck Daniels
leaping to his feet and into the centre of the room.

"He's here!" he yelled. "God help me, where'll I go now! He's here!"

He had drawn his revolver and stood staring desperately about him as if
he sought for a refuge in the solid wall. Almost instantly he recovered
himself, however, and dropped the gun back into the holster.

"No, not yet," he said, more to himself than the others. "It ain't
possible, even for Dan."

Kate Cumberland rallied herself, though her face was still white. She
stepped to Buck and took both his hands.

"You've been working yourself to death," she said gently. "Buck, you're
hysterical. What have you to fear from Dan? Isn't he your friend? Hasn't
he proved it a thousand times?"

Her words threw him into a fresh frenzy.

"If he gets me, it's blood on your head, Kate. It was for you I done
it."

"No, no, Buck. For Dan's sake alone. Isn't that enough?"

"For _his_ sake?" Buck threw back his head and laughed--a crazy
laughter. "He could rot in hell for all of me. He could foller his wild
geese around the world. Kate, it was for you!"

"Hush!" she pleaded. "Buck, dear!"

"Do I care who knows it? Not I! I got an hour--half an hour to live; and
while I live the whole damned world can know I love you, Kate, from
your spurs to the blue of your eyes. For your sake I brung him, and for
your sake I'll fight him, damn him, in spite----"

The wind wailed again, far off, and Buck Daniels cowered back against
the wall. He had drawn Kate with him, and he now kept her before him,
towards the door.

He began to whisper, swiftly, with a horrible tremble in his voice:
"Stand between me, Kate. Stand between me and him. Talk for me, Kate.
Will you talk for me?" He drew himself up and caught a long, shuddering
breath. "What have I been doin'? What have I been ravin' about?"

He looked about as if he saw the others for the first time.

"Sit here, Buck," said Kate, with perfect quiet. "Give me your hat.
There's nothing to fear. Now tell us."

"A whole day and a whole night," he said, "I been riding with the fear
of him behind me. Kate, I ain't myself, and if I been sayin' things----"

"No matter. Only tell me how you made him follow you."

Buck Daniels swept his knuckles across his forehead, as though to rub
out a horrible memory.

"Kate," he said in a voice which was hardly more than a whisper, "why
did he follow Jim Silent?"

The doctor slipped into a chair opposite Buck Daniels and watched him
with unbelieving eyes. When he had last seen Buck the man had seemed an
army in himself; but now a shivering, unmanned coward sat before him.
Byrne glanced at Kate Cumberland for explanation of the mysterious
change. She, also, was transformed with horror, and she stared at Buck
Daniels as at one already among the dead.

"Buck, you didn't--_strike_ him?"

Buck Daniels nodded jerkily.

"I'll try to tell you straight from the beginning. I found Dan in
Brownsville. I begged him to come back with me, but he wouldn't stir.
This was why: A gunman had come to the town lookin' for trouble, and
when he run acrost Dan he found plenty of it. No, don't look like that,
Kate; it was self-defense, pure and simple--they didn't even arrest Dan
for it. But this dyin' man's brother, Mac Strann, come down from the
hills and sat beside Jerry Strann waitin' for him to go west before he
started out to clean up on Dan. Yesterday evenin' Jerry was near dead
and everybody in Brownsville was waitin' to see what would happen,
because Dan wouldn't budge till Mac Strann had had his chance to get
back at him. So I sent a feller ahead to fix a relay of hosses to
Elkhead, because I made up my mind I was going to make Dan Barry chase
me out of that town. I walked into the saloon where Dan was
sittin'--braidin' a little horsehair strand--my God, Kate, think of him
sittin' there doin' that with a hundred fellers standin' about waitin'
for him to kill or be killed! I went up to him. I picked a fight, and
then I slapped him--in the face."

The sweat started on Daniels' forehead at the thought.

"But you're still alive!" cried Kate Cumberland. "Had you handled his gun
first?"

"No. As soon as I hit him I turned my back to him and took a couple of
steps away from him."

"Oh, Buck, Buck!" she cried, her face lighting. "You knew he wouldn't
shoot you in the back!"

"I didn't know nothin'. I couldn't even think--and my body was numb as a
dead man's all below the hips. There I stood like I was chained to the
floor--you know how it is in a nightmare when something chases you and
you can't run? That was the way with me."

"Buck! And he was sitting behind you--while you stood there?"

"Ay, sitting there with my death sittin' on his trigger finger. But I
knowed that if I showed the white feather, if I let him see me shake,
he'd be out of his chair and on top of me. No gun--he don't need nothin'
but his hands--and what was in front of my eyes was a death like--like
Jim Silent's!"

He squinted his eyes close and groaned. Once more he roused himself.

"But I couldn't move a foot without my knees bucklin', so I takes out my
makin's and rolls a cigarette. And while I was doin' it I was prayin'
that my strength would come back to me before he come back to
himself--and started!"

"It was surprise that held him, Buck. To think of you striking him--you
who have saved his life and fought for him like a blood-brother. Oh,
Buck, of all the men in the world you're the bravest and the noblest!"

"They ain't nothin' in that brand of talk," growled Buck, reddening.
"Anyway, at last I started for the door. It wasn't farther away than
from here to the wall. Outside was my hoss, and a chance for livin'. But
that door was a thousand years away, and a thousand times while I walked
towards it I felt Dan's gun click and bang behind me and felt the lead
go tearin' through me. And I didn't dare to hurry, because I knew that
might wake Dan up. So finally I got to the doors and just as they was
swingin' to behind me, I heard a sort of a moan behind me----"

"From Dan!" whispered the white-faced girl. "I know--a sort of a stifled
cry when he's angered! Oh, Buck."

"My first step took me ten yards from that door," reminisced Buck
Daniels, "and my next step landed me in the saddle, and I dug them spurs
clean into the insides of Long Bess. She started like a watch-spring
uncoilin', and as she spurts down the streets I leans clean over to her
mane and looks back and there I seen Dan standin' in the door with his
gun in his hand and the wind blowin' his hair. But he didn't shoot,
because the next second I was swallowed up in the dark and couldn't see
him no more."

"But it was no use!" cried the girl. "With Black Bart to trail you and
with Satan to carry him, he overtook you--and then----"

"He didn't," said Buck Daniels. "I'd fixed things so's he couldn't get
started with Satan for some time. And before he could have Satan on my
trail I'd put a long stretch behind me because Long Bess was racin'
every step. The lay of the land was with me. It was pretty level, and on
level goin' Long Bess is almost as fast as Satan; but on rocky goin'
Satan is like a goat--nothin' stops him! And I was ridin' Long Bess like
to bust her heart, straight towards McCauley's. We wasn't more'n a mile
away when I thought--the wind was behind me, you see--that I heard a
sort of far off whistling down the wind! My God!"

He could not go on for a moment, and Kate Cumberland sat with parted
lips, twisting her fingers together and then tearing them apart once
more.

"Well, that mile was the worst in my life. I thought maybe the man I'd
sent on ahead hadn't been able to leave me a relay at McCauley's, and if
he hadn't I knew I'd die somewhere in the hills beyond. And they looked
as black as dead men, and all sort of grinnin' down at me.

"But when I got to McCauley's, there stood a hoss right in front of the
house. It didn't take me two second to make the saddle-change. And then
I was off agin!"

A sigh of relief came from Byrne and Kate.

"That hoss was a beauty. Not long-legged like Bess, nor half so fast,
but he was jest right for the hills. Climbed like a goat and didn't let
up. Up and up we goes. The wind blows the clouds away when we gets to
the top of the climb and I looks down into the valley all white in the
moonlight. And across the valley I seen two little shadows slidin',
smooth and steady. It was Dan and Satan and Black Bart!"

"Buck!"

"My heart, it stood plumb still! I gives my hoss the spurs and we went
down the next slope. And I don't remember nothin' except that we got to
the Circle K Bar after a million years, 'most, and when we got there the
piebald flops on the ground--near dead. But I made the change and
started off agin, and that next hoss was even better than the piebald--a
sure goer! When he started I could tell by his gait what he was, and I
looked up at the sky----"

He stopped, embarrassed.

"And thanked God, Buck?"

"Kate, I ain't ashamed if maybe I did. But since then I ain't seen or
heard Dan, but all the time I rode I was expecting to hear his whistle
behind me, close up."

All the life died from her face.

"No, Buck, if he'd a followed all the way he would have caught you in
spite of your relay. No, I understand what happened. After a while he
remembered that Mac Strann was waiting for him back in Brownsville. And
he left your trail to be taken up later and went back to Brownsville.
You didn't see him follow you after you left the Circle X Bar?"

"No. I didn't dare look back. But somehow I knew he was comin'."

She shook her head.

"He won't come, Buck. He'll go back to meet Mac Strann--and then----"
She ran to the chair of Buck swiftly and caught his hands: "What sort of
a man is Mac Strann?"

But Buck smiled strangely up into her face.

"Does it make any difference," he said, "to Dan?"

She went slowly back to her place.

"No," she admitted, "no difference."

"If you came by relays for twenty-four hours," said the doctor,
numbering his points upon accurate fingertips, "it is humanly impossible
that this man could have followed you very closely. It will probably
take him another day to arrive."

But here his glance fell upon old Joe Cumberland, and found the
cattleman smiling faintly to himself.

Buck Daniels was considering the last remark seriously.

"No," he said, "it _ain't_ possible. Besides, what Kate says may be
true. She ought to know--she says he'll wait for Mac Strann. I didn't
think of that; I thought I was savin' Dan from another--well, what a
damn fool I been!"

He unknotted his bandana and with it mopped his face to a semblance of
cleanliness.

"It was the ridin' that done it," he explained, shame-faced. "You put a
man on a hoss for a certain time, and after a while he gets so he can't
think. He's sort of nutty. That was the way with me when I come in."

"Open the window on the veranda," said Joe Cumberland. "I want to feel
the wind."

The doctor obeyed the instruction, and again he noted that same quiet,
contented smile on the lips of the old man. For some reason it made him
ill at ease to see it.

"He won't get here for eight or ten hours," went on Buck Daniels, easing
himself into a more comfortable position, and raising his head a little
higher. "Ten hours more, even if he does come. That'll give me a chance
to rest up; right now I'm kind of shaky."

"A condition, you will observe, in which Mr. Barry will also be when he
arrives," remarked the doctor.

"Shaky?" grinned Buck Daniels. "M'frien', you don't know that bird!" He
sat up, clenching his fist. "And if Dan _does_ come, he can't affo'd to
press me too far! I'll take so much, and then----"

He struck his fist on the arm of the chair.

"Buck!" cried Kate Cumberland. "Are you mad? Have you lost your reason?
Would you _face_ him?"

Buck Daniels winced, but he then shook his head doggedly.

"He had his chance down in Brownsville," he said. "And he didn't take
it. Why? Because my back was turned? Well, he could of got in front of
me if he'd been terrible anxious. I've seen Dan in action; he's seen
_me_ in action! Maybe he's seen too much. They've been stranger things
than that, in this world!" He hitched his belt so that the butt of his
revolver came farther forward. But now Kate Cumberland advised: "Buck,
you're tired out; you don't know what you're saying. Better go up to
bed."

He flushed a ruddy bronze.

"D'you think I'm jest talkin' words, Kate, to hear myself talk?"

"Listen!" broke in Joe Cumberland, and raised a bony forefinger for
silence.

       *       *       *       *       *

And the doctor noted a great change in the old man. There was no longer
a tremor in his body. There was only a calm and smiling expectation--a
certainty. A tinge of colour was in his withered face for the first time
since Byrne had come to the ranch, and now the cattleman raised his
finger with such an air of calm authority that at once every voice in
the room was stilled.

"D'ye hear?"

They did not. They heard only the faint rushing of the air through the
window. The flame danced in the chimney of the lamp and changed the
faces in phantastic alteration. One and all, they turned and faced the
window. Still there was not a sound audible, but the doctor felt as if
the noise were approaching. He knew it as surely as if he could see some
far-off object moving near and nearer. And he knew, as clearly, that the
others in the room felt the same thing. He turned his glance from the
window towards Kate Cumberland. Her face was upturned. There was about
it a transparent pallor; the eyes were large and darkly ringed; the lips
parted into the saddest and the most patient of smiles; and the slender
fingers were interwoven and pressed against the base of her throat.

For the first time he saw how the fire that was so manifest in the old
man had been consuming her, also. It left no mark of the coming of death
upon her. But it had burned her pure and left her transparent as
crystal. Pity swelled in the throat of Byrne as he realised the anguish
of her long waiting. Fear mingled with his pity. He felt that something
was coming which would seize on her as the wind seizes on the dead leaf,
whirling her off into an infinity of storm and darkness into which he
could not follow a single pace.

He turned back towards the window. The rush of air played steadily, and
then in pulses, upon his face. Then even the wind ceased; as if it, too,
were waiting. Not a sound. But silence has a greater voice than discord
or music. It seemed to Byrne that he could tell how fast each heart was
beating.

The old man had closed his eyes again. And yet the rigid forefinger
remained raised, and the faint smile touched at the corners of his
mouth. Buck Daniels sat lunging forward in his chair, his knees
supporting his elbows, and scowled up at the window with a sort of
sullen terror.

Then Byrne heard it--so small a voice that at first he thought it was
only a part of the silence. It grew and grew--in a sudden burst it was
clear to every ear--the honking of the wild geese!

And Byrne knew the picture they made. He could see them far up in the
sky--a dim triangle of winter grey--moving with the beat of lightning
wings each in an arrowy flight north, and north, and north. Creatures
for sport all the world over; here alone, in all the earth, in the heart
of this mountain-desert, they were in some mysterious wise messengers.
Once more the far discord showered down upon them, died as they rose,
perhaps, to a higher level, and was heard no more.




CHAPTER XX

THE COMING


Then a padding step, light, lighter than the sound of the softest
thought. It was passing near; the faint breeze blew the sound to them,
around them, behind them. Each man felt as if some creature were
stalking him, unseen. Next--it appeared by magic against the blue black
of the night--the head of a great wolf, quite black, shaggy, with
sharply pointed ears. And the eyes stared at them, green eyes with
lights that swirled as the flame jumped in the throat of the lamp. For a
long moment the horror lasted. Then the head, as it had come,
disappeared, and the light, light foot fall, faded away.

Buck Daniels had risen, now. The sound of his whisper made them start.

"I'm going up--to my room--and lock the door--for God's sake--keep--him
away!"

And so he stole soundlessly away, and then they heard the creaks which
announced his progress up the stairs.

Not Buck Daniels alone. In the deadly silence Kate rose to her feet; and
the old man, the invalid--he with the dead body and the living brain,
rose from his couch and stood as erect as a soldier on parade. The
doctor was conscious of repeating to himself, hurriedly, a formula
something like this: "The thing which is coming is human; it cannot be
more than human; as long as it is human it is nothing to fear; the laws
of truth are irrevocably fixed; the laws of science will not change."
Yet in spite of this formula he was deadly cold, as if a wind were
blowing through his naked soul. It was not fear. It was something beyond
fear, and he would not have been otherwhere for any reward. All his mind
remained poised, expectant, as the astronomer waits for the new star
which his calculations have predicted to enter the field of his
telescope.

He caught the sound of another horse coming, far different even to his
unpracticed ear from the beat of hoofs which announced the coming of
Buck Daniels. The rhythm of their fall was slower, as if the stride of
the animal were much longer. He pictured a mighty creature with a vast
mane blown back against the chest of a giant rider. There was a murmur
from Kate: "Dan, my dear, my dear!"

Then he heard a padding footfall, hardly louder than the light, light
step of the wolf. The knob of the door turned slowly, without a sound;
it opened, and a man stepped in. He was not larger than the doctor; a
slender fellow, almost dapper in his dress, with hardly a sign of travel
about him, except that the brim of his sombrero was folded back from his
face as if from continual pressure of wind. These things Randall Byrne
noted vaguely; what he was sharply aware of were the eyes of the man. He
had the feeling that he had seen them before; he remembered the yellow
light that had swirled in the eyes of the wolf at the window.

The newcomer flashed a glance about the room, yet for all its speed it
seemed to linger an instant on each face, and when it crossed the stare
of Byrne the doctor shrank.

"Where is Buck?" asked the man. "I've come for him!"

As if in answer, the great, shaggy dog slipped through the entrance past
his master and glided across the room. As he passed, Kate held out a
hand to him. She called softly: "Bart!" but she was greeted with a
silent baring of fangs; and she caught her hand back against her breast,
with the tears springing in her eyes. On the other side of the room the
black dog paused and looked back to his master, while Byrne realised
with a shudder that the door before which it stood was the door through
which Buck Daniels had disappeared. Straight to that door Barry stepped,
and Byrne realised, with an eerie emotion, that the footfalls made no
sound.

Before he reached the door, however, the girl started forward and sprang
before him. With her outstretched arms she barred the way. Her skirt
brushed almost in the face of the dog, and the beast shrank away not in
fear, but crouching in readiness to leap. The sharp ears twitched back;
a murderous snarl rolled up from between the wicked teeth. Yet she did
not cast a single glance at him; she faced the greater danger.

She was saying: "Whatever Buck did, it wasn't done to hurt you, Dan; it
was done for your own sake. And for Dad's sake. You shan't pass here!"

From his position, the doctor could not see the face of Dan Barry, but
he guessed at it through the expression of Kate. Such terror and horror
were in her eyes as though she were facing a death's head inches away.
Then he saw the slender hand of Barry rise and move towards the girl,
slowly, tremblingly, as though one fierce impulse urged him to thrust
her to one side and as though another held back his arm. The doctor
could not watch the girl longer; fear and pity were wringing him as he
lowered his glance to the floor.

Then he heard her cry: "Have you forgotten me, like Bart? Like Bart,
have you forgotten me, Dan?"

His hand fell to his side and he glided back from her; but now Byrne
could see that the eyes of Barry were looking past the girl, as though
he stared through the solid wood of the door and found his prey beyond
it. The stranger slipped towards the door by which he had entered, with
the great dog slinking at his heels. Kate Cumberland leaned heavily
against the wall, her arm thrown across her face, but there was no
consciousness of her in the face of Barry. Yet at the very door he
paused and straightened; Byrne saw that he was staring towards Joe
Cumberland; and the old man reached a bony hand out.

"Oh, lad," he said softly, "I been waitin' for you years an' years,
seems like!"

Barry crossed the room as noiselessly, as swiftly, as a flying shadow.

"Sit down!" he commanded, and Byrne caught a faint ring in the voice,
like the shiver of metal striking steel.

Joe Cumberland obeyed without a word, and then lay back at full length
upon the couch--a palsy had seized on him, and the hand which rested on
the shoulder of Dan Barry was shaking. By the couch came the tall dog,
and crouched, staring up in the master's face; then the younger man
turned his face towards Byrne and the girl. Those thin-cut nostrils
expanded, the lips compressed, and Byrne dared not look into the flare
of the eyes.

"Who done this?" asked Barry, and still the shiver of cold metal rang in
his voice. "Who's done this?"

"Steady, lad," said Joe Cumberland faintly. "They ain't no call for
fightin'. Steady, Dan, boy. An' don't leave me!"

Byrne caught a signal from Kate and followed her obediently from the
room.

"Let them be alone," she said.

"Impossible!" protested the doctor. "Your father is lapsed into a most
dangerous condition. The physical inertia which has held him for so long
is now broken and I look for a dangerous mental and nervous collapse to
accompany it. A sedative is now imperative!"

He laid his hand on the knob of the door to return, but the girl blocked
his way.

"Don't go in," she commanded feebly. "I can't explain to you. All I can
say is that Dad was the one who found Dan Barry and there's something
between them that none of us understand. But I know that he can help
Dad. I know Dad is in no danger while Dan is with him."

"A pleasant superstition," nodded the doctor, "but medicine, my dear
Miss Cumberland, does not take account of such things."

"Doctor Byrne," she said, rallying a failing strength for the argument,
"I insist. Don't ask me to explain."

"In that case," he answered coldly, "I cannot assume responsibility for
what may happen."

She made a gesture of surrender, weakly.

"Look back in on them now," she said. "If you don't find father quiet,
you may go in to him."

Doctor Byrne obeyed, opening the door softly. He saw Joe Cumberland
prone, of course, upon the couch. One hand lay as usual across his
breast, but the other was at his side, clasped in the hands of Dan
Barry. The old cattleman slept. Yes, there was no doubt that for the
first time in many days he slumbered soundly. The lean, narrow chest
rose and fell with deep, slow breaths; the eyes were closed, and there
was no twitching of muscles to betray ragged nerves or a mind that
dreamed fiercely while the body slept. Far over the sleeping man leaned
the stranger, as if he were peering closely into the closed eyes of Joe
Cumberland. There was a tenseness of watching and waiting in his
attitude, like the runner on the mark, or like the burden-bearer lifting
a great weight, and Byrne gathered, in some mysterious manner, the
impression that Barry sent through his hands and into the body of
Cumberland a continual stream of nervous strength--an electric thing.
Nonsense, of course. And it was nonsense, also, to think that the huge
dog which lay staring up into the face of the master understood all this
affair much better than the practiced mind of the physician. Yet the
illusion held with Randall Byrne in spite of all his scepticism.

He was certain that he had made not the slightest sound in opening the
door, but presently the head of the watcher turned slowly, and Byrne was
looking into those same yellow, terrible eyes. At the same instant the
sick man moaned faintly. The doctor closed the door as softly as he had
opened it and turned a drawn face upon Kate Cumberland.

"I don't understand; it isn't possible!" he whispered.

"No one understands," said the girl, and smiled mirthlessly. "Don't try
to, Doctor Byrne. Go to bed, and sleep. If you can. Good night."

"But you," said Byrne, following her, "are almost as ill as your father.
Is there nothing I can do for you?"

"You?" she asked, surprised. "No, nothing."

"But there's not the slightest colour in your face. And you are
trembling, Miss Cumberland!"

She did not seem to hear him.

"Will he stay?" she asked of herself. "Will he leave before the
morning?"

"I shall see that he stays," said the doctor. "I will stay here outside
the door and see that he does not leave, if you wish."

Once more she smiled in that baffling manner.

"Could you keep the wind from blowing, Doctor Byrne? If I thought that
he could be kept----" she stopped. "He has forgotten us. He has
forgotten all of us except Dad. And if Dad cannot keep him, nothing will
keep him. It's useless for you to wait here. Good night again, Doctor
Byrne."

He watched her up the stairs. By the dim light he saw her hand catching
at the balustrade as if she were drawing herself up, step by step. When
she reached the landing and turned half towards him, he saw that her
head was fallen.

"Not a glance, not a thought for me," murmured the doctor. "But if the
stranger _does_ leave----" Instead of finishing the muttered sentences,
he drew a chair back against the wall and sat down with folded hands to
wait.




CHAPTER XXI

MAC STRANN DECIDES TO KEEP THE LAW


It was hours later that night when Haw-Haw Langley and Mac Strann sat
their horses on the hill to the south. Before them, on the nearest rise
of ground, a clump of tall trees and the sharp triangle of a roof split
the sky, while down towards the right spread a wide huddle of sheds and
barns.

"That's where the trail ends," said Mac Strann, and started his horse
down the slope. Haw-Haw Langley urged his little mount hurriedly
alongside the squat bulk of his companion. He looked like the skeleton
reality, and Mac Strann the blunt, deformed shadow.

"You ain't going into the house lookin' for him, Mac?" he asked, and he
lowered his voice to a sharp whisper in spite of the distance. "Maybe
there's a pile of men in that house. It's got room for a whole army. You
ain't going in there by yourself, Mac?"

"Haw-Haw," explained the big man quietly, "I ain't going after Barry.
I'm going to make him come after me."

Haw-Haw considered this explanation for a dazed moment. It was far too
mysterious for his comprehension.

"What you goin' to do?" he asked again.

"Would you know that black hoss agin if you seen him?" asked Mac Strann.

"In a thousand."

"That hoss has had a long ride; and Barry has put him in one of them
barns, they ain't no doubt. Most like, the dog is with the hoss."

"It looks a considerable lot like a wolf," muttered Langley. "I wouldn't
choose meetin' up with that dog in the dark. Besides, what good is it
goin' to do you to find the dog?"

"If you hurt a man's dog," explained Mac Strann calmly, "you're hurting
the man, ain't you? I'm going to hurt this man's dog; afterwards the
dog'll bring the man to me. They ain't no doubt of that. I ain't goin'
to kill the dog. I'm goin' to jest nick him so's he'll get well and then
hit my trail."

"What sense is they in that?"

"If Barry comes to me, ain't he the one that's breakin' the law? If I
kill him then, won't it be in self-defense? I ain't no law-breaker,
Haw-Haw. It ain't any good bein' a law-breaker. Them lawyers can talk a
man right into a grave. They's worse nor poison. I'd rather be caught in
a bear trap a hundred miles from my shack than have a lawyer fasten onto
my leg right in the middle of Brownsville. No, Haw-Haw, I ain't going to
break any law. But I'm going to fix the wolf so's he'll know me; and
when he gets well he'll hit my trail, and when he hits my trail he'll
have Barry with him. And when Barry sees me, then----" he raised his
arms above him in the dark. "Then!" breathed Mac Strann, "Jerry can
start sleepin' sound for the first time!"

Haw-Haw Langley wrapped his long arms about himself.

"An' I'll be there to watch. I'll be there to see fair play, don't you
never doubt it, Mac. Why didn't I never go with you before? Why, Jerry
never done anything to touch this! But be careful, Mac. Don't make no
slip up to-night. If they's trouble--I ain't a fighting man, Mac. I
ain't no ways built for it."

"Shut your mouth," said Mac Strann bluntly. "I need quiet now."

For they were now close to the house. Mac Strann brought his horse to a
jog trot and cast a semi-circle skirting the house and bringing him
behind the barns. Here he retreated to a little jutting point of land
from behind which the house was invisible, and there dismounted.

Haw-Haw Langley followed example reluctantly. He complained: "I ain't
never heard before of a man leavin' his hoss behind him! It ain't right
and it ain't policy."

His leader, however, paid no attention to this grumbling. He skirted
back behind the barns, walking with a speed which extended even the long
legs of Haw-Haw Langley. Most of the stock was turned out in the
corrals. Now and then a horse stamped, or a bull snorted from the fenced
enclosures, but from the barns they heard not a sound. Now Mac Strann
paused. They had reached the largest of the barns, a long, low
structure.

"This here," said Mac Strann, "is where that hoss must be. They wouldn't
run a hoss like that with others. They'd keep him in a big stall by
himself. We'll try this one, Haw-Haw."

But Haw-Haw drew back at the door. The interior was black as the hollow
of a throat as soon as Mac Strann rolled back the sliding door, and
Haw-Haw imagined evil eyes glaring and twinkling at him along the edges
of the darkness.

"The wolf!" he cautioned, grasping the shoulder of his companion. "You
ain't goin' to walk onto that wolf, Mac?"

The latter struck down Haw-Haw's hand.

"A wolf makes a noise before it jumps," he whispered, "and that warnin'
is all the light I need."

Now their eyes grew somewhat accustomed to the dark and Haw-Haw could
make out, vaguely, the posts of the stalls to his right. He could not
tell whether or not some animal might be lying down between the posts,
but Mac Strann, pausing at every stall, seemed to satisfy himself at a
glance. Right down the length of the barn they passed until they reached
a wall at the farther end.

"He ain't here," sighed Haw-Haw, with relief. "Mac, if I was you, I'd
wait till they was light before I went huntin' that wolf."

"He ought to be here," growled Mac Strann, and lighted a match. The
flame spurted in a blinding flash from the head of the match and then
settled down into a steady yellow glow. By that brief glow Mac Strann
looked up and down the wall. The match burned out against the calloused
tips of his fingers.

"That wall," mused Strann, "ain't made out of the same timber as the
side of the barn. That wall is whole years newer. Haw-Haw, that _ain't_
the end of the barn. They's a holler space beyond it." He lighted
another match, and then cursed softly in delight. "Look!" he commanded.

At the farther side of the wall was the glitter of metal--the latch of a
door opening in the wooden wall. Mac Strann set it ajar and Haw-Haw
peered in over the big man's shoulder. He saw first a vague and formless
glimmer. Then he made out a black horse lying down in the centre of a
box stall. The animal plunged at once to its feet, and crowding as far
as possible away against the wall, turned its head and stared at them
with flashing eyes.

"It's him!" whispered Haw-Haw. "It's Barry's black. They ain't another
hoss like him on the range. An' the wolf--thank God!--ain't with him."

But Mac Strann closed the door of the stall, frowning thoughtfully, and
thought on the face of Strann was a convulsion of pain. He dropped the
second match to his feet, where it ignited a wisp of straw that sent up
a puff of light.

"Ah-h!" drawled Mac Strann. "The wolf ain't here, but we'll soon have
him here. And the thing that brings him here will get rid of the black
hoss."

"Are you goin' to steal the hoss?"

"Steal him? He couldn't carry me two mile, a skinny hoss like that. But
if Barry ever gets away agin on that hoss I ain't never goin' to catch
him. That hoss has got to die."

Haw-Haw Langley caught his breath with a harsh gurgle. For men of the
mountain-desert sometimes fall very low indeed, but in their lowest
moments it is easier for him to kill a man than a horse. There is the
story, for instance, of the cattleman who saw the bull-fight in Juarez,
and when the bull gored the first horse the cowpuncher rose in the crowd
and sent a bullet through the picador to square the deal. So Haw-Haw
sighed.

"Mac," he whispered, "has it got to be done? Ain't there any other way?
I've seen that hoss. When the sun hits him it sets him on fire, he's
that sleek. And his legs is like drawn-iron, they're that fine. And he's
got a head that's finer than a man's head, Mac."

"I've seen him close enough," answered Mac Strann grimly. "An' I've
follered him for a day and a half, damn near. S'pose Barry finds out I'm
on his trail; s'pose he won't foller the wolf when the wolf tries to
lead him to me. S'pose he gets on this hoss and cuts away? Can I foller
the wind, Haw-Haw? This hoss has got to die!"

From the manger he threw out several armfuls of hay, wrenched down from
behind the manger several light boards, and tossed them on the hay. He
lighted a match and was approaching the small flame to the pile of
inflammables when Haw-Haw Langley cried softly: "Hark, Mac!"

The big man instantly extinguished the match. For a moment they could
distinguish nothing, but then they heard the sharp, high chorus of the
wild geese flying north. Haw-Haw Langley snickered apologetically.

"That was what I heard a minute ago!" he said. "And it sounded like
voices comin'."

A snarl of contempt from Mac Strann; then he scratched another match and
at once the flame licked up the side of the hay and cast a long arm up
the wooden wall.

"Out of this quick!" commanded Mac Strann, and they started hastily down
the barn towards the door. The fire behind them, after the puff of flame
from the hay, had died away to a ghastly and irregular glow with the
crackle of the slowly catching wood. It gave small light to guide them;
only enough, indeed, to deceive the eye. The posts of the stalls grew
into vast, shadowy images; the irregularities of the floor became high
places and pits alternately. But when they were half way to the door
Haw-Haw Langley saw a form too grim to be a shadow, blocking their path.
It was merely a blacker shape among the shades, but Haw-Haw was aware of
the two shining eyes, and stopped short in his tracks.

"The wolf!" he whispered to Mac Strann. "Mac, what're we goin' to do?"

The other had not time to answer, for the shadow at the door of the
barn now leaped towards them, silently, without growl or yelp or snarl.
As if to guide the battle, the kindling wood behind them now ignited and
sent up a yellow burst of light. By it Haw-Haw Langley saw the great
beast clearly, and he leaped back behind the sheltering form of Mac
Strann. As for Mac, he did not move or flinch from the attack. His
revolver was in his hand, levelled, and following the swift course of
Black Bart.




CHAPTER XXII

PATIENCE


There is one patience greater than the endurance of the cat at the hole
of the mouse or the wolf which waits for the moose to drop, and that is
the patience of the thinking man; the measure of the Hindoo's moveless
contemplation of Nirvana is not in hours but in weeks or even in months.
Randall Byrne sat at his sentinel post with his hands folded and his
grave eyes steadily fixed before him, and for hour after hour he did not
move. Though the wind rose, now and again, and whistled through the
upper chambers or mourned down the empty halls, Randall Byrne did not
stir so much as an eyelash in observance. Two things held him
fascinated. One was the girl who had passed up yonder stairs so wearily
without a single backward glance at him; the other was the silent battle
which went on in the adjoining room. Now and then his imagination
wandered away to secondary pictures. He would see Barry meeting Buck
Daniels, at last, and striking him down as remorselessly as the hound
strikes the hare; or he would see him riding back towards Elkhead and
catch a bright, sad vision of Kate Cumberland waving a careless adieu to
him, and then hear her singing carelessly as she turned away. Such
pictures as these, however, came up but rarely in the mind of Byrne.
Mostly he thought of the stranger leaning over the body of old Joe
Cumberland, reviving him, storing him with electric energy, paying back,
as it were, some ancient debt. And he thought of the girl as she had
turned at the landing place of the stairs, her head fallen; and he
thought of her lying in her bed, with her arm under the mass of bright
hair, trying to sleep, very tired, but remorsely held awake by that same
power which was bringing Joe Cumberland back from the verge of death.

It was all impossible. This thing could not be. It was really as bad as
the yarn of the Frankenstein monster. He considered how it would seem in
print, backed by his most solemn asseverations, and then he saw the
faces of the men who associated with him, pale thoughtful faces striving
to conceal their smiles and their contempt. But always he came back,
like the desperate hare doubling on his course, upon the picture of Kate
Cumberland there at the turning of the stairs, and that bent, bright
head which confessed defeat. The man had forgotten her. It made Byrne
open his eyes in incredulity even to imagine such a thing. The man had
forgotten her! She was no more to him than some withered hag he might
ride past on the road.

His ear, subconsciously attentive to everything around him, caught a
faint sound from the next room. It was a regular noise. It had the
rhythm of a quick footfall, but in its nature it was more like the
sound of a heavily beating pulse. Randall Byrne sat up in his chair. A
faint creaking attested that it was, indeed, a footfall traversing the
room to and fro, steadily.

The stranger, then, no longer leaned over the couch of the old
cattleman. He was walking up and down the floor with that
characteristic, softly padding step. Of what did he think as he walked?
It carried Byrne automatically out into the darkest night, with a wind
in his face, and the rhythm of a long striding horse carrying him on to
a destination unknown.

Here he heard a soft scratching, repeated, at the door. When it came
again he rose and opened the door--at once the tall, shaggy dog slipped
through the opening and glided past him. It startled Byrne oddly to see
the animal stealing away, as if Barry himself had been leaving. He
called to the beast, but he was met by a silent baring of white fangs
that stopped him in his tracks. The great dog was gone without a sound,
and Byrne closed the door again without casting a look inside. He was
stupidly, foolishly afraid to look within.

After that the silence had a more vital meaning. No pictures crowded his
brain. He was simply keyed to a high point of expectancy, and therefore,
when the door was opened silently, he sprang up as if in acknowledgment
of an alarm and faced Barry. The latter closed the door behind him and
glided after the big dog. He had almost crossed the big room when Byrne
was able to speak.

"Mr. Barry!" he called.

The man hesitated.

"Mr. Barry," he repeated.

And Dan Barry turned. It was something like the act of the wolf the
moment before; a swift movement--a flash of the eyes in something like
defiance.

"Mr. Barry, are you leaving us?"

"I'm going outside."

"Are you coming back?"

"I dunno."

A great joy swelled in the throat of Doctor Byrne. He felt like shouting
in triumph; yet he remembered once more how the girl had gone up the
stairs, wearily, with fallen head. He decided that he would do what he
could to keep the stranger with them, and though Randall Byrne lived to
be a hundred he would never do a finer thing than what he attempted
then. He stepped across the room and stood before Barry, blocking the
way.

"Sir," he said gravely, "if you go now, you will work a great sorrow in
this house."

A glint of anger rose in the eyes of Barry.

"Joe Cumberland is sleepin' soun'," he answered. "He'll be a pile rested
when he wakes up. He don't need me no more."

"He's not the only one who needs you," said Byrne. "His daughter has
been waiting impatiently for your coming, sir."

The sharp glance of Barry wavered away.

"I'd kind of like to stay," he murmured, "but I got to go."

A dull voice called from the next room.

"It's Joe Cumberland," said Byrne. "You see, he is not sleeping!"

The brow of Barry clouded, and he turned gloomily back.

"Maybe I better stay," he agreed.

Yet before he made a step Byrne heard a far-away honking of the wild
geese, that musical discord carrying for uncounted miles through the
windy air. The sound worked like magic on Barry. He whirled back.

"I got to go," he repeated.

And yet Byrne blocked the way. It required more courage to do that than
to do anything he had ever attempted in his life. The sweat poured out
from under his armpits as the stranger stepped near; the blood rushed
from his face as he stared into the eyes of Barry--eyes which now held
an uncanny glimmer of yellow light.

"Sir," said Byrne huskily, "you must not go! Listen! Old Cumberland is
calling to you again! Does that mean nothing? If you have some errand
out in the night, let me go for you."

"Partner," said the soft voice of Barry, "stand aside. I got no time,
I'm wanted!"

Every muscle of Randall Byrne's body was set to repulse the stranger in
any effort to pass through that door, and yet, mysteriously, against his
will, he found himself standing to one side, and saw the other slip
through the open door.

"Dan! Are ye there?" called a louder voice from the room beyond.

There was no help for it. He, himself, must go back and face Joe
Cumberland. With a lie, no doubt. He would say that Dan had stepped out
for a moment and would be back again. That might put Cumberland safely
to sleep. In the morning, to be sure, he would find out the
deception--but let every day bury its dead. Here was enough trouble for
one night. He went slowly, but steadily enough, towards the door of what
had now become a fatal room to the doctor. In that room he had seen his
dearest doctrines cremated. Out of that room he had come bearing the
ashes of his hopes in his hands. Now he must go back once more to try to
fill, with science, a gap of which science could never take cognizance.

He lingered another instant with his hand on the door; then he cast it
wide bravely enough and stepped in. Joe Cumberland was sitting up on the
edge of his couch. There was colour in the old man's face. It almost
seemed, to the incredulous eyes of Byrne, that the face was filled out a
trifle. Certainly the fire of the old cattleman's glance was less
unearthly.

"Where's Dan?" he called. "Where'd he go?"

It was no longer the deep, controlled voice of the stoic; it was the
almost whining complaint of vital weakness.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" parried Byrne. "Anything you need
or wish?"

"Him!" answered the old man explosively. "Damn it, I need Dan! Where is
he? He was here. I _felt_ him here while I was sleepin'. _where is he?_"

"He has stepped out for an instant," answered Byrne smoothly. "He will
be back shortly."

"He--has--stepped--out?" echoed the old man slowly. Then he rose to the
full of his gaunt height. His white hair, his triangle of beard and
pointed moustache gave him a detached, a mediaeval significance; a
portrait by Van Dyck had stepped from its frame.

"Doc, you're lyin' to me! Where has he gone?"

A sudden, almost hysterical burst of emotion swept Doctor Byrne.

"Gone to heaven or hell!" he cried with startling violence. "Gone to
follow the wind and the wild geese--God knows where!"

Like a period to his sentence, a gun barked outside, there was a howl of
demoniac pain and rage, and then a scream that would tingle in the ear
of Doctor Randall Byrne till his dying day.




CHAPTER XXIII

HOW MAC STRANN KEPT THE LAW


For when the dog sprang, Mac Strann fired, and the wolf was jerked up in
the midst of his leap by the tearing impact of the bullet. It was easy
for Strann to dodge the beast, and the great black body hurtled past him
and struck heavily on the floor of the barn. It missed Mac Strann,
indeed, but it fell at the very feet of Haw-Haw Langley, and a splash of
blood flirted across his face. He was too terrified to shriek, but fell
back against the wall of the barn, gasping. There he saw Black Bart
struggle to regain his feet, vainly, for both of the animal's forelegs
seemed paralyzed. Now the yellow light of the fire rose brightly, and by
it Haw-Haw marked the terrible eyes and the lolling, slavering tongue of
the great beast, and the fangs like ivory daggers. It could not regain
its feet, but it thrust itself forward by convulsive efforts of the hind
legs towards Mac Strann.

Haw-Haw Langley stared for a single instant in white faced fear, but
when he realised that Black Bart was helpless as a toothless old dog,
the tall cowpuncher, twisted his lean fingers with a silent joy. Once
more Bart pushed himself towards Mac Strann, and then Haw-Haw Langley
stepped forward, and with all the force of his long leg smashed his
heavy riding boot into the face of the dog. Black Bart toppled back
against the base of the manger, struggled vainly to regain his poise,
and it was then that he pointed his nose up, and wailed like a lost
soul, wailed with the fury of impotent hate. Mac Strann caught Haw-Haw
by the arm and dragged him back towards the door.

"I don't want to _kill_ the dog," he repeated. "Get out of here,
Haw-Haw. Barry'll be comin' any minute."

He could have used no sharper spur to urge on the laggard. Haw-Haw
Langley raced out of the barn a full stride before Mac Strann. They
hurried together to the little rise of ground behind which they had left
their horses, and as they ran the scream which had curdled the blood of
Randall Byrne rang through the night. In a thousand years he could never
have guessed from what that yell issued; his nearest surmise would have
been a score of men screaming in unison under the torture. But Mac
Strann and Haw-Haw Langley knew the sound well enough.

When they mounted their saddles they could look over the top of the
little hill and observe everything easily without being seen; for the
hill-top commanded a range of the corrals and a view of the fronts of
the barns and sheds which opened upon the fenced enclosures. The largest
and longest of these buildings was now plainly visible, for a long arm
of fire reached above the roof on one side of the low shed and by this
growing light the other barns, the glimmering-eyed horses and cattle of
the corrals, the trees about the house, the house itself, were in turn
visible, though vaguely, and at times, as the flame lapsed, all were
lost in a flood of swift darkness. Once more that unhuman shriek echoed
from hill to hill and from building to building. It was Satan in his box
stall. The flames were eating through the partition, and the stallion
was mad with fear.

Lights flashed, here and there, in the big ranch house; and from the
bunk-house on the farther side of the corrals rose a volley of curses
and yells of dismay. The cattle began milling blindly, bellowing and
stamping, and the horses ranged at a mad gallop back and forth across
their corrals, wild-eyed with terror. It was like the tumult of a
battle, and sharper than a trumpet a new sound cut through the din--it
was a short, high whistle, twice repeated. An answer came from the
burning barn--the long, strong neighing of the stallion.

"D'ye hear?" muttered Mac Strann. "It's the hoss talkin' to his master!"

"And there he comes!" said Haw-Haw Langley. "Runnin' like the wind!"

The flame, picked up by the gale, tore for itself a wider breathing
space through the roof and sent up an audibly roaring column of blinding
red. By that light, Mac Strann, following Haw-Haw's directing arm, saw a
lithe figure vault over the fence on the farther side of the corral and
dart forward among the milling cattle.

Now, when cattle begin to mill it takes a brave man on a brave,
well-trained horse to trust his chances in the midst of that ocean of
tossing horns. But this man ventured it on foot. Mac Strann could follow
him easily, for the man's hat was off, and the firelight glittered on
his black hair. That glimmering head darted here and there among the
circling cattle. Now it was lost, swamped, to all appearances, under a
score of trampling hooves. Again it reappeared on the further side. Mac
Strann could see the runner in a comparatively open space, racing like a
trained sprinter, and he headed straight towards a wall of tossing
horns. They were long-horns, and one sway of those lowered heads could
drive the hard, sharp point through and through the body of a man. Yet
straight at this impassable wall the stranger rushed, like a warrior in
his Berserker madness leaping naked upon a hedge of spears. At the verge
of the danger the man sprang high into the air. Two leaps, from back to
back among the herd, and he was across the thickest of danger, down once
more on the ground, and dodging past the outskirts of the bellowing
cows. Over the nearer fence he vaulted and disappeared into the smoke
which vomitted from the mouth of the burning barn.

"God A'mighty," groaned Haw-Haw Langley, "can he get the hoss out?"

"It ain't possible," answered Mac Strann. "All hosses goes mad when
they gets in a fire--even when they sees a fire. Look at them fools over
yonder in the corral."

Indeed, in the horse-corral a score of frantic animals were attempting
to leap the high rails in the direction of the burning barn. Their
stamping and snorting came volleying up the hill to the watchers.

"All hosses goes mad," concluded Mac Strann, "an' Barry'll get tramped
under the feet of his own hoss even if he gets to the stall--which he
won't. Look there!"

Out of the rush of fire and smoke at the door of the barn Dan Barry
stumbled, blindly, and fell back upon the ground. Haw-Haw Langley began
to twist his cold hands together in an ecstasy.

"The hoss is gone and the wolf is gone, and Barry is beat!" he chuckled
to himself. "Mac, I wouldn't of missed this for a ten days' ride. It's
worth it. But see the gal and that new gent, Mac!"

       *       *       *       *       *

For when the clamour arose outside the house, Buck Daniels had run to
the window. For many reasons he had not taken off his clothes this
night, but had lain down on the bed and folded his hands behind his head
to wait. With the first outcry he was at the window and there he saw the
flames curling above the roof of the barn, and next, by that wild light,
how Dan Barry raced through the dangerous corral, and then he heard the
shrill neighing of Satan, and saw Dan disappear in the smoking door of
the barn.

Fear drew Buck Daniels one way but a fine impulse drew him another. He
turned away from the window with a curse; he turned back to it with a
curse, and then, muttering: "He went through hell for me; and him and me
together, we'll go through hell again!" he ran from the room and
thundered down the crazy stairs.

As he left the house he found Kate Cumberland, and they went on
together, running without a word to each other. Only, when he came
beside her, she stopped short and flashed one glance at him. By that
glance he knew that she understood why he was there, and that she
accepted his sacrifice.

They hurried around the outer edge of the corrals, and as they
approached the flaming barn from one side the men from the bunk-house
rushed up from the other. It was Buck Daniels who reached Dan as the
latter stumbled back from the door of the barn, surrounded by a
following cloud of smoke, and fell stumbling to the ground. And Buck
raised him.

The girl was instantly beside them.

She had thrown on a white dressing gown when she rose from bed. It was
girded high across her breast, and over it showered her bright hair,
flashing like liquid gold in growing light. She, now, received the
semi-conscious burden of Dan Barry, and Buck Daniels stepped forward,
close to the smoke. He began to shout directions which the two watchers
behind the hill could not hear, though they saw his long arms point and
gesticulate and they could see his speaking lips. But wild confusion
was on the crowd of cowpunchers. They ran here and there. One or two
brought buckets of water and tossed the contents uselessly into the
swirling, red-stained hell of smoke. But most of them ran here and
there, accomplishing nothing.

"An' all this come from one little match, Mac," cried Haw-Haw
ecstatically at the ear of Mac Strann. "All what we're seein'! Look at
the gal, Mac! She's out of her wits! She's foolin' about Barry, doin' no
good."

A gust of smoke and fire must have met Barry face to face when he
entered the barn, for he seemed now as helpless as if he were under a
strong narcotic influence. He leaned heavily back into the arms of the
girl, his head rolling wildly from side to side. Then, clearer than
before, dominating all the confusion of noise, and with a ringing,
trumpet note of courage in it, the black stallion neighed again from his
burning stall. It had a magic effect upon Barry. He stood up and tore
himself from the arms of the girl. They saw her gesture and cry to the
surrounding men for help, and a dozen hands were stretched out to keep
the madman from running again into the fire. They might better have
attempted to hold a wild horse with their naked hands. He slipped and
broke through their grips, and a second later had leaped into the
inferno of smoke, running bent close to the ground where the pure air,
if there were any, was sure to be.

"The gal's sick!" said Haw-Haw Langley. "Look, Mac!"

And he began to laugh in that braying voice which had given him his
nickname. Yet even in his laughter his eyes were brightly observant; not
a single detail of misery or grief was lost upon him; he drank it in; he
fed his famine-stricken soul upon it. Kate Cumberland had buried her
face in her arms; Buck Daniels, attempting to rush in after Dan Barry,
had been caught beneath the arms by Doctor Byrne and another and was now
borne struggling back.

From the very heart of the burning barn the sharp single whistle burst
and over the rolling smoke and spring fire rose the answering neigh. A
human voice could not have spoken more intelligibly: "I wait in trust!"

After that neigh and whistle, a quiet fell over the group at the barn
door. There was nothing to do. There was not enough wind to blow the
flames from this barn to one of the neighbouring sheds; all they could
do was to stand still and watch the progress of the conflagration.

The deep, thick voice of Mac Strann broke in: "Start prayin', Haw-Haw,
that the hoss don't kill Barry when he gets to him. Start prayin' that
Barry is left for me to finish."

He must have meant his singular request more as a figure of speech than
a real demand, but an hysteria was upon Haw-Haw Langley. He stretched up
his vast, gaunt arms to the dim spot of red in the central heavens
above the fire, and Haw-Haw prayed for the first and last time in his
life.

"O Lord, gimme this one favour. Bring Barry safe out of the barn. Bring
him out even if you got to bring the damned hoss with him. Bring him out
and save him for Mac Strann to meet. And, God A'mighty, let me be around
somewhere's when they meet!"

This strange exhibition Mac Strann watched with a glowering eye.

"But it ain't possible," he said positively. "I been in fires. Barry
can't live through the fire; an' if he does, the hoss will finish him.
It ain't possible for him to come out!"

From half the roof of the shed flames now poured, but presently a great
shower of sparks rose at the farther end of the barn, and then Haw-Haw
heard the sound of a beating and crashing.

"Hei!" he screamed, "Barry's reached the black hoss and the black hoss
is beating him into the floor!"

"You fool!" answered Mac Strann calmly, "Barry has got a beam or
something and he's smashing down the burning partition of the box stall.
That's what he's doing; listen!"

High over the fire, once again rose the neighing of the black horse, a
sound of unspeakable triumph.

"You're right," groaned Haw-Haw, downcast. "He's reached the hoss!"

He had hardly finished speaking when Mac Strann said: "Anyway, he'll
never get out. This end wall of the barn is fallin' in."

Indeed, the outer wall of the barn, nearest the door, was wavering in a
great section and slowly tottering in. Another moment or two it would
crash to the floor and block the way of Dan Barry, coming out, with a
flaming ruin. Next the watchers saw a struggle among the group which
watched. Three men were struggling with Buck Daniels, but presently he
wrenched his arms free, struck down two men before him with swinging
blows of his fists, and leaped into the smoke.

"He's gone nutty, like a crazy hoss with the sight of the fire," said
Mac Strann quietly.

"He ain't! He ain't!" cried Haw-Haw Langley, wild with excitement. "He's
holdin' back the burnin' wall to keep the way clear, damn him!"

Indeed, the tottering wall, not having leaned to a great angle, was now
pushed back by some power from the inside of the barn and kept erect.
Though now and again it swayed in, as though the strength which held it
was faltering under the strain.

Now the eyes of the watchers were called to the other end of the barn by
a tremendous crashing. The entire section of that part of the roof fell
in, and a shower of sparks leaped up into the heart of the sky, lighting
the distant hills and drawing them near like watchers of the horror of
the night.

"That's the end," said Mac Strann. "Haw-Haw, they wasn't any good in
your prayer."

"I ain't a professional prayin' man," answered Haw-Haw defensively, "but
I done my best. If----" He was cut short by a chorused cry from the
watchers near the door of the barn, and then, through the vomitted smoke
and the fire, leaped the unsaddled body of Satan bearing on his back the
crouched figure of Dan Barry, and in the arms of Barry, limp, his head
hanging down loosely, was the body of the great black dog, Bart.

A fearful picture. The smoke swept following around the black stallion,
and a great tongue of flame licked hungrily after the trio. But the
stallion stood with head erect, and ears flattened, pawing the ground.
With that cloud of destruction blowing him he stood like the charger
which the last survivor might ride through the ruin of the universe in
the Twilight of the Gods.

At the same instant, another smoke-clad figure lunged from the door of
the barn, his hands outstretched as though he felt and fumbled his way
through utter darkness. It was Buck Daniels, and as he cleared the door
the section of tottering wall which he had upheld to keep the way clear
for the Three, wavered, sagged, and then sank in thunder to the floor,
and the whole barn lay a flame-tossed mass of ruin.

The watchers had scattered before the plunge of Satan, but he came to a
sliding halt, as if his rider had borne heavily back upon the reins.
Barry slipped from the stallion's back with the wounded dog, and kneeled
above the limp figure.

"It ain't the end," growled Mac Strann, "that hoss will go runnin' back
into the fire. It ain't hoss nature to keep from goin' mad at the sight
of a fire!"

In answer to him, the black stallion whirled, raised his head high, and,
with flaunting mane and tail, neighed a ringing defiance at the rising
flames. Then he turned back and nuzzled the shoulder of his master, who
was working with swift hands over the body of Black Bart.

"Anyway," snarled Haw-Haw Langley, "the damned wolf is dead."

"I dunno," said Mac Strann. "Maybe--maybe not. They's quite a pile that
we dunno."

"If you want to get rid of the hoss," urged Haw-Haw, writhing in the
glee of a new inspiration, "now's the time for it, Mac. Get out your gun
and pot the black. Before the crowd can get after us, we'll be miles
away. They ain't a saddled hoss in sight. Well, if you don't want to do
it, I will!" And he whipped out his gun.

But Mac Strann reached across and dragged the muzzle down.

"We done all we're goin' to do to-night. Seems like God's been listenin'
pretty close, around here!"

He turned his horse, and Haw-Haw, reluctantly, followed suit. Still, as
they trotted slowly away from the burning barn, Haw-Haw kept his glance
fixed behind him until a final roaring crash and a bellying cloud of
fire that smote the zenith announced the end of the barn. Then Haw-Haw
turned his face to his companion.

"Now what?" he demanded.

"We go to Elkhead and sit down and wait," answered Mac Strann. "If the
dog gets well he'll bring Barry to us. Then all I've got to do is defend
myself."

Haw-Haw Langley twisted up his face and laughed, silently, to the
red-stained sky.




CHAPTER XXIV

DOCTOR BYRNE LOOKS INTO THE PAST


The black head of Barry, the brown head of Randall Byrne, the golden
head of Kate Cumberland, were all bowed around the limp body of Black
Bart. Buck Daniels, still gasping for breath, stood reeling nearby.

"Let me attempt to resuscitate the animal," offered the doctor.

He was met by a blank look from Barry. The hair of the man was scorched,
his skin was blistered and burned. Only his hands remained uninjured,
and these continued to move over the body of the great dog. Kate
Cumberland was on her knees over the brute.

"Is it fatal, Dan?" she asked. "Is there no hope for Bart?"

There was no answer from Barry, and she attempted to raise the fallen,
lifeless head of the animal; but instantly a strong arm darted out and
brushed her hands away. Those hands fell idly at her sides and her head
went back as though she had been struck across the face. She found
herself looking up into the angry eyes of Randall Byrne. He reached down
and raised her to her feet; there was no colour in her face, no life in
her limbs.

"There's nothing more to be done here, apparently," said the doctor
coldly. "Suppose we take your father and go back to the house."

She made neither assent nor dissent. Dan Barry had finished a swift,
deft bandage and stopped the bleeding of the dog's wounds. Now he raised
his head and his glance slipped rapidly over the faces of the doctor and
the girl and rested on Buck Daniels. There was no flash of kindly
thanks, no word of recognition. His right hand raised to his cheek, and
rested there, and in his eyes came that flare of yellow hate. Buck
Daniels shrank back until he was lost in the crowd. Then he turned and
stumbled back towards the house.

Instantly, Barry began to work at expanding and depressing the lungs of
the huge animal as he might have worked to bring a man back to life.

"Watch him!" whispered the doctor to Kate Cumberland. "He is closer to
that dog--that wolf, it looks like--than he has ever been to any human
being!"

She would not answer, but she turned her head quickly away from the man
and his beast.

"Are you afraid to watch?" challenged Byrne, for his anger at Barry's
blunt refusals still made his blood hot. "When your father lay at
death's door was he half so anxious as he is now? Did he work so hard,
by half? See how his eyes are fixed on the muzzle of the beast as if he
were studying a human face!"

"No, no!" breathed the girl.

"I fell you, look!" commanded the doctor. "For there's the solution of
the mystery. No mystery at all. Barry is simply a man who is closer akin
to the brute forces in nature. See! By the eternal heavens, he's
dragging that beast--that dumb beast--back from the door of death!"

Barry had ceased his rapid manipulations, and turned the big dog back
upon its side. Now the eyes of Black Bart opened, and winked shut again.
Now the master kneeled at the head of the beast and took the scarred,
shaggy head between his hands.

"Bart!" he commanded.

Not a stir in the long, black body. The stallion edged a pace closer,
dropped his velvet muzzle, and whinnied softly at the very ear of the
dog. Still, there was not an answering quiver.

"Bart!" called the man again, and there was a ring of wild grief--of
fear--in his cry.

"Do you hear?" said Byrne savagely, at the ear of the girl. "Did you
ever use such a tone with a human being? Ever?"

"Take me away!" she murmured. "I'm sick--sick at heart. Take me away!"

Indeed, she was scarcely sure of her poise, and tottered where she
stood. Doctor Byrne slipped his arm about her and led her away,
supporting half her weight. They went slowly, by small, soft steps,
towards the house, and before they reached it, he knew that she was
weeping. But if there was sadness in Byrne, there was also a great joy.
He was afire, for there is a flamelike quality in hope. Loss of blood
and the stifling smoke, rather than a mortal injury or the touch of
fire, had brought Black Bart close to death, but now that his breathing
was restored, and almost normal, he gained rapidly. One instant he
lingered on the border between life and death; the next, the brute's
eyes opened and glittered with dim recognition up towards Dan, and he
licked the hand which supported his head. At Dan's direction, a blanket
was brought, and after Dan had lifted Black Bart upon it, four men
raised the corners of the blanket and carried the burden towards the
house. One of the cowpunchers went ahead bearing the light. This was the
sight which Doctor Byrne and Kate Cumberland saw from the veranda of the
ranch-house as they turned and looked back before going in.

"A funeral procession," suggested the doctor.

"No," she answered positively. "If Black Bart were dead, Dan wouldn't
allow any hands save his own to touch the body. No, Black Bart is alive!
Yet, it's impossible."

The word "impossible," however, was gradually dropping from the
vocabulary of Randall Byrne. True, the wolf-dog had seemed dead past
recovery and across the eyes of Byrne came a vision of the dead rising
from their graves. Yet he merely shook his head and said nothing.

"Ah!" she broke in. "Look!"

The procession drew nearer, heading towards the back of the big house,
and now they saw that Dan Barry walked beside the body of Black Bart, a
smile on his lifted face. They disappeared behind the back of the
house.

Byrne heard the girl murmuring, more to herself than to him: "Once he
was like that all the time."

"Like what?" he asked bluntly.

She paused, and then her hand dropped lightly on his arm. He could not
see more than a vague outline of her in the night, only the dull glimmer
of her face as she turned her head, and the faint whiteness of her hand.

"Let's say good-night," she answered, at length. "Our little worlds have
toppled about our heads to-night--all your theories, it seems, and, God
knows, all that I have hoped. Why should we stay here and make ourselves
miserable by talk?"

"But because we have failed," he said steadily, "is that a reason we
should creep off and brood over our failure in silence? No, let's talk
it out, man to man."

"You have a fine courage," said the girl. "But what is there we can
say?"

He answered: "For my part, I am not so miserable as you think. For I
feel as if this night had driven us closer together, you see; and I've
caught a perspective on everything that has happened here."

"Tell me what you know."

"Only what I think I know. It may be painful to hear."

"I'm very used to pain."

"Well, a moment ago, when Barry was walking beside his dog, smiling, you
murmured that he once was like that always. It gave me light. So I'd
say that there was a time when Dan Barry lived here with you and your
father. Am I right?"

"Yes, for years and years."

"And in those times he was not greatly different from other men. Not on
the surface."

"No."

"You came to be very fond of him."

"We were to marry," answered Kate Cumberland, and Byrne winced.

He went on: "Then something happened--suddenly--that took him away from
you, and you did not see him again until to-night. Am I right?"

"Yes. I thought you must have heard the story--from the outside. I'll
tell you the truth. My father found Dan Barry wandering across the hills
years ago. He was riding home over the range and he heard a strange and
beautiful whistling, and when he looked up he saw on the western ridge,
walking against the sky, a tattered figure of a boy. He rode up and
asked the boy his name. He learned it was Dan Barry--Whistling Dan, he
was called. But the boy could not, or would not, tell how he came to be
there in the middle of the range without a horse. He merely said that he
came from 'over there,' and waved his hand to the south and east. That
was all. He didn't seem to be alarmed because he was alone, and yet he
apparently knew nothing of the country; he was lost in this terrible
country where a man could wander for days without finding a house, and
yet the boy was whistling as he walked! So Dad took him home and sent
out letters all about--to the railroad in particular--to find out if
such a boy was missing.

"He received no answer. In the meantime he gave Dan a room in the house;
and I remember how Dan sat at the table the first night--I was a very
little girl then--and how I laughed at his strange way of eating. His
knife was the only thing he was interested in and he made it serve for
knife, fork, and spoon, and he held the meat in his fingers while he cut
it. The next morning he was missing. One of Dad's range riders picked up
Dan several miles to the north, walking along, whistling gayly. The next
morning he was missing again and was caught still farther away. After
that Dad had a terrible scene with him--I don't know exactly what
happened--but Dan promised to run away no more, and ever since then Dad
has been closer to Dan than anyone else.

"So Dan grew up. From the time I could first distinctly remember, he was
very gentle and good-natured, but he was different, always. After a
while he got Black Bart, you know, and then he went out with a halter
and captured Satan. Think of capturing a wild mustang with nothing but a
halter! He played around with them so much that I was jealous of them.
So I kept with them until Bart and Satan were rather used to me. Bart
would even play with me now and then when Dan wasn't near. And so
finally Dan and I were to be married.

"Dad didn't like the idea. He was afraid of what Dan might become. And
he was right. One day, in a saloon that used to stand on that hill over
there, Dan had a fight--his first fight--with a man who had struck him
across the mouth for no good reason. That man was Jim Silent. Of course
you've heard of him?"

"Never."

"He was a famous long-rider--an outlaw with a very black record. At the
end of that fight he struck Dan down with a chair and escaped. I went
down to Dan when I heard of the fight--Black Bart led me down, to be
exact--but Dan would not come back to the house, and he'd have no more
to do with anyone until he had found Jim Silent. I can't tell you
everything that happened. Finally he caught Jim Silent and killed
him--with his bare hands. Buck Daniels saw it. Then Dan came back to us,
but on the first night he began to grow restless. It was last Fall--the
wild geese were flying south--and while they were honking in the sky Dan
got up, said good-bye, and left us. We have never seen him again until
to-night. All we knew was that he had ridden south--after the wild
geese."

A long silence fell between them, for the doctor was thinking hard.

"And when he came back," he said, "Barry did not know you? I mean you
were nothing to him?"

"You were there," said the girl, faintly.

"It is perfectly clear," said Byrne. "If it were a little more
commonplace it might be puzzling, but being so extraordinary it clears
itself up. Did you really expect the dog, the wolf-dog, Black Bart, to
remember you?"

"I may have expected it."

"But you were not surprised, of course!"

"Naturally not."

"Yet you see that Dan Barry--Whistling Dan, you call him--was closer to
Black Bart than he was to you?"

"Why should I see that?"

"You watched him a moment ago when he was leaning over the dog."

He watched her draw her dressing gown closer about her, as though the
cold bit more keenly then.

She said simply: "Yes, I saw."

"Don't you see that he is simply more in tune with the animal world? And
it's really no more reasonable to expect Black Bart to remember you than
it is to expect Dan Barry to remember you? It's quite plain. When you go
back to the beginning man was simply an animal, without the higher
senses, as we call them. He was simply a brute, living in trees or in
caves. Afterwards he grew into the thing we all know. But why not
imagine a throw-back into the earlier instincts? Why not imagine the
creature devoid of the impulses of mind, the thing which we call man,
and see the splendid animal? You saw in Dan Barry simply a biological
sport--the freak--the thing which retraces the biological progress and
comes close to the primitive. But of course you could not realise this.
He seemed a man, and you accepted him as a man. In reality he was no
more a man than Black Bart is a man. He had the face and form of a man,
but his instincts were as old as the ages. The animal world obeys him.
Satan neighs in answer to his whistle. The wolf-dog licks his hand at
the point of death. There is the profound difference, always. You try to
reconcile him with other men; you give him the attributes of other men.
Open your eyes; see the truth: that he is no more akin to man than Black
Bart is like a man. And when you give him your affection, Miss
Cumberland, _you are giving your affection to a wild wolf!_ Do you
believe me?"

He knew that she was shaken. He could feel it, even without the
testimony of his eyes to witness. He went on, speaking with great
rapidity, lest she should escape from the influence which he had already
gained over her.

"I felt it when I first saw him--a certain nameless kinship with
elemental forces. The wind blew through the open door--it was Dan Barry.
The wild geese called from the open sky--for Dan Barry. These are the
things which lead him. These the forces which direct him. You have loved
him; but is love merely a giving? No, you have seen in him a man, but I
see in him merely the animal force."

She said after a moment: "Do you hate him--you plead against him so
passionately?"

He answered: "Can you hate a thing which is not human? No, but you can
dread it. It escapes from the laws which bind you and which bind me.
What standards govern it? How can you hope to win it? Love? What beauty
is there in the world to appeal to such a creature except the beauty of
the marrow-bone which his teeth have the strength to snap?"

"Ah, listen!" murmured the girl. "Here is your answer!"

And Doctor Randall Byrne heard a sound like the muted music of the
violin, thin and small and wonderfully penetrating. He could not tell,
at first, what it might be. For it was as unlike the violin as it was
like the bow and the rosined strings. Then he made out, surely, that it
was the whistling of a human being.

It followed no tune, no reasoned theme. The music was beautiful in its
own self. It rose straight up like the sky-lark from the ground, sheer
up against the white light of the sky, and there it sang against
heaven's gate. He had never heard harmony like it. He would never again
hear such music, so thin and yet so full that it went through and
through him, until he felt the strains take a new, imitative life within
him. He would have whistled the strains himself, but he could not follow
them. They escaped him, they soared above him. They followed no law or
rhythm. They flew on wings and left him far below. The girl moved away
from him as if led by an invisible hand, and now she stood at the
extremity of the porch. He followed her.

"Do you hear?" she cried, turning to him.

"What is it?" asked the doctor.

"It is he! Don't you understand?"

"Barry? Yes! But what does the whistling mean; is it for his wolf-dog?"

"I don't know," she answered quickly. "All I understand is that it is
beautiful. Where are your theories and explanations now, Doctor Byrne?".

"It _is_ beautiful--God knows!--but doesn't the wolf-dog understand it
better than either you or I?"

She turned and faced Byrne, standing very close, and when she spoke
there was something in her voice which was like a light. In spite of the
dark he could guess at every varying shade of her expression.

"To the rest of us," she murmured, "Dan has nothing but silence, and
hardly a glance. Buck saved his life to-night, and yet Dan remembered
nothing except the blow which had been struck. And now--now he pours out
all the music in his soul for a dumb beast. Listen!"

He saw her straighten herself and stand taller.

"Then through the wolf--I'll conquer through the dumb beast!"

She whipped past Byrne and disappeared into the house; at the same
instant the whistling, in the midst of a faint, high climax, broke,
shivered, and was ended. There was only the darkness and the silence
around Byrne, and the unsteady wind against his face.




CHAPTER XXV

WERE-WOLF


Doctor Byrne, pacing the front veranda with his thoughtful head bowed,
saw Buck Daniels step out with his quirt dangling in his hand, his
cartridge belt buckled about his waist, and a great red silk bandana
knotted at his throat.

He was older by ten years than he had been a few days before, when the
doctor first saw him. To be sure, his appearance was not improved by a
three days' growth of beard. It gave his naturally dark skin a dirty
cast, but even that rough stubble could not completely shroud the new
hollows in Daniels' cheeks. His long, black, uncombed hair, sagged down
raggedly across his forehead, hanging almost into his eyes; the eyes
themselves were sunk in such formidable cavities that Byrne caught
hardly more than two points of light in the shadows. All the
devil-may-care insouciance of Buck Daniels was quite, quite gone. In its
place was a dogged sullenness, a hang-dog air which one would not care
to face of a dark night or in a lonely place. His manner was that of a
man whose back is against the wall, who, having fled some keen pursuit,
has now come to the end of his tether and prepares for desperate even
if hopeless battle. There was that about him which made the doctor
hesitate to address the cowpuncher.

At length he said: "You're going out for an outing, Mr. Daniels?"

Buck Daniels started violently at the sound of this voice behind him,
and whirled upon the doctor with such a set and contorted expression of
fierceness that Byrne jumped back.

"Good God, man!" cried the doctor, "What's up with you?"

"Nothin'," answered Buck, gradually relaxing from his first show of
suspicion. "I'm beating it. That's all."

"Leaving us?"

"Yes."

"Not really!"

"D'you think I ought to stay?" asked Buck, with something of a sneer.

The doctor hesitated, frowning in a puzzled way. At length he threw out
his hands in a gesture of mute abandonment.

"My dear fellow," he said with a faint smile, "I've about stopped trying
to think."

At this Buck Daniels grinned mirthlessly.

"Now you're talkin' sense," he nodded. "They ain't no use in thinking."

"But why do you leave so suddenly?"

Buck Daniels shrugged his broad shoulders.

"I am sure," went on Byrne, "that Miss Cumberland will miss you."

"She will not," answered the big cowpuncher. "She's got her hands full
with--_him_."

"Exactly. But if it is more than she can do, if she makes no headway
with that singular fellow--she may need help----"

He was interrupted by a slow, long-drawn, deep-throated curse from Buck
Daniels.

"Why in hell should I help her with--_him?_"

"There is really no reason," answered the doctor, alarmed, "except, I
suppose, old friendship----"

"Damn old friendship!" burst out Buck Daniels. "There's an end to all
things and my friendship is worn out--on both sides. It's done!"

He turned and scowled at the house.

"Help her to win _him_ over? I'd rather stick the muzzle of my gun down
my throat and pull the trigger. I'd rather see her marry a man about to
hang. Well--to hell with this place. I'm through with it. S'long, doc."

But Doctor Byrne ran after him and halted him at the foot of the steps
down from the veranda.

"My dear Mr. Daniels," he urged, touching the arm of Buck. "You really
mustn't leave so suddenly as this. There are a thousand questions on the
tip of my tongue."

Buck Daniels regarded the professional man with a hint of weariness and
disgust.

"Well," he said, "I'll hear the first couple of hundred. Shoot!"

"First: the motive that sends you away."

"Dan Barry."

"Ah--ah--fear of what he may do?"

"Damn the fear. At least, it's him that makes me go."

"It seems an impenetrable mystery," sighed the doctor. "I saw you the
other night step into the smoking hell of that barn and keep the way
clear for this man. I knew, before that, how you rode and risked your
life to bring Dan Barry back here. Surely those are proofs of
friendship!"

Buck Daniels laughed unpleasantly. He laid a large hand on the shoulder
of the doctor and answered: "If them was the only proofs, doc, I
wouldn't feel the way I do. Proofs of friendship? Dan Barry has saved me
from the--rope!--and he's saved me from dyin' by the gun of Jim Silent.
He took me out of a rotten life and made me a man that could look honest
men in the face!"

He paused, swallowing hard, and the doctor's misty, overworked eyes
lighted with some comprehension. He had felt from the first a certain
danger in this big fellow, a certain reckless disregard of laws and
rules which commonly limit the actions of ordinary men. Now part of the
truth was hinted at. Buck Daniels, on a time, had been outside the law;
and Barry had drawn him back to the ways of men. That explained some of
the singular bond that lay between them.

"That ain't all," went on Buck. "Blood is thick, and I've loved him
better nor a brother. I've gone to hell and back for him. For him I took
Kate Cumberland out of the hands of Jim Silent, and I left myself in
her place. I took her away and all so's she could go to him. Damn him!
And now on account of him I got to leave this place."

His voice rose to a ringing pitch.

"D'you think it's easy for me to go? D'you think it ain't like tearing a
finger-nail off'n the flesh for me to go away from Kate? God knows what
she means to me! God knows, but if He does, He's forgotten me!"

Anguish of spirit set Buck Daniels shaking, and the doctor looked on in
amazement. He was like one who reaches in his pocket for a copper coin
and brings out a handful of gold-pieces.

"Kind feelin's don't come easy to me," went on Buck Daniels. "I been
raised to fight. I been raised to hard ridin' and dust in the throat. I
been raised on whiskey and hate. And then I met Dan Barry, and his voice
was softer'n a girl's voice, and his eyes didn't hold no doubt of me. Me
that had sneaked in on him at night and was goin' to kill him in his
sleep--because my chief had told me to! That was the Dan Barry what I
first knew. He give me his hand and give me the trust of his eyes, and
after he left me I sat down and took my head between my hands and my
heart was like to bust inside me. It was like the clouds had blowed away
from the sun and let it shine on me for the first time in my life. And I
swore that if the time come I'd repay him. For every cent he give me I'd
pay him back in gold. I'd foller to the end of the world to do what he
bid me do."

His voice dropped suddenly, choked with emotion.

"Oh, doc, they was tears come in my eyes; and I felt sort of clean
inside, and I wasn't ashamed of them tears! That was what Dan Barry done
for me!

"And I _did_ pay him back, as much as I could. I met Kate Cumberland and
she was to me among girls what Dan Barry was to me among men. I ain't
ashamed of sayin' it. I loved her till they was a dryness like ashes
inside me, but I wouldn't even lift up my eyes to her, because she
belonged to him. I follered her around like a dog. I done her bidding. I
asked no questions. What she wanted--that was law to me, and all the law
I wanted. All that I done for the sake of Dan Barry. And then I took my
life in my hands for him--not once, but day after day.

"Then he rode off and left her and I stayed behind. D'you think it's
been easy to stay here? Man, man, I've had to hear her talkin' about Dan
Barry day after day, and never a word for me. And I had to tell her
stories about Dan and what he'd used to do, and she' sit with her eyes
miles away from me, listenin' an smilin' and me there hungerin' for just
one look out of her eyes--hungerin' like a dyin' dog for water. And then
for her and Joe I rode down south and when I met Dan Barry d'you think
they was any light in his eyes when he seen me?

"No, he'd forgotten me the way even a hoss won't forget his master.
Forgot me after a few months--and after all that'd gone between us! Not
even Kate--even she was nothin' to him. But still I kept at it and I
brought him back. I had to hurt him to do it, but God knows it wasn't
out of spite that I hit him--God knows!

"And when I seen Dan go into that burnin' barn I says to myself: 'Buck,
if nothin' is done that wall will fall and there's the end of Dan Barry.
There's the end of him, that ain't any human use, and when he's finished
after a while maybe Kate will get to know that they's other men in the
world besides Dan.' I says that to myself, deep and still inside me. And
then I looked at Kate standin' in that white thing with her yaller hair
all blowin' about her face--and I wanted her like a dyin' man wants
heaven! But then I says to myself again: 'No matter what's happened,
he's been my friend. He's been my pal. He's been my bunkie.'

"Doc, you ain't got a way of knowin' what a partner is out here. Maybe
you sit in the desert about a thousand miles from nowhere, and across
the little mesquite fire, there's your pal, the only human thing in
sight. Maybe you go months seein' only him. If you're sick he takes care
of you. If you're blue he cheers you up. And that's what Dan Barry was
to me. So I stands sayin' these things to myself, and I says: 'If I keep
that wall from fallin' Dan'll know about it, and they won't be no more
of that yaller light in his eyes when he looks at me. That's what I says
to myself, poor fool!

"And I went into the fire and I fought to keep that wall from fallin'.
You know what happened. When I come out, staggerin' and blind and three
parts dead, Dan Barry looks up to me and touches his face where I'd hit
him, and the yaller comes up glimmerin' and blazin' in his eyes. Then I
went back to my room and I fought it out.

"And here's where I stand now. If I stay here, if I see that yaller
light once more, they won't be no waitin'. Him and me'll have to have it
out right then. Am I a dog, maybe, that I got to stand around and jump
when he calls me?"

"My dear fellow--my dear Mr. Daniels!" cried the horrified Doctor Byrne.
"Surely you're wrong. He wouldn't go so far as to make a personal attack
upon you!"

"Wouldn't he? Bah! Not if he was a man, no. I tell you, he ain't a man;
he's what the canuks up north call a were-wolf! There ain't no mercy or
kindness in him. The blood of a man means nothin' to him. The world
would be better rid of him. Oh, he can be soft and gentle as a girl.
Mostly he is. But cross him once and he forgets all you done for him.
Give him a taste of blood and he jumps at your throat. I tell you, I've
seen him do it!"

He broke off with a shudder.

"Doc," he said, in a lower and solemn voice. "Maybe I've said too much.
Don't tell Kate nothin' about why I'm goin'. Let her go on dreamin' her
fool dream. But now hear what I'm sayin'; If Dan Barry crosses me once
more, one of us two dies, and dies damned quick. It may be me, it may be
him, but I've come to the end of my rope. I'm leavin' this place till
Barry gets a chance to come to his senses and see what I've done for
him. That's all. I'm leavin' this place because they's a blight
on it, and that blight is Dan Barry. I'm leaving this place
because--doc--because I can smell the comin' of bloodshed in it. They's
a death hangin' over it. If the lightnin' was to hit and burn it up,
house and man, the range would be better for it!"

And he turned on his heel and strode slowly down towards the corral.
Doctor Byrne followed his progress with starting eyes.




CHAPTER XXVI

THE BATTLE


The chain which fastened Black Bart had been passed around the trunk of
a tree that stood behind the ranch house, and there the great dog lay
tethered. Doctor Byrne had told Whistling Dan, with some degree of
horror, that the open air was in the highest degree dangerous to wounds,
but Whistling Dan had returned no answer. So Black Bart lay all day in
the soft sand, easing himself from time to time into a new position, and
his thoughtful eyes seemed to be concentrated on the desire to grow
well. Beside him was the chair in which Dan Barry sat for many an hour
of the day and even the night.

Kate Cumberland watched the animal from the shadow of the house; his
eyes were closed, and the long, powerful head lay inert on the sand, yet
she knew that the wolf-dog was perfectly aware of her presence. Day
after day since he lay there, she had attempted to approach Black Bart,
and day after day he had allowed her to come within reaching distance of
him, only to drive her back at the last moment by a sudden display of
the murderous, long fangs; or by one of those snarls which came out of
the black depths of his heart. Now, a dog snarls from not far down in
its throat, but the noise of an angered wild beast rolls up out of its
very entrails--a passion of hate and defiance. And when she heard that
sound, or when she saw the still more terrible silent rage of the beast,
Kate Cumberland's spirit failed, and she would shrink back again to a
safe distance.

She was not easily discouraged. She had that grim resolution which comes
to the gambler after he has played at the same table night after night,
night after night, and lost, lost, lost, until, playing with the last of
his money, he begins to mutter through his set teeth: "The luck _must_
change!" So it was with Kate Cumberland. For in Black Bart she saw the
only possible clue to Whistling Dan. There was the stallion, to be sure,
but she knew Satan too well. Nothing in the wide world could induce that
wild heart to accept more than one master--more than one friend. For
Satan there was in the animal world Black Bart, and in the world of men,
Dan Barry. These were enough. For all the rest he kept the disdainful
speed of his slender legs or the terror of his teeth and trampling
hoofs. Even if she could have induced the stallion to eat from her hand
she could never have made him willing to trust himself to her guidance.
Some such thing she felt that she must accomplish with Black Bart. To
the wild beast with the scarred and shaggy head she must become a
necessary, an accepted thing.

One repulse did not dishearten her. Again and again she made the trial.
She remembered having read that no animal can resist the thoughtful
patience of thinking man, and hour after hour she was there, until a new
light in the eye of the wolf-dog warned her that the true master was
coming.

Then she fled, and from a post of vantage in the house she would watch
the two. An intimacy surpassing the friendships and devotions of human
beings existed between them. She had seen the wolf lie with his great
head on the foot of his master and the unchanging eyes fixed on Barry's
face--and so for an hour at a stretch in mute worship. Or she had
watched the master go to the great beast to change the dressing--a thing
which could not be done too often during the day. She had seen the swift
hands remove the bandages and she had seen the cleansing solution
applied. She knew what it was; it stung even the unscratched skin, and
to a wound it must be torture, but the wolf lay and endured--not even
shuddering at the pain.

It had seemed to her that this was the great test. If she could make the
wolf lie like this for her, then, truly, she might feel herself in some
measure admitted to that mystic fellowship of the three--the man, the
stallion, and the wolf. If she could, with her own unaided hands, remove
the bandages and apply that solution, then she could know many things,
and she could feel that she was nearer to Whistling Dan than ever
before.

So she had come, time and again, with the basin and the roll of cloth
in her arm, and she had approached with infinite patience, step by step,
and then inch by inch. Once it had taken a whole hour for her to come
within a yard of the beast. And all that time Black Bart had lain with
closed eyes. But at the critical instant always there was the silent
writhing up of the lips and the gleam of hate--or the terrible snarl
while the eyes fastened on her throat. Her heart had stopped in
mid-beat; and that day she ran back into the house and threw herself on
her bed, and would not come from her room till the following morning.

Now, as she watched from the shadow of the house, with the basin of
antiseptic under her arm, the gambler's desperation rose stronger and
stronger. She came out, at length, and walked steadily towards Black
Bart. She had grown almost heedless of fear at this moment, but when she
was within a pace, once more the head reared back; the teeth flashed.
And the heart of Kate Cumberland, as always, stopped. Yet she did not
retreat this time. All the colour left her face, so that her eyes seemed
amazingly blue and wide. One foot drew back, tremblingly ready to spring
to safety; yet she held her place. She moved--and it was towards Black
Bart.

At that came a snarl that would have made the heart of a lone grizzly
quake and leave his new-found nuts. One further pace she made--and the
beast plunged up, and braced itself with its one strong fore leg. A
devil of yellow-green gleamed in either eye, and past the grinning
fangs she saw the hot, red throat, and she saw the flattened ears, the
scars on the bony forehead, the muscles that bulged on the base of the
jaw. Ay, strength to drive those knife-like teeth through flesh and bone
at a single snap. More--she had seen their effect, and the throat of a
bull cut at a single slash. And yet--she sank on her knees beside the
monster.

His head was well nigh as high as hers, then; if he attacked there could
be no dream of escape for her. Or she might drag herself away from the
tearing teeth--a disfigured horror forever. Think not that an iota of
all these terrors missed her mind. No, she felt the fangs buried in her
throat and heard the snarl of the beast stifled with blood. Yet--she
laid her hand on the bandage across the shoulder of Black Bart.

His head whirled. With those ears flattened, with that long, lean neck,
it was like the head of a striking snake. Her sleeve was rolled up to
the elbow, and over the bare skin the teeth of the wolf-dog were set.
The snarl had grown so deep and hideous that the tremor of it fairly
shook her, and she saw that the jaws of the beast slavered with hunger.
She knew--a thousand things about Black Bart, and among the rest that he
had tasted human blood. And there is a legend which says that once a
wild beast has tasted the blood of man he will taste it a second time
before he dies. She thought of that--she dared not turn her head lest
she should encounter the hellfire of Bart's eyes. Yet she had passed
all ordinary fear. She had reached that exquisite frenzy of terror when
it becomes one with courage. The very arm over which the wolf's teeth
were set moved--raised--and with both hands she untied the knot of the
bandage.

The snarling rose to a pitch of maniacal rage; the teeth compressed--if
they broke the skin it was the end; the first taste of blood would be
enough!--and drew away her arm. If she had started then, all the devil
in the creature would be loosed, for her terror taught her that. And by
some mysterious power that entered her at that moment she was able to
turn her head, slowly, and look deep into those terrible eyes.

Her arm was released.

But Black Bart crouched and the snakelike head lowered; he was quivering
throughout that steel-muscled body to throw himself at her throat. The
finger was on the hair-trigger; it needed a pressure not greater than a
bodiless thought. And still she looked into the eyes of the wolf-dog;
and her terror had made her strangely light of body and dizzy of mind.
Then the change came, suddenly. The yellow-green changed, swirled in the
eyes of Black Bart; the eyes themselves wavered, and at last looked
away; the snarl dropped to a sullen growl. And Black Bart lay down as he
had been before.

His head was still turned towards her, to be sure. And the teeth were
still bared, as with rapid, deft fingers she undid the bandage; and from
instant to instant, as the bandage in spite of her care pressed against
the wound, the beast shivered and wicked glances flashed up at her face.
The safe-blower who finds his "soup" cooling and dares not set it down
felt as Kate Cumberland felt then.

She never knew what kept her hands steady, but steady they were. The
cloth was removed, and now she could see the red, angry wound, with the
hair shaven away to a little distance on every side. She dipped her
cloth into the antiseptic; it stung her fingers! She touched the cloth
lightly against the wound; and to her astonishment the wolf-dog relaxed
every muscle and let his head fall to the ground; also the growl died
into a soft whine, and this in turn ended.

She had conquered! Ay, when the wound was thoroughly cleansed and when
she started to wind the bandage again, she had even the courage to touch
Black Bart's body and make him rise up so that she could pass the cloth
freely. At her touch he shuddered, to be sure, as a man might shudder at
the touch of an unclean thing, but there was no snarl, and the teeth
were not bared.

As she tied the knot which secured the bandage in its place she was
aware that the eyes of Bart, no longer yellow-green, watched her; and
she felt some vague movement of the wonder that was passing through the
brute mind. Then the head of the wolf-dog jerked up; he was staring at
something in the distance, and there was nothing under heaven that Bart
would raise his head to look at in this manner except one thing. The
fingers of Kate grew stiff, and trembled. Slowly, in a panic, she
finished the knot, and then she was aware of someone who had approached
without sound and now stood behind her.

She looked up, at length, before she rose to her feet.

Thankfulness welled up warm in her heart to find her voice steady and
commonplace when she said: "The wound is much better. Bart will be well
in a very few days now."

Whistling Dan did not answer, and his wondering eyes glanced past her
own. She saw that he was staring at a double row of white indentations
on her forearm, where the teeth of Black Bart had set. He knew those
marks, and she knew he knew. Strength was leaving her, and weakness went
through her--water where blood should have been. She dared not stay. In
another moment she would be hopelessly in the grip of hysteria.

So she rose, and passed Dan without a word, and went slowly towards the
house. She tried to hurry, indeed, but her legs would not quicken their
pace. Yet at length she had reached shelter and no sooner was she past
the door of the house than her knees buckled; she had to steady herself
with both hands as she dragged herself up the stairs to her room. There,
from the window, she looked down and saw Whistling Dan standing as she
had left him, staring blankly at the wolf-dog.




CHAPTER XXVII

THE CONQUEST


There was no star-storming confidence in Kate Cumberland after that
first victory. Rather she felt as the general who deploys his
skirmishers and drives in the outposts of an enemy. The advantage is
his, but it has really only served to give him some intimation of the
strength of the enemy. At the supper table this night she found
Whistling Dan watching her--not openly, for she could never catch his
eye--but subtly, secretly, she knew that he was measuring her, studying
her; whether in hostility, amity, or mere wonder, she could not tell.
Finally a vast uneasiness overtook her and she turned to the doctor for
relief. Doctor Randall Byrne held a singular position in the attention
of Kate. Since the night of the fire and her open talk with him, the
doctor knew "everything," and women are troubled in the presence of a
man who knows the details of the past.

The shield behind which they hide in social intercourse is a touch of
mystery--or at least a hope of mystery. The doctor, however, was not
like other men; he was more similar to a precocious child and she
comforted herself in his obvious talent for silence. If he had been
alert, strong, self-confident, she might have hated him because he knew
so much about her; but when she noted the pale, thoughtful face, the
vast forehead outbalancing the other features, and the wistful,
uncertain eyes, she felt nothing towards him stronger than pity.

It is good for a woman to have something which she may pity, a child, an
aged parent, or a house-dog. It provides, in a way, the background
against which she acts; so Kate, when in doubt, turned to the doctor, as
on this night. There was a certain cruelty in it, for when she smiled at
him the poor doctor became crimson, and when she talked to him his
answers stumbled on his tongue; and when she was silent and merely
looked at him that was worst of all, for he became unable to manage
knife and fork and would sit crumbling bread and looking frightened.
Then he was apt to draw out his glasses and make a move to place them on
his nose, but he always caught and checked himself in time--which added
to his embarrassment.

These small maneuvres had not lasted long before the girl became aware
that the silent attention of Whistling Dan had passed from her to the
doctor--and held steadily upon him. She did not go so far as to call it
jealousy, but certainly it was a grave and serious consideration that
measured the doctor up and down and back again; and it left her free to
examine the two men in contrast. For the first time it struck her that
they were much alike in many ways. Physically, for instance, there was
the same slenderness, the same delicacy with which the details were
finished; the same fragile hands, for instance. The distinction lay in a
suggestion of strength and inexhaustible reserve of energy which Dan
Barry possessed. The distinction lay still more in their faces. That of
Byrne was worn and pallied from the long quest and struggle for truth;
the body was feeble; the eyes were uncertain; but within there was a
powerful machine which could work infallibly from the small to the large
and the large to the small. With Whistling Dan there was no suggestion
at all of mental care. She could not imagine him worrying over a
problem. His knowledge was not even communicable by words; it was more
impalpable than the instinct of a woman; and there was about him the
wisdom and the coldness of Black Bart himself.

The supper ended too soon for Kate. She had been rallying Randall Byrne,
and as soon as he could graciously leave, the poor fellow rose with a
crimson face and left the room; and behind him, sauntering apparently in
the most casual manner, went Whistling Dan. As for Kate Cumberland, she
could not put all the inferences together--she dared not; but when she
lay in her bed that night it was a long time before she could sleep, for
there was a voice inside her, singing.

She chose her time the next day. Dan alternated between Black Bart and
old Joe Cumberland during most of the day, and no sooner had he left
the wolf-dog in the morning than she went out to Bart.

As always, Black Bart lay with his head flattened against the sand,
dreaming in the sun, and not an eyelid quivered when she approached, yet
she understood perfectly that the animal knew every move she made. She
would have attempted to dress the wound again, but the memory of the
ordeal of yesterday was too terrible. She might break down in the midst
of her effort, and the first sign of weakness, she knew, was the only
spur which Black Bart needed. So she went, instead, to the chair where
Dan often sat for hours near the dog, and there she took her place,
folded her hands on her lap, and waited. She had no particular plan in
mind, more than that she hoped to familiarize the great brute with the
sight of her. Once he had known her well enough, but now he had
forgotten all that passed before as completely, no doubt, as Whistling
Dan himself had forgotten.

While she sat there, musing, she remembered a scene that had occurred
not many a month before. She had been out walking one fall day, and had
gone from the house down past the corrals where a number of cattle newly
driven in from the range were penned. They were to be driven off for
shipment the next day. A bellowing caught her ear from one of the
enclosures and she saw two bulls standing horn to horn, their heads
lowered, and their puffing and snorting breaths knocking up the dust
while they pawed the sand back in clouds against their flanks. While
she watched, they rushed together, bellowing, and for a moment they
swayed back and forth. It was an unequal battle, however, for one of the
animals was a hardened veteran, scarred from many a battle on the range,
while the other was a young three-year old with a body not half so
strong as his heart. For a short time he sustained the weight of the
larger bull, but eventually his knees buckled, and then dropped heavily
against the earth. At that the older bull drew back a little and charged
again. This time he avoided the long horns of his rival and made the
unprotected flank of the animal his target. If he had charged squarely
the horns would have been buried to the head; but striking at an angle
only one of them touched the target and delivered a long, ripping blow.
With the blood streaming down his side, the wounded bull made off into a
group of cows, and when the victor pursued him closely, he at length
turned tail and leaped the low fence--for the corral was a new one,
hastily built for the occasion. The conqueror raised his head inside the
fence and bellowed his triumph, and outside the fence the other
commenced pawing up the sand again, switching his tail across his
bleeding side, and turning his little red eyes here and there. They
fixed, at length, upon Kate Cumberland, and she remembered with a start
of horror that she was wearing a bright red blouse. The next instant the
bull was charging. She turned in a hopeless flight. Safety was hundreds
of yards away in the house; the skirts tangled about her legs; and
behind her the dull impacts of the bull's hoofs swept close and closer.
Then she heard a snarl in front, a deep-throated, murderous snarl, and
she saw Black Bart racing towards her. He whizzed by her like a black
thunderbolt; there was a roar and bellow behind her, and at the same
time she stumbled over a fence-board and fell upon her knees. But when
she cast a glance of terror behind her she saw the bull lying on its
side with lolling tongue and glazing eyes and the fangs of Black Dart
were buried in its throat.

When she reached this point in her musings her glance naturally turned
towards the wolf-dog, and she started violently when she saw that Bart
was slinking towards her, trailing the helpless leg. The moment he felt
her eyes upon him, Bart dropped down, motionless, with a wicked baring
of his teeth; his eyes closed, and he seemed, as usual, dreaming in the
sun.

Was the brute stalking her? It was worse, in a way, than the ordeal of
the day before, this stealthy, noiseless approach. And in her panic she
first thought of springing from her chair and reaching a distance which
the chain would keep him from following. Yet it was very strange. Black
Bart in his wildest days after Dan brought him to the ranch had never
been prone to wantonly attack human beings. Infringe upon his right,
come suddenly upon him, and then, indeed, there was a danger to all
saving his master. But this daylight stalking was stranger than words
could tell.

She forced her eyes to look straight ahead and sat with a beating
heart, waiting. Then, by slow degrees, she let her glance travel
cautiously back towards Bart without turning her head. There was no
doubt about it! The great wolf-dog was slinking towards her on his
belly, still trailing the wounded foreleg. There was something snakelike
in that slow approach, so silent and so gradual.

And yet she waited, moving neither hand nor foot.

A sort of nightmare paralysis held her, as when we flee from some horror
in our dreams and find that our limbs have grown numb. Behind us races
the deadly thing, closer and closer; before us is the door of
safety--only a step to reach it--and yet we cannot move a foot!

It was not all pure terror. There was an incredible excitement as
well--her will against the will of the dumb brute--which would conquer?

She heard a faint rustling of the sand beside her and could hardly keep
from turning her head again. But she succeeded. Waves of coldness broke
on her mind; her whole body would have shuddered had not fear chilled
her into motionlessness. All reason told her that it was madness to sit
there with the stealthy horror sliding closer; even now it might be too
late. If she rose the shaggy form might spring from the ground at her.
Perhaps the wolf had treasured up the pain from the day before and now--

A black form did, indeed, rise from the ground, but slowly. And standing
on three legs, Bart stood a moment and stared in the face of the girl.
The fear rushed out of her heart; and her face flushed hotly with
relief. There was no enmity in the steady stare of the wolf-dog. She
could feel that even though she did not look. Something that Whistling
Dan had said long before came to her: "Even a hoss and a dog, Kate, can
get terrible lonesome."

Black Bart moved until he faced her directly. His ears were pricking in
eagerness; she heard a snarl, but so low and muffled that there was
hardly a threat in it; could it be a plea for attention? She would not
look down to the sharp eyes, until a weight fell on her knees--it was
the long, scarred head of the wolf! The joy that swelled in her was so
great that it pained her like a grief.

She stretched out her hand, slowly, slowly towards that head. And Black
Bart shrank and quivered, and his lips writhed back from the long,
deadly teeth, and his snarl grew to a harsher, hoarser threat; still he
did not remove his head, and he allowed the hand to touch him between
the eyes and stroke the fur back to between the ears. Only one other
hand had ever touched that formidable head in such a manner! The teeth
no longer showed; the keen, suspicious eyes grew dim with pleasure; the
snarl sank to murmur and then died out.

"Bart!" commanded the girl, sharply.

The head jerked up, but the questing eyes did not look at her. He
glanced over his shoulder to find the danger that had made her voice so
hard. And she yearned to take the fierce head in her arms; there were
tears she could have wept over it. He was snarling again, prepared
already to battle, and for her sake.

"Bart!" she repeated, more gently. "Lie down!"

He turned his head slowly back to her and looked with the unspeakable
wistfulness of the dumb brutes into her eyes. But there was only one
voice in which Bart could speak, and that was the harsh, rattling snarl
which would have made a mountain-lion check itself mid-leap and slink
back to its lair. In such a voice he answered Kate, and then sank down,
gradually. And he lay still.

So simply, and yet so mysteriously, she was admitted to the partnership.
But though one member of that swift, grim trio had accepted her, did it
mean that the other two would take her in?

A weight sank on her feet and when she looked down she saw that Black
Bart had lowered his head upon them, and so he lay there with his eyes
closed, dreaming in the sun.




CHAPTER XXVIII

THE TRAIL


Bandages and antiseptics and constant care, by themselves could not have
healed Black Bart so swiftly, but nature took a strong hand. The wound
closed with miraculous speed. Three days after he had laid his head on
the feet of Kate Cumberland, the wolf-dog was hobbling about on three
legs and tugging now and again at the restraining chain; and the day
after that the bandages were taken off and Whistling Dan decided that
Bart might run loose. It was a brief ceremony, but a vital one. Doctor
Byrne went out with Barry to watch the loosing of the dog; from the
window of Joe Cumberland's room he and Kate observed what passed. There
was little hesitancy in Black Bart. He merely paused to sniff the foot
of Randall Byrne, snarl, and then trotted with a limp towards the
corrals.

Here, in a small enclosure with rails much higher than the other
corrals, stood Satan, and Black Bart made straight for the stallion. He
was seen from afar, and the black horse stood waiting, his head thrown
high in the air, his ears pricking forward, the tail flaunting, a
picture of expectancy. So under the lower rail Bart slunk and stood
under the head of Satan, growling terribly. Of this display of anger
the stallion took not the slightest notice, but lowered his beautiful
head until his velvet nose touched the cold muzzle of Bart. There was
something ludicrous about the greeting--it was such an odd shade close
to the human. It was as brief as it was strange, for Black Bart at once
whirled and trotted away towards the barns.

By the time Doctor Byrne and Whistling Dan caught up with him, the
wolf-dog was before the heaps and ashes which marked the site of the
burned barn. Among these white and grey and black heaps he picked his
way, sniffing hastily here and there. In the very centre of the place he
sat down suddenly on his haunches, pointed his nose aloft, and wailed
with tremendous dreariness.

"Now," murmured the doctor to Dan, "that strikes me as a singular
manifestation of intelligence in an animal--he has found the site of the
very barn where he was hurt--upon my word! Even fire doesn't affect his
memory!"

Here he observed that the face of Whistling Dan had grown grim. He ran
to Bart and crouched beside him, muttering; and Byrne heard.

"That's about where you was lyin'," said Dan, "and you smell your own
blood on the ground. Keep tryin', Bart. They's something else to find
around here."

The wolf-dog looked his master full in the face with pricking ears,
whined and then started off sniffling busily at the heaps of ashes.

"The shooting of the dog is quite a mystery," said Byrne, by way of
conversation. "Do you suppose that one of the men from the bunk-house
could have shot him?"

But Dan seemed no longer aware of the doctor's presence. He slipped here
and there with the wolf-dog among the ash-heaps, pausing when Bart
paused, talking to the brute continually. Sometimes he pointed out to
Bart things which the doctor did not perceive and Bart whined with a
terrible, slavering, blood-eagerness.

The wolf-dog suddenly left the ash-heaps and now darted in swiftly
entangled lines here and there among the barns. Dan Barry stood
thoughtfully still, but now and then he called a word of encouragement.

And Black Bart stayed with his work. Now he struck out a wide circle,
running always with his nose close to the ground. Again he doubled back
sharply to the barn-site, and began again in a new direction. He ran
swiftly, sometimes putting his injured leg to the ground with hardly a
limp, and again drawing it up and running on three feet. In a moment he
passed out of sight behind a slight rise of ground to the left of the
ash-heaps, and at some little distance. He did not reappear. Instead, a
long, shrill wail came wavering towards the doctor and Dan Barry. It
raised the hair on the head of the doctor and sent a chill through his
veins; but it sent Whistling Dan racing towards the place behind which
Black Bart had disappeared. The doctor hurried after as fast as he
might and came upon the wolf-dog making small, swift circles, his nose
to the ground, and then crossing to and fro out of the circles. And the
face of the master was black while he watched. He ran again to Bart and
began talking swiftly.

"D'you see?" he asked, pointing. "From behind this here hill you could
get a pretty good sight of the barn--and you wouldn't be seen, hardly,
from the barn. Someone must have waited here. Look about, Bart, you'll
be findin' a pile of signs, around here. It means that them that done
the shootin' and the firin' of the barn stood right here behind this
hill-top and watched the barn burn--and was hopin' that Satan and you
wouldn't ever come out alive. That's the story."

He dropped to his knees and caught Bart as the big dog ran by.

"Find'em, Bart!" he whispered. "Find'em!"

And he struck sharply on the scar where the bullet had ploughed its way
into Bart's flesh.

The answer of Bart was a yelp too sharp and too highly pitched to have
come from the throat of any mere dog. Once more he darted out and ran
here and there, and Doctor Byrne heard the beast moaning as it ran. Then
Bart ceased circling and cut down the slope away from the hill at a
sharp trot.

A cry of inarticulate joy burst from Dan, and then: "You've found it!
You have it!" and the master ran swiftly after the dog. He followed the
latter only for a short distance down the slope and then stood still
and whistled. He had to repeat the call before the dog turned and ran
back to his master, where he whined eagerly about the man's feet. There
was something uncanny and horrible about it; it was as if the dumb beast
was asking for a life, and the life of a man. The doctor turned back and
walked thoughtfully to the house.

At the door he was met by Kate and a burst of eager questions, and he
told, simply, all that he had seen.

"You'll get the details from Mr. Barry," he concluded.

"I know the details," answered the girl. "He's found the trail and he
knows where it points, now. And he'll want to be following it before
many hours have passed. Doctor Byrne, I need you now--terribly. You must
convince Dan that if he leaves us it will be a positive danger to Dad.
Can you do that?"

"At least," said the doctor, "there will be little deception in that. I
will do what I can to persuade him to stay."

"Then," she said hurriedly, "sit here, and I shall sit here. We'll meet
Dan together when he comes in."

They had hardly taken their places when Barry entered, the wolf at his
heels; at the door he paused to flash a glance at them and then crossed
the room. On the farther side he stopped again.

"I might be tellin' you," he said in his soft voice, "that now's Bart's
well I got to be travellin' again. I start in the morning."

The pleading eyes of Kate raised Byrne to his feet.

"My dear Mr. Barry!" he called. The other turned again and waited. "Do
you mean that you will leave us while Mr. Cumberland is in this critical
condition?"

A shadow crossed the face of Barry.

"I'd stay if I could," he answered. "But it ain't possible!"

"What takes you away is your affair, sir," said the doctor. "My concern
is Mr. Cumberland. He is in a very precarious condition. The slightest
nerve shock may have--fatal--results."

Dan Barry sighed.

"Seemed to me," he answered, "that he was buckin' up considerable. Don't
look so thin, doc."

"His body may be well enough," said the doctor calmly, "but his nerves
are wrecked. I am afraid to prophesy the consequences if you leave him."

It was apparent that a great struggle was going on in Barry. He answered
at length: "How long would I have to stay? One rain could wipe out all
the sign and make me like a blind man in the desert. Doc, how long would
I have to stay?"

"A few days," answered Byrne, "may work wonders with him."

The other hesitated.

"I'll go up and talk with him," he said, "and what he wants I'll do."




CHAPTER XXIX

TALK


He was long in getting his answer. The hours dragged on slowly for Kate
and the doctor, for if Joe Cumberland could hold Dan it was everything
to the girl, and if Barry left at once there might be some root for the
hope which was growing stronger and stronger every day in the heart of
Randall Byrne. Before evening a not unwelcome diversion broke the
suspense somewhat.

It was the arrival of no less a person than Marshal Jeff Calkins. His
shoulders were humped and his short legs bowed from continual riding,
and his head was slung far forward on a gaunt neck; so that when he
turned his head from one to another in speaking it was with a peculiar
pendulum motion. The marshal had a reputation which was strong over
three hundred miles and more of a mountain-desert. This was strange, for
the marshal was a very talkative man, and talkative men are not popular
on the desert; but it has been discovered that on occasion his six-gun
could speak as rapidly and much more accurately than his tongue. So
Marshal Calkins waxed in favour.

He set the household at ease upon his arrival by announcing that "they
hadn't nothin' for him there." All he wanted was a place to bunk in,
some chow, and a feed for the horse. His trail led past the Cumberland
Ranch many and many a dreary mile.

The marshal was a politic man, and he had early in life discovered that
the best way to get along with any man was to meet him on his own
ground. His opening blast of words at Doctor Byrne was a sample of his
art.

"So you're a doc, hey? Well, sir, when I was a kid I had a colt that
stuck its foreleg in a hole and busted it short and when that colt had
to be shot they wasn't no holdin' me. No, sir, I could of cleaned up on
the whole family. And ever since then I've had a hankerin' to be a doc.
Something about the idea of cuttin' into a man that always sort of
tickled me. They's only one main thing that holds me back--I don't like
the idea of knifin' a feller when he ain't got a chance to fight back!
That's me!"

To this Doctor Randall Byrne bowed, rather dazed, but returned no
answer.

"And how's your patient, doc?" pursued the irresistible marshal. "How's
old Joe Cumberland? I remember when me and Joe used to trot about the
range together. I was sort of a kid then; but think of old Joe bein'
down in bed--sick! Why, I ain't never been sick a day in my life. Sick?
I'd laugh myse'f plumb to death if anybody ever wanted me to go to bed.
What's the matter with him, anyway?"

"His nerves are a bit shaken about," responded the doctor. "To which I
might add that there is superimposed an arterial condition----"

"Cut it short, Doc," cried the marshal goodnaturedly. "I ain't got a
dictionary handy. Nerves bad, eh? Well, I don't wonder about that. The
old man's had enough trouble lately to make anybody nervous. I wouldn't
like to go through it myself. No, sir! What with that Dan Barry--I ain't
steppin' on any corns, Kate, am I?"

She smiled vaguely, but the marshal accepted the smile as a strong
dissent.

"They was a time not so long ago when folks said that you was kind of
sweet on Dan. Glad to hear they ain't nothin' in it. 'S a matter of
fact----"

But here Kate interrupted with a raised hand. She said: "I think that
was the supper gong. Yes, there it is. We'll go in now, if you wish."

"They's only one sound in the world that's better to me than a dinner
gong," said the profuse marshal, as they seated themselves around the
big dining table, "and that was the sound of my wife's voice when she
said 'I will.' Queer thing, too. Maria ain't got a very soft voice, most
generally speakin', but when she busted up in front of that preacher and
says 'I will,' why, God A'mighty--askin' your pardon, Kate--they was a
change come in her voice that was like a bell chimin' down in her
throat--a bell ringin' away off far, you know, so's you only kind of
guess at it! But comin' back to you and Dan, Kate----"

It was in vain she plied the marshal with edibles. His tongue wagged
upon roller-bearings and knew no stopping. Moreover, the marshal had
spent some portion of his life in a boarding house and had mastered the
boarding-house art of talking while he ate.

"Comin' back to you and Dan, we was all of us sayin' that you and Dan
kind of had an eye for each other. I s'pose we was all wrong. You see,
that was back in the days before Dan busted loose. When he was about the
range most usually he was the quietest man I ever sat opposite to
barrin' one--and that was a feller that went west with a bum heart at
the chuck table! Ha, ha, ha!" The marshal's laughter boomed through the
big room as he recalled this delightful anecdote. He went on: "But after
that Jim Silent play we all changed our minds, some. D'you know, doc, I
was in Elkhead the night that Dan got our Lee Haines?"

"I've never heard of the episode," murmured the doctor.

"You ain't? Well, I be damned!--askin' your pardon, Kate----But you
sure ain't lived in these parts long! Which you wouldn't think one man
could ride into a whole town, go to the jail, knock out two guards that
was proved men, take the keys, unlock the irons off'n the man he wanted,
saddle a hoss, and ride through a whole town--full of folks that was
shootin' at him. Now, would you think that was possible?"

"Certainly not."

"And it _ain't_ possible, I'm here to state. But they was something
different about Dan Barry. D'you ever notice it, Kate?"

She was far past speech.

"No, I guess you never would have noticed it. You was livin' too close
to him all the time to see how different he was from other fellers.
Anyway, he done it. They say he got plugged while he was ridin' through
the lines and he bled all the way home, and he got there unconscious. Is
that right, Kate?"

He waited an instant and then accepted the silence as an affirmative.

"Funny thing about that, too. The place where he come to was Buck
Daniels' house. Well, Buck was one of Jim Silent's men, and they say
Buck had tried to plug Dan before that. But Dan let him go that time,
and when Buck seen Dan ride in all covered with blood he remembered that
favour and he kept Dan safe from Jim Silent and safe from the law until
Dan was well. I seen Buck this morning over to Rafferty's place,
and----"

Here the marshal noted a singular look in the eyes of Kate Cumberland, a
look so singular that he turned in his chair to follow it. He saw Dan
Barry in the act of closing the door behind him, and Marshal Calkins
turned a deep and violent red, varied instantly by a blotchy yellow
which in turn faded to something as near white as his tan permitted.

"Dan Barry!" gasped the marshal, rising, and he reached automatically
towards his hip before he remembered that he had laid his belt and guns
aside before he entered the dining-room, as etiquette is in the
mountain-desert. For it is held that shooting at the table disturbs the
appetite.

"Good evenin'," said Dan quietly. "Was it Buck Daniels that you seen at
Rafferty's place, Marshal Calkins?"

"Him," nodded the marshal, hoarsely. "Yep, Buck Daniels."

And then he sank into his chair, silent for the first time. His eyes
followed Barry as though hypnotized.

"I'm kind of glad to know where I can find him," said Barry, and took
his place at the table.

The silence continued for a while, with all eyes focused on the
new-comer. It was the doctor who had to speak first.

"You've talked things over with Mr. Cumberland?" he asked.

"We had a long talk," nodded Dan. "You was wrong about him, doc. He
thinks he can do without me."

"What?" cried Kate.

"He thinks he can do without me," said Dan Barry. "We talked it all
over."

The silence fell again. Kate Cumberland was staring blankly down at her
plate, seeing nothing; and Doctor Byrne looked straight before him and
felt the pulse drumming in his throat. His chance, then, was to come. By
this time the marshal had recovered his breath.

He said to Dan: "Seems like you been away some time, Dan. Where you been
hangin' out?"

"I been ridin' about," answered Dan vaguely.

"Well," chuckled the marshal, "I'm glad they ain't no more Jim Silents
about these parts--not while you're here and while I'm here. You kept
things kind of busy for Glasgow, Dan."

He turned to Kate, who had pushed back her chair.

"What's the matter, Kate?" he boomed. "You ain't lookin' any too
tip-top. Sick?"

"I may be back in a moment," said the girl, "but don't delay supper for
me."

She went out of the room with a step poised well enough, but the moment
the door closed behind her she fairly staggered to the nearest chair and
sank into it, her head fallen back, her eyes dim, and all the strength
gone from her body and her will. Several minutes passed before she
roused herself, and then it was to drag herself slowly up the stairs to
the door of her father's room. She opened it without knocking, and then
closed it and stood with her back against it, in the shadow.




CHAPTER XXX

THE VOICE OF BLACK BART


Her father lay propped high with pillows among which his head lolled
back. The only light in the room was near the bed and it cast a glow
upon the face of Joe Cumberland and on the white linen, the white hair,
the white, pointed beard. All the rest of the room swam in darkness. The
chairs were blotches, indistinct, uncertain; even the foot of the bed
trailed off to nothingness. It was like one of those impressionistic,
very modern paintings, where the artist centres upon one point and
throws the rest of his canvas into dull oblivion. The focus here was the
face of the old cattleman. The bedclothes, never stirred, lay in folds
sharply cut out with black shadows, and they had a solid seeming, as the
mort-cloth rendered in marble over the effigy. That suggested weight
exaggerated the frailty of the body beneath the clothes. Exhausted by
that burden, the old man lay in the arms of a deadly languor, so that
there was a kinship of more than blood between him and Kate at this
moment. She stepped to the side of the bed and stood staring down at
him, and there was little gentleness in her expression. So cold was
that settled gaze that her father stirred, at length, shivered, and
without opening his eyes, fumbled at the bed-spread and drew it a little
more closely about his shoulders. Even that did not give him rest; and
presently the wrinkled eyelids opened and he looked up at his daughter.
A film of weariness heavier than sleep at first obscured his sight, but
this in turn cleared away; he frowned a little to clear his vision, and
then wagged his head slowly from side to side.

"Kate," he said feebly, "I done my best. It simply wasn't good enough."

She answered in a voice as low as his, but steadier: "What could have
happened? Dad, what happened to make you give up every hold on Dan? What
was it? You were the last power that could keep him here. You knew it.
Why did you tell him he could go?"

The monotone was more deadly than any emphasis of a raised word.

"If you'd been here," pleaded Joe Cumberland, "you'd have done what I
done. I couldn't help it. There he sat on the foot of the bed--see where
them covers still kind of sag down--after he told me that he had
something to do away from the ranch and that he wanted to go now that
Black Bart was well enough to travel in short spells. He asked me if I
still needed him."

"And you told him no?" she cried. "Oh Dad, you know it means everything
to me--but you told him no?" He raised a shaking hand to ward off the
outburst and stop it.

"Not at first, honey. Gimme a chance to talk, Kate. At first I told him
that I needed him--and God knows that I _do_ need him. I dunno why--not
even Doc Byrne knows what there is about Dan that helps me. I told Dan
all them things. And he didn't say nothin', but jest sat still on the
foot of the bed and looked at me.

"It ain't easy to bear his eyes, Kate. I lay here and tried at first to
smile at him and talk about other things--but it ain't easy to bear his
eyes. You take a dog, Kate. It ain't supposed to be able to look you in
the eye for long; but s'pose you met up with a dog that could. It'd make
you feel sort of queer inside. Which I felt that way while Dan was
lookin' at me. Not that he was threatenin' me. No, it wasn't that. He
was only thoughtful, but I kept gettin' more nervous and more fidgety. I
felt after a while like I couldn't stand it. I had to crawl out of bed
and begin walkin' up and down till I got quieter. But I seen that
wouldn't do.

"Then I begun to think. I thought of near everything in a little while.
I thought of what would happen s'pose Dan should stay here. Maybe you
and him would get to like each other again. Maybe you'd get married.
Then what would happen?

"I thought of the wild geese flyin' north in the spring o' the year and
the wild geese flyin' south in the fall o' the year. And I thought of
Dan with his heart followin' the wild geese--God knows why!--and I seen
a picture of him standin' and watchin' them, with you nearby and not
able to get one look out of him. I seen that, and it made my blood
chilly, like the air on a frosty night.

"Kate, they's something like the power of prophecy that comes to a dyin'
man!"

"Dad!" she cried. "What are you saying?"

She slipped to her knees beside the bed and drew his cold hands towards
her, but Joe Cumberland shook his head and mildly drew one hand away. He
raised it, with extended forefinger--a sign of infinite warning; and
with the glow of the lamp full upon his face, the eyes were pits of
shadow with stirring orbs of fire in the depths.

"No, I ain't dead now," he said, "but I ain't far away from it. Maybe
days, maybe weeks, maybe whole months. But I've passed the top of the
hill, and I know I'm ridin' down the slope. Pretty soon I'll finish the
trail. But what little time I've got left is worth more'n everything
that went before. I can see my life behind me and the things before like
a cold mornin' light was over it all--you know before the sun begins to
beat up the waves of heat and the mist gets tanglin' in front of your
eyes? You know when you can look right across a thirty mile valley and
name the trees, a'most the other side? That's the way I can see now.
They ain't no feelin' about it. My body is all plumb paralyzed. I jest
see and know--that's all.

"And what I see of you and Dan--if you ever marry--is plain--hell! Love
ain't the only thing they is between a man and a woman. They's something
else. I dunno what it is. But it's a sort of a common purpose; it's
havin' both pairs of feet steppin' out on the same path. That's what it
is. But your trail would go one way and Dan's would go another, and
pretty soon your love wouldn't be nothin' but a big wind blowin' between
two mountains--and all it would do would be to freeze up the blood in
your hearts."

"I seen all that, while Dan was sittin' at the foot of the bed. Not that
I don't want him here. When I see him I see the world the way it was
when I was under thirty. When there wasn't nothin' I wouldn't try once,
when all I wanted was a gun and a hoss and a song to keep me from
tradin' with kings. No, it ain't goin' to be easy for me when Dan goes
away. But what's my tag-end of life compared with yours? You got to be
given a chance; you got to be kept away from Dan. That's why I told him,
finally, that I thought I could get along without him."

"Whether or not you save me," she answered, "you signed a death warrant
for at least two men when you told him that."

"Two men? They's only one he's after--and Buck Daniel has had a long
start. He can't be caught!"

"That Marshal Calkins is here to-night. He saw Buck at Rafferty's, and
he talked about it in the hearing of Dan at the table. I watched Dan's
face. You may read the past and see the future, Dad, but I know Dan's
face. I can read it as the sailor reads the sea. Before to-morrow night
Buck Daniels will be dead; and Dan's hands will be red."

She dropped her head against the bedclothes and clasped her fingers over
the bright hair.

When she could speak again she raised her head and went on in the same
swift, low monotone: "And besides, Black Bart has found the trail of the
man who fired the barn and shot him. And the body of Buck won't be cold
before Dan will be on the heels of the other man. Oh, Dad, two lives lay
in the hollow of your hand. You could have saved them by merely asking
Dan to stay with you; but you've thrown them away."

"Buck Daniels!" repeated the old man, the horror of the thing dawning on
him only slowly. "Why didn't he get farther away? Why didn't he ride
night and day after he left us? He's got to be warned that Dan is
coming!"

"I've thought of that. I'm going into my room now to write a note and
send it to Buck by one of our men. But at the most he'll have less than
a day's start--and what is a day to Satan and Dan Barry?"

"I thought it was for the best," muttered old Joe. "I couldn't see how
it was wrong. But I can send for Dan and tell him that I've changed my
mind." He broke off in a groan. "No, that wouldn't be no good. He's set
his mind on going by this time, and nothing can keep him back. But
--Kate, maybe I can delay him. Has he gone up to his room yet?"

"He's in there now. Talk softly or he'll hear us. He's walking up and
down, now."

"Ay, ay, ay!" nodded old Joe, his eyes widening with horror, "and his
footfall is like the padding of a big cat. I could tell it out of a
thousand steps. And I know what's going on inside his mind!"

"Yes, yes; he's thinking of the blow Buck Daniels struck him; he's
thinking of the man who shot down Bart. God save them both!"

"Listen!" whispered the cattleman. "He's raised the window. I heard the
rattle of the weights. He's standing there in front of the window,
letting the wind of the night blow in his face!"

The wind from the window, indeed, struck against the door communicating
with Joe Cumberland's room, and shook it as if a hand were rattling at
the knob.

The girl began to speak again, as swiftly as before, her voice the
barely audible rushing of a whisper: "The law will trail him, but I
won't give him up. Dad, I'm going to fight once more to keep him
here--and if I fail, I'll follow him around the world." Such words
should have come loudly, ringing. Spoken so softly, they gave a terrible
effect; like the ravings of delirium, or the monotone of insanity. And
with the white light against her face she was more awe-inspiring than
beautiful. "He loved me once; and the fire must still be in him; such
fire _can't_ go out, and I'll fan it back to life, and then if it burns
me--if it burns us both--the fire itself cannot be more torture than to
live on like this!"

"Hush, lass!" murmured her father. "Listen to what's coming!"

It was a moan, very low pitched, and then rising slowly, and gaining in
volume, rising up the scale with a dizzy speed, till it burst and rang
through the house--the long-drawn wail of a wolf when it hunts on a
fresh trail.




CHAPTER XXXI

THE MESSAGE


Buck Daniels opened his eyes and sat bolt-upright in bed. He had dreamed
the dream again, and this time, as always, he awakened before the end.
He needed no rubbing of eyes to rouse his senses. If a shower of cold
water had been dashed upon him he could not have rallied from sound
slumber so suddenly. His first movement was to snatch his gun from under
his mattress, not that he dreamed of needing it, but for some reason the
pressure of the butt against his palm was reassuring. It was better than
the grip of his friend--a strong man.

It was the first grey of dawn, a light so feeble that it served merely
to illuminate the darkness, so to speak. It fell with any power upon one
thing alone, the bit of an old, dusty bridle that hung against the wall,
and it made the steel glitter like a watchful eye. There was a great
dryness in the throat of Buck Daniels; and his whole big body shook with
the pounding of his heart.

He was not the only thing that was awake in the grey hour. For now he
caught a faint and regular creaking of the stairs. Someone was mounting
with an excessively cautious and patient step, for usually the crazy
stairs that led up to this garret room of the Rafferty house creaked and
groaned a protest at every footfall. Now the footfall paused at the head
of the stairs, as when one stops to listen.

Buck Daniels raised his revolver and levelled it on the door; but his
hand was shaking so terribly that he could not keep his aim--the muzzle
kept veering back and forth across the door. He seized his right hand
with his left, and crushed it with a desperate pressure. Then it was
better. The quivering of the two hands counteracted each other and he
managed to keep some sort of a bead.

Now the step continued again, down the short hall. A hand fell on the
knob of the door and pressed it slowly open. Against the deeper
blackness of the hall beyond, Buck saw a tall figure, hatless. His
finger curved about the trigger, and still he did not fire. Even to his
hysterical brain it occurred that Dan Barry would be wearing a hat--and
moreover the form was tall.

"Buck!" called a guarded voice.

The muzzle of Daniels' revolver dropped; he threw the gun on his bed and
stood up.

"Jim Rafferty!" he cried, with something like a groan in his voice.
"What in the name of God are you doin' here at this hour?"

"Someone come here and banged on the door a while ago. Had a letter for
you. Must have rid a long ways and come fast; while he was givin' me
the letter at the door I heard his hoss pantin' outside. He wouldn't
stay, but went right back. Here's the letter, Buck. Hope it ain't no bad
news. Got a light here, ain't you?"

"All right, Jim," answered Buck Daniels, taking the letter. "I got a
lantern. You get back to bed."

The other replied with a noisy yawn and left the room while Buck kindled
the lantern. By that light he read his name upon the envelope and tore
it open. It was very brief.


   "Dear Buck,

   Last night at supper Dan found out where
   you are. In the morning he's leaving the ranch and
   we know that he intends to ride for Rafferty's place;
   he'll probably be there before noon. The moment
   you get this, saddle your horse and ride. Oh, Buck,
   why did you stay so close to us?

   Relay your horses. Don't stop until you're over
   the mountains. Black Bart is well enough to take
   the trail and Dan will use him to follow you. You
   know what that means.

   Ride, ride, ride!

   Kate."


He crumpled up the paper and sank back upon the bed.

"Why did you stay so close?"

He had wondered at that, himself, many times in the past few days. Like
the hunted rabbit, he expected to find safety under the very nose of
danger. Now that he was discovered it seemed incredible that he could
have followed so patently foolish a course. In a sort of daze he
uncrumpled the note again and read the wrinkled writing word by word. He
had leaned close to read by the uncertain light, and now he caught the
faintest breath of perfume from the paper. It was a small thing, smaller
among scents than a whisper is among voices, but it made Buck Daniels
drop his head and crush the paper against his face. It was a moment
before he could uncrumple the paper sufficiently to study the contents
of the note thoroughly. At first his dazed brain caught only part of the
significance. Then it dawned on him that the girl thought he had fled
from the Cumberland Ranch through fear of Dan Barry.

Ay, there had been fear in it. Every day at the ranch he had shuddered
at the thought that the destroyer might ride up on that devil of black
silken grace, Satan. But every day he had convinced himself that even
then Dan Barry remembered the past and was cursing himself for the
ingratitude he had shown his old friend. Now the truth swept coldly home
to Buck Daniels. Barry was as fierce as ever upon the trail; and Kate
Cumberland thought that he--Buck Daniels,--had fled like a cur from
danger.

He seized his head between his hands and beat his knuckles against the
corrugated flesh of his forehead. She had thought that!

Desire for action, action, action, beset him like thirst. To close with
this devil, this wolf-man, to set his big fingers in the smooth, almost
girlish throat, to choke the yellow light out of those eyes--or else to
die, but like a man proving his manhood before the girl.

He read the letter again and then in an agony he crumpled it to a ball
and hurled it across the room. Catching up his hat and his belt he
rushed wildly from the room, thundered down the crazy stairs, and out to
the stable.

Long Bess, the tall, bay mare which had carried him through three years
of adventure and danger and never failed him yet, raised her
aristocratic head above the side of the stall and whinnied. For answer
he shook his fist at her and cursed insanely.

The saddle he jerked by one stirrup leather from the wall and flung it
on her back, and when she cringed to the far side of the stall, he
cursed her again, bitterly, and drew up the cinch with a lunge that made
her groan. He did not wait to lead her to the door before mounting, but
sprang into the saddle.

Here he whirled her about and drove home the spurs. Cruel usage, for
Long Bess had never denied him the utmost of her speed and strength at
the mere sound of his voice. Now, half-mad with fear and surprise, she
sprang forward at full gallop, slipped and almost sprawled on the floor,
and then thundered out of the door.

At once the soft sandy-soil received and deadened the impact of her
hoofs. Off she flew through the grey of the morning, soundless as a
racing ghost.

Long Bess--there was good blood in her. She was as delicately limbed as
an antelope, and her heart was as strong as the smooth muscles of her
shoulders and hips. Yet to Buck Daniels her fastest gait seemed slower
than a walk. Already his thoughts were flying far before. Already he
stood before the ranch house calling to Dan Barry. Ay, at the very door
of the place they should meet and one of them must die. And better by
far that the blood of him who died should stain the hands of Kate
Cumberland.




CHAPTER XXXII

VICTORY


The grey light which Buck Daniels saw that morning, hardly brightened as
the day grew, for the sky was overcast with sheeted mist and through it
a dull evening radiance filtered to the earth. Wung Lu, his celestial,
slant eyes now yellow with cold, built a fire on the big hearth in the
living-room. It was a roaring blaze, for the wood was so dry that it
flamed as though soaked in oil, and tumbled a mass of yellow fire up the
chimney. So bright was the fire, indeed, that its light quite
over-shadowed the meagre day which looked in at the window, and every
chair cast its shadow away from the hearth. Later on Kate Cumberland
came down the backstairs and slipped into the kitchen.

"Have you seen Dan?" she asked of the cook.

"Wung Lu make nice fire," grinned the Chinaman. "Misser Dan in there."

She thought for an instant.

"Is breakfast ready, Wung?"

"Pretty soon quick," nodded Wung Lu.

"Then throw out the coffee or the eggs," she said quickly. "I don't want
breakfast served yet; wait till I send you word."

As the door closed behind her, the eye-brows of Wung rose into perfect
Roman arches.

"Ho!" grunted Wung Lu, "O ho!"

In the hall Kate met Randall Byrne coming down the stairs. He was
dressed in white and he had found a little yellow wildflower and stuck
it in his button-hole. He seemed ten years younger than the day he rode
with her to the ranch, and now he came to her with a quick step,
smiling.

"Doctor Byrne," she said quietly, "breakfast will be late this morning.
Also, I want no one to go into the living-room for a while. Will you
keep them out?"

The doctor was instantly gone.

"He hasn't gone, yet?" he queried.

"Not yet."

The doctor sighed and then, apparently following a sudden impulse, he
reached his hand to her.

"I hope something comes of it," he said.

Even then she could not help a wan smile.

"What do you mean by that, doctor?"

The doctor sighed again.

"If the inference is not clear," he said, "I'm afraid that I cannot
explain. But I'll try to keep everyone from the room."

She nodded her thanks, and went on; but passing the mirror in the hall
the sight of her face made her stop abruptly. There was no vestige of
colour in it; and the shadow beneath her eyes made them seem inhumanly
large and deep. The bright hair, to be sure, waved over her head and
coiled on her neck, but it was like a futile shaft of sunlight falling
on a dreary moor in winter. She went on thoughtfully to the door of the
living-room but there she paused again with her hand upon the knob; and
while she stood there she remembered herself as she had been only a few
months before, with the colour flushing in her face and a continual
light in her eyes. There had been little need for thinking then. One had
only to let the wind and the sun strike on one, and live. Then, in a
quiet despair, she said to herself: "As I am--I must win or lose--as I
am!" and she opened the door and stepped in.

She had been cold with fear and excitement when she entered the room to
make her last stand for happiness, but once she was in, it was not so
hard. Dan Barry lay on the couch at the far end of the room with his
hands thrown under his head, and he was smiling in a way which she well
knew; it had been a danger signal in the old days, and when he turned
his face and said good-morning to her, she caught that singular glimmer
of yellow which sometimes came up behind his eyes. In reply to his
greeting she merely nodded, and then walked slowly to the window and
turned her back to him.

It was a one-tone landscape. Sky, hills, barns, earth, all was a single
mass of lifeless grey; in such an atmosphere old Homer had seen the
wraiths of his dead heroes play again at the things they had done on
earth. She noted these things with a blank eye, for a thousand thoughts
were leaping through her mind. Something must be done. There he lay in
the same room with her. He had turned his head back, no doubt, and was
staring at the ceiling as before, and the yellow glimmer was in his eyes
again. Perhaps, after this day, she should never see him again; every
moment was precious beyond the price of gold, and yet there she stood at
the window, doing nothing. But what _could_ she do?

Should she go to him and fall on her knees beside him and pour out her
heart, telling him again of the old days. No, it would be like striking
on a wooden bell; no echo would rise; and she knew beforehand the deadly
blackness of his eyes. So Black Bart lay often in the sun, staring at
infinite distance and seeing nothing but his dreams of battle. What were
appeals and what were words to Black Bart? What were they to Dan Barry?
Yet once, by sitting still--the thought made her blood leap with a
great, joyous pulse that set her cheeks tingling.

She waited till the first impulse of excitement had subsided, and then
turned back and sat down in a chair near the fire. From a corner of her
eye she was aware that Whistling Dan had turned his head again to await
her first speech. Then she fixed her gaze on the wall of yellow flame.
The impulse to speak to him was like a hand tugging to turn her around,
and the words came up and swelled in her throat, but still she would not
stir.

In a moment of rationality she felt in an overwhelming wave of mental
coldness the folly of her course, but she shut out the thought with a
slight shudder. Silence, to Dan Barry, had a louder voice and more
meaning than any words.

Then she knew that he was sitting up on the couch. Was he about to stand
up and walk out of the room? For moment after moment he did not stir;
and at length she knew, with a breathless certainty, that he was staring
fixedly at her! The hand which was farthest from him, and hidden, she
gripped hard upon the arm of the chair. That was some comfort, some
added strength.

She had now the same emotion she had had when Black Bart slunk towards
her under the tree--if a single perceptible tremor shook her, if she
showed the slightest awareness of the subtle approach, she was undone.
It was only her apparent unconsciousness which could draw either the
wolf-dog or the master.

She remembered what her father had told her of hunting young deer--how
he had lain in the grass and thrust up a leg above the grass in sight of
the deer and how they would first run away but finally come back step by
step, drawn by an invincible curiosity, until at length they were within
range for a point blank shot.

Now she must concentrate on the flames of the fireplace, see nothing but
them, think of nothing but the swiftly changing domes and walls and
pinnacles they made. She leaned a little forward and rested her cheek
upon her right hand--and thereby she shut out the sight of Dan Barry
effectually. Also it made a brace to keep her from turning her head
towards him, and she needed every support, physical and mental.

Still he did not move. Was he in truth looking at her, or was he staring
beyond her at the grey sky which lowered past the window? The faintest
creaking sound told her that he had risen, slowly, from the crouch. Then
not a sound, except that she knew, in some mysterious manner, that he
moved, but whether towards her or towards the door she could not dream.
But he stepped suddenly and noiselessly into the range of her vision and
sat down on a low bench at one side of the hearth. If the strain had
been tense before, it now became terrible; for there he sat almost
facing her, and looking intently at her, yet she must keep all awareness
of him out of her eyes. In the excitement a strong pulse began to beat
in the hollow of her throat, as if her heart were rising. She had won,
she had kept him in the room, she had brought him to a keen thought of
her. A Pyrrhic victory, for she was poised on the very edge of a cliff
of hysteria. She began to feel a tremor of the hand which supported her
cheek. If that should become visible to him he would instantly know that
all her apparent unconsciousness was a sham, and then she would have
lost him truly!

Something sounded at one of the doors--and then the door opened softly.
She was almost glad of the interruption, for another instant might have
swept away the last reserve of her strength. So this, then, was the end.

But the footfall which sounded in the apartment was a soft, padding
step, with a little scratching sound, light as a finger running on a
frosty window pane. And then a long, shaggy head slipped close to
Whistling Dan. It was Black Bart!

A wave of terror swept through her. She remembered another scene, not
many months before, when Black Bart had drawn his master away from her
and led him south, south, after the wild geese. The wolf-dog had come
again like a demoniac spirit to undo her plans!

Only an instant--the crisis of a battle--then the great beast turned
slowly, faced her, slunk with his long stride closer, and then a cold
nose touched the hand which gripped the arm of her chair. It gave her a
welcome excuse for action of some sort; she reached out her hand,
slowly, and touched the forehead of Black Bart. He winced back, and the
long fangs flashed; her hand remained tremulously poised in air, and
then the long head approached again, cautiously, and once more she
touched it, and since it did not stir, she trailed the tips of her
fingers backwards towards the ears. Black Bart snarled again, but it was
a sound so subdued as to be almost like the purring of a great cat. He
sank down, and the weight of his head came upon her feet. Victory!

In the full tide of conscious power she was able to drop her hand from
her face, raise her head, turn her glance carelessly upon Dan Barry; she
was met by ominously glowing eyes. Anger--at least it was not
indifference.

He rose and stepped in his noiseless way behind her, but he reappeared
instantly on the other side, and reached out his hand to where her
fingers trailed limp from the arm of the chair. There he let them lie,
white and cool, against the darkness of his palm. It was as if he sought
in the hand for the secret of her power over the wolf-dog. She let her
head rest against the back of the chair and watched the nervous and
sinewy hand upon which her own rested. She had seen those hands fixed in
the throat of Black Bart himself, once upon a time. A grim simile came
to her; the tips of her fingers touched the paw of the panther. The
steel-sharp claws were sheathed, but suppose once they were bared, and
clutched. Or she stood touching a switch which might loose, by the
slightest motion, a terrific voltage. What would happen?

Nothing! Presently the hand released her fingers, and Dan Barry stepped
back and stood with folded arms, frowning at the fire. In the weakness
which overcame her, in the grip of the wild excitement, she dared not
stay near him longer. She rose and walked into the dining-room.

"Serve breakfast now, Wung," she commanded, and at once the gong was
struck by the cook.

Before the long vibrations had died away the guests were gathered around
the table, and the noisy marshal was the first to come. He slammed back
a chair and sat down with a grunt of expectancy.

"Mornin', Dan," he said, whetting his knife across the table-cloth, "I
hear you're ridin' this mornin'? Ain't going my way, are you?"

Dan Barry sat frowning steadily down at the table. It was a moment
before he answered.

"I ain't leavin," he said softly, at length, "postponed my trip."




CHAPTER XXXIII

DOCTOR BYRNE SHOWS THE TRUTH


On this day of low-lying mists, this day so dull that not a shadow was
cast by tree or house or man, there was no graver place than the room of
old Joe Cumberland; even lamp light was more merciful in the room, for
it left the corners of the big apartment in obscurity, but this meagre
daylight stripped away all illusion and left the room naked and ugly.
Those colours of wall and carpet, once brighter than spring, showed now
as faded and lifeless as foliage in the dead days of late November when
the leaves have no life except what keeps them clinging to the twig, and
when their fallen fellows are lifted and rustled on the ground by every
faint wind, with a sound like breathing in the forest. And like autumn,
too, was the face of Joe Cumberland, with a colour neither flushed nor
pale, but a dull sallow which foretells death. Beside his bed sat Doctor
Randall Byrne and kept the pressure of two fingers upon the wrist of the
rancher.

When he removed the thermometer from between the lips of Cumberland the
old man spoke, but without lifting his closed eyelids, as if even this
were an effort which he could only accomplish by a great concentration
of the will.

"No fever to-day, doc?"

"You feel a little better?" asked Byrne.

"They ain't no feelin'. But I ain't hot; jest sort of middlin' cold."

Doctor Byrne glanced down at the thermometer with a frown, and then
shook down the mercury.

"No," he admitted, "there is no fever."

Joe Cumberland opened his eyes a trifle and peered up at Byrne.

"You ain't satisfied, doc?"

Doctor Randall Byrne was of that merciless modern school which believes
in acquainting the patient with the truth.

"I am not," he said.

"H-m-m!" murmured the sick man. "And what might be wrong?"

"Your pulse is uneven and weak," said the doctor.

"I been feelin' sort of weak since I seen Dan last night," admitted the
other. "But that news Kate brought me will bring me up! She's kept him
here, lad, think of that!"

"I am thinking of it," answered the doctor coldly. "Your last interview
with him nearly--killed you. If you see him again I shall wash my hands
of the case. When he first came you felt better at once--in fact, I
admit that you _seemed_ to do better both in body and mind. But the
thing could not last. It was a false stimulus, and when the first
effects had passed away, it left you in this condition. Mr. Cumberland,
you must see him no more!"

But Joe Cumberland laughed long and softly.

"Life," he murmured, "ain't worth that much! Not half!"

"I can do no more than advise," said the doctor, as reserved as before.
"I cannot command."

"A bit peeved, doc?" queried the old man. "Well, sir, I know they ain't
much longer for me. Lord, man, I can feel myself going out like a flame
in a lamp when the oil runs up. I can feel life jest makin' its last few
jumps in me like the flame up the chimney. But listen to me----" he
reached out a long, large knuckled, claw-like hand and drew the doctor
down over him, and his eyes were earnest--"I got to live till I see 'em
standin' here beside me, hand in hand, doc!"

The doctor, even by that dim light, had changed colour. He passed his
hand slowly across his forehead.

"You expect to see that?"

"I expect nothin'. I only hope!"

The bitterness of Byrne's heart came up in his throat.

"It will be an oddly suited match," he said, "if they marry. But they
will not marry."

"Ha!" cried Cumberland, and starting up in bed he braced himself on a
quaking elbow. "What's that?"

"Lie down!" ordered the doctor, and pressed the ranchman back against
the pillows.

"But what d'you mean?"

"It would be a long story--the scientific explanation."

"Doc, where Dan is concerned I got more patience than Job."

"In brief, then, I will prove to you that there is no mystery in this
Daniel Barry."

"If you can do that, doc, you're more of a man than I been guessing you
for. Start now!"

"In primitive times," said Doctor Randall Byrne, "man was nearly related
to what we now call the lower animals. In those days he could not
surround himself with an artificial protective environment. He depended
on the unassisted strength of his body. His muscular and sensuous
development, therefore, was far in advance of that of the modern man.
For modern man has used his mind at the expense of his body. The very
_quality_ of his muscles is altered; and the senses of sight and
hearing, for instance, are much blunted. For in the primitive days the
ear kept guard over man even when he slept in terror of a thousand
deadly enemies, each stronger than he; and the eye had to be keenly
attuned to probe the shadows of the forest for lurking foes.

"Now, sir, there is in biology the thing known, as the sport. You will
have heard that all living organisms undergo gradual processes of
change. Season by season and year by year, environment affects the
individual; yet these gradual changes are extremely slow. Between steps
of noticeable change there elapse periods many times longer than the
life of historic man. All speed in changes such as these comes in what
we call 'sports'. That is, a particular plant, for instance, gradually
tends to have fewer leaves and a thicker bark, but the change is slight
from age to age until suddenly a single instance occurs of plant which
realises suddenly in a single step the 'ideal' towards which the species
has been striving. In a word, it has very, very few leaves, and an
extraordinarily thick bark.

"For a particular instance, one species of orange tended to have few and
fewer seeds. But finally came an orange tree whose fruit had no seeds at
all. That was the origin of the navel orange. And that was a typical
'sport'.

"Now, there is the reverse of the sport. Instead of jumping long
distance ahead, an individual may lapse back towards the primitive. That
individual is called an atavism. For instance, in this mountain-desert
there has, for several generations, been a pressure of environment
calling for a species of man which will be able to live with comparative
comfort in a waste region--a man, in a word, equipped with such powerful
organisms that he will be as much at home in the heart of the desert as
an ordinary man would be in a drawing-room. You gather the drift of my
argument.

"I have observed this man Barry carefully. I am thoroughly convinced
that he is such an atavism.

"Among other men he seems strange. He is different and therefore he
seems mysterious. As a matter of fact, he is quite a common freak. I
could name you others like him in differing from common men, though not
differing from them in exactly the same manner.

"You see the result of this? Daniel Barry is a man to whom the desert is
necessary, because he was made for the desert. He is lonely among
crowds--you have said it yourself--but he is at home in a mountain
wilderness with a horse and a dog."

"Doc, you talk well," broke in Joe Cumberland, "but if he ain't human,
why do humans like him so much? Why does he mean so much to me--to
Kate?"

"Simply because he is different. You get from him what you could get
from no other man in the world, perhaps, and you fail to see that the
fellow is really more akin to his wolf-dog than he is to a man."

"Supposin' I said you was right," murmured the old man, frowning, "how
d'you explain why he likes other folks. According to you, the desert and
the mountains and animals is what he wants. Then how is it that he took
so much care of me when he come back this time? How is it that he likes
Kate, enough to give up a trail of blood to stay here with her?"

"It is easy to explain the girl's attraction," said the doctor. "All
animals wish to mate, Mr. Cumberland, and an age old instinct is now
working out in Dan Barry. But while you and Kate may please him, you are
not necessary to him. He left you once before and he was quite happy in
his desert. And I tell you, Mr. Cumberland, that he will leave you
again. You cannot tame the untameable. It is not habit that rules this
man. It is instinct a million years old. The call which he will hear is
the call of the wilderness, and to answer it he will leave father and
wife and children and ride out with his horse and his dog!"

The old man lay quite motionless, staring at the ceiling.

"I don't want to believe you," he said slowly, "but before God I think
you're right. Oh, lad, why was I bound up in a tangle like this one? And
Kate--what will she do?"

The doctor was quivering with excitement.

"Let the man stay with her. In time she will come to see the brute
nature of Daniel Barry. That will be the end of him with her."

"Brute. Doc. They ain't nobody as gentle as Dan!"

"Till he tastes blood, a lion can be raised like a house-dog," answered
the doctor.

"Then she mustn't marry him? Ay, I've felt it--jest what you've put in
words. It's livin' death for Kate if she marries him! She's kept him
here to-day. To-morrow something may cross him, and the minute he feels
the pull of it, he'll be off on the trail--the blow of a man, the
hollering out of the wild geese--God knows what it'll take to start him
wild again and forget us all--jest the way a child forgets its parents!"

A voice broke in upon them, calling far away: "Dan! Dan Barry!"




CHAPTER XXXIV

THE ACID TEST


In the living-room below they heard it, Dan and Kate Cumberland. All day
she had sat by the fire which still blazed on the hearth, replenished
from time to time by the care of Wung Lu. She had taken up some sewing,
and she worked at it steadily. Some of that time Dan Barry was in the
room, sitting through long intervals, watching her with lynx-eyed
attention. Very rarely did he speak--almost never, and she could have
numbered upon her two hands the words he had spoken--ay, and she could
have repeated them one by one. Now and again he rose and went out, and
the wolf-dog went with him each time. But towards the last Black Bart
preferred to stay in the room, crouched in front of her and blinking at
the fire, as if he knew that each time his master would return to the
fire. Then, why leave the pleasant warmth for the chilly greyness of the
day outside?

There he remained, stirring only now and then to lift a clumsy paw and
brush it across his eyes in an oddly human gesture. Once or twice, also,
he lifted that great, scarred head and laid it on her knees, looking
curiously from her busy hands to her face, and from her face back again
to her work, until, having apparently assured himself that all was well,
he dropped his head again and lay once more motionless. She could see
him open a listless eye when the master entered the room again. And with
each coming of Dan Barry she felt again surrounded as if by invisible
arms. Something was prying at her, striving to win a secret from her.

As the day wore on, a great, singing happiness rose in her throat, and
at about the same time she heard a faint sound, impalpable, from the
farther side of the room where Dan Barry sat. He was whistling.

A simple thing for a man to do, to be sure, but the astonishment of it
nearly stopped the heart of Kate Cumberland. For in all her life she had
never before heard him whistle except when he was in the open, and
preferably when he was astride of the strength and the speed of Satan,
with Black Bart scouting swiftly and smoothly ahead. But now he whistled
here by the warmth of the fire. To be sure the sound was small and thin,
but there was such music in it as she had never heard before. It was so
thin that it was almost ghostly, as if the soul of wild Paganini played
here on a muted violin. No tune that might be repeated, but as always
when she heard it, a picture rose before the eyes of Kate. It wavered at
first against the yellow glow of the firelight. Then it quite shut out
all else.

It was deep night, starry night. The black horse and his rider wound up
a deep ravine. To one side a bold mountain tumbled up to an infinite
height, bristling with misshapen trees here and there, and losing its
head against the very stars. On the other side were jagged hills, all
carved in the solid rock. And down the valley, between the mountains and
the stars, blew a soft wind; as if that wind made the music. They were
climbing up, up, up, and now they reach--the music rising also to a soft
but triumphant outburst--a high plateau. They were pressed up against
the heart of the sky. The stars burned low, and low. Around them the
whole earth seemed in prospect at their feet. The moon burst through a
mass of clouds, and she saw, far off, a great river running silver
through the night.

Happy? Ay, and he was happy too, and his happiness was one with hers. He
was not even looking out the window while he whistled, but his eyes were
fixed steadily, unchangingly, upon her face.

It was then that they heard it: "Dan! Dan Barry! Come out!"

A hoarse, ringing cry, as of one who is shouting against a great wind:
"Dan! Dan Barry! Come out!"

Dan Barry was on his feet and gliding to the wall, where he took down
his belt from a nail and buckled it swiftly around him. And Kate ran to
the window with the wolf-dog snarling beside her and saw standing in
front of the house, his hat off, his black hair wildly tumbled, and two
guns in his hands, Buck Daniels! Behind him the tall bay mare shook
with her panting and glistened with the sweat of the long ride.

She heard a scratching next and saw the wolf-dog rear up and paw at the
door. Once through that door and he would be at the throat of the man
outside, she knew. Nor he alone, for Dan Barry was coming swiftly across
the room with that strange, padding step. He had no eye for her. He was
smiling, and she had rather have seen him in a cursing fury than to see
this smile. It curled the upper lip with something like a sneer; and she
caught the white glint of his teeth; the wolf-dog snarled back over his
shoulder to hurry his master. It was the crisis which she had known all
day was coming, sooner or later. She had only prayed that it might be
delayed for a little time. And confronting the danger was like stepping
into the path of runaway horses. Fear ruled her with an iron hand, and
she swayed back against the wall and supported herself with an
outstretched hand.

What was there to be done? If she stepped in between him and his man, he
would brush her aside from his path and out of his life forever. If he
went on to his vengeance he would no less be started on the path which
led around the world away from her. The law would be the hound which
pursued him and relentlessly nipped at his heels--an eternal terror and
unrest. No thought of Buck Daniels who had done so much for her. She
cast his services out of her mind with the natural cruelty of woman.
Her whole thought was, selfishly, for the man before her, and for
herself.

He was there--his hand was upon the knob of the door. And then she
remembered how the teeth of Black Bart had closed over her arm--and how
they had not broken even the skin. In an instant she was pressed against
the door before Dan Barry--her arms outstretched.

He fell back the slightest bit before her, and then he came again and
brushed her slowly, gently, to one side, with an irresistible strength.
She had to meet his eyes now--there was no help for it--and she saw
there that swirl of yellow light--that insatiable hunger. And she knew,
fully and bitterly, that she had failed. With the wolf-dog, indeed, she
had conquered, but the man escaped her. If time had been granted her she
would have won, she knew, but the hand of Buck Daniels, so long her
ally, had destroyed her chances. It was his hand now which shook the
knob of the door, and she turned with a sob of despair to face the new
danger.

In her wildest dreams she had never visioned Buck Daniels transformed
like this. She knew that in his past, as one of those long-riders who
roam the mountain-desert, their hand against the hands of every man,
Buck Daniels had been known and feared by the strongest. But all she had
seen of Buck Daniels had been gentleness itself. Yet what faced her as
the door flew wide was a nightmare thing with haggard face and
shadow-buried, glittering eyes--unshaven, unkempt of hair, his shirt
open at the throat, his great hands clenched for the battle. The
wolf-dog, at that familiar sight, whined a low greeting, but with a
glance at his master knew that there was a change--the old alliance was
broken--so he bared his white teeth and changed his whine to a snarl of
hate.

Then a strange terror struck Kate Cumberland. She had never dreamed that
she could fear for Dan Barry at the hands of any man, but now the
desperate resolve which breathed from every line of Buck Daniels,
chilled her blood at the heart. She sprang back before Dan Barry. Facing
him, she saw that demoniac glitter of yellow rising momently brighter in
his eyes, and he was smiling. No execration or loud voiced curse could
have contained the distilled malignancy of that smile. All this she
caught in a single glimpse. The next instant she had whirled and stood
before Dan, shielding him with outspread arms and facing Buck Daniels.
The latter thrust back into the holster the gun which he had drawn when
he entered the room.

"Stand away from him, Kate," he commanded, and his eyes went past her to
dwell on the face of Barry. "Stand away from him. It's been comin' for a
long time, and now it's here. Barry I'm takin' no start on you. Stand
away from the girl and pull your gun--and I'll pump you full of lead."

The softest of soft voices murmured behind her: "I been waitin' for you,
Buck, days and days and days. I ain't never been so glad to see
anybody!"

And she felt Barry slip shadowlike to one side. She sprang in front of
him again with a wild cry.

"Buck!" she begged, "don't shoot!"

Laughter, ringing and unhuman, filled the throat of Buck Daniels.

"Is it him you're beggin' for?" he sneered at her. "Is it him you got
your fears for? Ain't you got a word of pity for poor Buck Daniels that
sneaked off like a whipped puppy? Bah! Dan Barry, the time is come. I
been leadin' the life of a houn' dog for your sake. But it's ended. Pull
your gun and get out from behind the skirts of that girl!"

As long as they faced each other with the challenge in their eyes,
nothing on earth could avert the fight, she knew, but if she could delay
them for one moment--she felt that swift moving form behind her slipping
away from behind her--she could follow Barry's movements by the light in
Daniels' eyes.

"Buck!" she cried, "for God's sake--for my sake turn away from
him--and--roll another cigarette!"

For she remembered the story--how Daniels had turned under the very nose
of danger and done this insane thing in the saloon at Brownsville and in
her despair she could think of no other appeal.

It was the very strangeness of it that gave it point. Buck Daniels
turned on his heel.

"It's the last kindness I do you, Dan," he said, with his broad back to
them. "But before you die you got to know why I'm killin' you. I'm going
to roll one cigarette and smoke it and while I smoke it I'm goin' to
tell you the concentrated truth about your worthless self and when I'm
done smokin' I'm goin' to turn around and drop you where you stand.
D'ye hear?"

"They's no need of waitin'," answered the soft voice of Barry. "Talkin'
don't mean much."

But Kate Cumberland turned and faced him. He was fairly a-quiver with
eagerness and the hate welled and blazed and flickered in his eyes; his
face was pale--very pale--and it seemed to her that she could make out
in the pallor the print of the fingers of Buck Daniels and that blow
those many days before. And she feared him as she had never feared him
before--yet she blocked his way still with the outspread arms.

They could hear the crinkle of the cigarette paper as Buck rolled his
smoke.

"No," said Buck, his voice suddenly altered to an almost casual
moderation, "talk don't mean nothin' to you. Talk is human, and nothin'
human means nothin' to you. But I got to tell you why you ought to die,
Barry.

"I started out this mornin' hatin' the ground you walked on, but now I
see that they ain't no use to hate you. Is they any use hatin' a
mountain-lion that kills calves? No, you don't hate it, but you get a
gun and trail it and shoot it down. And that's the way with you."

They heard the scratch of his match.

"That's the way with you. I got my back to you right now because if I
looked you in the eye I couldn't let you live no more'n I could let a
mountain-lion live. I know you're faster with your gun than I am and
stronger than I am, and made to fight. But I know I'm going to kill you.
You've done your work--you've left hell on all sides of you--it's your
time to die. I know it! You been lyin' like a snake in the rocks with
your poison ready for any man that walks past you. Now your poison is
about used up."

He paused, and then when he spoke again there was a ring of exultation
in his voice: "I tell you, Dan, I don't fear you, and I know that the
bullet in this gun here on my hips is the one that's goin' to tear your
heart out. I _know_ it!"

Something like a sob came from the lips of Dan Barry. His hands moved
out towards Buck Daniels as though he were plucking something from the
empty air.

"You've said enough," he said. "You said plenty. Now turn around and
fight!"

And Kate Cumberland stepped back, out of line of the two. She knew that
in what followed she could not play the part of the protector or the
delayer. Here they stood, hungry, for battle, and there was no power in
her weak hands to separate them. She stood far back and fumbled with her
hands at the wall for support. She tried to close her eyes, but the
fascination of the horror forced her to watch against her strongest
will. And the chief part of that dreadful suspense lay in the even, calm
voice of Buck Daniels as he went on: "I'll turn around and fight soon
enough. But Kate asked me to smoke another cigarette. I know what she
means. She wants me to leave you the way I done in the saloon that day.
I ain't goin' to leave, Dan. But I'm glad she asked me to turn away,
because it gives me a chance to tell you some things you got to know
before you go west.

"Dan, you been like a fire that burns every hand that touches you." He
inhaled a long breath of smoke and blew it up towards the ceiling.
"You've busted the heart of the friend that follered you; you've busted
the heart of the girl that loves you."

He paused again, for another long inhalation, and Kate Cumberland,
staring in fearful suspense, waiting for the instant when Buck should at
last turn and when the shots should explode, saw that the yellow glow
was now somewhat misted in the eyes of Barry. He frowned, as one
bewildered.

"Think of her, Dan!" went on Buck Daniels. "Think of her wasting herself
on a no-good houn' dog like you--a no-good wild _wolf_! My God A'mighty,
she might of made some good man happy--some man with a soul and a
heart--but instead of that God sent you like a blast across her--you
with your damned soul of wind and your heart of stone! Think of it! When
you see what you been, Barry, I wonder you don't go out and take your
own gun and blow off your head."

"Buck," called Dan Barry, "so help me God, if you don't turn your face
to me--I'll shoot you through the back!"

"I knew," said the imperturbable Daniels, "that you'd come to that in
the end. You used to fight like a man, but now you're followin' your
instincts, and you fight like a huntin' wolf. Look at the brute that's
slinkin' up to me there! That's what you are. You kill for the sake of
killin'--like the beasts.

"If you was a man, could you treat me like you've done? Your damned cold
heart and your yaller eyes and all would of burned up in the barn the
other night--you and your wolf and your damned hoss. Why didn't I let
you burn? Because I was a fool. Because I still thought they was
something of the man in you. But I seen afterwards what you was, and I
rode off to get out of your way--to keep your hands from gettin' red
with my blood. And then you plan on follerin' me--damn you!--on
follerin' _me!_

"So that, Dan, is why I've come to put you out of the world--as I'm
goin' to do now! Once you hated to give pain, and if you hurt people it
was because you couldn't help it. But now you live on torturin' others.
Barry, pull your gun!"

And as he spoke, he whirled, the heavy revolver leaping into his hand.

Still Kate Cumberland could not close her eyes on the horror. She could
not even cry out; she was frozen.

But there was no report--no spurt of smoke--no form of a man stumbling
blindly towards death. Dan Barry stood with one hand pressed over his
eyes and the other dangled at his side, harmless, while he frowned in
bewilderment at the floor.

He said slowly, at length: "Buck, I kind of think you're right. They
ain't no use in me. I been rememberin', Buck, how you sent Kate to me
when I was sick."

There was a loud clatter; the revolver dropped from the hand of Buck
Daniels.

The musical voice of Dan Barry murmured again: "And I remember how you
stood up to Jim Silent, for my sake. Buck, what's come between us since
them days? You hit me a while back, and since then I been wantin' your
blood--but hearin' you talk now, somehow--I feel sort of lost and
lonesome--like I'd thrown somethin' away that I valued most."

Buck Daniels threw out his great arms and his voice was broken terribly.

"Oh, God A'mighty, Dan," he cried, "jest take one step back to me and
I'll come all the way around the world to meet you!"

He stumbled across the floor and grasped at the hand of Barry, for a
mist had half-blinded his eyes.

"Dan," he pleaded, "ain't things as they once was? D'you forgive me?"

"Why, Buck," murmured Dan Barry, in that same bewildered fashion, "seems
like we was bunkies once."

"Dan," muttered Buck Daniels, choking, "Dan----" but he dared not trust
his voice further, and turning, he fairly fled from the room.

The dazed eyes of Dan Barry followed him. Then they moved until they
encountered the face of Kate Cumberland. A shock, as if of surprise,
widened the lids. For a long moment they stared in silence, and then he
began to walk, very slowly, a step at a time, towards the girl. Now, as
he faced her, she saw that there was no longer a hint of the yellow in
his eyes, but he stepped closer and closer; he was right before her,
watching her with an expression of mute suffering that made her heart
grow large.

He said, more to himself than to her: "Seems like I been away a long
time."

"A very long time," she whispered.

He drew a great breath.

"Is it true, what Buck said? About you?"

"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she cried. "Don't you see?"

He started a little, and taking both her hands he made her face the dull
light from the windows.

"Seems like you're kind of pale, Kate."

"The colour went while I waited for you, Dan."

"But there comes a touch of red--like morning--in your throat, and
runnin' up your cheeks."

"Don't you see? It's because you've come back!"

He closed his eyes and murmured: "I remember we was close--closer than
this. We were sittin' here--in this room--by a fire. And then something
called me out and I follered it."

"The wild geese--yes."

"Wild geese?" he repeated blankly, and then shook his head. "How could
wild geese call me? But things happened. I was kept away. Sometimes I
wanted to come back to you, but somehow I could never get started. Was
it ten years ago that I left?"

"Months--months longer than years."

"What is it?" he asked. "I been watchin' you, and waitin' to find out
what was different in you. Black Bart seen something in you. I dunno
what. Today I sort of guessed what it is. I can feel it now. It's
something like a pain. It starts sort of in the stomach, Kate. It's like
bein' away from a place where you want to be. Queer, ain't it? I ain't
far from you. I've got your hands in mine, but somehow you don't feel
near. I want to walk--a long ways--closer. And the pain keeps growin'."

His voice fell away to a murmur, and now a deadly silence lay between
them, and it seemed as if lights were varying upon their faces, so swift
and subtle were the changes of expression. And they drew closer by
imperceptible degrees. So his arms, fumbling, found their away about
her, drew her closer, till her head drooped back, and her face was close
beneath his.

"Was it true," he whispered, "what Buck said?"

"There's nothing true except that we're together."

"But your eyes are brimful of tears!"

"The same pain you feel, Dan; the same loneliness and the hurt."

"But it's going now. I feel as if I'd been riding three days without
more'n enough water to moisten my tongue every hour; with the sand white
hot, and my hoss staggerin', and the sun droppin' closer and closer till
the mountains are touched with white fire. Then I come, in the evenin',
to a valley with cool shadows beginning to slip across from the western
side, and I stand in the shadow and feel the red-hot blood go smashin',
smashin', smashin' in my temples--and then--a sound of runnin' water
somewhere up the hill-side. Runnin', cool, fresh, sparkling water
whispering over the rocks. Ah, God, that's what it means to me to stand
here close to you, Kate!

"And it's like standin' up in the mornin' on the top of a high hill and
seein' the light jump up quick in the east, and there lies all the world
at my feet, mile after mile of it--they's a river like silver away off
yonder--and they's range after range walkin' off into a blue nothing.
That's what it's like to stand here and look down into them blue eyes of
yours, Kate--miles and miles into 'em, till I feel as if I seen your
heart beneath. And they's the rose of the mornin' on your cheeks, and
the breath of the mornin' stirrin' between your lips, and the light of
the risin' sun comes flarin' in your eyes. And I own the world--I own
the world.'

"Two burnin' pieces of wood, that's you and me, and when I was away from
you the fire went down to a smoulder; but now that we're close a wind
hits us, and the flames come together and rise and jump and twine
together. Two pieces of burnin' wood, but only one flame--d'you feel
it?--Oh, Kate, our bodies is ashes and dust, and all that's worth while
is that flame blowin' up from us, settin' the world on fire!"




CHAPTER XXXV

PALE ANNIE


Even in Elkhead there were fires this day. In the Gilead saloon one
might have thought that the liquid heat which the men imbibed would
serve in place of stoves, but the proprietor, "Pale Annie," had an eye
to form, and when the sky was grey he always lighted the stove.

"Pale Annie" he was called because his real name was Anderson Hawberry
Sandringham. That name had been a great aid to him when he was an
undertaker in Kansas City; but Anderson Hawberry Sandringham had fallen
from the straight and narrow path of good undertakers some years before
and he had sought refuge in the mountain-desert, where most things
prosper except sheriffs and grass. He was fully six inches more than six
feet in height and his face was so long and pale that even Haw-Haw
Langley seemed cheerful beside the ex-undertaker. In Kansas City this
had been much prized, for that single face could lend solemnity to any
funeral. In Elkhead it was hardly less of an asset.

People came out of curiosity to see Pale Annie behind the bar with his
tall silk hat--which he could never bring himself to lay aside--among
the cobwebs of the rafters. They came out of curiosity and they remained
to drink--which is a habit in the mountain-desert. A travelling drummer
or a patent medicine man had offered Pale Annie a handsome stake to
simply go about with him and lend the sanction of his face to the talk
of the drummer, but Pale Annie had discovered a veritable philosopher's
stone in Elkhead and he was literally turning whiskey into gold.

This day was even more prosperous than usual for Pale Annie, for the
grey weather and the chilly air made men glad of the warmth, both
external and internal, which Pale Annie possessed in his barroom. His
dextrous hands were never for a moment still at the bar, either setting
out drinks or making change, except when he walked out and threw a fresh
feed into the fire, and stirred up the ruddy depths of the stove with a
tall poker. It was so long, indeed, that it might have served even Pale
Annie for a cane and it was a plain untapered bar of iron which the
blacksmith had given him as the price of a drink, on a day. He needed a
large poker, however, for there was only the one stove in the entire big
room, and it was a giant of its kind, as capacious as a hogshead. This
day Pale Annie kept it red hot, so that the warmth might penetrate to
the door on the one hand and to the rear of the room where the tables
and chairs were, on the other.

Since Pale Annie's crowd took little exercise except for bending their
elbows now and again, and since the majority of them had been in the
place fully half the day, by ten in the evening sounds of hilarity began
to rise from the saloon. Solemn-faced men who had remained in their
places for hour after hour, industriously putting away the red-eye, now
showed symptoms of life. Some of them discovered hitherto hidden talents
as singers, and they would rise from their places, remove their hats,
open their bearded mouths, and burst into song. An antiquarian who had
washed gold in '49 and done nothing the rest of his life save grow a
prodigious set of pure white whiskers, sprang from his place and did a
hoe-down that ravished the beholders. Thrice he was compelled to return
to the floor; and in the end his performance was only stopped by an
attack of sciatica. Two strong men carried him back to his chair and
wept over him, and there was another drink all around.

In this scene of universal joy there were two places of shadow. For at
the rear end of the room, almost out of reach of the lantern-light, sat
Haw-Haw Langley and Mac Strann. The more Haw-Haw Langley drank the more
cadaverous grew his face, until in the end it was almost as solemn as
that of Pale Annie himself; as for Mac Strann, he seldom drank at all.

A full hour had just elapsed since either of them spoke, yet Haw-Haw
Langley said, as if in answer to a remark: "He's heard too much about
you, Mac. He ain't no such fool as to come to Elkhead."

"He ain't had time," answered the giant.

"Ain't had time? All these days?"

"Wait till the dog gets well. He'll follow the dog to Elkhead."

"Why, Mac, the trail's been washed out long ago. That wind the other day
would of knocked out any trail less'n a big waggon."

"It won't wash out the trail for _that_ dog," said Mac Strann calmly.

"Well," snarled Haw-Haw, "I got to be gettin' back home pretty soon. I
ain't rollin' in coin the way you are, Mac."

The other returned no answer, but let his eyes rove vacantly over the
room, and since his head was turned the other way, Haw-Haw Langley
allowed a sneer to twist at his lips for a moment.

"If I had the price," he said, "we'd have another drink."

"I ain't drinkin'," answered the giant monotonously.

"Then I'll go up and bum one off'n Pale Annie. About time he come
through with a little charity."

So he unfurled his length and stalked through the crowd up to the bar.
Here he leaned and confidentially whispered in the ear of Pale Annie.

"Partner, I been sprinklin' dust for a long time in here, and there
ain't been any reward. I'm dry, Annie."

Pale Annie regarded him with grave disapproval.

"My friend," he said solemnly, "liquor is the real root of all evil. For
my part, I quench my thirst with water. They's a tub over there in the
corner with a dipper handy. Don't mention it."

"I didn't thank you," said Haw-Haw Langley furiously. "Damn a tight-wad,
say I!"

The long hand of Pale Annie curled affectionately around the neck of an
empty bottle.

"I didn't quite gather what you said?" he remarked courteously, and
leaned across the bar--within striking distance.

"I'll tell you later," remarked Haw-Haw sullenly, and turned his
shoulder to the bar.

As he did so two comparatively recent arrivals came up beside him. They
were fresh from a couple of months of range-finding, and they had been
quenching a concentrated thirst by concentrated effort. Haw-Haw Langley
looked them over, sighed with relief, and then instantly produced Durham
and the brown papers. He paused in the midst of rolling his cigarette
and offered them to the nearest fellow.

"Smoke?" he asked.

Now a man of the mountain-desert knows a great many things, but he does
not know how to refuse. The proffer of a gift embarrasses him, but he
knows no way of avoiding it; also he never rests easy until he has made
some return.

"Sure," said the man, and gathered in the tobacco and papers. "Thanks!"

He covertly dropped the cigarette which he had just lighted, and stepped
on it, then he rolled another from Haw-Haw's materials. The while, he
kept an uneasy eye on his new companion.

"Drinkin'?" he asked at length.

"Not jest now," said Haw-Haw carelessly.

"Always got room for another," protested the other, still more in
earnest as he saw his chance of a return disappearing.

"All right, then," said Haw-Haw. "Jest one more."

And he poured a glass to the brim, waved it gracefully towards the
others without spilling a drop, and downed it at a gulp.

"Ben in town long?" he asked.

"Not long enough to find any action," answered the other.

The eye of Haw-Haw Langley brightened. He looked over the two carefully.
The one had black hair and the other red, but they were obviously
brothers, both tall, thick-shouldered, square-jawed, and pug-nosed.
There was Irish blood in that twain; the fire in their eyes could have
come from only one place on earth. And Haw-Haw grinned and looked down
the length of the room to where Mac Strann sat, a heavy, inert mass, his
fleshy forehead puckered into a half-frown of animal wistfulness.

"You ain't the only ones," he said to his companion at the bar. "They's
a man in town who says they don't turn out any two men in this range
that could give him action."

"The hell!" grunted he of the red hair. And he looked down to his
blunt-knuckled hands.

"'S matter of fact," continued Haw-Haw easily, "he's right here now!"

He looked again towards Mac Strann and remembered once more the drink
which Mac might so easily have purchased for him.

"It ain't Pale Annie, is it?" asked the black haired man, casting a
dubious glance up and down the vast frame of the undertaker.

"Him? Not half!" grinned Haw-Haw. "It's a fet feller down to the end of
the bar. I guess he's been drinkin' some. Kind of off his nut."

He indicated Mac Strann.

"He looks to me," said the red-haired man, setting his jaw, "like a
feller that ain't any too old to learn one more thing about the range in
these parts."

"He looks to me," chimed in the black haired brother, "like a feller
that might be taught something right here in Pale Annie's barroom.
Anyway, he's got room at his table for two more."

So saying the two swallowed their drinks and rumbled casually down the
length of the room until they came to the table where Mac Strann sat.
Haw-Haw Langley followed at a discreet distance and came within earshot
to hear the deep voice of Mac Strann rumbling: "Sorry, gents, but that
chair is took."

The black-haired man sank into the indicated chair.

"You're right," he announced calmly. "Anybody could see with half an
eye that you ain't a fool. It's took by me!"

And he grinned impudently in the face of Mac Strann. The latter, who had
been sitting with slightly bent head, now raised it and looked the pair
over carelessly; there was in his eye the same dumb curiosity which
Haw-Haw Langley had seen many a time in the eye of a bull, leader of the
herd.

The giant explained carefully: "I mean, they's a friend of mine that's
been sittin' in that chair."

"If I ain't your friend," answered the black-haired brother instantly,
"it ain't any fault of mine. Lay it up to yourself, partner!"

Mac Strann stretched out his hand on the surface of the table.

He said: "I got an idea you better get out of that chair."

The other turned his head slowly on all sides and then looked Mac Strann
full in the face.

"Maybe they's something wrong with my eyes," he said, "but I don't see
no reason."

The little dialogue had lasted long enough to focus all eyes on the
table at the end of the room, and therefore there were many witnesses to
what followed. The arm of Mac Strann shot out; his hand fastened in the
collar of the black-haired man's shirt, and the latter was raised from
his seat and propelled to one side by a convulsive jerk. He probably
would have been sent crashing into the bar had not his shirt failed
under the strain. It ripped in two at the shoulders, and the seeker
after action, naked to the waist, went reeling back to the middle of the
room, before he gained his balance. After him went Mac Strann with an
agility astonishing in that squat, formless bulk. His long arms were
outstretched and his fingers tensed, and in his face there was an
uncanny joy; his lip had lifted in that peculiarly disheartening sneer.

He was not a pace from him of the black hair when a yell of rage behind
him and the other brother leaped through the air and landed on Mac
Strann's back. He doubled up, slipped his arms behind him, and the next
instant, without visible reason, the red-headed man hurtled through the
air and smashed against the bar with a jolt that set the glassware
shivering and singing. Then he relaxed on the floor, a twisted and
foolish looking mass.

As for the seeker after action, he had at first reached after his
revolver, but he changed his mind at the last instant and instead picked
up the great poker which leaned against the stove. It was a ponderous
weapon and he had to wield it in both hands. As he swung it around his
head there was a yell from men ducking out of the way, and Pale Annie
curled his hand again around his favorite empty bottle. He had no good
opportunity to demonstrate its efficiency, however. Mac Strann,
crouching in the position from which he had catapulted the red-haired
man, cast upwards a single glance at the other brother, and then he
sprang in. The poker hissed through the air with the vigour of a strong
man's arms behind it and it would have cracked the head of Mac Strann
like an empty egg-shell if it had hit its mark. But it was heaved too
high, and Mac Strann went in like a football player rushing the line,
almost doubled up against the floor as he ran. His shoulders struck the
other hardly higher than the knees, and they went down together, but so
doing the head of Mac Strann's victim cracked against the floor, and he
also was still.

The exploit was greeted by a yell of applause and then someone proposed
a cheer, and it was given. It died off short on the lips of the
applauders, however, for it was seen that Mac Strann was not yet done
with his work, and he went about it in a manner which made men sober
suddenly and exchange glances.

First the stranger dragged the two brothers together, laying one of them
face down on the floor. The second he placed over the first, back to
back. Next he picked up the long poker from the floor and slipped it
under the head and down to the neck of the first man. The bystanders
watched in utter silence, with a touch of horror coming now in their
eyes.

Now Mac Strann caught the ends of the iron and began to twist up on
them. There was no result at first. He refreshed his hold and tried
again. The sleeves of his shirt were seen to swell and then grow hard
and taut with vast play of muscle beneath. His head bowed lower between
his shoulders, and those shoulders trembled, and the muscles over them
quivered like heat-waves rising of a spring morning. There was a
creaking, now, and then the iron was seen to shiver and then bend,
slowly, and once it was wrenched out of the horizontal, the motion was
more and more rapid. Until, when the giant was done with his labor, the
ends of the iron over-lapped around the necks of the two luckless
brothers. Mac Strann stepped back and surveyed his work; the rest of the
room was in silence, saving that the red-headed man was coming back to
consciousness and now writhed and groaned feebly. He could not rise;
that was manifest, for the thick band of iron tied his neck to the neck
of his brother.

Upon this scene Mac Strann gazed with a thoughtful air and then stepped
to the side of the room where stood a bucket of dirty water, recently
used for mopping behind the bar. This he caught up, returned, and dashed
the black, greasy water over the pair.

If it had been electricity it could not have operated more effectively.
The two awoke with one mind, and with a tremendous spluttering and
cursing struggled to regain their feet. It was no easy thing, however,
for when one stood up the other slipped and in his fall involved the
brother. In the meantime it made a jest exactly suited to the mind of
Elkhead, and shrieks of hysterical laughter rewarded their struggles.
Until at length they sat solemnly, back to back, easing the pressure of
the iron as best they might with their hands. Assembled Elkhead reeled
about the room, drunken with laughter. But Mac Strann went quietly back
to his table and paid no attention to the scene.

There is an end to all good things, however, and finally the two
brothers concerted action together, rose, and then side-stepped towards
the door, dripping the mop-water at every step. Obviously they were
bound for the blacksmith's to lose their collar; and everyone in the
saloon knew that the blacksmith was not in town.

The old man who had done the hoe-down hobbled to the end of the barroom
and before the table of Mac Strann made a speech to the effect that
Elkhead had everything it needed except laughter, that Mac Strann had
come to their assistance in that respect, and that if he, the old man,
had the power, he would pension such an efficient jester and keep him
permanently in the town. To all of this Mac Strann paid not the
slightest heed, but with his fleshy brow puckered considered the
infinite distance. Even the drink which Pale Annie, grateful for the
averted riot, placed on the table before him, Mac Strann allowed to
stand untasted. And it was private stock!

It was at this time that Haw-Haw Langley made his way back to the table
and occupied the contested seat.

"That was a bum play," he said solemnly to Mac Strann. "When Barry hears
about what you done here to two men, d'you think that he'll ever hit
your trail?"

The other started.

"I never thought about it," he murmured, his thick lips, as always,
framing speech with difficulty. "D'you s'pose I'd ought to go back to
the Cumberland place for him?"

A yell rose at the farther end of the room.

"A wolf! Hey! Shoot the damn wolf!"

"You fool!" cried another. "He ain't skinny enough to be a wolf.
Besides, whoever heard of a tame wolf comin' into a barroom?"

Nevertheless many a gun was held in readiness, and the men, even the
most drunken, fell back to one side and allowed a free passage for the
animal. It seemed, indeed, to be a wolf, and a giant of its kind, and it
slunk now with soundless step through the silence of the barroom,
glancing neither to right nor to left, until it came before the table of
Mac Strann. There it halted and slunk back a little, the upper lip
lifted away from the long fangs, its eyes glittered upon the face of the
giant, and then it swung about and slipped out of the barroom as it had
come, in utter silence.

In the utter silence Mac Strann leaned across the table to Haw-Haw
Langley.

"He's come alone this time," he said, "but the next time he'll bring his
master with him. We'll wait!"

The Adam's-apple rose and fell in the throat of Haw-Haw.

"We'll wait," he nodded, and he burst into the harsh, unhuman laughter
which had given him his name.




CHAPTER XXXVI

THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE


This is the letter which Swinnerton Loughburne received over the
signature of Doctor Randall Byrne. It was such a strange letter that
between paragraphs Swinnerton Loughburne paced up and down his Gramercy
Park studio and stared, baffled, at the heights of the Metropolitan
Tower.

"Dear Swinnerton,

"I'll be with you in good old Manhattan about as soon as you get this
letter. I'm sending this ahead because I want you to do me a favour. If
I have to go back to those bare, blank rooms of mine with the smell of
chemicals drifting in from the laboratory, I'll--get drunk. That's all!"

Here Swinnerton Loughburne lowered the letter to his knees and grasped
his head in both hands. Next he turned to the end of the letter and made
sure that the signature was "Randall Byrne." He stared again at the
handwriting. It was not the usual script of the young doctor. It was
bolder, freer, and twice as large as usual; there was a total lack of
regard for the amount of stationery consumed.

Shaking his head in bewilderment, Swinnerton Loughburne shook his fine
grey head and read on: "What I want you to do, is to stir about and find
me a new apartment. Mind you, I don't want the loft of some infernal
Arcade building in the Sixties. Get me a place somewhere between
Thirtieth and Fifty-eighth. _Two_ bed-rooms. I want a place to put some
of the boys when they drop around my way. And at least one servant's
room. Also at least one large room where I can stir about and wave my
arms without hitting the chandelier. Are you with me?"

Here Swinnerton Loughburne seized his head between both hands again and
groaned: "Dementia! Plain and simple dementia! And at his age, poor
boy!"

He continued: "Find an interior decorator. Not one of these fuzzy haired
women-in-pants, but a he-man who knows what a he-man needs. Tell him I
want that place furnished regardless of expense. I want some deep chairs
that will hit me under the knees. I want some pictures on the wall--but
_nothing out of the Eighteenth Century_--no impressionistic
landscapes--no girls dolled up in fluffy stuff. I want some pictures I
can enjoy, even if my maiden aunt can't. There you are. Tell him to go
ahead on those lines.

"In a word, Swinnerton, old top, I want to live. For about thirty years
I've _thought_, and now I know that there's nothing in it. All the
thinking in the world won't make one more blade of grass grow; put one
extra pound on the ribs of a long-horn; and in a word, thinking is the
bunk, pure and simple!"

At this point Swinnerton Loughburne staggered to the window, threw it
open, and leaned out into the cold night. After a time he had strength
enough to return to his chair and read through the rest of the epistle
without interruption.

"You wonder how I've reached the new viewpoint? Simply by seeing some
concentrated life here at the Cumberland ranch. My theories are blasted
and knocked in the head--praise God!--and I've brushed a million cobwebs
out of my brain. Chemistry? Rot! There's another sort of chemistry that
works on the inside of a man. That's what I want to study. There are
three great preliminary essentials to the study:


   1st: How to box with a man.
   2nd: How to talk with a girl.
   3rd: How to drink old wine.


Try the three, Swinnerton; they aren't half bad. At first they may give
you a sore jaw, an aching heart, and a spinning head, but in the end
they teach you how to keep your feet and _fight!_

"This is how my eyes were opened.

"When I came out to this ranch it was hard for me to ride a horse. So
I've been studying how it should be done. Among other things, you should
keep your toes turned in, you know. And there are many other things to
learn.

"When I had mastered them one by one I went out the other day and asked
to have a horse saddled. It was done, and a lantern-jawed cowpuncher
brought out a piebald gelding with long ears and sleepy eyes. Not a
lovely beast, but a mild one. So I went into the saddle according to
theory--with some slight hesitations here and there, planted my feet in
the stirrups, and told the lantern-jawed fellow to turn loose the head
of the piebald. This was done. I shook the reins. The horse did not
move. I called to the brute by name. One ear wagged back to listen to
me.

"I kicked the beast in the ribs. Unfortunately I had forgotten that long
spurs were on my heels. The horse was instantly aware of that fact,
however. He leaped into a full gallop. A very jolty process. Then he
stopped--but I kept on going. A fence was in the way, so I was halted.
Afterwards the lantern-jawed man picked me up and offered to carry me
back to the house or at least get a wheelbarrow for me. I refused with
some dignity. I remarked that I preferred walking, really, and so I
started out across the hills and away from the house. My head was sore;
so were my shoulders where I hit the fence; I began to think of the joy
of facing that horse again, armed with a club.

"It was evening--after supper, you see--and the light of the moon was
already brighter than the sunlight. And by the time I had crossed the
first range of hills, it was quite dark. As I walked I brooded upon many
things. There were enough to disturb me.

"There was old Joe Cumberland, at death's door and beyond the reach of
my knowledge; and he had been taken away from death by the wild man, Dan
Barry. There was the girl with the bright hair--Kate Cumberland. In
education, nothing; in brain, nothing; in experience, nothing; and yet I
was attracted. But she was not attracted in the least until along came
the wild man again, and then she fell into his arms--actually fought for
him! Why? I could not tell. My name and the things I have done and even
my money, meant nothing to her. But when he came it was only a glance, a
word, a smile, and she was in his arms. I felt like Caligula. I wished
the world had only one neck, and I an axe. But why should I have felt
depressed because of failures in the eyes of these silly yokels? Not one
of them could read the simplest chemical formula!

"All very absurd, you will agree, and you may get some inkling as to my
state of mind while I walked over those same dark hills. I seemed a part
of that darkness. I looked up to the stars. They were merely like the
pages of a book. I named them off hand, one after the other, and thought
of their characteristics, their distances, their composition, and
meditated on the marvels the spectrum has made known to us. But no
sooner did such a train of thoughts start in my brain, than I again
recurred to the girl, Kate Cumberland, and all I was aware of was a pain
at heart--something like homesickness. Very strange.

"She and the man are together constantly. The other day I was in Joseph
Cumberland's room and we heard whistling outside. The face of the old
man lighted, 'They are together again,' he said. 'How do you guess at
that?' I asked. 'By the sound of his whistling,' he answered. 'For he
whistles as if he expected an answer--as if he were talking with
someone.' And by the Lord, the old man was right. It would never have
occurred to me!

"Now as I started down the farther slope of a hill a whistling sound ran
upon me through the wind, and looking back I saw a horseman galloping
with great swiftness along the line of the crest, very plainly outlined
by the sky, and by something of smoothness in the running of the horse I
knew that it was Barry and his black stallion. But the whistling--the
music! Dear God, man, have you read of the pipes of Pan? That night I
heard them and it made a riot in my heart.

"He was gone, suddenly, and the whistling went out like a light, but
something had happened inside me--the first beginning of this process of
internal change. The ground no longer seemed so dark. There were earth
smells--very friendly--I heard some little creature chirruping
contentedly to itself. Something hummed--a grasshopper, perhaps. And
then I looked up to the stars. There was not a name I could think of--I
forgot them all, and for the first time I was contented to look at them
and wonder at their beauty without an attempt at analysis or labelling.

"If I say that I went back to the ranch-house with my feet on the ground
and by heart up there among the stars, will you understand?

"I found the girl sewing in front of the fire in the living room.
Simply looked up to me with a smile, and a certain dimness about the
eyes--well, my breath stopped.

"'Kate,' said I, 'I am going away to-morrow morning!'

"'And leave Dad?' said she.

"'To tell you the truth,' I answered, 'there is nothing I can do for
him. There has never been anything I could do for him.'

"'I am sorry,' said she, and lifted up her eyes to me.

"Now, I had begun by being stiff with her, but the ringing of that
whistling--pipes of Pan, you know--was in my ears. I took a chair beside
her. Something overflowed in my heart. For the first time in whole days
I could look on her beauty without pain.

"'Do you know why I'm going?' I asked.

"She waited.

"'Because,' said I, and smiled right into her face, 'I love you, Kate,
most infernally; and I know perfectly well that I will get never the
devil a bit of good out of it.'

"She peered at me. 'You aren't jesting?' says she. 'No, you're serious.
I'm very sorry, Doctor Byrne.'

"'And I,' I answered, 'am glad. I wouldn't change it for the world. For
once in my life--to-night--I've forgotten myself. No, I won't go away
and nurse a broken heart, but I'll think of you as a man should think of
something bright and above him. You'll keep my heart warm, Kate, till
I'm a very old man. Because of you, I'll be able to love some other
girl--and a fine one, by the Lord!'

"Something in the nature of an outburst, eh? But it was the music which
had done it. All the time it rang and echoed through my ears. My words
were only an echo of it. I was in tune with the universe. I was living
for the first time. The girl dropped her sewing--tossed it aside. She
came over to me and took my hands in a way that would have warmed even
the icicles of your heart, Swinnerton.

"'Doctor,' says she, 'I know that you are going to be very happy.'

"'Happiness,' said I, 'is a trick, like riding a horse. And I think that
I've learned the trick. I've caught it from you and from Barry.'

"At that, she let go my hands and stepped back. The very devil is in
these women, Swinnerton. You never can place them for a minute at a
time.

"'I am trying to learn myself,' she said, and there was a shadow of
wistfulness in her eyes.

"In another moment I should have made a complete fool of myself, but I
remembered in time and got out of the room. To-morrow I start back for
the old world but I warn you beforehand, my dear fellow, that I'm
bringing something of the new world with me.

"What has it all brought to me? I am sad one day and gay the next. But
at least I know that thinking is not life and now I'm ready to fight.

"Randall Byrne."




CHAPTER XXXVII

THE PIEBALD


The morning of the doctor's departure witnessed quite a ceremony at the
Cumberland ranch, for old Joe Cumberland insisted that he be brought
down from his room to his old place in the living-room. When he
attempted to rise from his bed, however, he found that he could not
stand; and big Buck Daniels lifted the old man like a child and carried
him down the stairs. Once ensconced on the sofa in the living-room Joe
Cumberland beckoned his daughter close to him, and whispered with a
smile as she leaned over: "Here's what comes of pretendin', Kate. I been
pretending to be too sick to walk, and now I _can't_ walk; and if I'd
pretended to be well, I'd be ridin' Satan right now!"

He looked about him.

"Where's Dan?" he asked.

"Upstairs getting ready for the trip."

"Trip?"

"He's riding with Doctor Byrne to town and he'll bring back Doctor
Byrne's horse."

The old man grew instantly anxious.

"They's a lot of things can happen on a long trip like that, Kate."

She nodded gravely.

"But we have to try him," she said. "We can't keep him here at the ranch
all the time. And if he really cares, Dad, he'll come back."

"And you let him go of your own free will?" asked Joe Cumberland,
wonderingly.

"I asked him to go," she answered quietly, but some of the colour left
her face.

"Of course it's going to come out all right," nodded her father.

"I asked him when he'd be back, and he said he would be here by dark
to-night."

The old man sighed with relief.

"He don't never slip up on promises," he said. "But oh, lass, I'll be
glad when he's back again! Buck, how'd you and Dan come along together?"

"We don't come," answered Buck gloomily. "I tried to shake hands with
him yesterday and call it quits. But he wouldn't touch me. He jest
leaned back and smiled at me and hated me with his eyes, that way he
has. He don't even look at me except when he has to, and when he does I
feel like someone was sneaking up behind me with a knife ready. And he
ain't said ten words to me since I come back." He paused and considered
Kate with the same dark, lowering glance. "To-morrow I leave."

"You'll think better of that," nodded Joe Cumberland. "Here's the doctor
now."

He came in with Dan Barry behind him. A changed man was the doctor. He
was a good two inches taller because he stood so much more erect, and
there was a little spring in his step which gave aspiration and spirit
to his carriage. He bade them good-bye one by one, and by Joe Cumberland
he sat down for an instant and wished him luck. The old ranchman drew
the other down closer.

"They's no luck for me," he whispered, "but don't tell none of 'em. I'm
about to take a longer trip than you'll ride to-day. But first I'll see
'em settled down here--Dan quiet and both of 'em happy. S'long,
doc--thanks for takin' care of me. But this here is something that can't
be beat no way. Too many years'll break the back of any man, doc. Luck
to ye!"

"If you'll step to the door," said the doctor, smiling upon the rest,
"you'll have some fun to watch. I'm going to ride on the piebald."

"Him that throwed you yesterday?" grinned Buck Daniels.

"The same," said the doctor. "I think I can come to a gentleman's
understanding with him. A gentleman from the piebald's point of view is
one who is never unintentionally rude. He may change his mind this
morning--or he may break my back. One of the two is sure to happen."

In front of the house Dan Barry already sat on Satan with Black Bart
sitting nearby watching the face of his master. And beside them the
lantern-jawed cowpuncher held the bridle of the piebald mustang. Never
in the world was there a lazier appearing beast. His lower lip hung
pendulous, a full inch and a half below the upper. His eyes were rolled
so that hardly more than the whites showed. He seemed to stand asleep,
dreaming of some Nirvana for equine souls. And the only signs of life
were the long ears, which wobbled, occasionally, back and forth.

When the doctor mounted, the piebald limited all signs of interest to
opening one eye.

The doctor clucked. The piebald switched his tail. Satan, at a word from
Dan Barry, moved gracefully into a soft trot away from the house. The
doctor slapped his mount on the neck. An ear flicked back and forth. The
doctor stretched out both legs, and then he dug both spurs deep into the
flanks of the mustang.

It was a perfectly successful maneuvre. The back of the piebald changed
from an ugly humped line to a decidedly sharp parabola and the horse
left the ground with all four feet. He hit it again, almost in the
identical hoof-marks, and with all legs stiff. The doctor sagged
drunkenly in the saddle, and his head first swung far back, and then
snapped over so that the chin banged against his chest. Nevertheless he
clung to the saddle with both hands, and stayed in his seat. The piebald
swung his head around sufficiently to make sure of the surprising fact,
and then he commenced to buck in earnest.

It was a lovely exhibition. He bucked with his head up and his head
between his knees. He bucked in a circle and in a straight line and then
mixed both styles for variety. He made little spurts at full speed,
leaped into the air, and came down stiff-legged at the end of the run,
his head between his braced forefeet, and then he whirled as if on a peg
and darted back the other way. He bucked criss-cross, jumping from side
to side, and he interspersed this with samples of all his other kinds of
bucking thrown in. That the doctor stuck on the saddle was a miracle
beyond belief. Of course he pulled leather shamelessly throughout the
contest, but riding straight up is a good deal of a myth. Fancy riding
is reserved for circus men. The mountain-desert is a place where men
stick close to utility and let style go hang.

And the doctor stuck in the saddle. He had set his teeth, and he was a
sea-sick greenish-white. His hat was a-jog over one ear--his shirt tails
flew out behind. And still he remained to battle. Aye, for he ceased the
passive clinging to the saddle. He gathered up the long quirt which had
hitherto dangled idly from his wrist, and at the very moment when the
piebald had let out another notch in his feats, the doctor, holding on
desperately with one hand, with the other brandished the quirt around
his head and brought it down with a crack along the flanks of the
piebald.

The effect was a little short of a miracle. The mustang snorted and
leaped once into the air, but he forgot to come down stiff-legged, and
then, instantly, he broke into a little, soft dog trot, and followed
humbly in the trail of the black stallion. The laughter and cheers from
the house were the sweetest of music in the ears of Doctor Randall
Byrne; the most sounding sentences of praise from the lips of the most
learned of professors, after this, would be the most shabby of
anticlimaxes. He waved his arm back to a group standing in front of the
house--Buck Daniels, Kate, the lantern-jawed cowboy, and Wung Lu waving
his kitchen apron. In another moment he was beside the rider of the
stallion, and the man was whistling one of those melodies which defied
repetition. It simply ran on and on, smoothly, sweeping through
transition after transition, soaring and falling in the most effortless
manner. Now it paused, now it began again. It was never loud, but it
carried like the music of a bird on wing, blown by the wind. There was
about it, also, something which escaped from the personal. He began to
forget that it was a man who whistled, and such a man! He began to look
about to the hills and the sky and the rocks--for these, it might be
said, were set to music--they, too, had the sweep of line, and the
broken rhythms, the sense of spaciousness, the far horizons.

That day was a climax of the unusual weather. For a long time the sky
had been periodically blanketed with thick mists, but to-day the wind
had freshened and it tore the mists into a thousand mighty fragments.
There was never blue sky in sight--only, far up, a diminishing and
lighter grey to testify that above it the yellow sun might be shining;
but all the lower heavens were a-sweep with vast cloud masses,
irregular, huge, hurling across the sky. They hung so low that one could
follow the speed of their motion and almost gauge it by miles per hour.
And in the distance they seemed to brush the tops of the hills. Seeing
this, the doctor remembered what he had heard of rain in this region. It
would come, they said, in sheets and masses--literal water-falls. Dry
arroyos suddenly filled and became swift torrent, rolling big boulders
down their courses. There were tales of men fording rivers who were
suddenly overwhelmed by terrific walls of water which rushed down from
the higher mountains in masses four and eight feet high. In coming they
made a thundering among the hills and they plucked up full grown trees
like twigs thrust into wet mud. Indeed, that was the sort of rain one
would expect in such a country, so whipped and naked of life. Even the
reviving rainfall was sent in the form of a scourge; and that which
should make the grass grow might tear it up by the roots.

That was a time of change and of portent, and a day well fitted to the
mood of Randall Byrne. He, also, had altered, and there was about to
break upon him the rain of life, and whether it would destroy him or
make him live, and richly, he could not guess. But he was naked to the
skies of chance--naked as this landscape.

Far past the mid-day they reached the streets of Elkhead and stopped at
the hotel. As the doctor swung down from his saddle, cramped and sore
from the long ride, thunder rattled over the distant hills and a patter
of rain splashed in the dust and sent up a pungent odor to his
nostrils. It was like the voice of the earth proclaiming its thirst. And
a blast of wind leaped down the street and lifted the brim of Barry's
hat and set the bandana at his throat fluttering. He looked away into
the teeth of the wind and smiled.

There was something so curious about him at the instant that Randall
Byrne wanted to ask him into the hotel--wanted to have him knee to knee
for a long talk. But he remembered an old poem--the sea-shell needs the
waves of the sea--the bird will not sing in the cage. And the yellow
light in the eyes of Barry, phosphorescent, almost--a thing that might
be nearly seen by night--that, surely, would not shine under any roof.
It was the wind which made him smile. These things he understood,
without fear.

So he said good-bye, and the rider waved carelessly and took the reins
of the piebald and turned the stallion back. He noted the catlike grace
of the horse in moving, as if his muscles were steel springs; and he
noted also that the long ride had scarcely stained the glossy hide with
sweat--while the piebald reeked with the labour. Randall Byrne drew
thoughtfully back onto the porch of the hotel and followed the rider
with his eyes. In a moment a great cloud of dust poured down the street,
covered the rider, and when it was gone he had passed around a corner
and out of the life of the doctor.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE CHALLENGE


All this time Black Bart had trotted contentedly ahead of Satan, never
having to glance back but apparently knowing the intended direction;
save that when Dan Barry turned to the road leading out of the little
town, the wolf-dog had turned in an opposite direction. The rider turned
in the saddle and sent a sharp whistle towards the animal, but he was
answered by a short howl of woe that made him check Satan and swing
around. Black Bart stood in the centre of the street facing in the
opposite direction, and he looked back over his shoulder towards his
master.

There was apparently a perfect understanding between them, and the
master first glanced up and made sure of the position of the sun and the
length of time he might allow for the trip home, before he decided to
follow the whim of the wolf-dog. Then he turned Satan and cantered, with
the piebald trailing, back towards Black Bart.

At this the wolf-dog began to trot down the street, turned the next
corner, and drew up at the door of a rambling building above which hung
a dirty, cracked sign: "GILEAD SALOON" and underneath in smaller
letters was painted the legend: "Here's where you get it!"

Black Bart strolled up to the swinging doors of the emporium and then
turned to look back at his master; clearly he wished Dan to enter the
place. But the rider shook his head and would certainly have ridden on
had not, at that moment, the rain which had hitherto fallen only in
rattling bursts, now burst over the roofs of the town with a loud
roaring as of wind through a forest. It was possible that the shower
might soon pass over, so Dan rode under the long shelter which stretched
in front of the saloon, dismounted, and entered behind Black Bart.

It was occupied by a scattering of people, for the busy time of the day
had not yet commenced and Pale Annie was merely idling behind the
bar--working at half-speed, as it were. To this group Black Bart paid
not the slightest heed but glided smoothly down the centre of the long
room until he approached the tables at the end, where, in a corner, sat
a squat, thick-chested man, and opposite him the most cadaverously lean
fellow that Whistling Dan had ever seen. Before these two Black Bart
paused and then cast a glance over his shoulder towards the master;
Whistling Dan frowned in wonder; he knew neither of the pair.

But Black Bart apparently did. He slouched a pace closer, crouched, and
bared his fangs with a tremendous snarl. At this the lean man left his
chair and sprang back to a distance. Terror convulsed his face; but his
eyes glittered with a fascinated interest and he glanced first at his
companion and then at the great wolf-dog, as if he were making a
comparison between them. It was the broad shouldered man who first
spoke.

"Partner," he said in a thick voice, in which the articulation was
almost lost, "maybe you better take your dog out before he gets hurt. He
don't like me and I don't like him none too much."

"Bart!" called Dan Barry.

But Black Bart gave no heed. There had been a slight flexing of his
muscles as he crouched, and now he leaped--a black bolt of fighting
weight--squarely in the face of the giant. He was met and checked midway
in his spring. For the two long arms darted out, two great hands
fastened in the throat of the beast, and Black Bart fell back upon the
floor, with Mac Strann following, his grip never broken by the fall.

A scurry of many feet running towards the scene; a shouting of twenty
voices around him; but all that Whistling Dan saw were the fangs of Bart
as they gnashed fruitlessly at the wrists of Mac Strann, and then the
great red tongue lolling out and the eyes bulging from their
sockets--all he heard was the snarling of the wolf and the peculiar
whine of rage which came from the throat of the man-beast fighting the
wolf. Then he acted. His hands darted between the thick forearms of Mac
Strann--his elbows jerked out and snapped the grip; next he dragged
Black Bart away from the danger.

The wolf was instantly on his feet and lunging again, but a sharp
"Heel!" from Dan checked him mid-leap. He came to a shuddering halt
behind the legs of his master. Whistling Dan slipped a little closer to
the giant.

"I should have knowed you before," he said in a voice which carried only
to the ears of Strann. "You're the brother of Jerry Strann. And they's a
reason why Bart hates you, partner!"

The thick upper lip of Strann lifted slightly as he spoke.

"Him or you--you and your wolf together or one by one--it don't make no
difference to me. I've come for you, Barry!"

The other straightened a little, and his eyes travelled slowly up and
down the form of Strann.

"I been hungering to meet a man like you," he said. "Hungerin',
partner."

"North of town they's the old McDuffy place, all in ruins and nobody
ever near it. I'll be there in an hour, m'frien'."

"I'll be waiting for you there," nodded Mac Strann, and so saying, he
turned back to his table as if he had been interrupted by nothing more
than a casual greeting. Still Dan Barry remained a moment with his eyes
on the face of Mac Strann. And when he turned and walked with his light,
soundless step down the length of the silent barroom, the wolf-dog slunk
at his heels, ever and anon swinging his head over his shoulder and
glancing back at the giant at the end of the room. As the door closed
on man and dog, the saloon broke once more into murmur, and then into
an excited clamoring. Pale Annie stepped from behind the bar and leaned
upon the table beside Mac Strann. Even while leaning in this manner the
bartender was as tall as the average man; he waved back the others with
a gesture of his tremendous arm. Then he reached out and took the hand
of Mac Strann in his clammy fingers.

"My friend," said the ex-undertaker in his careful manner, "I seen a man
once California a husky two-year-old--which nobody said could be done,
and I've seen some other things, but I've never seen anything to touch
the way you handled Black Bart. D'you know anything about that dog?"

Mac Strann shook his ponderous head and his dull eyes considered Pale
Annie with an expression of almost living curiosity.

"Black Bart has a record behind him that an old time gun-man would have
heard with envy. There are dead men in the record of that dog, sir!"

All this he had spoken in a comparatively loud voice, but now, noting
that the others had heeded his gesture and had made back towards the bar
to drink on the strength of that strange fight between man and beast,
the bartender approached his lips close to the ear of the giant.

He said in a rapid murmur: "I watched you talking with Dan Barry and I
saw Barry's face when he went out. You and he are to meet somewhere
again to-day. My friend, don't throw yourself away."

Here Mac Strann stared down at his mighty hand--a significant answer,
but Pale Annie went on swiftly: "Yes, you're strong, but strength won't
save you from Dan Barry. We know him here in Elkhead. Do you know that
if he had pulled his gun and shot you down right here where you sit,
that he could have walked out of this room without a hand raised to stop
him? Yes, sir! And why? Because we know his record; and I'd rather go
against a wolf with my bare hands--as you did--than stand up against Dan
Barry with guns. I could tell you how he fought Jim Silent's gang, one
to six. I could tell you a lot of other things. My friend, I _will_ tell
you about 'em if you'll listen."

But Mac Strann considered the speaker with his dull eyes.

"I never was much on talkin'," he observed mildly. "I don't understand
talkin' very well."

Pale Annie started to speak again, but he checked himself, stared
earnestly at Mac Strann, and then hurried back behind his bar. His face
was even graver than usual; but business was business with Pale
Annie--and all men have to die in their time! Haw-Haw Langley took the
place which Pale Annie had left vacant opposite Mac Strann.

He cast a frightened glance upward, where the rain roared steadily on
the roof of the building; then his eyes fluttered back until they rested
on the face of his companion. He had to moisten his thin lips before he
could speak and even then it was a convulsive effort, like a man
swallowing too large a morsel.

"Well?" said Haw-Haw. "Is it fixed?"

"It's fixed," said Mac Strann. "Maybe you'd get the hosses, Haw-Haw. If
you're comin with me?"

A dark shadow swept over the face of Haw-Haw Langley.

"You're going to beat it?" he sneered. "After you come all this way
you're going to run away from Barry? And him not half your size?"

"I'm going out to meet him," answered Mac Strann.

Haw-Haw Langley started up as if he feared Mac Strann would change his
mind if there were any delay. His long fingers twisted together, as if
to bring the blood into circulation about the purple knuckles.

"I'll have the hosses right around to the front," he said. "By the time
you got your slicker on, Mac, I'll have 'em around in front!"

And he stalked swiftly from the room.




CHAPTER XXXIX

THE STORM


When they rode out of the town the wet sand squashed under the feet of
their horses and splashed up on their riding boots and their slickers.
It even spotted their faces here and there, and a light brown spray
darted out to right and left of the falling hoofs. For all the streets
of Elkhead were running shallow rivers, with dark, swift currents, and
when they left the little town the landscape was shut out by the falling
torrents. It made a strange and shifting panorama, for the rain varied
in its density now and again, and as it changed hills which had been
quite blotted out leaped close upon them, like living things, and then
sprang back again into the mist.

So heavy was that tropical fall of water that the horses were bothered
by the beating of the big drops, and shook their heads and stamped
fretfully under the ceaseless bombardment. Indeed, when one stretched
out his hand the drops stung him as if with lashes of tiny whips. There
was no wind, no thunder, no flash of lightning, only the tremendous
downpour which blended earth and sky in a drab, swift river.

The air was filled with parallel lines, as in some pencil drawings--not
like ordinary rain, but as if the sky had changed into a vast
watering-spout and was sending down a continuous flood from a myriad
holes. It was hard to look up through the terrific downpour, for it
blinded one and whipped the face and made one breathless, but now and
again a puff of the rare wind would lift the sodden brim of the sombrero
and then one caught a glimpse of the low-hanging clouds, with the
nearest whiffs of black mist dragging across the top of a hill. Without
noticeable currents of wind, that mass of clouds was shifting
slowly--with a sort of rolling motion, across the sky. And the weight of
the rain forced the two to bend their heads and stare down to where the
face of the earth was alive with the gliding, brown waters, whose
surface was threshed into a continual foam. To speak to each other
through the uproar, they had to cup their hands about their lips and
shout. Then again the rainfall around them fell away to a drizzling mist
and the beating of the downpour sounded far away, and they were
surrounded by distant walls of noise. So they came to the McDuffy place.

It was a helpless ruin, long abandoned. Not an iota of the roof
remained. The sheds for the horses had dropped to the earth; but the
walls of the house still remained standing, in part, with the empty
windows looking out with a mocking promise of the shelter which was not
within. Upon this hollow shack the rain beat with redoubled fury, and
even before they could make out the place through the blankets of rain,
they heard the hollow drumming. For there were times, oddly enough, when
any sound would carry a great distance through the crashing of the rain.

A wind now sprung up and at once veered the rain from its perpendicular
fall. It slashed them in the face under the drooping brims of their
sombreros, so they drew into the shelter of the highest part of the
standing wall. Still some of the rain struck them, but the major part of
it was shunted over their heads. Moreover, the wall acted as a sort of
sounding board, catching up every odd noise from the storm-beaten plain
beyond. They could speak to each other now without effort.

"D'you think," asked Haw-Haw Langley, pressing his reeking horse a
little closer to Mac Strann, "that he'll come out after us in a rain
like this?"

But simple-minded Mac Strann lifted his head and peered through the
thick curtains of rain.

"D'you think," he parried, "that Jerry could maybe look through all this
and see what I'm doin' to-day?"

It made Haw-Haw Langley grin, but peering more closely and observing
that there was no mockery in the face of the giant, he wiped out his
grin with a scrubbing motion of his wet hand and peered closely into the
face of his companion.

"They ain't any doubt of it," he said reassuringly. "He'll know what you
do, Mac. What was it that Pale Annie said to you?"

"Wanted me not to meet Barry. Said that Barry had once cleaned up a
gang of six."

"And here we are only two."

"You ain't to fight!" warned Mac Strann sharply. "It'll be man to man,
Haw-Haw."

"But he might not notice that," cried Haw-Haw, and he caressed his
scrawny neck as though he already felt fingers closing about his
windpipe. "Him bein' used to fight crowds, Mac. Did you think of that?"

"I never asked you to come," responded Mac Strann.

"Mac," cried Haw-Haw in a sudden alarm, "s'pose you wasn't to win.
S'pose you wasn't able to keep him away from me?"

The numb lips of Mac Strann sprawled in an ugly smile, but he made no
other answer.

"_You_ don't think you'll lose," hurried on Haw-Haw, "but neither did
them six that Pale Annie was tellin' about, most like. But they did!
They lost; but if you lose what'll happen to me?"

"They ain't no call for you to stay here," said Mac Strann with utter
indifference.

Haw-Haw answered quickly: "I wouldn't go--I wouldn't miss it for
nothin'. Ain't I come all this way to see it--I mean to help? Would I
fall down on you now, Mac? No, I wouldn't!"

And twisting those bony fingers together he burst once more into that
rattling, unhuman laughter which all the Three B's knew so well and
dreaded as the dying dread the sight of the circling buzzard above.

"Stop laughin'!" cried Mac Strann with sudden anger. "Damn you, stop
laughin'!"

The other peered upon Mac Strann with incredulous delight, his broad
mouth gaping to that thirsted grin of enjoyment.

"You ain't gettin' nervous, Mac?" he queried, and thrust his face closer
to make sure. "You ain't bothered, Mac? You ain't doubtin' how this'll
turn out?" There was no answer and so he replied to himself: "I know
what done it to you. I seen it myself. It was that yaller light in his
eyes, Mac. My God, it come up there out of nothin' and it wasn't a light
that ought to come in no man's eyes. It was like I'd woke up at night
with a cold weight on my chest and found two snakes' eyes glitterin'
close to my face. Makes me shivery, like, jest to think of it now. D'you
notice that, Mac?"

"I'm tired of talkin'," said Mac Strann hoarsely, "damned tired!"

And so saying he swung his great head slowly around and glared at
Haw-Haw. The latter shrank away with an undulatory motion in his saddle.
And when the head of Mac Strann turned away again the broad mouth began
gibbering: "It's gettin' him like it done me. He's scared, scared,
scared--even Mac Strann!"

He broke off, for Mac Strann had jerked up his head and said in a
strangely muffled voice: "What was that?"

The bullet head of Haw-Haw Langley leaned to one side, and his
glittering eyes rolled up while he listened.

"Nothin'!" he said, "I don't hear nothin'!"

"Listen again!" cried Mac Strann in that same cautious voice, as of one
whispering in the night in the house of the enemy. "It's like a voice in
the wind. It comes down the wind. D'ye hear now--now--now?"

It was, indeed, the faintest of faint sounds when Haw-Haw caught it. It
was, in the roar of the rain, as indistinct as some distant light on the
horizon which may come either from a rising star or from the window of a
house. But it had a peculiar quality of its own, even as the house-light
would be tinged with yellow when the stars are cold and white. A small
and distant sound, and yet it cut through the crashing of the storm more
and more clearly; someone rode through the rain whistling.

"It's him!" gasped Haw-Haw Langley. "My God A'mighty, Mac, he's
whistlin'! It ain't possible!"

He reined his horse closer to the wall, listening with mouth agape.

He shrilled suddenly: "What if he should hit us both, seein' us
together? They ain't no heart in a feller that can whistle in a storm
like this!"

But Mac Strann had lowered his head, bulldog-like, and now he listened
and thrust out his blunt jaw farther and farther and returned no answer.

"God gimme the grit to stick it out," begged Haw-Haw Langley in an
agony of desire. "God lemme see how it comes out. God lemme watch 'em
fight. One of 'em is goin' to die--may be two of 'em--nothin' like it
has ever been seen!"

The rain shifted, and the heart of the storm rolled far away. For the
moment they could look far out across the shadow-swept hills, and out of
the heart of the desolate landscape the whistling ran thrilling upon
them. It was so loud and close that of one accord the two listeners
jerked their heads about and stared at each other, and then turned their
eyes as hastily away, as though terrified by what they had seen--each in
the face of the other. It was no idle tune which they heard whistled.
This was a rising, soaring pean of delight. It rang down upon the
wind--it cut into their faces like the drops of the rain; it branded
itself like freezing cold into their foreheads.

And then, upon the crest of the nearest hill, Haw-Haw Langley saw a dim
figure through the mist, a man on a horse and something else running in
front; and they came swiftly.

"It's the wolf that's runnin' us down!" screamed Haw-Haw Langley. "Oh,
God A'mighty, even if we was to want to run, the wolf would come and
pull us down. Mac, will you save me? Will you keep the wolf away?"

He clung to the arm of his companion, but the other brushed him back
with a violence which almost unseated Haw-Haw.

"Keep off'n me," growled Mac Strann, "because when you touch me, it
feels like somethin' dead was next to my skin. Keep off'n me!"

Haw-Haw dragged himself back into the saddle with effort, for it was
slippery with rain. His face convulsed with something black as hate.

"It ain't long you'll do the orderin' and be so free with your hands.
He's comin'--soon! Mac, I'd like to stay--I'd like to see the
finish----" he stopped, his buzzard eyes glittering against the face of
the giant.

The rain blotted out the figure of the coming horseman, and at the same
instant the whistling leaped close upon them. It was as if the whistling
man had disappeared at the place where the rain swallowed his form, and
had taken body again at their very side. Mac Strann shrank back against
the wall, bracing his shoulders, and gripped the butts of his guns. But
Haw-Haw Langley cast a frightened glance on either side; his head making
birdlike, pecking notions, and then he leaned over the pommel of his
saddle with a wail of despair and spurred off into the rain.




CHAPTER XL

THE ARROYO


He disappeared, instantly, in that shivering curtain of greyness. Mac
Strann sat by the ruined house alone.

Now, in a time of danger a child will give courage to the strong man.
There is a wonderful communion between any two in time of crisis; and
when Haw-Haw Langley disappeared through the rain it was to Mac Strann
as it was to Patroclus when Apollo struck the base of his neck and his
armour of proof fell from him. Not only was there a singular sense of
nakedness, but it seemed to him also that the roaring of the rain became
a hostile voice of threatening at the same instant.

He had never in his life feared any living thing. But now there was a
certain hollowness in the region of his stomach, and his heart fluttered
like a bird in the air, with appalling lightness. And he wished to be
far away.

With a clear heaven above him--ay, that would be different, but God had
arranged this day and had set the earth like a stage in readiness for a
death. And that was why the rain lashed the earth so fiercely. He looked
down. After his death the wind would still continue to beat that muddy
water to foam. Ay, in that very place all would be as it was at this
moment. He would be gone, but the sky and the senseless earth would
remain unchanged. A sudden yearning seized him for the cabin among the
mountains, with the singing of the coffee pot over the fire--the good,
warm, yellow fire that smoked between the rocks. And the skins he had
left leaning against the walls of the cabin to dry--he remembered them
all in one glance of memory.

Why was he here, then, when he should have been so far away, making his
roof snug against this torrent of rain. Now, there would be no rain,
surely, in those kindly mountains. Their tall peaks would shut out the
storm clouds. Only this plain, these low hills, were the place of hell!

He swung the head of his horse to one side, drove deep the spurs, and
leaning his head to the volleying of the rain he raced in a direction
opposite to that in which Haw-Haw Langley had disappeared, in a
direction that led as straight as the line of a flying bird towards that
cabin in the mountains.

Now and then the forefeet of his great horse smashed into a pool and
sent a muddy shower of rain flying up. It crackled against his slicker;
it beat like hands against his face. Everything was striving--all the
elements of wind and rain--to hold him back.

Yet flight brought a blessed sense of relief and of safety. He eased the
pace of his horse to a moderate gallop, and no longer driving blindly
through the hills, he made out, by peering into the blast of rain, some
of the pools which lay in his path, and swung aside to avoid them.

The rain lightened again about him; he caught a view of the kindly,
sheltering hills on all sides; but as he urged his horse on towards them
a shrill flight of whistling fell upon his ears from behind. He drew his
horse at once to a halt and listened with his heart knocking at his
teeth.

It was impossible, manifestly, that the fellow could have followed his
track through the rain. For that matter, if the wolf-fiend could follow
traces over a plain awash with water, why might they not as well follow
the tracks of Haw-Haw Langley? There was no good reason.

The whistling? Well, the whistler was far away in the heart of the
storm, and the sound was merely blown against the wind by a chance echo.
Yet he remained holding his rein taut, and listening with all his might.

It came again, suddenly as before, sharp, and keen as a shaft of light
in the blackest heart of night, and Mac Strann leaned over the pommel of
his saddle with a groan, and drove the spurs home. At the same instant
the rain shut in over the hills again; a fresher wind sprang up and
drove the downpour into his face. Also its roar shut out the possibility
of any sound reaching him from behind.

He was the worse for that. As long as the whistling might reach him he
could tell how near the pursuer rode; but in this common roar of the
rain the man might be at any distance behind him--on his very heels,
indeed. Ay, Dan Barry might rush upon him from behind. He had seen that
black stallion and he would never forget--those graceful, agile lines,
that generous breast, wide for infinite wind and the great heart. If the
stallion were exerted, it could overtake his own mount as if he were
standing still. Not on good footing, perhaps, but in this mucky ground
the weight of his horse was terribly against him. He drove the spurs
home again; he looked back again and again, piercing the driving mist of
rain with starting eyes. He was safe still; the destroyer was not in
sight; yet he might be riding close behind that wall of rain.

His horse came to a sudden halt, sliding on all four feet and driving up
a rush of dirty water before him; even then he had stopped barely in
time, for his forefeet were buried to the knees in water. Before Mac
Strann lay a wide arroyo. In ordinary weather it was dry as all the
desert around, but now it had cupped the water from miles around and ran
bank full, a roaring torrent. On its surface the rain beat with a
continual crashing, like axes falling on brittle glass; and the downpour
was now so fearful that Mac Strann, for all his peering, could not look
to the other side.

He judged the current to see if he might swim his horse across. But even
while he stared the stump of a cottonwood went whirling down the stream,
struck a rock, perhaps, on the bottom, flung its entire bulk out of the
water with the impact, and then floundered back into the stream again
and whirled instantly out of sight in the sheeted rain.

No horse in the world could live through such a current. But the arroyo
might turn. He swung his horse and spurred desperately along the bank,
keeping his eye upon the bank. No, the stream cut back in a sharp curve
and headed him farther and farther in the direction of the pursuer. He
brought the mighty horse to another sliding halt and swung about in the
opposite direction, for surely there must lie the point of escape.
Desperately he rode, for the detour had cost him priceless time, yet it
might be made up. Ay, the stream sloped sharply into the direction in
which he wished to ride. For a distance he could not judge, since
seconds were longer than minutes to Mac Strann now.

And then--the edge of the stream curved back again. He thought it must
be a short twist in the line of the arroyo, but following it a little
further he came to realise the truth. The arroyo described a wide curve,
and a sharp one, and to ride down its banks on either side was merely to
throw himself into the arms of Whistling Dan.

Once he struck his fleshy forehead, and then turned with gritting teeth
and galloped back for the point at which he had first arrived. To his
maddened brain it occurred that the current of the arroyo might by this
have somewhat abated. He might now make his way across it. So he halted
once more on the bank at the point where the stream doubled back on its
course and once more, in an agony, studied the force of the current. It
seemed so placid at the first glance that he was on the verge of
spurring the horse into the wide, brown stream, but even as he loosened
the reins a gap opened in the middle of the water, widened, whirling at
the brim, and drew swiftly into a fierce vortex with a black, deep
bottom. Mac Strann tightened his reins again, and then turned his horse,
and waited.

Back the veriest coward against the wall and he becomes formidable, and
Mac Strann was one who had never feared before either man or beast or
the powers of the storm. Even now he dreaded no reality, but there dwelt
in his mind the memory of how Dan Barry had glared at him in the Gilead
Saloon, and how a flicker of yellow light had glowed in the man's
eyes--a strange and phosphorescent glimmer that might be seen in the
darkness of night. When he turned the head of his horse away from the
arroyo, he waited as one waits for the coming of a ghost. There was the
same chill tingling in his blood.

Now the blanket of rain lifted and shook away to comparative
clearness--lifted, and for the first time he could look far away across
the plains. Nothing but grey, rain-washed desert met his eyes, and then
the whistling broke once more upon him at the crest of a thrilling run.
Mac Strann strained his eyes through the mist of the storm and then he
saw, vaguely as a phantom, the form of a horseman rushing swiftly into
the very teeth of the wind. The whistle wavered, ended, and in its
place the long yell of a wolf cut the air. Mac Strann brandished a
ponderous fist in defiance that was half hysterical. Man or beast alone
he would meet--but a wolf-man!--he whirled the horse again and urged him
heedlessly into the water.

The whirlpool no longer opened before him--it had passed on down the
arroyo and left in its wake a comparative calm. So that when the horse
took the water he made good progress for some distance, until Mac Strann
could see, clearly, the farther bank of the stream. In his joy he
shouted to his horse, and swung himself clear from his saddle to lighten
the burden. At the same time they struck a heavier current and it struck
them down like a blow from above until the water closed over their
heads.

It was only for a moment, however; then they emerged, the horse with
courageously pricking ears and snorting nostrils just above the flood.
Mac Strann swung clear, gripping the horn of the saddle with one hand
while with the other he hastily divested himself of all superfluous
weight. His slicker went first, ripped away from throat and shoulders
and whipped off his body by one tug of the current. Next he fumbled at
his belt and tossed this also, guns and all, away; striking out with his
legs and his free arm to aid the progress that now forged ahead with
noticeable speed.

The current, to be sure, was carrying them farther down the stream, but
they were now almost to the centre of the arroyo and, though the water
boiled furiously over the back of the horse, they forged steadily close
and closer to the safe shore.

It was chance that defeated Mac Strann. It came shooting down the river
and he saw it only an instant too late--a log whipping through the
surface of the stream as though impelled by a living force. And with
arrowy straightness it lunged at them. Mac Strann heaved himself
high--he screamed at the horse as though the poor brute could understand
his warning, and then the tree-trunk was upon them. Fair and square it
struck the head of the horse with a thud audible even through the
rushing of the stream. The horse went down like lead, and Mac Strann was
dragged down beneath the surface.

He came up fighting grimly and hopelessly for life. For he was in the
very centre of the stream, now, and the current swept him relentlessly
down. There seemed to be hands in the middle of the arroyo, and when he
strove to battle his way to the edge of the water the current tangled at
his legs and pulled him back. Yet even then he did not fear. It was
death, he knew, but at least it was death fighting against a force of
nature rather than destruction at the hands of some weird and unhuman
agency. His arms began to grow numb. He raised his head to pick out the
nearest point on the shore and make his last struggle for life.

What he saw was a black head cutting the water just above him, and
beside the horse, one hand upon the beast's mane, swam a man. At the
same instant a hand fastened on his collar and he was drawn slowly
against the force of the river.

In the stunning surprise of the first moment he could make no effort to
save himself, and as a result, all three were washed hopelessly down the
current, but a shrill warning from his rescuer set him fighting again
with all the power of his great limbs. After that they forged steadily
towards the shore. The black horse swam with amazing strength, and
breaking the force of the current for the men, they soon passed from the
full grip of the torrent and forged into the smoother shallows at the
side of the stream. In a moment firm land was beneath the feet of Mac
Strann, and he turned his dull eyes of amazement upon Dan Barry. The
latter stood beside the panting black horse. He had not even thrown off
his slicker in the fording of the stream--there had been no time for
even that small delay if he wished to save Strann. And now he was
throwing back the folds of the garment to leave free play for his arms.
He panted from the fierce effort of the fording, but his head was high,
a singular smile lingered about the corners of his mouth, and in his
eyes Mac Strann saw the gleam of yellow, a signal of unfathomable
danger.

From his holsters Barry drew two revolvers. One he retained; the other
he tossed towards Mac Strann, and the latter caught it automatically.

"Now," said the soft voice of Barry, "we're equally armed.--Down,
Bart!----" (for the wolf-dog was slinking with ominous intent towards
the giant) and there's the dog you shot. "If you drop me, you can send
your next shot into Bart. If I drop you, the teeth of Bart will be in
your throat. Make your own terms; fight in the way you want; knives, if
you like 'em better than guns, or----" and here the yellow flamed
terribly in Barry's eyes--"bare hand to hand!"

The grim truth sank slowly home in the dull mind of Mac Strann. The man
had saved him from the water to kill him on dry land.

"Barry," he said slowly, "it was your bullet that brung down Jerry; but
you've paid me back here. They's nothin' left on earth worth fightin'
for. There's your gun."

And he threw the revolver into the mud at Barry's feet, turned on his
heel, and lumbered off into the rain. There was no voice of answer
behind him, except a shrill whine of rage from Black Bart and then a
sharp command: "Down!" from the master. As the blanket of rain shut over
him, Mac Strann looked back. There stood the strange man with the wolf
crouched at his feet, and the teeth of Bart were bared, and the hum of
his horrible snarling carried to Strann through the beat of the rain.
Mac Strann turned again, and plodded slowly through the storm.

And Dan Barry? Twice men had stood before him, armed, and twice he had
failed to kill. Wonder rose in him; wonder and a great fear. Was he
losing the desert, and was the desert losing him? Were the chains of
humanity falling about him to drag him down to a tamed and sordid life?
A sudden hatred for all men, Mac Strann, Daniels, Kate, and even poor
Joe Cumberland, welled hot in the breast of Whistling Dan. The strength
of men could not conquer him; but how could their very weakness disarm
him? He leaped again on the back of Satan, and rode furiously back into
the storm.




CHAPTER XLI

THE FALLING OF NIGHT


It had been hard to gauge the falling of night on this day, and even the
careful eyes of the watchers on the Cumberland Ranch could not tell when
the greyness of the sky was being darkened by the coming of the evening.
All day there had been swift alterations of light and shadow,
comparatively speaking, as the clouds grew thin or thick before the
wind. But at length, indubitably, the night was there. Little by little
the sky was overcast, and even the lines of the falling rain were no
longer visible. Before the gloom of the darkness had fully settled over
the earth, moreover, there came a change in the wind, and the watchers
at the rain-beaten windows of the ranch-house saw the clouds roll apart
and split into fragments that were driven from the face of the sky; and
from the clean washed face of heaven the stars shone down bright and
serene. And still Dan Barry had not come.

After the tumult of that long day the sudden silence of that windless
night had more ill omen in it than thunder and lightning. For there is
something watching and waiting in silence. In the living room the three
did not speak.

Now that the storm was gone they had allowed the fire to fall away
until the hearth showed merely fragmentary dances of flame and a wide
bed of dull red coals growing dimmer from moment to moment. Wung Lu had
brought in a lamp--a large lamp with a circular wick that cast a bright,
white light--but Kate had turned down the wick, and now it made only a
brief circle of yellow in one corner of the room. The main illumination
came from the fireplace and struck on the faces of Kate and Buck
Daniels, while Joe Cumberland, on the couch at the end of the room, was
only plainly visible when there was an extraordinarily high leap of the
dying flames; but usually his face was merely a glimmering hint in the
darkness--his face and the long hands which were folded upon his breast.
Often when the flames leapt there was a crackling of the embers and the
last of the log, and then the two nearer the fire would start and flash
a glance, of one accord, towards the prostrate figure on the couch.

That silence had lasted so long that when at length the dull voice of
Joe Cumberland broke in, there was a ring of a most prophetic solemnity
about it.

"He ain't come," said the old man. "Dan ain't here."

The others exchanged glances, but the eyes of Kate dropped sadly and
fastened again upon the hearth.

Buck Daniels cleared his throat like an orator.

"Nobody but a fool," he said, "would have started out of Elkhead in a
storm like this."

"Weather makes no difference to Dan," said Joe Cumberland.

"But he'd think of his hoss----"

"Weather makes no difference to Satan," answered the faint, oracular
voice of Joe Cumberland. "Kate!"

"Yes?"

"Is he comin'?"

She did not answer. Instead, she got up slowly from her place by the
fire and took another chair, far away in the gloom, where hardly a
glimmer of light reached to her and there she let her head rest, as if
exhausted, against the back of the seat.

"He promised," said Buck Daniels, striving desperately to keep his voice
cheerful, "and he never busts his promises."

"Ay," said the old man, "he promised to be back--but he ain't here."

"If he started after the storm," said Buck Daniels.

"He didn't start after the storm," announced the oracle. "He was out in
it."

"What was that," cried Buck Daniels sharply.

"The wind," said Kate, "for it's rising. It will be a cold night,
to-night."

"And he ain't here," said the old man monotonously.

"Ain't there things that might hold him up?" asked Buck, with a touch of
irritation.

"Ay," said the old rancher, "they's things that'll hold him up. They's
things that'll turn a dog wild, too, and the taste of blood is one of
'em!"

The silence fell again.

There was an old clock standing against the wall. It was one of those
tall, wooden frames in which, behind the glass, the heavy, polished disk
of the pendulum, alternated slowly back and forth with wearisome
precision. And with every stroke of the seconds there was a faint,
metallic clangor in the clock--a falter like that which comes in the
voice of a very old man. And the sound of this clock took possession of
every silence until it seemed like the voice of a doomsman counting off
the seconds. Ay, everyone in the room, again and again, took up the tale
of those seconds and would count them slowly--fifty, fifty-one,
fifty-two, fifty-three--and on and on, waiting for the next speech, or
for the next popping of the wood upon the hearth, or for the next wail
of the wind that would break upon the deadly expectancy of that count.
And while they counted each looked straight before him with wide and
widening eyes.

Into one of these pauses the voice of Buck Daniels broke at length; and
it was a cheerless and lonely voice in that large room, in the dull
darkness, and the duller lights.

"D'you remember Shorty Martin, Kate?"

"I remember him."

He turned in his chair and hitched it a little closer to her until he
could make put her face, dimly, among the shadows. The flames jumped on
the hearth, and he saw a picture that knocked at his heart.

"The little bow-legged feller, I mean."

"Yes, I remember him very well."

Once more the flames sputtered and he saw how she looked wistfully
before her and above. She had never seemed so lovely to Buck Daniels.
She was pale, indeed, but there was no ugly pinching of her face, and if
there were shadows beneath her eyes, they only served to make her eyes
seem marvelously large and bright. She was pallid, and the firelight
stained her skin with touches of tropic gold, and cast a halo of the
golden hair about her face. She seemed like one of those statues wrought
in the glory and the rich days of Athens in ivory and in gold--some
goddess who has heard the tidings of the coming fall, the change of the
old order, and sits passive in her throne waiting the doom from which
there is no escape. Something of this filtered through to the sad heart
of Buck Daniels. He, too, had no hope--nay, he had not even her small
hope, but somehow he was able to pity her and cherish the picture of her
in that gloomy place. It seemed to Buck Daniels that he would give ten
years from the best of his life to see her smile as he had once seen her
in those old, bright days. He went on with his tale.

"You would have busted laughin' if you'd seen him at the Circle Y Bar
roundup the way I seen him. Shorty ain't so bad with a rope. He's always
talkin' about what he can do and how he can daub a rope on anything
that's got horns. He ain't so bad, but then he ain't so good, either.
Specially, he ain't so good at ridin'--you know what bowed legs he's
got, Kate?"

"I remember, Buck."

She was looking at him, at last, and he talked eagerly to turn that look
into a smile.

"Well, they was the three of us got after one two year old--a bull and a
bad 'un. Shorty was on one side and me and Cuttle was on the other side.
Shorty daubed his rope and made a fair catch, but when his hoss set back
the rope busted plumb in two. Now, Shorty, he had an idea that he could
ease the work of his hoss a whole pile if he laid holts on the rope
whenever his hoss set down to flop a cow. So Shorty, he had holt on this
rope and was pulling back hard when the rope busted, and Shorty, he
spilled backwards out'n that saddle like he'd been kicked out.

"Whilst he was lyin' there, the bull, that had took a header when the
rope busted, come up on his feet agin, and I'll tell a man he was rarin'
mad! He seen Shorty lyin' on the ground, and he took a run for Shorty.
Me and Cuttle was laughin' so hard we couldn't barely swing our ropes,
but I made a throw and managed to get that bull around both horns. So my
Betty sits down and braces herself for the tug.

"In the meantime little Shorty, he sits up and lays a hand to his head,
and same time he sees that bull come tarin' for him. Up he jumps. And
jest then the bull come to the end of the line and wonk!--down he goes,
head over heels, and hits the sand with a bang that must of jostled his
liver some, I'll be sayin'!

"Well, Shorty, he seen that bull fly up into the air and he lets out a
yell like the world was comin' to an end, and starts runnin'. If he'd
run straight back the other way the bull couldn't of run a step, because
I had him fast with my rope, but Shorty seen me, and he come tarin' for
my hoss to get behind him.

"That bull was like a cat gettin' to his feet, and he sights Shorty
tarin' and lights out after him. There they went lickety-split. That
bull was puffin' on the seat of Shorty's trowsers and tossin' his horns
and jest missin' Shorty by inches; and Shorty had his mouth so wide open
hollerin' that you could have throwed a side of beef down his throat;
and his eyes was buggin' out. Them bow-legs of his was stretchin' ten
yards at a clip, most like, and the boys says they could hear him
hollerin' a mile away. But that bull, stretch himself all he could,
couldn't gain an inch on Shorty, and Shorty couldn't gain an inch on the
bull, till the bull come to the other end of the forty-foot rope, and
then, whang! up goes the heels of the bull and down goes his head, and
his heels comes over--wonk! and hits Shorty right square on the head.

"Been an ordinary feller, and he wouldn't of lived to talk about it
afterwards, but seein' it was Shorty, he jest goes up in the air and
lands about ten yards away, and rolls over and hits his feet without
once gettin' off his stride--and then he _did_ start runnin', and he
didn't stop runnin' nor hollerin' till he got plumb back to the house!"

Buck Daniels sat back in his chair and guffawed at the memory. In the
excitement of the tale he had quite forgotten Kate, but when he
remembered her, she sat with her head craned a little to one side, her
hand raised for silence, and a smile, indeed, upon her lips, but never a
glance for Buck Daniels. He knew at once.

"Is it him?" he whispered. "D'you hear him?"

"Hush!" commanded two voices, and then he saw that old Joe Cumberland
also was listening.

"No," said the girl suddenly, "it was only the wind."

As if in answer, a far, faint whistling broke upon them. She drew her
hands slowly towards her breast, as if, indeed, she drew the sound in
with them.

"He's coming!" she cried. "Oh, Dad, listen! Don't you hear?"

"I do," answered the rancher, "but what I'm hearin' don't warm my blood
none. Kate, if you're wise you'll get up and go to your room and don't
pay no heed to anything you might be hearin' to-night."




CHAPTER XLII

THE JOURNEY INTO NIGHT


There was no doubting the meaning of Joe Cumberland. It grew upon them
with amazing swiftness, as if the black stallion were racing upon the
house at a swift gallop, and the whistling rose and rang and soared in a
wild outburst. Give the eagle the throat of the lark, and after he has
struck down his prey in the centre of the sky and sent the ragged
feathers and the slain body falling down to earth, what would be the
song of the eagle rising again and dwindling out of sight in the heart
of the sky? What terrible pean would he send whistling down to the dull
earth far below? And such was the music that came before the coming of
Dan Barry. It did not cease, as usual, at a distance, but it came closer
and closer, and it swelled around them. Buck Daniels had risen from his
chair and stolen to a corner of the room where not a solitary shaft of
light could possibly reach him; and Kate Cumberland slipped farther into
the depths of the big chair.

So that, in their utter silence, in spite of the whistling that blew in
upon them, they could hear the dull ticking of the tall clock, and by a
wretched freak of fate the ticking fell exactly in with the soaring
rhythm of the whistle and each had a part in the deadliness of the
other.

Very near upon them the music ceased abruptly. A footfall swept down the
hall, a weight struck the door and cast it wide, and Black Bart glided
into the room. He cast not a glance on either side. He turned his head
neither to right nor to left. But he held straight on until he came to
Kate Cumberland and there he stood before her.

She leaned forward.

"Bart!" she said softly and stretched out her hands to him.

A deep snarl stopped the gesture, and at the flash of the long fangs she
sank into the chair. Old Joe Cumberland, with fearful labour, dragged
himself to a sitting position upon the couch, and sitting up in this
fashion the light fell fully upon his white face and his white hair and
his white beard, so that he made a ghostly picture.

Then an outer door slammed and a light step, at an almost running pace
speeded down the hall, the door was swung wide again, and Dan was before
them. He seemed to bring with him the keen, fresh air of the light, and
at the opening of the door the flame in the lamp jumped in its chimney,
shook, and fell slowly back to its original dimness; but by that glow of
light they saw that the sombrero upon Dan Barry's head was a shapeless
mass--his bandana had been torn away, leaving his throat bare--his
slicker was a mass of rents and at the neck had been crumpled and torn
in a thousand places as though strong teeth had worried it to a rag.
Spots of mud were everywhere on his boots, even on his sombrero with its
sagging brim, and on one side of his face there was a darker stain. He
had ceased his whistling, indeed, but now he stood at the door and
hummed as he gazed about the room. Straight to Kate Cumberland he
walked, took her hands, and raised her from the chair.

He said, and there was a fibre and ring in his voice that made them
catch their breaths: "There's something outside that I'm following
to-night. I don't know what it is. It is the taste of the wind and the
feel of the air and the smell of the ground. And I've got to be ridin'.
I'm saying good-bye for a bit, Kate."

"Dan," she cried, "what's happened? What's on your face?"

"The mark of the night," he answered. "I don't know what else. Will you
come with me, Kate?"

"For how long? Where are you going, Dan!"

"I don't know where or how long. All I know is I've got to be going.
Come to the window. Take the air on your face. You'll understand!"

He drew her after him and cast up the window.

"Do you feel it in the wind" he called to her, turning with a
transfigured face. "Do you hear it?"

She could not speak but stood with her face lifted, trembling.

"Look at me!" he commanded, and turned her roughly towards him. There he
stood leaning close to her, and the yellow light flickered and waned
and burned again in his eyes.

He had held her hands while he stared. Now he dropped them with an
exclamation.

"You're blank," he said angrily. "You've seen nothing and heard
nothing."

He turned on his heel.

"Bart!" he called, and walked from the room, and they heard the padding
of his soft step down the hall and on the porch and then--silence.

Black Bart slunk to the door and into the hall, but instantly he was
back and peering into the gloom of the silent place like an evil-eyed
spectre.

A sharp whistle rang from outside, and Black Bart started. Still he
glided on until he stood before Kate; then turned and stalked slowly
towards the door, looking back after her. She did not move, and with a
snarl the wolf-dog whirled again and trotted back to her. This time he
caught a fold of her skirt in his teeth and pulled on it. And under the
pressure she made a step.

"Kate!" called Joe Cumberland. "Are you mad, girl, to dream of goin' out
in a night like this?"

"I'm not going!" she answered hurriedly. "I'm afraid--and I won't leave
you, Dad!"

She had stopped as she spoke, but Black Bart, snarling terribly, threw
his weight back, and dragged her a step forward.

"Buck," cried old Joe Cumberland and he dragged himself up and stood
tottering. "Shoot the damned wolf--for God's sake--for my sake!"

Still the wolf-dog drew the girl in that snarling progress towards the
door.

"Kate!" cried her father, and the agony in his voice made it young and
sent it ringing through the room. "Will you go out to wander between
heaven and hell--on a night like this?"

"I'm not going!" she answered, "I won't leave you--but oh--Dad!----"

He opened his lips for a fresh appeal, but the chorus of the wild geese
swept in upon the wind, blown loud and clear and jangling as distant
bells out of tune. And Kate Cumberland buried her face in her hands and
stumbled blindly out of the room and down the hall--and then they heard
the wild neighing of a horse outside.

"Buck!" commanded Joe Cumberland. "He's stealin' my girl--my Kate--go
out! call up the boys--tell'em to stop Dan from saddlin' a horse for
Kate----"

"Wait and listen!" cut in Buck Daniels. "D'you hear that?"

On the wet ground outside they heard a patter of galloping hoofs, and
then a wild whistling, sweet and keen and high, came ringing back to
them. It diminished rapidly with the distance.

"He's carryin' her off on Satan!" groaned Joe Cumberland, staggering as
he tried to step forward. "Buck, call out the boys. Even Satan can't
beat my hosses when he's carryin' double--call'em out--if you bring her
back----"

His voice choked and he stumbled and would have fallen to his knees had
not Buck Daniels sprang forward and caught him and carried him back to
the couch.

"What's happened there ain't no man can stop," said Buck hoarsely.
"God's work or devil's work--I dunno--but I know there ain't no place
for a man between Dan and Kate."

"Turn up the lights," commanded Joe Cumberland sharply. "Got to see; I
got to think. D'you hear?"

Buck Daniels ran to the big lamp and turned up the wick. At once a clear
light flooded every nook of the big room and showed all its emptiness.

"Can't you make the lamp work?" asked the old ranchman angrily. "Ain't
they any oil in it? Why, Buck, they ain't enough light for me to see
your face, hardly. But I'll do without the light. Buck, how far will
they go? Kate's a good girl! She won't leave me, lad!"

"She won't," agreed Buck Daniels. "Jest gone with Dan for a bit of a
canter."

"The devil was come back in his eyes," muttered the old man. "God knows
where he's headin' for! Buck, I brought him in off'n the range and made
him a part of my house. I took him into my heart; and now he's gone out
again and taken everything that I love along with him. Buck, why did he
go?"

"He'll come back," said the big cowpuncher softly.

"It's gettin' darker and darker," said Joe Cumberland, "and they's a
kind of ringing in my ears. Talk louder. I don't hear you none too
well."

"I said they was comin' back," said Buck Daniels.

Something like a light showed on the face of Joe Cumberland.

"Ay, lad," he said eagerly, "I can hear Dan's whistlin' comin'
back--nearer and nearer. Most like he was jest playin' a joke on me, eh,
Buck?"

"Most like," said Buck, brokenly.

"Ay, there it's ringin' at the door of the house! Was that a footstep on
the hall?"

"It was," said Buck. "They's comin' down the hall!"

But far, far away he heard the whistling of Dan Barry dying among the
hills.

"You let the lamp go out," said Joe Cumberland, "and now I can't see
nothing. Are they in the room?"

"They're here," said Buck Daniels, "comin' towards you now."

"Dan!" cried the old man, shading his eyes and peering anxiously--"no, I
can't see a thing. Can you find me, lad?"

And Buck Daniels, softening his voice as much as he could, answered. "I
can find you."

"Then gimme your hand."

Buck Daniels slipped his own large hand into the cold fingers of the
dying cattleman. An expression of surpassing joy lay on the face of Joe
Cumberland.

"Whistlin' Dan, my Dan," he murmured faintly, "I'm kind of sleepy, but
before I go to sleep, to-night, I got to tell you that I forgive you for
your joke--pretendin' to take Kate away."

"They's nothin' but sleep worth while--and goin' to sleep, holdin' your
hand, lad--"

Buck Daniels dropped upon his knees and stared into the wide, dead eyes.
Through the open window a sound of whistling blew to him. It was a
sweet, faint music, and being so light it seemed like a chorus of
singing voices among the mountains, for it was as pure and as sharp as
the starlight.

Buck Daniels lifted his head to listen, but the sound faded, and the
murmur of the night-wind came between.

THE END












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