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The Night Horseman

by Max Brand · English · Gutenberg #12436 · 511,900 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Night Horseman

Author: Max Brand


        
Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #12436]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12436

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT HORSEMAN ***

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 m

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