The Max Brand Megapack (370 page)

She heard a faint rustling of the sand beside her and could hardly keep from turning her head again. But she succeeded. Waves of coldness broke on her mind; her whole body would have shuddered had not fear chilled her into motionlessness. All reason told her that it was madness to sit there with the stealthy horror sliding closer; even now it might be too late. If she rose the shaggy form might spring from the ground at her. Perhaps the wolf had treasured up the pain from the day before and now—

A black form did, indeed, rise from the ground, but slowly. And standing on three legs, Bart stood a moment and stared in the face of the girl. The fear rushed out of her heart; and her face flushed hotly with relief. There was no enmity in the steady stare of the wolf-dog. She could feel that even though she did not look. Something that Whistling Dan had said long before came to her: “Even a hoss and a dog, Kate, can get terrible lonesome.”

Black Bart moved until he faced her directly. His ears were pricking in eagerness; she heard a snarl, but so low and muffled that there was hardly a threat in it; could it be a plea for attention? She would not look down to the sharp eyes, until a weight fell on her knees—it was the long, scarred head of the wolf! The joy that swelled in her was so great that it pained her like a grief.

She stretched out her hand, slowly, slowly towards that head. And Black Bart shrank and quivered, and his lips writhed back from the long, deadly teeth, and his snarl grew to a harsher, hoarser threat; still he did not remove his head, and he allowed the hand to touch him between the eyes and stroke the fur back to between the ears. Only one other hand had ever touched that formidable head in such a manner! The teeth no longer showed; the keen, suspicious eyes grew dim with pleasure; the snarl sank to murmur and then died out.

“Bart!” commanded the girl, sharply.

The head jerked up, but the questing eyes did not look at her. He glanced over his shoulder to find the danger that had made her voice so hard. And she yearned to take the fierce head in her arms; there were tears she could have wept over it. He was snarling again, prepared already to battle, and for her sake.

“Bart!” she repeated, more gently. “Lie down!”

He turned his head slowly back to her and looked with the unspeakable wistfulness of the dumb brutes into her eyes. But there was only one voice in which Bart could speak, and that was the harsh, rattling snarl which would have made a mountain-lion check itself mid-leap and slink back to its lair. In such a voice he answered Kate, and then sank down, gradually. And he lay still.

So simply, and yet so mysteriously, she was admitted to the partnership. But though one member of that swift, grim trio had accepted her, did it mean that the other two would take her in?

A weight sank on her feet and when she looked down she saw that Black Bart had lowered his head upon them, and so he lay there with his eyes closed, dreaming in the sun.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE TRAIL

Bandages and antiseptics and constant care, by themselves could not have healed Black Bart so swiftly, but nature took a strong hand. The wound closed with miraculous speed. Three days after he had laid his head on the feet of Kate Cumberland, the wolf-dog was hobbling about on three legs and tugging now and again at the restraining chain; and the day after that the bandages were taken off and Whistling Dan decided that Bart might run loose. It was a brief ceremony, but a vital one. Doctor Byrne went out with Barry to watch the loosing of the dog; from the window of Joe Cumberland’s room he and Kate observed what passed. There was little hesitancy in Black Bart. He merely paused to sniff the foot of Randall Byrne, snarl, and then trotted with a limp towards the corrals.

Here, in a small enclosure with rails much higher than the other corrals, stood Satan, and Black Bart made straight for the stallion. He was seen from afar, and the black horse stood waiting, his head thrown high in the air, his ears pricking forward, the tail flaunting, a picture of expectancy. So under the lower rail Bart slunk and stood under the head of Satan, growling terribly. Of this display of anger the stallion took not the slightest notice, but lowered his beautiful head until his velvet nose touched the cold muzzle of Bart. There was something ludicrous about the greeting—it was such an odd shade close to the human. It was as brief as it was strange, for Black Bart at once whirled and trotted away towards the barns.

By the time Doctor Byrne and Whistling Dan caught up with him, the wolf-dog was before the heaps and ashes which marked the site of the burned barn. Among these white and grey and black heaps he picked his way, sniffing hastily here and there. In the very centre of the place he sat down suddenly on his haunches, pointed his nose aloft, and wailed with tremendous dreariness.

“Now,” murmured the doctor to Dan, “that strikes me as a singular manifestation of intelligence in an animal—he has found the site of the very barn where he was hurt—upon my word! Even fire doesn’t affect his memory!”

Here he observed that the face of Whistling Dan had grown grim. He ran to Bart and crouched beside him, muttering; and Byrne heard.

“That’s about where you was lyin’,” said Dan, “and you smell your own blood on the ground. Keep tryin’, Bart. They’s something else to find around here.”

The wolf-dog looked his master full in the face with pricking ears, whined and then started off sniffling busily at the heaps of ashes.

“The shooting of the dog is quite a mystery,” said Byrne, by way of conversation. “Do you suppose that one of the men from the bunk-house could have shot him?”

But Dan seemed no longer aware of the doctor’s presence. He slipped here and there with the wolf-dog among the ash-heaps, pausing when Bart paused, talking to the brute continually. Sometimes he pointed out to Bart things which the doctor did not perceive and Bart whined with a terrible, slavering, blood-eagerness.

The wolf-dog suddenly left the ash-heaps and now darted in swiftly entangled lines here and there among the barns. Dan Barry stood thoughtfully still, but now and then he called a word of encouragement.

And Black Bart stayed with his work. Now he struck out a wide circle, running always with his nose close to the ground. Again he doubled back sharply to the barn-site, and began again in a new direction. He ran swiftly, sometimes putting his injured leg to the ground with hardly a limp, and again drawing it up and running on three feet. In a moment he passed out of sight behind a slight rise of ground to the left of the ash-heaps, and at some little distance. He did not reappear. Instead, a long, shrill wail came wavering towards the doctor and Dan Barry. It raised the hair on the head of the doctor and sent a chill through his veins; but it sent Whistling Dan racing towards the place behind which Black Bart had disappeared. The doctor hurried after as fast as he might and came upon the wolf-dog making small, swift circles, his nose to the ground, and then crossing to and fro out of the circles. And the face of the master was black while he watched. He ran again to Bart and began talking swiftly.

“D’you see?” he asked, pointing. “From behind this here hill you could get a pretty good sight of the barn—and you wouldn’t be seen, hardly, from the barn. Someone must have waited here. Look about, Bart, you’ll be findin’ a pile of signs, around here. It means that them that done the shootin’ and the firin’ of the barn stood right here behind this hill-top and watched the barn burn—and was hopin’ that Satan and you wouldn’t ever come out alive. That’s the story.”

He dropped to his knees and caught Bart as the big dog ran by.

“Find’em, Bart!” he whispered. “Find’em!”

And he struck sharply on the scar where the bullet had ploughed its way into Bart’s flesh.

The answer of Bart was a yelp too sharp and too highly pitched to have come from the throat of any mere dog. Once more he darted out and ran here and there, and Doctor Byrne heard the beast moaning as it ran. Then Bart ceased circling and cut down the slope away from the hill at a sharp trot.

A cry of inarticulate joy burst from Dan, and then: “You’ve found it! You have it!” and the master ran swiftly after the dog. He followed the latter only for a short distance down the slope and then stood still and whistled. He had to repeat the call before the dog turned and ran back to his master, where he whined eagerly about the man’s feet. There was something uncanny and horrible about it; it was as if the dumb beast was asking for a life, and the life of a man. The doctor turned back and walked thoughtfully to the house.

At the door he was met by Kate and a burst of eager questions, and he told, simply, all that he had seen.

“You’ll get the details from Mr. Barry,” he concluded.

“I know the details,” answered the girl. “He’s found the trail and he knows where it points, now. And he’ll want to be following it before many hours have passed. Doctor Byrne, I need you now—terribly. You must convince Dan that if he leaves us it will be a positive danger to Dad. Can you do that?”

“At least,” said the doctor, “there will be little deception in that. I will do what I can to persuade him to stay.”

“Then,” she said hurriedly, “sit here, and I shall sit here. We’ll meet Dan together when he comes in.”

They had hardly taken their places when Barry entered, the wolf at his heels; at the door he paused to flash a glance at them and then crossed the room. On the farther side he stopped again.

“I might be tellin’ you,” he said in his soft voice, “that now’s Bart’s well I got to be travellin’ again. I start in the morning.”

The pleading eyes of Kate raised Byrne to his feet.

“My dear Mr. Barry!” he called. The other turned again and waited. “Do you mean that you will leave us while Mr. Cumberland is in this critical condition?”

A shadow crossed the face of Barry.

“I’d stay if I could,” he answered. “But it ain’t possible!”

“What takes you away is your affair, sir,” said the doctor. “My concern is Mr. Cumberland. He is in a very precarious condition. The slightest nerve shock may have—fatal—results.”

Dan Barry sighed.

“Seemed to me,” he answered, “that he was buckin’ up considerable. Don’t look so thin, doc.”

“His body may be well enough,” said the doctor calmly, “but his nerves are wrecked. I am afraid to prophesy the consequences if you leave him.”

It was apparent that a great struggle was going on in Barry. He answered at length: “How long would I have to stay? One rain could wipe out all the sign and make me like a blind man in the desert. Doc, how long would I have to stay?”

“A few days,” answered Byrne, “may work wonders with him.”

The other hesitated.

“I’ll go up and talk with him,” he said, “and what he wants I’ll do.”

CHAPTER XXIX

TALK

He was long in getting his answer. The hours dragged on slowly for Kate and the doctor, for if Joe Cumberland could hold Dan it was everything to the girl, and if Barry left at once there might be some root for the hope which was growing stronger and stronger every day in the heart of Randall Byrne. Before evening a not unwelcome diversion broke the suspense somewhat.

It was the arrival of no less a person than Marshal Jeff Calkins. His shoulders were humped and his short legs bowed from continual riding, and his head was slung far forward on a gaunt neck; so that when he turned his head from one to another in speaking it was with a peculiar pendulum motion. The marshal had a reputation which was strong over three hundred miles and more of a mountain-desert. This was strange, for the marshal was a very talkative man, and talkative men are not popular on the desert; but it has been discovered that on occasion his six-gun could speak as rapidly and much more accurately than his tongue. So Marshal Calkins waxed in favour.

He set the household at ease upon his arrival by announcing that “they hadn’t nothin’ for him there.” All he wanted was a place to bunk in, some chow, and a feed for the horse. His trail led past the Cumberland Ranch many and many a dreary mile.

The marshal was a politic man, and he had early in life discovered that the best way to get along with any man was to meet him on his own ground. His opening blast of words at Doctor Byrne was a sample of his art.

“So you’re a doc, hey? Well, sir, when I was a kid I had a colt that stuck its foreleg in a hole and busted it short and when that colt had to be shot they wasn’t no holdin’ me. No, sir, I could of cleaned up on the whole family. And ever since then I’ve had a hankerin’ to be a doc. Something about the idea of cuttin’ into a man that always sort of tickled me. They’s only one main thing that holds me back—I don’t like the idea of knifin’ a feller when he ain’t got a chance to fight back! That’s me!”

To this Doctor Randall Byrne bowed, rather dazed, but returned no answer.

“And how’s your patient, doc?” pursued the irresistible marshal. “How’s old Joe Cumberland? I remember when me and Joe used to trot about the range together. I was sort of a kid then; but think of old Joe bein’ down in bed—sick! Why, I ain’t never been sick a day in my life. Sick? I’d laugh myse’f plumb to death if anybody ever wanted me to go to bed. What’s the matter with him, anyway?”

“His nerves are a bit shaken about,” responded the doctor. “To which I might add that there is superimposed an arterial condition—”

“Cut it short, Doc,” cried the marshal goodnaturedly. “I ain’t got a dictionary handy. Nerves bad, eh? Well, I don’t wonder about that. The old man’s had enough trouble lately to make anybody nervous. I wouldn’t like to go through it myself. No, sir! What with that Dan Barry—I ain’t steppin’ on any corns, Kate, am I?”

She smiled vaguely, but the marshal accepted the smile as a strong dissent.

“They was a time not so long ago when folks said that you was kind of sweet on Dan. Glad to hear they ain’t nothin’ in it. ’S a matter of fact—”

But here Kate interrupted with a raised hand. She said: “I think that was the supper gong. Yes, there it is. We’ll go in now, if you wish.”

“They’s only one sound in the world that’s better to me than a dinner gong,” said the profuse marshal, as they seated themselves around the big dining table, “and that was the sound of my wife’s voice when she said ‘I will.’ Queer thing, too. Maria ain’t got a very soft voice, most generally speakin’, but when she busted up in front of that preacher and says ‘I will,’ why, God A’mighty—askin’ your pardon, Kate—they was a change come in her voice that was like a bell chimin’ down in her throat—a bell ringin’ away off far, you know, so’s you only kind of guess at it! But comin’ back to you and Dan, Kate—”