The Max Brand Megapack (373 page)

Something sounded at one of the doors—and then the door opened softly. She was almost glad of the interruption, for another instant might have swept away the last reserve of her strength. So this, then, was the end.

But the footfall which sounded in the apartment was a soft, padding step, with a little scratching sound, light as a finger running on a frosty window pane. And then a long, shaggy head slipped close to Whistling Dan. It was Black Bart!

A wave of terror swept through her. She remembered another scene, not many months before, when Black Bart had drawn his master away from her and led him south, south, after the wild geese. The wolf-dog had come again like a demoniac spirit to undo her plans!

Only an instant—the crisis of a battle—then the great beast turned slowly, faced her, slunk with his long stride closer, and then a cold nose touched the hand which gripped the arm of her chair. It gave her a welcome excuse for action of some sort; she reached out her hand, slowly, and touched the forehead of Black Bart. He winced back, and the long fangs flashed; her hand remained tremulously poised in air, and then the long head approached again, cautiously, and once more she touched it, and since it did not stir, she trailed the tips of her fingers backwards towards the ears. Black Bart snarled again, but it was a sound so subdued as to be almost like the purring of a great cat. He sank down, and the weight of his head came upon her feet. Victory!

In the full tide of conscious power she was able to drop her hand from her face, raise her head, turn her glance carelessly upon Dan Barry; she was met by ominously glowing eyes. Anger—at least it was not indifference.

He rose and stepped in his noiseless way behind her, but he reappeared instantly on the other side, and reached out his hand to where her fingers trailed limp from the arm of the chair. There he let them lie, white and cool, against the darkness of his palm. It was as if he sought in the hand for the secret of her power over the wolf-dog. She let her head rest against the back of the chair and watched the nervous and sinewy hand upon which her own rested. She had seen those hands fixed in the throat of Black Bart himself, once upon a time. A grim simile came to her; the tips of her fingers touched the paw of the panther. The steel-sharp claws were sheathed, but suppose once they were bared, and clutched. Or she stood touching a switch which might loose, by the slightest motion, a terrific voltage. What would happen?

Nothing! Presently the hand released her fingers, and Dan Barry stepped back and stood with folded arms, frowning at the fire. In the weakness which overcame her, in the grip of the wild excitement, she dared not stay near him longer. She rose and walked into the dining-room.

“Serve breakfast now, Wung,” she commanded, and at once the gong was struck by the cook.

Before the long vibrations had died away the guests were gathered around the table, and the noisy marshal was the first to come. He slammed back a chair and sat down with a grunt of expectancy.

“Mornin’, Dan,” he said, whetting his knife across the table-cloth, “I hear you’re ridin’ this mornin’? Ain’t going my way, are you?”

Dan Barry sat frowning steadily down at the table. It was a moment before he answered.

“I ain’t leavin,” he said softly, at length, “postponed my trip.”

CHAPTER XXXIII

DOCTOR BYRNE SHOWS THE TRUTH

On this day of low-lying mists, this day so dull that not a shadow was cast by tree or house or man, there was no graver place than the room of old Joe Cumberland; even lamp light was more merciful in the room, for it left the corners of the big apartment in obscurity, but this meagre daylight stripped away all illusion and left the room naked and ugly. Those colours of wall and carpet, once brighter than spring, showed now as faded and lifeless as foliage in the dead days of late November when the leaves have no life except what keeps them clinging to the twig, and when their fallen fellows are lifted and rustled on the ground by every faint wind, with a sound like breathing in the forest. And like autumn, too, was the face of Joe Cumberland, with a colour neither flushed nor pale, but a dull sallow which foretells death. Beside his bed sat Doctor Randall Byrne and kept the pressure of two fingers upon the wrist of the rancher.

When he removed the thermometer from between the lips of Cumberland the old man spoke, but without lifting his closed eyelids, as if even this were an effort which he could only accomplish by a great concentration of the will.

“No fever to-day, doc?”

“You feel a little better?” asked Byrne.

“They ain’t no feelin’. But I ain’t hot; jest sort of middlin’ cold.”

Doctor Byrne glanced down at the thermometer with a frown, and then shook down the mercury.

“No,” he admitted, “there is no fever.”

Joe Cumberland opened his eyes a trifle and peered up at Byrne.

“You ain’t satisfied, doc?”

Doctor Randall Byrne was of that merciless modern school which believes in acquainting the patient with the truth.

“I am not,” he said.

“H-m-m!” murmured the sick man. “And what might be wrong?”

“Your pulse is uneven and weak,” said the doctor.

“I been feelin’ sort of weak since I seen Dan last night,” admitted the other. “But that news Kate brought me will bring me up! She’s kept him here, lad, think of that!”

“I am thinking of it,” answered the doctor coldly. “Your last interview with him nearly—killed you. If you see him again I shall wash my hands of the case. When he first came you felt better at once—in fact, I admit that you
seemed
to do better both in body and mind. But the thing could not last. It was a false stimulus, and when the first effects had passed away, it left you in this condition. Mr. Cumberland, you must see him no more!”

But Joe Cumberland laughed long and softly.

“Life,” he murmured, “ain’t worth that much! Not half!”

“I can do no more than advise,” said the doctor, as reserved as before. “I cannot command.”

“A bit peeved, doc?” queried the old man. “Well, sir, I know they ain’t much longer for me. Lord, man, I can feel myself going out like a flame in a lamp when the oil runs up. I can feel life jest makin’ its last few jumps in me like the flame up the chimney. But listen to me—” he reached out a long, large knuckled, claw-like hand and drew the doctor down over him, and his eyes were earnest—“I got to live till I see ’em standin’ here beside me, hand in hand, doc!”

The doctor, even by that dim light, had changed colour. He passed his hand slowly across his forehead.

“You expect to see that?”

“I expect nothin’. I only hope!”

The bitterness of Byrne’s heart came up in his throat.

“It will be an oddly suited match,” he said, “if they marry. But they will not marry.”

“Ha!” cried Cumberland, and starting up in bed he braced himself on a quaking elbow. “What’s that?”

“Lie down!” ordered the doctor, and pressed the ranchman back against the pillows.

“But what d’you mean?”

“It would be a long story—the scientific explanation.”

“Doc, where Dan is concerned I got more patience than Job.”

“In brief, then, I will prove to you that there is no mystery in this Daniel Barry.”

“If you can do that, doc, you’re more of a man than I been guessing you for. Start now!”

“In primitive times,” said Doctor Randall Byrne, “man was nearly related to what we now call the lower animals. In those days he could not surround himself with an artificial protective environment. He depended on the unassisted strength of his body. His muscular and sensuous development, therefore, was far in advance of that of the modern man. For modern man has used his mind at the expense of his body. The very
quality
of his muscles is altered; and the senses of sight and hearing, for instance, are much blunted. For in the primitive days the ear kept guard over man even when he slept in terror of a thousand deadly enemies, each stronger than he; and the eye had to be keenly attuned to probe the shadows of the forest for lurking foes.

“Now, sir, there is in biology the thing known, as the sport. You will have heard that all living organisms undergo gradual processes of change. Season by season and year by year, environment affects the individual; yet these gradual changes are extremely slow. Between steps of noticeable change there elapse periods many times longer than the life of historic man. All speed in changes such as these comes in what we call ‘sports’. That is, a particular plant, for instance, gradually tends to have fewer leaves and a thicker bark, but the change is slight from age to age until suddenly a single instance occurs of plant which realises suddenly in a single step the ‘ideal’ towards which the species has been striving. In a word, it has very, very few leaves, and an extraordinarily thick bark.

“For a particular instance, one species of orange tended to have few and fewer seeds. But finally came an orange tree whose fruit had no seeds at all. That was the origin of the navel orange. And that was a typical ‘sport’.

“Now, there is the reverse of the sport. Instead of jumping long distance ahead, an individual may lapse back towards the primitive. That individual is called an atavism. For instance, in this mountain-desert there has, for several generations, been a pressure of environment calling for a species of man which will be able to live with comparative comfort in a waste region—a man, in a word, equipped with such powerful organisms that he will be as much at home in the heart of the desert as an ordinary man would be in a drawing-room. You gather the drift of my argument.

“I have observed this man Barry carefully. I am thoroughly convinced that he is such an atavism.

“Among other men he seems strange. He is different and therefore he seems mysterious. As a matter of fact, he is quite a common freak. I could name you others like him in differing from common men, though not differing from them in exactly the same manner.

“You see the result of this? Daniel Barry is a man to whom the desert is necessary, because he was made for the desert. He is lonely among crowds—you have said it yourself—but he is at home in a mountain wilderness with a horse and a dog.”

“Doc, you talk well,” broke in Joe Cumberland, “but if he ain’t human, why do humans like him so much? Why does he mean so much to me—to Kate?”

“Simply because he is different. You get from him what you could get from no other man in the world, perhaps, and you fail to see that the fellow is really more akin to his wolf-dog than he is to a man.”

“Supposin’ I said you was right,” murmured the old man, frowning, “how d’you explain why he likes other folks. According to you, the desert and the mountains and animals is what he wants. Then how is it that he took so much care of me when he come back this time? How is it that he likes Kate, enough to give up a trail of blood to stay here with her?”

“It is easy to explain the girl’s attraction,” said the doctor. “All animals wish to mate, Mr. Cumberland, and an age old instinct is now working out in Dan Barry. But while you and Kate may please him, you are not necessary to him. He left you once before and he was quite happy in his desert. And I tell you, Mr. Cumberland, that he will leave you again. You cannot tame the untameable. It is not habit that rules this man. It is instinct a million years old. The call which he will hear is the call of the wilderness, and to answer it he will leave father and wife and children and ride out with his horse and his dog!”

The old man lay quite motionless, staring at the ceiling.

“I don’t want to believe you,” he said slowly, “but before God I think you’re right. Oh, lad, why was I bound up in a tangle like this one? And Kate—what will she do?”

The doctor was quivering with excitement.

“Let the man stay with her. In time she will come to see the brute nature of Daniel Barry. That will be the end of him with her.”

“Brute. Doc. They ain’t nobody as gentle as Dan!”

“Till he tastes blood, a lion can be raised like a house-dog,” answered the doctor.

“Then she mustn’t marry him? Ay, I’ve felt it—jest what you’ve put in words. It’s livin’ death for Kate if she marries him! She’s kept him here to-day. To-morrow something may cross him, and the minute he feels the pull of it, he’ll be off on the trail—the blow of a man, the hollering out of the wild geese—God knows what it’ll take to start him wild again and forget us all—jest the way a child forgets its parents!”

A voice broke in upon them, calling far away: “Dan! Dan Barry!”

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE ACID TEST

In the living-room below they heard it, Dan and Kate Cumberland. All day she had sat by the fire which still blazed on the hearth, replenished from time to time by the care of Wung Lu. She had taken up some sewing, and she worked at it steadily. Some of that time Dan Barry was in the room, sitting through long intervals, watching her with lynx-eyed attention. Very rarely did he speak—almost never, and she could have numbered upon her two hands the words he had spoken—ay, and she could have repeated them one by one. Now and again he rose and went out, and the wolf-dog went with him each time. But towards the last Black Bart preferred to stay in the room, crouched in front of her and blinking at the fire, as if he knew that each time his master would return to the fire. Then, why leave the pleasant warmth for the chilly greyness of the day outside?

There he remained, stirring only now and then to lift a clumsy paw and brush it across his eyes in an oddly human gesture. Once or twice, also, he lifted that great, scarred head and laid it on her knees, looking curiously from her busy hands to her face, and from her face back again to her work, until, having apparently assured himself that all was well, he dropped his head again and lay once more motionless. She could see him open a listless eye when the master entered the room again. And with each coming of Dan Barry she felt again surrounded as if by invisible arms. Something was prying at her, striving to win a secret from her.

As the day wore on, a great, singing happiness rose in her throat, and at about the same time she heard a faint sound, impalpable, from the farther side of the room where Dan Barry sat. He was whistling.