by Max Brand
“I ain’t leavin,” he said softly, at length, “postponed my trip.”
33. 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 y
ou, 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!”
34. THE ACID TEST
IN THE LIVING-ROOM below they heard it, Dan and Kate Cumberland. All day she had sat by the fire which still blazed on the hearth, replenished from time to time by the care of Wung Lu. She had taken up some sewing, and she worked at it steadily. Some of that time Dan Barry was in the room, sitting through long intervals, watching her with lynx-eyed attention. Very rarely did he speak — almost never, and she could have numbered upon her two hands the words he had spoken — ay, and she could have repeated them one by one. Now and again he rose and went out, and the wolf-dog went with him each time. But towards the last Black Bart preferred to stay in the room, crouched in front of her and blinking at the fire, as if he knew that each time his master would return to the fire. Then, why leave the pleasant warmth for the chilly greyness of the day outside?
There he remained, stirring only now and then to lift a clumsy paw and brush it across his eyes in an oddly human gesture. Once or twice, also, he lifted that great, scarred head and laid it on her knees, looking curiously from her busy hands to her face, and from her face back again to her work, until, having apparently assured himself that all was well, he dropped his head again and lay once more motionless. She could see him open a listless eye when the master entered the room again. And with each coming of Dan Barry she felt again surrounded as if by invisible arms. Something was prying at her, striving to win a secret from her.
As the day wore on, a great, singing happiness rose in her throat, and at about the same time she heard a faint sound, impalpable, from the farther side of the room where Dan Barry sat. He was whistling.
A simple thing for a man to do, to be sure, but the astonishment of it nearly stopped the heart of Kate Cumberland. For in all her life she had never before heard him whistle except when he was in the open, and preferably when he was astride of the strength and the speed of Satan, with Black Bart scouting swiftly and smoothly ahead. But now he whistled here by the warmth of the fire. To be sure the sound was small and thin, but there was such music in it as she had never heard before. It was so thin that it was almost ghostly, as if the soul of wild Paganini played here on a muted violin. No tune that might be repeated, but as always when she heard it, a picture rose before the eyes of Kate. It wavered at first against the yellow glow of the firelight. Then it quite shut out all else.
It was deep night, starry night. The black horse and his rider wound up a deep ravine. To one side a bold mountain tumbled up to an infinite height, bristling with misshapen trees here and there, and losing its head against the very stars. On the other side were jagged hills, all carved in the solid rock. And down the valley, between the mountains and the stars, blew a soft wind; as if that wind made the music. They were climbing up, up, up, and now they reach — the music rising also to a soft but triumphant outburst — a high plateau. They were pressed up against the heart of the sky. The stars burned low, and low. Around them the whole earth seemed in prospect at their feet. The moon burst through a mass of clouds, and she saw, far off, a great river running silver through the night.
Happy? Ay, and he was happy too, and his happiness was one with hers. He was not even looking out the window while he whistled, but his eyes were fixed steadily, unchangingly, upon her face.
It was then that they heard it: “Dan! Dan Barry! Come out!”
A hoarse, ringing cry, as of one who is shouting against a great wind: “Dan! Dan Barry! Come out!”
Dan Barry was on his feet and gliding to the wall, where he took down his belt from a nail and buckled it swiftly around him. And Kate ran to the window with the wolf-dog snarling beside her and saw standing in front of the house, his hat off, his black hair wildly tumbled, and two guns in his hands, Buck Daniels! Behind him the tall bay mare shook with her panting and glistened with the sweat of the long ride.
She heard a scratching next and saw the wolf-dog rear up and paw at the door. Once through that door and he would be at the throat of the man outside, she knew. Nor he alone, for Dan Barry was coming swiftly across the room with that strange, padding step. He had no eye for her. He was smiling, and she had rather have seen him in a cursing fury than to see this smile. It curled the upper lip with something like a sneer; and she caught the white glint of his teeth; the wolf-dog snarled back over his shoulder to hurry his master. It was the crisis which she had known all day was coming, sooner or later. She had only prayed that it might be delayed for a little time. And confronting the danger was like stepping into the path of runaway horses. Fear ruled her with an iron hand, and she swayed back against the wall and supported herself with an outstretched hand.
What was there to be done? If she stepped in between him and his man, he would brush her aside from his path and out of his life forever. If he went on to his vengeance he would no less be started on the path which led around the world away from her. The law would be the hound which pursued him and relentlessly nipped at his heels — an eternal terror and unrest. No thought of Buck Daniels who had done so much for her. She cast his services out of her mind with the natural cruelty of woman. Her whole thought was, selfishly, for the man before her, and for herself.
He was there — his hand was upon the knob of the door. And then she remembered how the teeth of Black Bart had closed over her arm — and how they had not broken even the skin. In an instant she was pressed against the door before Dan Barry — her arms outstretched.
He fell back the slightest bit before her, and then he came again and brushed her slowly, gently, to one side, with an irresistible strength. She had to meet his eyes now — there was no help for it — and she saw there that swirl of yellow light — that insatiable hunger. And she knew, fully and bitterly, that she had failed. With the wolf-dog, indeed, she had conquered, but the man escaped her. If time had been granted her she would have won, she knew, but the hand of Buck Daniels, so long her ally, had destroyed her chances. It was his hand now which shook the knob of the door, and she turned with a sob of despair to face the new danger.
In her wildest dreams she had never visioned Buck Daniels transformed like this. She knew that in his past, as one of those long-riders who roam the mountain-desert, their hand against the hands of every man, Buck Daniels had been known and feared by the strongest. But all she had seen of Buck Daniels had been gentleness itself. Yet what faced her as the door flew wide was a nightmare thing with haggard face and shadow-buried, glittering eyes — unshaven, unkempt of hair, his shirt open at the throat, his great hands clenched for the battle. The wolf-dog, at that familiar sight, whined a low greeting, but with a glance at his master knew that there was a change — the old alliance was
broken — so he bared his white teeth and changed his whine to a snarl of hate.
Then a strange terror struck Kate Cumberland. She had never dreamed that she could fear for Dan Barry at the hands of any man, but now the desperate resolve which breathed from every line of Buck Daniels, chilled her blood at the heart. She sprang back before Dan Barry. Facing him, she saw that demoniac glitter of yellow rising momently brighter in his eyes, and he was smiling. No execration or loud voiced curse could have contained the distilled malignancy of that smile. All this she caught in a single glimpse. The next instant she had whirled and stood before Dan, shielding him with outspread arms and facing Buck Daniels. The latter thrust back into the holster the gun which he had drawn when he entered the room.
“Stand away from him, Kate,” he commanded, and his eyes went past her to dwell on the face of Barry. “Stand away from him. It’s been comin’ for a long time, and now it’s here. Barry I’m takin’ no start on you. Stand away from the girl and pull your gun — and I’ll pump you full of lead.”
The softest of soft voices murmured behind her: “I been waitin’ for you, Buck, days and days and days. I ain’t never been so glad to see anybody!”
And she felt Barry slip shadowlike to one side. She sprang in front of him again with a wild cry.
“Buck!” she begged, “don’t shoot!”
Laughter, ringing and unhuman, filled the throat of Buck Daniels.
“Is it him you’re beggin’ for?” he sneered at her. “Is it him you got your fears for? Ain’t you got a word of pity for poor Buck Daniels that sneaked off like a whipped puppy? Bah! Dan Barry, the time is come. I been leadin’ the life of a houn’ dog for your sake. But it’s ended. Pull your gun and get out from behind the skirts of that girl!”
As long as they faced each other with the challenge in their eyes, nothing on earth could avert the fight, she knew, but if she could delay them for one moment — she felt that swift moving form behind her slipping away from behind her — she could follow Barry’s movements by the light in Daniels’ eyes.