by Max Brand
"The gal's sick!" said Haw-Haw Langley. "Look, Mac!"
And he began to laugh in that braying voice which had given him his nickname. Yet even in his laughter his eyes were brightly observant; not a single detail of misery or grief was lost upon him; he drank it in; he fed his famine-stricken soul upon it. Kate Cumberland had buried her face in her arms; Buck Daniels, attempting to rush in after Dan Barry, had been caught beneath the arms by Doctor Byrne and another and was now borne struggling back.
From the very heart of the burning barn the sharp single whistle burst and over the rolling smoke and flaming fire rose the answering neigh. A human voice could not have spoken more intelligibly: "I wait in trust!"
After that neigh and whistle, a quiet fell over the group at the barn door. There was nothing to do. There was not enough wind to blow the flames form this barn to one of the neighboring sheds; all they could do was stand still and watch the progress of the conflagration.
The deep, thick voice of Mac Strann broke in: "Start prayin', Haw-Haw, that the hoss don't kill Barry when he gets to him. Start prayin' that Barry is left for me to finish."
He must have meant his singular request more as a figure of speech than a real demand, but an hysteria was upon Haw-Haw Langley. He stretched up his vast, gaunt arms to the dim spot of red in the central heavens above the fire, and Haw-Haw prayed for the first and last time in his life.
"O Lord, gimme this one favor. Bring Barry safe out of the barn. Bring him out even if you got to bring the damned hoss with him. Bring him out and save him for Mac Strann to meet. And, God A'mighty, let me be around somewheres when they meet!"
This strange exhibition Mac Strann watched with a glowering eye.
"But it ain't possible," he said positively. "I been in fires. Barry can't live through the fire; an' if he does, the hoss will finish him. It ain't possible for him to come out!"
From half the roof of the shed flames now poured, but presently a great shower of sparks rose at the farther end of the barn, and the Haw-Haw heard the sound of a beating and crashing.
"Hei!" he screamed, "Barry's reached the black hoss and the black hoss is beating him into the floor!"
"You fool!" answered Mac Strann calmly, "Barry has got a beam or something and he's smashing down the burning partition of the box stall. That's what he's doing; listen!"
High over the fire, once again rose the neighing of the black horse, a sound of unspeakable triumph.
"You're right," groaned Haw-Haw, downcast. "He's reached the hoss!"
He had hardly finished speaking when Mac Strann said: "Anyway, he'll never get out. This end of the barn is fallin' in."
Indeed, the outer wall of the barn, nearest the door, was wavering in a great section and slowly tottering in. Another moment or two it would crash to the floor and block the way of Dan Barry, coming out, with a flaming ruin. Next the watchers saw a struggle among the group which watched. Three men were struggling with Buck Daniels, but presently he wrenched his arms free, struck down two men before him with swinging blows of his fists, and leaped into the smoke.
"He's gone nutty, like a crazy hoss with the sight of the fire," said Mac Strann quietly.
"He ain't! He ain't!" cried Haw-Haw Langley, wild with excitement. "He's holdin' back the burnin' wall to keep the way clear, damn him!"
Indeed, the tottering wall, not having leaned to a great angle, was now pushed back by some power from the inside of the barn and kept erect. Though now and again it swayed in, as though the strength which held it was faltering under the strain.
Now the eyes of the watchers were called to the other end of the barn by a tremendous crashing. The entire section of that part of the roof fell in, and a shower of sparks leaped up into the heart of the sky, lighting the distant hills and drawing them near like watchers of the horror of the night.
"That's the end," said Mac Strann. "Haw-Haw, they wasn't any good in your prayer."
"I ain't a professional prayin' man," answered Haw-Haw defensively, but I done my best. If--"
He was cut short by a chorused cry from the watchers near the door of the barn, and then, through the vomited smoke and the fire, leaped the unsaddled body of Satan bearing on his back the crouched figure of Dan Barry, and in the arms of Barry, limp, his head hanging down loosely, was the body of the great black dog, Bart.
A fearful picture. The smoke swept following around the black stallion, and a great tongue of flame licked hungrily after the trio. But the stallion stood with head erect, and ears flattened, pawing the ground. With that cloud of destruction blowing him he stood like the charger which the last survivor might ride through the ruin of the universe in the Twilight of the Gods.
At the same instant, another smoke-clad figure lunged from the door of the barn, his hands outstretched as though he felt and fumbled his way through utter darkness. It was Buck Daniels, and as he cleared the door the section of tottering wall which eh had upheld to keep the way clear for the Three, wavered, sagged, and then sank in thunder to the floor, and the whole barn lay a flame-tossed mass of ruin.
The watchers had scattered before the plunge of Satan, but he came to a sliding halt, as if his rider had borne heavily back upon the reins. Barry slipped from the stallion's back with the wounded dog, and kneeled above the limp figure.
"It ain't the end," growled Mac Strann, "that hoss will go runnin' back into the fire. It ain't hoss nature to keep from goin' mad at the sight of a fire!"
In answer to him, the stallion whirled, raised his head high, and, with flaunting mane and tail, neighed a ringing defiance at the rising flames. Then he turned back and nuzzled the shoulder of his master, who was working with swift hands over the body of Black Bart.
"Anyway," snarled Haw-Haw Langley, "the damned wolf is dead."
"I dunno," said Mac Strann. "Maybe-maybe not. They's quite a pile that we dunno."
"If you want to get rid of the hoss," urged Haw-Haw, writhing in the glee of a new inspiration, "now's the time for it, Mac. Get out your gun and pot the black. Before the crowd can get us, we'll be miles away. The aint' a saddled hoss in sight. Well, if you don't want to do it, I will!"
But Mac Strann reached across and dragged the muzzle down.
"We done all we're goin' to do tonight. Seems like God's been listenin' pretty close, around here!"
He turned his horse, and Haw-Haw, reluctantly, followed suit. Still, as they trotted slowly away from the burning barn, Haw-Haw kept his glance fixed behind him until a final roaring crash and a belling cloud of fire that smote the zenith announced the end of the barn. Then Haw-Haw turned his face to his companion.
"Now what?" he demanded.
"We go to Elkhead and sit down and wait," answered Mac Strann. "If the dog gets well he'll bring Barry to me. Then all I've got to do is defend myself."
Haw-Haw Langley twisted up his face and laughed, silently, to the red-stained sky.
Chapter 24. DOCTOR BYRNE LOOKS INTO THE PAST
THE BLACK HEAD of Barry, the brown head of Randall Byrne, the golden head of Kate Cumberland, were all bowed around the limp body of Black Bart. Buck Daniels, still gasping for breath, stood reeling nearby.
"Let me attempt to resuscitate the animal, offered the doctor.
He was met by a blank look from Barry. The hair of the man was scorched, his skin was blistered and burned. Only his hands remained uninjured, and these continued to move over the body of the great dog. Kate Cumberland was on her knees over the brute.
"Is it fatal, Dan?" she asked. "Is there no hope for Bart?"
There was no answer from Barry, and she attempted to raise the fallen, lifeless head of the animal; but instantly a strong arm darted out and brushed her hands away. Those hands fell idly at her sides and her head went back as though she had been struck across the face. She found herself looking up into the angry eyes of Randall Byrne. He reached down and raised her to her feet; there was no color in her face, no life in her limbs.
"There's nothing more to be done here, apparent
ly," said the doctor coldly. "Suppose we take your father and go back to the house."
She made neither assent or dissent. Dan Barry had finished a swift, deft bandage and stopped the bleeding of the dog's wounds. Now he raised his head and his glance slipped rapidly over the faces of the doctor and the girl and rested on Buck Daniels. There was no flash of kindly thanks, no word of recognition. His right hand raised to his cheek, and rested there, and in his eyes came that flare of yellow hate. Buck Daniels shrank back until he was lost in the crowd. Then he turned and stumbled back toward the house.
Instantly, Barry began to work at expanding and depressing the lungs of the huge animal as he might have worked to bring a man back to life.
"Watch him!" whispered the doctor to Kate Cumberland. "He is closer to that dog-that wolf, it looks like-than he has ever been to any human being!"
She would not answer, but she turned her head quickly from the man and his beast.
"Are you afraid to watch?" challenged Byrne, for his anger at Barry's blunt refusals still made his blood hot. "When your father lay at death's door was he half as anxious as he is now? Did he work so hard, by half? See how his eyes are fixed on the muzzle of the beast as if he were studying a human face?"
"No, no!" breathed the girl.
"I tell you, look!" commanded the doctor. "For there's the solution of the mystery. No mystery at all. Barry is simply a man who is closer akin to the brute forces in nature. See! By the eternal heavens, he's dragging that beast-that dumb beast-back from the door of death!"
Barry had ceased his rapid manipulations, and turned the big dog back on its side. Now the eyes of Black Bart opened, and winked shut again. Now the master kneeled at the head of the beast and took the scarred, shaggy head between his hands.
"Bart!" he commanded.
Not a stir in the long, black body. The stallion edged a pace closer, dropped his velvet muzzle, and whinnied softly at the very ear of the dog. Still, there was not an answering quiver.
"Bart!" called the man again, and there was a ring of wild grief-of fear-in his cry.
"Do you hear?" said Byrne savagely, at the ear of the girl. "Did you ever use such a tone with a human being? Ever?"
"Take me away!" she murmured. "I'm sick-sick of heart. Take me away!"
Indeed, she was scarcely sure of her poise, and tottered where she stood. Doctor Byrne slipped his arm about her and led her away, supporting half her weight. They went slowly, by small, soft steps, toward the house, and before they reached it, he knew that she was weeping. But if there was sadness in Byrne, there was also a great joy. He was afire, for there is a flamelike quality in hope.
Loss of blood and the stifling smoke, rather than a mortal injury or the touch of fire, had brought Black Bart close to death, but now that his breathing was restored, and almost normal, he gained rapidly. One instant he lingered on the border between life and death; the next, the brute's eyes opened and glittered with dim recognition up toward Dan, and he licked the hand which supported his head. At Dan's direction, a blanket was brought, and after Dan had lifted Black Bart upon it, four men raised the corners of the blanket and carried the burden toward the house. One of the cowpunchers went ahead bearing a light. This was the sight which Doctor Byrne and Kate Cumberland saw from the veranda of the ranch-house as they turned and looked back before going in.
"A funeral procession," suggested the doctor.
"No," she answered positively. "If Black Bart were dead, Dan wouldn't allow any hands save his own to touch the body. No, Black Bart is alive! Yet, it's impossible."
The word "impossible," however, was gradually dropping from the vocabulary of Randall Byrne. True, the wolf dog had seemed dead past recovery and across the eyes of Byrne came a vision of the dead rising from their graves. Yet he merely shook his head and said nothing.
"Ah!" she broke in. "Look!"
The procession drew nearer, heading toward the back of the big house, and now they saw that Dan Barry walked beside the body of Black Bart, a smile on his lifted face. They disappeared behind the back of the house.
Byrne heard the girl murmuring, more to herself than to him: "Once he was like that all the time."
"Like what?" he asked bluntly.
She paused, and then her hand dropped lightly on his arm. He could not see more than a vague outline of her in the night, only the dull glimmer of her face as she turned her head, and the faint whiteness of her hand.
"Let's say good night," she answered, at length. "Our little worlds have toppled about our heads tonight-all your theories, it seems, and God knows, all that I have hoped. Why should we stay here and make ourselves miserable by talk?"
"But because we have failed," he said steadily, "is that the reason we should creep off and brood over our failure in silence? No, let's talk it out, man to man."
"You have a fine courage," said the girl. "But what is there we can say?"
He answered: "For my part, I am not so miserable as you think. For I feel as if this night had driven us closer together, you see; and I've caught a perspective on everything that has happened here."
"Tell me what you know."
"Only what I think I know. It may be painful to hear."
"I'm very used to pain."
"Well, a moment ago, when Barry was walking beside his dog, smiling, you murmured that he once was like that always. It gave me light. So I'd say that there was a time when Dan Barry lived here with you and your father. Am I right?"
"Yes, for years and years."
"And in those times he was not greatly different from other men. Not on the surface."
"No."
"You came to be very fond of him."
"We were to marry," answered Kate Cumberland, and Byrne winced.
He went on: "Then something happened-suddenly-that took him away from you, and you did not see him again until tonight. Am I right?"
"Yes. I thought you must have heard the story-from the outside. I'll tell you the truth. My father found Dan Barry wandering across the hills years ago. He was riding home over the range and he heard a strange and beautiful whistling, and when he looked up he saw on the western ridge, walking against the sky, a tattered figure of a boy. He rode up and asked the boy his name. He learned it was Dan Barry-Whistling Dan, he was called. But the boy could not, or would not, tell how he came to be there in the middle of the range without a horse. He merely said that he came from 'over there,' and waved his hand to the south and east. That was all. He didn't seem to be alarmed because he was alone, and yet he apparently knew nothing of the country; he was lost in this terrible country where a man could wander for days without finding a house, and yet the boy was whistling as he walked! So Dad took him home and sent out letters all about-to the railroad in particular-to find out if such a boy was missing.
"Dad didn't like the idea. He was afraid of what Dan might become. And he was right. One day, in a saloon that used to stand on that hill over there, Dan had a fight-his first fight-with a man who had struck him across the mouth for no good reason. That man was Jim Silent. Of course you've heard of him?"
"Never."
He was a famous long-rider-an outlaw with a very black record. At the end of that fight he struck Dan down with a chair and escaped. I went down to Dan when I heard of the fight-Black Bart led me down, to be exact-but Dan would not come back to the house, and he'd have no more to do with anyone until he had found Jim Silent. I can't tell you everything that happened. Finally he caught Jim Silent and killed him-with his bare hands. Buck Daniels saw it. Then Dan came back to us, but on the first night he began to grow restless. It was last Fall-the wild geese were flying up, said good-bye, and left us. We have never seen him again until tonight. All we knew was that he had ridden south-after the wild geese."
A long silence fell between them, for the doctor was thinking hard.
"And when he came back," he said, "Barry did not know you? I mean, you were nothing to him?"
"You were there," said the girl, faintly.
"I may have expected it."
"But you were not surprised, of course!"
"Naturally not."
"Yet you see Dan Barry-Whistling Dan, you call him-was closer to Black Bart than he was to you?"
"Why should I see that?"
"You watched him a moment ago when he was leaning over the dog."
He watched her draw her dressing gown closer about her, as though the cold bit more keenly then.
She said simply: "Yes, I saw."
"Don't you see that he is simply more in tune with the animal world? And it's really no more reasonable to expect Black Bart to remember you than it is to expect Dan Barry to remember you? It's quite plain. When you go back to the beginning man was simply an animal, without the higher senses, as we call them. He was simply a brute, living in trees or in caves. Afterward he grew into the thing we all know. But why not imagine a throw-back into the earlier instincts? Why not imagine the creature devoid of the impulses of mind, the thing which we call man, and see the splendid animal? You saw in Dan Barry simply a biological sport-the freak-the thing which retraces the biological progress and comes close to the primitive. But of course you could not realize this. He seemed a man, and you accepted him as a man. In reality he was no more a man than Black Bart is a man. He had the face and form of a man, but his instincts were as old as the ages. The animal world obeys him. Satan neighs in answer to his whistle. The wolf dog licks his hand at the point of death. There is the profound difference, always. You try to reconcile him with other men; you give him the attributes of other men. Open your eyes; see the truth: that he is no more akin to man than Black Bart is like a man. And when you give him your affection, Miss Cumberland, you are giving your affection to a wild wolf! Do you believe me?"