the Night Horseman (1920)

by Max Brand

  It was a one-tone landscape. Sky, hills, barns, earth, all was a single mass of lifeless gray; in such an atmosphere old Homer had seen the wraiths of the dead heroes play again at the things they had done on earth. She noted these things with a blank eye, for a thousand thoughts were leaping through her mind. Something must be done. There he lay in the same room with her. He had turned his head back, no doubt, and was staring at the ceiling as before, and the yellow glimmer was in his eyes again. Perhaps, after this day, she should never see him again; every moment was precious beyond the price of gold, and yet there she stood at the window, doing nothing. But what could she do?

  Should she go to him and fall on her knees beside him and pour out her heart, telling him again of the old days? No, it would be like striking on a wooden bell; no echo would rise; and she knew before hand the deadly blackness of his eyes. So Black Bart lay often in the sun, staring at infinite distance and seeing nothing but his dreams of battle. What were appeals and what were words to Black Bart? What were they to Dan Barry? Yet once, by sitting still-the thought made her blood leap with a great, joyous pulse that set her cheeks tingling.

  She waited till the first impulse of excitement had subsided, and then turned back and sat down in a chair near the fire. From a corner of her eye she was aware that Whistling Dan had turned his head again to await her first speech. Then she fixed her gaze on the wall of yellow flame. The impulse to speak to him was like a hand tugging to turn her around, and the words came up and welled in her throat, but still she would not stir.

  In a moment of rationality she felt in an overwhelming wave of mental coldness the folly of her course, but she shut out the thought with a slight shudder. Silence, to Dan Barry, had a louder voice and more meaning than any words.

  Then she knew that he was sitting up on the couch. Was he about to stand up and walk out of the room? For moment after moment he did not stir; and at length she knew, with a breathless certainty, that he was staring fixedly at her! The hand which was farthest from him, and hidden, she gripped hard upon the arm of the chair. That was some comfort, some added strength.

  She had now the same emotion she had had when Black Bart slunk toward her under the tree-if a single perceptible tremor shook her, if she showed the slightest awareness of the subtle approach, she was undone. It was only her apparent unconsciousness which could draw either the wolf dog or the master.

  She remembered what her father had told her of hunting young deer-how he had lain in the grass and thrust up a leg above the grass in sight of the deer and how they would first run away but finally come back step by step, drawn by an invincible curiosity, until at length they were within range for a point blank shot.

  Now she must concentrate on the flames of the fireplace, see nothing but them, think of nothing but the swiftly changing domes and walls and pinnacles they made. She leaned a little forward and rested her cheek upon her right hand-and thereby she shut out the sight of Dan Barry effectually. Also it made a brace to keep her from turning her head toward him, and she needed every support, physical and mental.

  Still he did not move. Was he in truth looking at her, or was he staring beyond her at the gray sky which lowered past the window? The faintest creaking sound told her that he had risen, slowly, from the couch. Then not a sound, except that she knew, in some mysterious manner, that he moved, but whether toward her or toward the door she could not dream. But he stepped suddenly and noiselessly into the range of her vision and sat down on a low bench at one side of the hearth. If the strain had been tense before, it now became terrible; for there he sat almost facing her, and looking intently at her, yet she must keep all awareness of him out of her eyes. In the excitement a strong pulse began to beat in the hollow of her throat, as if her heart were rising. She had won, she had kept him in the room, she had brought him to a keen thought of her. A Pyrrhic victory, for she was poised on the very edge of a cliff of hysteria. She began to feel a tremor of the hand which supported her cheek. If that should become visible to him he would instantly know that all her apparent unconsciousness was a sham, and then she would have lost him truly!

  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 up the 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 and 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 the 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 toward 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 fro 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 tablecloth. "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 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 meager daylight stripped away all illusion and left the room naked and ugly. Those colors 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 color 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 today, 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 tdhe 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 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 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 the 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 before me, hand in hand, doc!"

  The doctor, even by that dim light, had changed color. 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 sensory 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 a plant which realizes suddenly in a single step the 'ideal' toward 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 a long distance ahead, an individual may lapse back toward the primitive. That individual is called an atavism. For instance, in this mountain-desert thee 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 in 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 today. Tomorrow something may cros
s 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 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 toward 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 grayness 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 the great, scarred head and slid 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.