The Night Horseman

by Max Brand

  CHAPTER XLI

  THE FALLING OF NIGHT

  It had been hard to gauge the falling of night on this day, and even thecareful eyes of the watchers on the Cumberland Ranch could not tell whenthe greyness of the sky was being darkened by the coming of the evening.All day there had been swift alterations of light and shadow,comparatively speaking, as the clouds grew thin or thick before thewind. But at length, indubitably, the night was there. Little by littlethe sky was overcast, and even the lines of the falling rain were nolonger visible. Before the gloom of the darkness had fully settled overthe earth, moreover, there came a change in the wind, and the watchersat the rain-beaten windows of the ranch-house saw the clouds roll apartand split into fragments that were driven from the face of the sky; andfrom the clean washed face of heaven the stars shone down bright andserene. And still Dan Barry had not come.

  After the tumult of that long day the sudden silence of that windlessnight had more ill omen in it than thunder and lightning. For there issomething watching and waiting in silence. In the living room the threedid not speak.

  Now that the storm was gone they had allowed the fire to fall awayuntil the hearth showed merely fragmentary dances of flame and a widebed of dull red coals growing dimmer from moment to moment. Wung Lu hadbrought in a lamp--a large lamp with a circular wick that cast a bright,white light--but Kate had turned down the wick, and now it made only abrief circle of yellow in one corner of the room. The main illuminationcame from the fireplace and struck on the faces of Kate and BuckDaniels, while Joe Cumberland, on the couch at the end of the room, wasonly plainly visible when there was an extraordinarily high leap of thedying flames; but usually his face was merely a glimmering hint in thedarkness--his face and the long hands which were folded upon his breast.Often when the flames leapt there was a crackling of the embers and thelast of the log, and then the two nearer the fire would start and flasha glance, of one accord, towards the prostrate figure on the couch.

  That silence had lasted so long that when at length the dull voice ofJoe Cumberland broke in, there was a ring of a most prophetic solemnityabout it.

  "He ain't come," said the old man. "Dan ain't here."

  The others exchanged glances, but the eyes of Kate dropped sadly andfastened again upon the hearth.

  Buck Daniels cleared his throat like an orator.

  "Nobody but a fool," he said, "would have started out of Elkhead in astorm like this."

  "Weather makes no difference to Dan," said Joe Cumberland.

  "But he'd think of his hoss----"

  "Weather makes no difference to Satan," answered the faint, oracularvoice of Joe Cumberland. "Kate!"

  "Yes?"

  "Is he comin'?"

  She did not answer. Instead, she got up slowly from her place by thefire and took another chair, far away in the gloom, where hardly aglimmer of light reached to her and there she let her head rest, as ifexhausted, against the back of the seat.

  "He promised," said Buck Daniels, striving desperately to keep his voicecheerful, "and he never busts his promises."

  "Ay," said the old man, "he promised to be back--but he ain't here."

  "If he started after the storm," said Buck Daniels.

  "He didn't start after the storm," announced the oracle. "He was out init."

  "What was that," cried Buck Daniels sharply.

  "The wind," said Kate, "for it's rising. It will be a cold night,to-night."

  "And he ain't here," said the old man monotonously.

  "Ain't there things that might hold him up?" asked Buck, with a touch ofirritation.

  "Ay," said the old rancher, "they's things that'll hold him up. They'sthings that'll turn a dog wild, too, and the taste of blood is one of'em!"

  The silence fell again.

  There was an old clock standing against the wall. It was one of thosetall, wooden frames in which, behind the glass, the heavy, polished diskof the pendulum, alternated slowly back and forth with wearisomeprecision. And with every stroke of the seconds there was a faint,metallic clangor in the clock--a falter like that which comes in thevoice of a very old man. And the sound of this clock took possession ofevery silence until it seemed like the voice of a doomsman counting offthe seconds. Ay, everyone in the room, again and again, took up the taleof those seconds and would count them slowly--fifty, fifty-one,fifty-two, fifty-three--and on and on, waiting for the next speech, orfor the next popping of the wood upon the hearth, or for the next wailof the wind that would break upon the deadly expectancy of that count.And while they counted each looked straight before him with wide andwidening eyes.

  Into one of these pauses the voice of Buck Daniels broke at length; andit was a cheerless and lonely voice in that large room, in the dulldarkness, and the duller lights.

  "D'you remember Shorty Martin, Kate?"

  "I remember him."

  He turned in his chair and hitched it a little closer to her until hecould make put her face, dimly, among the shadows. The flames jumped onthe hearth, and he saw a picture that knocked at his heart.

  "The little bow-legged feller, I mean."

  "Yes, I remember him very well."

  Once more the flames sputtered and he saw how she looked wistfullybefore her and above. She had never seemed so lovely to Buck Daniels.She was pale, indeed, but there was no ugly pinching of her face, and ifthere were shadows beneath her eyes, they only served to make her eyesseem marvelously large and bright. She was pallid, and the firelightstained her skin with touches of tropic gold, and cast a halo of thegolden hair about her face. She seemed like one of those statues wroughtin the glory and the rich days of Athens in ivory and in gold--somegoddess who has heard the tidings of the coming fall, the change of theold order, and sits passive in her throne waiting the doom from whichthere is no escape. Something of this filtered through to the sad heartof Buck Daniels. He, too, had no hope--nay, he had not even her smallhope, but somehow he was able to pity her and cherish the picture of herin that gloomy place. It seemed to Buck Daniels that he would give tenyears from the best of his life to see her smile as he had once seen herin those old, bright days. He went on with his tale.

  "You would have busted laughin' if you'd seen him at the Circle Y Barroundup the way I seen him. Shorty ain't so bad with a rope. He's alwaystalkin' about what he can do and how he can daub a rope on anythingthat's got horns. He ain't so bad, but then he ain't so good, either.Specially, he ain't so good at ridin'--you know what bowed legs he'sgot, Kate?"

  "I remember, Buck."

  She was looking at him, at last, and he talked eagerly to turn that lookinto a smile.

  "Well, they was the three of us got after one two year old--a bull and abad 'un. Shorty was on one side and me and Cuttle was on the other side.Shorty daubed his rope and made a fair catch, but when his hoss set backthe rope busted plumb in two. Now, Shorty, he had an idea that he couldease the work of his hoss a whole pile if he laid holts on the ropewhenever his hoss set down to flop a cow. So Shorty, he had holt on thisrope and was pulling back hard when the rope busted, and Shorty, hespilled backwards out'n that saddle like he'd been kicked out.

  "Whilst he was lyin' there, the bull, that had took a header when therope busted, come up on his feet agin, and I'll tell a man he was rarin'mad! He seen Shorty lyin' on the ground, and he took a run for Shorty.Me and Cuttle was laughin' so hard we couldn't barely swing our ropes,but I made a throw and managed to get that bull around both horns. So myBetty sits down and braces herself for the tug.

  "In the meantime little Shorty, he sits up and lays a hand to his head,and same time he sees that bull come tarin' for him. Up he jumps. Andjest then the bull come to the end of the line and wonk!--down he goes,head over heels, and hits the sand with a bang that must of jostled hisliver some, I'll be sayin'!

  "Well, Shorty, he seen that bull fly up into the air and he lets out ayell like the world was comin' to an end, and starts runnin'. If he'drun straight back the other way the bull couldn't of run a step, becauseI had him fast with m
y rope, but Shorty seen me, and he come tarin' formy hoss to get behind him.

  "That bull was like a cat gettin' to his feet, and he sights Shortytarin' and lights out after him. There they went lickety-split. Thatbull was puffin' on the seat of Shorty's trowsers and tossin' his hornsand jest missin' Shorty by inches; and Shorty had his mouth so wide openhollerin' that you could have throwed a side of beef down his throat;and his eyes was buggin' out. Them bow-legs of his was stretchin' tenyards at a clip, most like, and the boys says they could hear himhollerin' a mile away. But that bull, stretch himself all he could,couldn't gain an inch on Shorty, and Shorty couldn't gain an inch on thebull, till the bull come to the other end of the forty-foot rope, andthen, whang! up goes the heels of the bull and down goes his head, andhis heels comes over--wonk! and hits Shorty right square on the head.

  "Been an ordinary feller, and he wouldn't of lived to talk about itafterwards, but seein' it was Shorty, he jest goes up in the air andlands about ten yards away, and rolls over and hits his feet withoutonce gettin' off his stride--and then he _did_ start runnin', and hedidn't stop runnin' nor hollerin' till he got plumb back to the house!"

  Buck Daniels sat back in his chair and guffawed at the memory. In theexcitement of the tale he had quite forgotten Kate, but when heremembered her, she sat with her head craned a little to one side, herhand raised for silence, and a smile, indeed, upon her lips, but never aglance for Buck Daniels. He knew at once.

  "Is it him?" he whispered. "D'you hear him?"

  "Hush!" commanded two voices, and then he saw that old Joe Cumberlandalso was listening.

  "No," said the girl suddenly, "it was only the wind."

  As if in answer, a far, faint whistling broke upon them. She drew herhands slowly towards her breast, as if, indeed, she drew the sound inwith them.

  "He's coming!" she cried. "Oh, Dad, listen! Don't you hear?"

  "I do," answered the rancher, "but what I'm hearin' don't warm my bloodnone. Kate, if you're wise you'll get up and go to your room and don'tpay no heed to anything you might be hearin' to-night."

  CHAPTER XLII

  THE JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

  There was no doubting the meaning of Joe Cumberland. It grew upon themwith amazing swiftness, as if the black stallion were racing upon thehouse at a swift gallop, and the whistling rose and rang and soared in awild outburst. Give the eagle the throat of the lark, and after he hasstruck down his prey in the centre of the sky and sent the raggedfeathers and the slain body falling down to earth, what would be thesong of the eagle rising again and dwindling out of sight in the heartof the sky? What terrible pean would he send whistling down to the dullearth far below? And such was the music that came before the coming ofDan Barry. It did not cease, as usual, at a distance, but it came closerand closer, and it swelled around them. Buck Daniels had risen from hischair and stolen to a corner of the room where not a solitary shaft oflight could possibly reach him; and Kate Cumberland slipped farther intothe depths of the big chair.

  So that, in their utter silence, in spite of the whistling that blew inupon them, they could hear the dull ticking of the tall clock, and by awretched freak of fate the ticking fell exactly in with the soaringrhythm of the whistle and each had a part in the deadliness of theother.

  Very near upon them the music ceased abruptly. A footfall swept down thehall, a weight struck the door and cast it wide, and Black Bart glidedinto the room. He cast not a glance on either side. He turned his headneither to right nor to left. But he held straight on until he came toKate Cumberland and there he stood before her.

  She leaned forward.

  "Bart!" she said softly and stretched out her hands to him.

  A deep snarl stopped the gesture, and at the flash of the long fangs shesank into the chair. Old Joe Cumberland, with fearful labour, draggedhimself to a sitting position upon the couch, and sitting up in thisfashion the light fell fully upon his white face and his white hair andhis white beard, so that he made a ghostly picture.

  Then an outer door slammed and a light step, at an almost running pacespeeded down the hall, the door was swung wide again, and Dan was beforethem. He seemed to bring with him the keen, fresh air of the light, andat the opening of the door the flame in the lamp jumped in its chimney,shook, and fell slowly back to its original dimness; but by that glow oflight they saw that the sombrero upon Dan Barry's head was a shapelessmass--his bandana had been torn away, leaving his throat bare--hisslicker was a mass of rents and at the neck had been crumpled and tornin a thousand places as though strong teeth had worried it to a rag.Spots of mud were everywhere on his boots, even on his sombrero with itssagging brim, and on one side of his face there was a darker stain. Hehad ceased his whistling, indeed, but now he stood at the door andhummed as he gazed about the room. Straight to Kate Cumberland hewalked, took her hands, and raised her from the chair.

  He said, and there was a fibre and ring in his voice that made themcatch their breaths: "There's something outside that I'm followingto-night. I don't know what it is. It is the taste of the wind and thefeel of the air and the smell of the ground. And I've got to be ridin'.I'm saying good-bye for a bit, Kate."

  "Dan," she cried, "what's happened? What's on your face?"

  "The mark of the night," he answered. "I don't know what else. Will youcome with me, Kate?"

  "For how long? Where are you going, Dan!"

  "I don't know where or how long. All I know is I've got to be going.Come to the window. Take the air on your face. You'll understand!"

  He drew her after him and cast up the window.

  "Do you feel it in the wind" he called to her, turning with atransfigured face. "Do you hear it?"

  She could not speak but stood with her face lifted, trembling.

  "Look at me!" he commanded, and turned her roughly towards him. There hestood leaning close to her, and the yellow light flickered and wanedand burned again in his eyes.

  He had held her hands while he stared. Now he dropped them with anexclamation.

  "You're blank," he said angrily. "You've seen nothing and heardnothing."

  He turned on his heel.

  "Bart!" he called, and walked from the room, and they heard the paddingof his soft step down the hall and on the porch and then--silence.

  Black Bart slunk to the door and into the hall, but instantly he wasback and peering into the gloom of the silent place like an evil-eyedspectre.

  A sharp whistle rang from outside, and Black Bart started. Still heglided on until he stood before Kate; then turned and stalked slowlytowards the door, looking back after her. She did not move, and with asnarl the wolf-dog whirled again and trotted back to her. This time hecaught a fold of her skirt in his teeth and pulled on it. And under thepressure she made a step.

  "Kate!" called Joe Cumberland. "Are you mad, girl, to dream of goin' outin a night like this?"

  "I'm not going!" she answered hurriedly. "I'm afraid--and I won't leaveyou, Dad!"

  She had stopped as she spoke, but Black Bart, snarling terribly, threwhis weight back, and dragged her a step forward.

  "Buck," cried old Joe Cumberland and he dragged himself up and stoodtottering. "Shoot the damned wolf--for God's sake--for my sake!"

  Still the wolf-dog drew the girl in that snarling progress towards thedoor.

  "Kate!" cried her father, and the agony in his voice made it young andsent it ringing through the room. "Will you go out to wander betweenheaven and hell--on a night like this?"

  "I'm not going!" she answered, "I won't leave you--but oh--Dad!----"

  He opened his lips for a fresh appeal, but the chorus of the wild geeseswept in upon the wind, blown loud and clear and jangling as distantbells out of tune. And Kate Cumberland buried her face in her hands andstumbled blindly out of the room and down the hall--and then they heardthe wild neighing of a horse outside.

  "Buck!" commanded Joe Cumberland. "He's stealin' my girl--my Kate--goout! call up the boys--tell'em to stop Dan from saddlin' a horse forKate----"

  "W
ait and listen!" cut in Buck Daniels. "D'you hear that?"

  On the wet ground outside they heard a patter of galloping hoofs, andthen a wild whistling, sweet and keen and high, came ringing back tothem. It diminished rapidly with the distance.

  "He's carryin' her off on Satan!" groaned Joe Cumberland, staggering ashe tried to step forward. "Buck, call out the boys. Even Satan can'tbeat my hosses when he's carryin' double--call'em out--if you bring herback----"

  His voice choked and he stumbled and would have fallen to his knees hadnot Buck Daniels sprang forward and caught him and carried him back tothe couch.

  "What's happened there ain't no man can stop," said Buck hoarsely."God's work or devil's work--I dunno--but I know there ain't no placefor a man between Dan and Kate."

  "Turn up the lights," commanded Joe Cumberland sharply. "Got to see; Igot to think. D'you hear?"

  Buck Daniels ran to the big lamp and turned up the wick. At once a clearlight flooded every nook of the big room and showed all its emptiness.

  "Can't you make the lamp work?" asked the old ranchman angrily. "Ain'tthey any oil in it? Why, Buck, they ain't enough light for me to seeyour face, hardly. But I'll do without the light. Buck, how far willthey go? Kate's a good girl! She won't leave me, lad!"

  "She won't," agreed Buck Daniels. "Jest gone with Dan for a bit of acanter."

  "The devil was come back in his eyes," muttered the old man. "God knowswhere he's headin' for! Buck, I brought him in off'n the range and madehim a part of my house. I took him into my heart; and now he's gone outagain and taken everything that I love along with him. Buck, why did hego?"

  "He'll come back," said the big cowpuncher softly.

  "It's gettin' darker and darker," said Joe Cumberland, "and they's akind of ringing in my ears. Talk louder. I don't hear you none toowell."

  "I said they was comin' back," said Buck Daniels.

  Something like a light showed on the face of Joe Cumberland.

  "Ay, lad," he said eagerly, "I can hear Dan's whistlin' comin'back--nearer and nearer. Most like he was jest playin' a joke on me, eh,Buck?"

  "Most like," said Buck, brokenly.

  "Ay, there it's ringin' at the door of the house! Was that a footstep onthe hall?"

  "It was," said Buck. "They's comin' down the hall!"

  But far, far away he heard the whistling of Dan Barry dying among thehills.

  "You let the lamp go out," said Joe Cumberland, "and now I can't seenothing. Are they in the room?"

  "They're here," said Buck Daniels, "comin' towards you now."

  "Dan!" cried the old man, shading his eyes and peering anxiously--"no, Ican't see a thing. Can you find me, lad?"

  And Buck Daniels, softening his voice as much as he could, answered. "Ican find you."

  "Then gimme your hand."

  Buck Daniels slipped his own large hand into the cold fingers of thedying cattleman. An expression of surpassing joy lay on the face of JoeCumberland.

  "Whistlin' Dan, my Dan," he murmured faintly, "I'm kind of sleepy, butbefore I go to sleep, to-night, I got to tell you that I forgive you foryour joke--pretendin' to take Kate away."

  "They's nothin' but sleep worth while--and goin' to sleep, holdin' yourhand, lad--"

  Buck Daniels dropped upon his knees and stared into the wide, dead eyes.Through the open window a sound of whistling blew to him. It was asweet, faint music, and being so light it seemed like a chorus ofsinging voices among the mountains, for it was as pure and as sharp asthe starlight.

  Buck Daniels lifted his head to listen, but the sound faded, and themurmur of the night-wind came between.

  THE END