by Max Brand
By dark, however, a few halts, a chance to crop grass for a moment here and there, a roll by the next creek and a short draught of water, restored a great part of the black’s strength, and before the night was an hour old he was heading up through the hills at a long, swift trot.
Even then it was that dark, cold time just before dawn when they wound up the difficult pass toward the cave. The moon had gone down; a thin, high mist painted out the stars; and there were only varying degrees of blackness to show them the way, with peaks and ridges starting here and there out of the night, very suddenly. It was so dark, indeed, that sometimes Dan could not see where Bart skulked a little ahead, weaving among the boulders and picking the easiest way. But all three of them knew the course by instinct, and when they came to a more or less commanding rise of ground in the valley Dan checked the stallion and whistled.
Then he sat canting his head to one side to listen more intently. A rising wind brought about him something like an echo of the sound, but otherwise there was no answer.
“She ain’t heard,” muttered Dan to Bart, who came running back at the call, so familiar to him and to the horse. He whistled again, prolonging the call until it soared and trembled down the gulch, and this time when he stopped he sat for a long moment, waiting, until Black Bart whined at his side.
“She ain’t learned to sleep light, yet,” muttered Barry. “An’ I s’pose she’s plumb tired out waitin’ for me. But if something’s happened—Satan!”
That word sent the stallion leaping ahead at a racing gait, swerving among rocks which he could not see.
“They’s nothin’ wrong with her,” whispered Barry to himself. “They can’t be nothin’ happened to her!”
He was in the cave, a moment later, standing in the center of the place with the torch high above his head; it flared and glimmered in the great eyes of Satan and the narrow eyes of Bart. At length he slipped down to a rock beside him while the torch, fallen from his hand, sputtered and whispered where it lay on the gravel.
“She’s gone,” he said to emptiness. “She’s lef’ me—” Black Bart licked his limp hand but dared not even whine.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Ben Swann
Since the night when old Joe Cumberland died and Kate Cumberland rode off after her wild man, Ben Swann, the foreman of the Cumberland ranch, had lived in the big house. He would have been vastly more comfortable in the bunkhouse playing cards with the other hands, but Ben Swann felt vaguely that it was a shame for so much space in the ranch house to go to waste, and besides, Ben’s natural dignity was at home in the place even if his mind grew lonely. It was Ben Swann, therefore, who ran down and flung open the door, on which a heavy hand was beating. Outside stood two men, very tall, taller than himself, and one of them a giant. They had about them a strong scent of horses.
“Get a light,” said one of these. “Run for it. Get a light. Start a fire, and be damned quick about it!”
“And who the hell might you gents be?” queried Ben Swann, leaning against the side of the doorway to dicker.
“Throw that fool on his head,” said one of the strangers, “and go on in, Lee!”
“Stand aside,” said the other, and swept the doorknob out of Ben’s grip, flattening Ben himself against the wall. While he struggled there, gasping, a man and a woman slipped past him.
“Tell him who we are,” said the woman’s voice. “We’ll go to the living-room, Buck, and start a fire.”
The strangers apparently knew their way even in the dark, for presently he heard the scraping of wood on the hearth in the living-room. It bewildered Ben Swann. It was dream-like, this sudden invasion.
“Now, who the devil are you?”
A match was scratched and held under his very nose, until Ben shrank back for fear that his splendid mustaches might ignite. He found himself confronted by one of the largest men he had ever seen, a leonine face, vaguely familiar.
“You Lee Haines!” he gasped. “What are you doin’ here?”
“You’re Swann, the foreman, aren’t you?” said Haines. “Well, come out of your dream, man. The owner of the ranch is in the living-room.”
“Joe Cumberland’s dead,” stammered Ben Swann.
“Kate Cumberland.”
“Her! And—Barry—the Killing at Alder—”
“Shut up!” ordered Haines, and his face grew ugly. “Don’t let that chatter get to Kate’s ears. Barry ain’t with her. Only his kid. Now stir about.”
After the first surprise was over, Ben Swann did very well. He found the fire already started in the living-room and on the rug before the hearth a yellow-haired little girl wrapped in a tawny hide. She was sound asleep, worn out by the long ride, and she seemed to Ben Swann a very pretty picture. Surely there could be in her little of the father of whom he had heard so much—of whom that story of the Killing at Alder was lately told. He took in that picture at a glance and then went to rustle food; afterward he went down to sleep in the bunkhouse and at breakfast he recounted the events of the night with a relish. Not one of the men had been more than three years on the place, and therefore their minds were clean slates on which Swann could write his own impressions.
“Appearances is deceivin’” concluded the foreman. “Look at Mrs. Dan Barry. They tell you around these parts that she’s pretty, but they don’t tell you how damned fine lookin’ she is. She’s got a soft look and you’d never pick her for the sort that would run clean off with a gent like Barry. Barry himself wasn’t so bad for looks, but they’ll tell you in Elkhead how bad he is in action, and maybe they’s some widders in Alder that could put in a word. Take even the kid. She looks no more’n a baby, but what d’you know is inside of her?
“Speakin’ personal, gents, I don’t put no kind of trust in that houseful yonder. Here they come in the middle of the night like there was a posse after ’em. They climb that house and sit down and eat like they’d ridden all day. Maybe they had. Even while they was eatin’ they didn’t seem none too happy.
“That loose shutter upstairs come around in the wind with a bang and Buck Daniels comes out of his chair as fast as powder could blow him. He didn’t say nothin’. Just sat down lookin’ kind of sick, and the other two was the same way. When they talked, they’d bust off in the middle of a word and let their eyes go trailin’ into some corner of the room that was plumb full of shadow. Then Lee Haines gets up and walks up and down.
“‘Swann,’ says he, ‘how many good men have you got on the place?’
“‘Why,’ says I, ‘they’re all good!’
“‘Huh,’ says Haines, and he puts a hand on my shoulder, ‘Just how good are they, Swann?’”
“I seen what he wanted. He wanted to know how many scrappy gents was punchin’ cows here; maybe them three up there figures that they might need help. From what? What was they runnin’ away from?”
“Hey!” broke in one of the cowpunchers, pointing with a dramatic fork through the window.
It was a bright spot of gold that disappeared over the top of the nearest hill; then it came into view again, the whole body of a yellow-haired child, clothed in a wisp of white, and running steadily toward the north.
“The kid!” gasped the foreman. “Boys, grab her. No, you’d bust her; I know how to handle her!”
He was gone through the door with gigantic leaps and shot over the crest of the low hill. Then those in the cookhouse heard a small, tingling scream; after it, came silence, and the tall foreman striding across the hill with the child high in his arms. He came panting through the door and stood her up on the end of the table, a small and fearless creature. She wore on her feet the little moccasins which Dan himself had fashioned for her, but the tawny hide was not on her—perhaps her mother had thrown the garment away. The moccasins and the white nightgown were the sum and substance of her apparel, and the cowpunchers stood up around the table to admire her spunk.
“Damed near spat pizen,” observed Ben Swann, “when I hung into her—tried to bite me, b
ut the minute I got her in my hands she quit strugglin’, as reasonable as a grown-up, by God!”
“Shut up, Ben. Don’t you know no better’n to cuss in front of a kid?”
The great, dark eyes of Joan went somberly from face to face. If she was afraid, she disguised it well, but now and then, like a wild thing which sees that escape is impossible, she looked through the window and out over the open country beyond.
“Where was you headed for, honey?” queried Ben Swann.
The child considered him bravely for a time before she replied.
“Over there.”
“Over there? Now what might she mean by that? Headed for Elkhead—in a nightgown? Any place I could take you, kid?”
If she did not altogether trust Ben Swann, at least she preferred him to the other unshaven, work-thinned faces which leered at her around the table.
“Daddy Dan,” she said softly. “Joan wants to go to Daddy Dan.”
“Daddy Dan—Dan Barry,” translated Ben Swann, and he drew a bit away from her. “Boys, that mankillin’ devil must be around here; and that’s what them up to the house was runnin’ from—Barry!”
It scattered the others to the windows, to the door.
“What d’you see?”
“Nothin’.”
“Swann, if Barry is comin’ to these parts, I’m goin’ to pack my war-bag.”
“Me too, Ben. Them that get ten thousand’ll earn it. I heard about the Killin’ at Alder.”
“Listen to me, gents,” observed Ben Swann. “If Barry is comin’ here we ain’t none of us goin’ to stay; but don’t start jumpin’ out from under till I get the straight of it. I’m goin’ to take the kid up to the house right now and find out.”
So he wrapped up Joan in an old blanket, for she was shivering in the cold of the early morning, and carried her up to the ranchhouse. The alarm had already been given. He saw Buck Daniels gallop toward the front of the place leading two saddled horses; he saw Haines and Kate run down the steps to meet them, and then they caught sight of the foreman coming with Joan on his shoulder.
The joy of that meeting, it seemed to Ben Swann, was decidedly one-sided. Kate ran to Joan with a little wailing cry of happiness and gathered her close, but neither big Lee Haines nor ugly Buck Daniels seemed overcome with happiness at the regaining of Joan, and the child herself merely endured the caresses of her mother. Ben Swann made them a speech.
He told them that anybody with half an eye could tell they were bothered by something, that they acted as if they were running away. Now, running in itself was perfectly all right and quite in order when it was impossible to outface or outbluff a danger. He himself, Ben Swann, believed in such tactics. He wasn’t a soldier; he was a cowpuncher. So were the rest of the boys out yonder, and though they’d stay by their work in ordinary times, and they’d face ordinary trouble, they were not minded to abide the coming of Dan Barry.
“So,” concluded Swann, “I want to ask you straight. Is him they call Whistlin’ Dan comin’ this way? Are you runnin’ from him? And did you steal the kid from him?”
Lee Haines took upon his competent shoulders the duty of answering.
“You look like a sensible man, Swann,” he said severely. “I’m surprised at you. In the first place, two men don’t run away from one.”
A fleeting smile appeared and disappeared on the lips of Ben Swann. Haines hastily went on: “As for stealing the baby from Dan Barry, good heavens, man, don’t you think a mother has a right to her own child? Now go back to that scared bunch and tell them that Dan Barry is back in the Grizzly Peaks.”
For several reasons this did not completely satisfy the foreman, but he postponed his decision. Lee Haines spoke like one in the habit of giving orders, and Swann walked slowly back to the cookhouse.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
The New Alliance
“And so,” said Lee Haines, when he joined Buck Daniels in the living-room, “there goes our reinforcements. That whole crew will scatter like dead leaves when Barry breezes in. It looks to me—”
“Shut up!” cut in Daniels. “Shut up!”
His dark, homely face turned to the larger man with a singular expression of awe. He whispered: “D’you hear? She’s in the next room whippin’ Joan for runnin’ away, and never a yap out of the kid!”
He held up a lean finger for caution and then Haines heard the sound of the willow switch. It stopped.
“If you run away again,” warned Kate, her voice pitched high and trembling, “munner will whip harder, and put you in a dark place for a long, long time.”
Still there was not a sound of the child’s voice, not even the pulse of stifled weeping. Presently the door opened and Kate stood there.
“Go out in the kitchen and tell Li to give you breakfast. Naughty girls can’t eat with munner.”
Through the door came Joan, her little round face perfectly white, perfectly expressionless. She did not cringe, passing her mother; she walked steadily across the room, rose on tip-toe to open the kitchen door, and disappeared through it. Kate dropped into a chair, shaking.
“Out!” whispered Buck to Lee Haines. “Beat it. I got to talk alone.” And as soon as Haines obeyed, Buck sat down close to the girl. She was twisting and untangling her fingers in a dumb agony.
“What has he done to her, Buck? What has he done?”
It was a maxim with Buck that talk is to woman what swearing is to man; it is a safety valve, and therefore he waited in silence until the first rush of her grief had passed.
“She only looked at me when I whipped her. My heart turned in me. She didn’t cry; she wasn’t even angry. She just stood there—my baby!—and looked at me!”
She threw herself back in the chair with her eyes closed, and he saw where the trouble had marked her face. He wanted to lean over and take her in his arms.
“I’m going mad, Buck. I can’t stand it. How could he have changed her to this?”
“Listen to me, Kate. Joan ain’t been changed. She’s only showin’ what she is.”
The mother stared wildly at him.
“Don’t look like I was a murderer. God knows I’m sorry, Kate, but if they’s Dan’s blood in your little girl it ain’t my fault. It ain’t anything he’s taught her. It’s just that bein’ alone with him has brought out what she really is.”
“I won’t believe you, Buck. I don’t dare listen to you!”
“You got to listen, Kate, because you know I’m right. D’you think that any kind of teachin’ could make her learn how to stand and keep from cryin’ when she was whipped?”
“I know.”
She spoke softly, as if some terrible power might overhear them talk, and Buck lowered his voice in turn.
“She’s wild, Kate, I knew it when I seen the way she handled Bart. She’s wild!”
“Then I’ll have her tame again.”
“You tried that once and failed.”
“Dan was a man when I tried, and his nature was formed. Joan is only a baby—my baby. She’s half mine. She has my hair and my eyes.”
“I don’t care what the color of her eyes is, I know what’s behind them. Look at ’em, and then tell me who she takes after.”
“Buck, why do you talk like this? What do you want me to do?”
“A hard thing. Send Joan back to Dan.”
“Never!”
“He’ll never give her up, I tell you.”
“Oh, God help me. What shall I do? I’ll keep her! I’ll make her tame.”
“But you’ll never keep her that way. Think of Dan. Think of the yaller in his eyes, Kate.”
“Until I die,” she said with sudden quiet, “I’ll fight to keep her.”
And he answered with equal solemnity: “Until Dan dies he’ll fight to have her. And he’s never been beat yet.”
Through a breathing space he stared at her and she at him, and the eyes of Buck Daniels were the first to turn. Everything that was womanly and gentle had died from her face, and in its stead
was something which made Buck rise and wander from the room.
He found Lee Haines and told him briefly all that had passed. The great battle, they decided, had begun between Kate and Barry for the sake of the child, and that battle would go on until one of them was dead or the prize for which they struggled lost. Barry would come on the trail and find them at the ranch, and then he would strike for Joan. And they had no help for the struggle against him. The cowpunchers would scatter at the first sign of Barry, at the first shrill of his ill-omened whistling. They might ride for Elkhead and raise a posse from among the citizens, but it would take two days to do that and gather a number of effective fighters for the crisis, and in the meantime the chances were large that Barry would strike the ranch while the messenger was away. There was really nothing to do but sit patiently and wait. They were both brave men, very; and they were both not unpracticed fighters; but they began to wait for the coming of Barry as the prisoner waits for the day of his execution.
It spoke well for the quality of their nerves that they would not speak to Kate of the time to come; they sat back like spectators at a play and watched the maneuvers of the mother to win back Joan.
There was not an idle moment from breakfast to dark. They went out to gather wildflowers on the western hill from the house; they sat on the veranda where Kate told Joan stories of the ranch and pointed out the distant mountains which were its boundaries, and explained that all between them would one day be her own land; that the men who rode yonder were doing her work; that the cattle who ranged the hills were marked with her brand. She said it all in small words so that Joan could understand, but as far as Buck and Lee could make out, there was never a flicker of intelligence or interest in the eyes of the child.
It was a hard battle every hour, and after supper Kate sat in a big chair by the fire with her eyes half closed, admitting defeat, perhaps. For Joan was curled up on the couch at the farthest, dimmest end of the room, and with her chin propped in both small hands she stared in silence through the window and over the darkening hills. Buck and Lee were there, never speaking, but now and then their eyes sought each other with a vague hope. For Kate might see that her task was impossible, send Joan back, and that would free them of the danger.
