The Max Brand Megapack

by Max Brand

  “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 away 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 so 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 fell 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 upon 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 at 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, towards 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 towards 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 towards the house. One of the cowpunchers went ahead bearing the 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 towards 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 to-night—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 a 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 to-night. 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.

  “He received no answer. In the meantime he gave Dan a room in the house; and I remember how Dan sat at the table the first night—I was a very little girl then—and how I laughed at his strange way of eating. His knife was the only thing he was interested in and he made it serve for knife, fork, and spoon, and he held the meat in his fingers while he cut it. The next morning he was missing. One of Dad’s range riders picked up Dan several miles to the north, walking along, whistling gayly. The next morning he was missing again and was caught still farther away. After that Dad had a terrible scene with him—I don’t know exactly what happened—but Dan promised to run away no more, and ever since then Dad has been closer to Dan than anyone else.

  “So Dan grew up. From the time I could first distinctly remember, he was very gentle and good-natured, but he was different, always. After a while he got Black Bart, you know, and then he went out with a halter and captured Satan. Think of capturing a wild mustang with nothing but a halter! He played around with them so much that I was jealous of them. So I kept with them until Bart and Satan were rather used to me. Bart would even play with me now and then when Dan wasn’t near. And so finally Dan and I were to be married.

  “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 dow
n, 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 south—and while they were honking in the sky Dan got up, said good-bye, and left us. We have never seen him again until to-night. 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.

  “It is perfectly clear,” said Byrne. “If it were a little more commonplace it might be puzzling, but being so extraordinary it clears itself up. Did you really expect the dog, the wolf-dog, Black Bart, to remember you?”

  “I may have expected it.”

  “But you were not surprised, of course!”

  “Naturally not.”

  “Yet you see that 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. Afterwards 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 realise 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?”

  He knew that she was shaken. He could feel it, even without the testimony of his eyes to witness. He went on, speaking with great rapidity, lest she should escape from the influence which he had already gained over her.

  “I felt it when I first saw him—a certain nameless kinship with elemental forces. The wind blew through the open door—it was Dan Barry. The wild geese called from the open sky—for Dan Barry. These are the things which lead him. These the forces which direct him. You have loved him; but is love merely a giving? No, you have seen in him a man, but I see in him merely the animal force.”

  She said after a moment: “Do you hate him—you plead against him so passionately?”

  He answered: “Can you hate a thing which is not human? No, but you can dread it. It escapes from the laws which bind you and which bind me. What standards govern it? How can you hope to win it? Love? What beauty is there in the world to appeal to such a creature except the beauty of the marrow-bone which his teeth have the strength to snap?”

  “Ah, listen!” murmured the girl. “Here is your answer!”

  And Doctor Randall Byrne heard a sound like the muted music of the violin, thin and small and wonderfully penetrating. He could not tell, at first, what it might be. For it was as unlike the violin as it was like the bow and the rosined strings. Then he made out, surely, that it was the whistling of a human being.

  It followed no tune, no reasoned theme. The music was beautiful in its own self. It rose straight up like the sky-lark from the ground, sheer up against the white light of the sky, and there it sang against heaven’s gate. He had never heard harmony like it. He would never again hear such music, so thin and yet so full that it went through and through him, until he felt the strains take a new, imitative life within him. He would have whistled the strains himself, but he could not follow them. They escaped him, they soared above him. They followed no law or rhythm. They flew on wings and left him far below. The girl moved away from him as if led by an invisible hand, and now she stood at the extremity of the porch. He followed her.

  “Do you hear?” she cried, turning to him.

  “What is it?” asked the doctor.

  “It is he! Don’t you understand?”

  “Barry? Yes! But what does the whistling mean; is it for his wolf-dog?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered quickly. “All I understand is that it is beautiful. Where are your theories and explanations now, Doctor Byrne?”.

  “It is beautiful—God knows!—but doesn’t the wolf-dog understand it better than either you or I?”

  She turned and faced Byrne, standing very close, and when she spoke there was something in her voice which was like a light. In spite of the dark he could guess at every varying shade of her expression.

  “To the rest of us,” she murmured, “Dan has nothing but silence, and hardly a glance. Buck saved his life to-night, and yet Dan remembered nothing except the blow which had been struck. And now—now he pours out all the music in his soul for a dumb beast. Listen!”

  He saw her straighten herself and stand taller.

  “Then through the wolf—I’ll conquer through the dumb beast!”

  She whipped past Byrne and disappeared into the house; at the same instant the whistling, in the midst of a faint, high climax, broke, shivered, and was ended. There was only the darkness and the silence around Byrne, and the unsteady wind against his face.

  CHAPTER XXV

  WERE-WOLF

  Doctor Byrne, pacing the front veranda with his thoughtful head bowed, saw Buck Daniels step out with his quirt dangling in his hand, his cartridge belt buckled about his waist, and a great red silk bandana knotted at his throat.

  He was older by ten years than he had been a few days before, when the doctor first saw him. To be sure, his appearance was not improved by a three days’ growth of beard. It gave his naturally dark skin a dirty cast, but even that rough stubble could not completely shroud the new hollows in Daniels’ cheeks. His long, black, uncombed hair, sagged down raggedly across his forehead, hanging almost into his eyes; the eyes themselves were sunk in such formidable cavities that Byrne caught hardly more than two points of light in the shadows. All the devil-may-care insouciance of Buck Daniels was quite, quite gone. In its place was a dogged sullenness, a hang-dog air which one would not care to face of a dark night or in a lonely place. His manner was that of a man whose back is against the wall, who, having fled some keen pursuit, has now come to the end of his tether and prepares for desperate even if hopeless battle. There was that about him which made the doctor hesitate to address the cowpuncher.

  At length he said: “You’re going out for an outing, Mr. Daniels?”

  Buck Daniels started violently at the sound of this voice behind him, and whirled upon the doctor with such a set and contorted expression of fierceness that Byrne jumped back.

  “Good God, man!” cried the doctor, “What’s up with you?”

  “Nothin’,” answered Buck, gradually relaxing from his first show of suspicion. “I’m beating it. That’s all.”

  “Leaving us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not really!”

  “D’you think I ought to stay?” asked Buck, with
something of a sneer.

  The doctor hesitated, frowning in a puzzled way. At length he threw out his hands in a gesture of mute abandonment.

  “My dear fellow,” he said with a faint smile, “I’ve about stopped trying to think.”

  At this Buck Daniels grinned mirthlessly.

  “Now you’re talkin’ sense,” he nodded. “They ain’t no use in thinking.”

  “But why do you leave so suddenly?”

  Buck Daniels shrugged his broad shoulders.

  “I am sure,” went on Byrne, “that Miss Cumberland will miss you.”

  “She will not,” answered the big cowpuncher. “She’s got her hands full with—him.”

  “Exactly. But if it is more than she can do, if she makes no headway with that singular fellow—she may need help—”

  He was interrupted by a slow, long-drawn, deep-throated curse from Buck Daniels.

  “Why in hell should I help her with—him?”

  “There is really no reason,” answered the doctor, alarmed, “except, I suppose, old friendship—”

  “Damn old friendship!” burst out Buck Daniels. “There’s an end to all things and my friendship is worn out—on both sides. It’s done!”

  He turned and scowled at the house.

  “Help her to win him over? I’d rather stick the muzzle of my gun down my throat and pull the trigger. I’d rather see her marry a man about to hang. Well—to hell with this place. I’m through with it. S’long, doc.”

  But Doctor Byrne ran after him and halted him at the foot of the steps down from the veranda.

  “My dear Mr. Daniels,” he urged, touching the arm of Buck. “You really mustn’t leave so suddenly as this. There are a thousand questions on the tip of my tongue.”

  Buck Daniels regarded the professional man with a hint of weariness and disgust.

  “Well,” he said, “I’ll hear the first couple of hundred. Shoot!”

  “First: the motive that sends you away.”

  “Dan Barry.”

  “Ah—ah—fear of what he may do?”

  “Damn the fear. At least, it’s him that makes me go.”