by Max Brand
CHAPTER III
THE DOCTOR RIDES
Hank Dwight disappeared from the doorway and the doctor was called fromhis pondering by the voice of the girl. There was something about thatvoice which worried Byrne, for it was low and controlled and musical andit did not fit with the nasal harshness of the cattlemen. When she beganto speak it was like the beginning of a song. He turned now and foundher sitting a tall bay horse, and she led a red-roan mare beside her.When he went out she tossed her reins over the head of her horse andstrapped his valise behind her saddle.
"You won't have any trouble with that mare," she assured him, when thetime came for mounting. Yet when he approached gingerly he was receivedwith flattened ears and a snort of anger. "Wait," she cried, "the leftside, not the right!"
He felt the laughter in her voice, but when he looked he could see notrace of it in her face. He approached from the left side, setting histeeth.
"You observe," he said, "that I take your word at its full value," andplacing his foot in the stirrup, he dragged himself gingerly up to thesaddle. The mare stood like a rock. Adjusting himself, he wiped a suddenperspiration from his forehead.
"I quite believe," he remarked, "that the animal is of unusualintelligence. All may yet be well!"
"I'm sure of it." said the girl gravely. "Now we're off."
And the horses broke into a dog trot. Now the gait of the red roan marewas a dream of softness, and her flexible ankles gave a play of wholeinches to break the jar of every step, the sure sign of the goodsaddle-horse; but the horse has never been saddled whose trot is reallya smooth pace. The hat of Doctor Byrne began to incline towards hisright eye and his spectacles towards his left ear. He felt a peculiarlightness in the stomach and heaviness in the heart.
"The t-t-t-trot," he ventured to his companion, "is a d-d-d-dam--"
"Dr. Byrne!" she cried.
"Whoa!" called Doctor Byrne, and drew mightily in upon the reins. Thered mare stopped as a ball stops when it meets a stout wall; the doctorsprawled along her neck, clinging with arms and legs. He managed toclamber back into the saddle.
"There are vicious elements in the nature of this brute," he observed tothe girl.
"I'm very sorry," she murmured. He cast a sidelong glance but found notthe trace of a smile.
"The word upon which I--"
"Stopped?" she suggested.
"Stopped," he agreed, "was not, as you evidently assumed, an oath. Onthe contrary, I was merely remarking that the trot is a damaging gait,but through an interrupted--er--articulation--"
His eye dared her, but she was utterly grave. He perceived that therewas, after all, a certain kinship between this woman of themountain-desert and the man thereof. Their silences were filled witheloquence.
"We'll try a canter," she suggested, "and I think you'll find thateasier."
So she gave the word, and her bay sprang into a lope from a standingstart. The red mare did likewise, nearly flinging the doctor over theback of the saddle, but by the grace of God he clutched the pommel intime and was saved. The air caught at his face, they swept out of thetown and onto a limitless level stretch.
"Sp-p-p-peed," gasped the doctor, "has never been a p-p-passion withme!"
He noted that she was not moving in the saddle. The horse was like thebottom of a wave swinging violently back and forth. She was the calmcrest, swaying slightly and graciously with a motion as smooth as theflowing of water. And she spoke as evenly as if she were sitting in arocking chair.
"You'll be used to it in a moment," she assured him.
He learned, indeed, that if one pressed the stirrups as the shoulders ofthe horse swung down and leaned a trifle forward when the shoulders roseagain, the motion ceased to be jarring; for she was truly a matchlesscreature and gaited like one of those fabulous horses of old, sired bythe swift western wind. In a little time a certain pride went beatingthrough the veins of the doctor, the air blew more deeply into hislungs, there was a different tang to the wind and a different feel tothe sun--a peculiar richness of yellow warmth. And the small head of thehorse and the short, sharp, pricking ears tossed continually; and nowand then the mare threw her head a bit to one side and glanced back athim with what he felt to be a reassuring air. Life and strength andspeed were gripped between his knees--he flashed a glance at the girl.
But she rode with face straightforward and there was that about herwhich made him turn his eyes suddenly away and look far off. It was ajagged country, for in the brief rainy season there came sudden andterrific downpours which lashed away the soil and scoured the face ofthe underlying rock, and in a single day might cut a deep arroyo wherebefore had been smooth plain. This was the season of grass, but not thedark, rank green of rich soil and mild air--it was a yellowish green, acolour at once tender and glowing. It spread everywhere across theplains about Elkhead, broken here and there by the projecting boulderswhich flashed in the sun. So a great battlefield might appear,pockmarked with shell-holes, and all the scars of war freshly cut uponits face. And in truth the mountain desert was like an arena ready tostage a conflict--a titanic arena with space for earth-giants tostruggle--and there in the distance were the spectator mountains. High,lean-flanked mountains they were, not clad in forests, but ratherbristling with a stubby growth of the few trees which might endure inprecarious soil and bitter weather, but now they gathered the dignity ofdistance about them. The grass of the foothills was a faint green mistabout their feet, cloaks of exquisite blue hung around the upper masses,but their heads were naked to the pale skies. And all day long, withdeliberate alteration, the garb of the mountains changed. When thesudden morning came they leaped naked upon the eye, and then withdrew,muffling themselves in browns and blues until at nightfall they coveredthemselves to the eyes in thickly sheeted purple--Tyrian purple--andprepared for sleep with their heads among the stars.
Something of all this came to Doctor Randall Byrne as he rode, for itseemed to him that there was a similarity between these mountains andthe girl beside him. She held that keen purity of the upper slopes underthe sun, and though she had no artifice or careful wiles to make herstrange, there was about her a natural dignity like the mystery ofdistance. There was a rhythm, too, about that line of peaks against thesky, and the girl had caught it; he watched her sway with the gallop ofher horse and felt that though she was so close at hand she was athousand miles from him. She concealed nothing, and yet he could no moresee her naked soul than he could tear the veils of shadow from themountains. Not that the doctor phrased his emotions in words. He wasonly conscious of a sense of awe and the necessity of silence.
A strange feeling for the doctor! He came from the region of the mindwhere that which is not spoken does not exist, and now this girl wascarrying him swiftly away from hypotheses, doubts, and polysyllabicspeech into the world--of what? The spirit? The doctor did not know. Heonly felt that he was about to step into the unknown, and it held forhim the fascination of the suspended action of a statue. Let it not bethought that he calmly accepted the sheer necessity for silence. Hefought against it, but no words came.
It was evening: the rolling hills about them were already dark; only theheads of the mountains took the day; and now they paused at the top of arise and the girl pointed across the hollow. "There we are," she said.It was a tall clump of trees through which broke the outlines of atwo-storied house larger than any the doctor had seen in themountain-desert; and outside the trees lay long sheds, a great barn, anda wide-spread wilderness of corrals. It struck the doctor with itsapparently limitless capacity for housing man and beast. Coming incontrast with the rock-strewn desolation of the plains, this was a greatestablishment; the doctor had ridden out with a waif of the desert andshe had turned into a princess at a stroke. Then, for the first timesince they left Elkhead, he remembered with a start that he was to carefor a sick man in that house.
"You were to tell me," he said, "something about the sickness of yourfather--the background behind his condition. But we've both forgottenabout it."
> "I have been thinking how I could describe it, every moment of theride," she answered. Then, as the gloom fell more thickly around themevery moment, she swerved her horse over to the mare, as if it werenecessary that she read the face of the doctor while she spoke.
"Six months ago," she said, "my father was robust and active in spite ofhis age. He was cheerful, busy, and optimistic. But he fell into adecline. It has not been a sudden sapping of his strength. If it werethat I should not worry so much; I'd attribute it to disease. But everyday something of vitality goes from him. He is fading almost from hourto hour, as slowly as the hour hand of a clock. You can't notice thechange, but every twelve hours the hand makes a complete revolution.It's as if his blood were evaporating and nothing we can do will supplyhim with fresh strength."
"Is this attended by irritability?"
"He is perfectly calm and seems to have no care for what becomes ofhim."
"Has he lost interest in the things which formerly attracted andoccupied him?"
"Yes, he minds nothing now. He has no care for the condition of thecattle, or for profit or loss in the sales. He has simply stepped out ofevery employment."
"Ah, a gradual diminution of the faculties of attention."
"In a way, yes. But also he is more alive than he has ever been. Heseems to hear with uncanny distinctness, for instance."
The doctor frowned.
"I was inclined to attribute his decline to the operation of old age,"he remarked, "but this is unusual. This--er--inner acuteness isaccompanied by no particular interest in any one thing?".
As she did not reply for the moment he was about to accept the silencefor acquiescence, but then through the dimness he was arrested by thelustre of her eyes, fixed, apparently, far beyond him.
"One thing," she said at length. "Yes, there is one thing in which heretains an interest."
The doctor nodded brightly.
"Good!" he said. "And that--?"
The silence fell again, but this time he was more roused and he fixedhis eyes keenly upon her through the gloom. She was deeply troubled; onehand gripped the horn of her saddle strongly; her lips had parted; shewas like one who endures inescapable pain. He could not tell whether itwas the slight breeze which disturbed her blouse or the rapid panting ofher breath.
"Of that," she said, "it is hard to speak--it is useless to speak!"
"Surely not!" protested the doctor. "The cause, my dear madame, thoughperhaps apparently remote from the immediate issue, is of the utmostsignificance in diagnosis."
She broke in rapidly: "This is all I can tell you: he is waiting forsomething which will never come. He has missed something from his lifewhich will never come back into it. Then why should we discuss what itis that he has missed."
"To the critical mind," replied the doctor calmly, and he automaticallyadjusted his glasses closer to his eyes, "nothing is withoutsignificance."
"It is nearly dark!" she exclaimed hurriedly. "Let us ride on."
"First," he suggested, "I must tell you that before I left Elkhead Iheard a hint of some remarkable story concerning a man and a horse and adog. Is there anything--"
But it seemed that she did not hear. He heard a sharp, low exclamationwhich might have been addressed to her horse, and the next instant shewas galloping swiftly down the slope. The doctor followed as fast as hecould, jouncing in the saddle until he was quite out of breath.
