From the moment Joan gave the name of Daddy Dan, the wolf-dog kept to the trail with arrowy straightness. Whatever the limitations of Bart's rather uncanny intelligence, upon one point he was usually letter-perfect, and even when a stranger mentioned Dan in the hearing of the dog it usually brought a whine or at least an anxious look. He hewed to his line now with that animal sense of direction which men can never wholly understand. Boulders and trees slipped away on either side of Joan; now on a descent of the mountain-side he broke into a lope that set the flowers fluttering on her bonnet; now he prowled up the ravine beyond, utterly tireless.
He was strictly business. When she slipped a little from her place as he veered around a rock he did not slow up, as usual, that she might regain her seat, but switched his head back with a growl that warned her into position. That surprise was hardly out of her mind when she saw a gay patch of wild-flowers a little from the line of his direction, and she tugged at his ear to swing him towards it. A sharp jerk of his head tossed her hand aside, and again she caught the glint of wild eyes as he looked back at her. Then she grew grave, puzzled. She trusted Black Bart with all her heart, as only a child can trust dumb animals, but now she sensed a change in him. She had guessed at a difference on that night when Dan came home for the last time; and the same thing seemed to be in the dog today.
Before she could make up her mind as to what it might be, Black Bart swung aside up a steep slope, and whisked her into the gloom of a cave. Into the very heart of the darkness he glided and stopped.
“Daddy Dan!” she called.
A faint echo, after a moment, came back to her from the depths of the cave, making her voice strangely deep. Otherwise, there was no answer.
“Bart!” she whispered, suddenly frightened by the last murmur of that echo, “Daddy Dan's not here. Go back!”
She tugged at his ear to turn him, but again that jerk of the head freed his ear. He caught her by the cloak, crouched close to the floor, and she found herself all at once sitting on the gravelly floor of the cave with Bart facing her.
“Bad Bart!” she said, scrambling to her feet.
“Naughty dog!”
She was still afraid to raise her voice in that awful silence, and in the dark. When she glanced around her, she made out vague forms through the dimness that might be the uneven walls of the cave, or might be strange and awful forms of night.
“Take me home!”
A growl that went shuddering down the cave stopped her, and now she saw that the eyes of Bart glowed green and yellow. Even then she could not believe that he would harm her, and stretched out a tentative hand. This time she made out the flash of his teeth as he snarled. He was no longer the Bart she had played with around the cabin, but a strange wild thing, and with a scream she darted past him toward the door. Never had those chubby legs flown so fast, but even as the light from the mouth of the cave glimmered around her, she heard a crunching on the gravel from behind, and then a hand, it seemed, caught her cloak and jerked her to a stop.
She fell sprawling, head over heels, and when she looked up, there sat Bart upon his haunches above her, growling terribly, and gripping the end of the cloak. No doubt about it now. Black Bart would have his teeth in her throat if she made another movement toward the entrance. A city child would have either gone mad with terror or else made that fatal struggle to reach the forbidden place, but Joan had learned many things among the mountains, and among others, she knew the difference between the tame and the free. The old dappled cow was tame, for instance; and the Maltese cat, which came too close to Bart the year before and received a broken back for its carelessness, had been tame; and the brown horse with the white face and the dreary eyes was tame. They could be handled, and teased, and petted and bossed about at will. Other creatures were different. For instance, the scream of the hawk always made her shrink a little closer to the ground, or else run helter-skelter for the house, and sometimes, up the gulches, she had heard the wailing of a mountain lion on the trail, hunting swiftly, and very hungry. There was even something about the dead eyes of certain lynxes and coyotes and bobcats which Daddy Dan trapped that made Joan feel these animals belonged to a world where the authority of man was only the strength of his hand or his cunning. Not that she phrased these thoughts in definite words, but Joan was very close to nature, and therefore her instincts gave her a weird little touch of wisdom in such matters.
And when she lay there tangled in her cloak and looked up into the glowing eyes of Bart and heard his snarling roll around her, and pass in creepy chills up her back, she nearly died of fear, to be sure, but she lay as still as still, frozen into a part of the rock. Black Bart was gone, and in his place was a terrible creature which belonged there among the shadows, for it could see in the night.
Presently the bright eyes disappeared, and now she saw that Bart lay stretched across the entrance to the cave, where the long shadow was now creeping down the slope. Inches by inches she ventured to sit up, and all it brought from Bart was a quick turn of the head and a warning growl. It meant as plainly as though he had spoken in so many words: “Stay where you are and I don't care in the least what you do, but don't try to cross this entrance if you fear the length of my teeth and the keenness thereof.” And she did fear them, very much, for she remembered the gashes across the back and the terrible rips up the side, of the dead Maltese cat.
She even took a little heart, after a time. A grownup cannot feel terror or grief as keenly as a child, but neither does terror or grief pass away a tithe as fast. She seemed at liberty to roam about in the cave as long as she did not go near the entrance, and now the shadows and the dimness no longer frightened her. Nothing was terrible except that long, dark body which lay across the entrance to the cave, and she finally got to her feet and began to explore. She came first on a quantity of dead grass heaped in a corner that was where Satan was stalled, no doubt, and it made all the cave seem almost homelike. She found, too, a number of stones grouped together with ashes in the hollow circle-that was where the fires were built, and there to the side lay the pile of dead wood. A little down the cave and directly in the center of the top, she next saw the natural aperture where the smoke must escape and last of all she came on the bed. Boughs heaped a foot thick with the blankets on top, neatly stretched out, and the tarpaulin over all, made a couch as soft as down and fragrant with the pure scent of evergreens.
Joan tried the surface with a foot that sank to her ankle, then with her hands, and finally sat down to think. The first fear was almost gone; she understood that Bart was keeping her here until Dan came home, and fear does not go hand in hand with understanding. She only wondered, now, at the reason that kept Daddy Dan living in this cave so far from the warm comfort of the cabin, and so far away from her mother; but thinking makes small heads drowsy, and in five minutes Joan lay with her head pillowed on her arm, sound asleep.
When she awoke, the evening-gray of the cave had given place to utter blackness, alarming and thick. Joan sat up with a start; she would have cried out, bewildered, but now she heard a noise on the gravel, and turned to see Daddy Dan entering the cave with Satan behind him, quite distinctly outlined by the sunset outside. Black Bart walked first, looking back over his shoulder as though he led the way.
It was partly because the black, silhouetted figures awed her, somewhat, and partly because she wished to give Daddy Dan a gay surprise, that Joan did not run to him. And then, in the darkness, she heard Satan munching the dried grass, and the squeak and rattle as the saddle was drawn off and hung up, scraping against the rock.
“What you been doin', Bart?” queried the voice of Daddy Dan, and the last of Joan's fears fell from her as she listened. “You act kind of worried. If you been runnin' rabbits all day and got your pads full of thorns I'll everlastin'ly treat you rough.”
The wolf-dog whined.
“Well, speak up. What you want? Want me over there?”
It would have been a trifle unearthly to most people, but Joan knew the ways of Daddy Dan with Satan and Black Bart. She lay quite still, shivering with pleasure as the footsteps approached her. Then a match scratched—she saw by the blue spurt of flame that he was lighting a pine torch, then whirling it until the flame ate down to the pitchy knot. He held it above his head, and now she saw him plainly: the light cascaded over his shoulders, glowed on his eyes, and then puffed out sidewise in a draught.
Joan was upon her feet, and running toward him with a cry of joy, until she remembered that he was not to be approached like her mother. There were never any bear-hugs from him, no caresses, not much laughter. She stopped barely in time, and stood with her fingers interlaced, staring up at him, half delighted, half afraid. She read his mind by microscopic changes in his eyes and lips.
“Munner sent me.”
That was wrong, she saw at once.
“And Bart brought me.” Much better, now. “And oh, Daddy Dan, I've been lonesome for you!”
He continued to stare at her for another moment, and even Joan could not tell whether he were angry or indifferent or pleased.
“Well,” he murmured at length, “I guess you're hungry, Joan?”
She knew it was complete acceptance, and she could hardly keep from a shout of happiness. Daddy Dan had a great aversion to sudden outcries.
“I guess I am,” said Joan.
He made the preparation for supper with such easy speed that everything seemed to be done by magic hands. When Joan's mother cooked supper there was always much rattling of the stove, then the building of the fire, a long preparation of food, and another interval when things steamed and sizzled on the fire. There followed the setting of the table, and then a long, aching time of hunger when the food was in sight, but one could not eat until Daddy Dan had done this, and Munner had done that. Also, when one did eat, half the taste was taken from things by the necessity of various complicated evolutions of knife and fork. Instance the absurdity of taking the fork under the thumb with the forefinger pressing along the back of the wobbly instrument, when any one could see that the proper, natural way of using a fork was to grasp it daggerwise and drive it firmly through that skidding piece of meat. Not only this, but a cup must be held in one hand, and bread must be broken into little pieces before putting butter on it. Above all, no matter how terribly hard one tried, there was sure to be a mistake, and then: “Now, Joan, don't do that. This is the way—”
But how different everything was in this delightful house of Daddy Dan!
In an incredibly short time three torches flared about them and filled the air with scents of freshness and the outdoors-scents that went tingling up the nose and filled one with immense possibilities of eating. At the very same time, a few motions caused a heap of wood to catch fire and blaze among the stones while a steady stream of blue-white smoke wavered up toward the top of the cave and disappeared in the shadows. After this her father showed her a little stream of water which must come from a spring far back in the cave, and the current slipped noiselessly along one wall, and dipped of sight again before it reached the entrance to the place. Here she discovered a little bowl, made out of small stones nicely fitted together, and allowing the water to pour over one edge and out at another with a delicious purling—such crystal clear water that one actually wanted to wash in it even if it was cold, and even if one had the many sore places on fingers and nose and behind the ears.
Behold! no sooner did one turn from the washing of hands and face than the table was miraculously spread upon the surface of a flat rock, with other stones nearby to serve as chairs; and on the table steamed “pone,” warmed over; coffee with milk in it—coffee, which was so strictly banned at home!—potatoes sliced to transparent thinness and fried to crisp brown at the edges, and a great slab of meat that fairly shouted to the appetite.
So far so good, but the realization was a thousand fold better than anticipation. No cutting of one's own meat at this enchanted board! The shining knife of Daddy Dan divided it into delectable bits with the speed of light, and it needed only the slightest amount of experimenting and cautious glances to discover that one could use a fork daggerwise, and when in doubt even seize upon a morsel with one's fingers and wipe the fingers afterwards on a bit of the dry grass. One could grasp the cup by both sides, scorning the silly handle, and if occasionally one sipped the coffee with a little noise—which added astonishingly to the taste—there was no sharp warning, no frowning eye to overlook. Besides, at Munner's table, there was never time to pay attention to Joan, for there was talk about vague, abstract things—the price of skins, the melting of the snows, the condition of the passes, the long and troubling argument about the wicker chairs, with some remarkably foolish asides, now and then, concerning happiness and love—when all the time any one with half an eye could see that the thing to do was to eat and eat and eat until that hollow place ceased to be. Talking came afterwards.
In the house of Daddy Dan all these things were ordered as they should be. Not a word was said; not a glance of criticism rested upon her; when her tin plate was cleared she heard no reproofs for eating too greedily, but she was furnished anew from the store of good things on the rock.
In place of conversation, there were other matters to occupy the mind during the meal. For presently she observed the beautiful head of Satan just behind his master—Satan, who could pass over noisy gravel with the softness of a cat, and now loomed out of the deeper night down the cavern. Inch by inch, with infinite caution and keenly pricked ears, the head lowered beside Dan, and the quivering, delicate muzzle stole towards a fragment of the “pone.” Joan watched breathlessly and then she saw that in spite of the caution of that movement her father knew all about it—just a glint of amusement in the corner of his eyes, just a slight twitch at the corners of his mouth to tell Joan that he was as delighted as a boy playing a trick. Barely in time to save the morsel of pone, he spoke and the head was dashed up. Yet Satan was not entirely discouraged. If he could not steal the bread he would beg for it. It made Joan pause in her destruction of the edibles, not to watch openly, for an instinct told her that the thing to do was to note these by-plays from the corner of one's eye, as Daddy Dan did, and swallow the ripples of mirth that came tickling in the throat. She knew perfectly well that Satan would have it in the end, for of all living things not even Munner had such power over Dan as the black stallion. He maneuvered adroitly. First he circled the table and stood opposite the master, begging with his eyes, but Dan looked fixedly down at the rock until an impatient whinny called up his eyes. Then he pretended the most absolute surprise.
“Why, Satan, you old scoundrel, what are you doin' over there? Get back where you belong?”
He gestured with a thumb over his shoulder and Satan glided around the rock and stood once more behind Dan.
“Manners?” continued Dan. “You ain't got 'em. You'll be tryin' to sit down at the table with me, pretty soon.” He concluded: “But I'll teach you one of these days, and you'll smart for a week.”
Even at the mock menace Joan trembled a little, but to her astonishment Satan paid not the slightest heed. Dan sat with his hat on his head—which was a new and delightful event at the table—and now the stallion took the hat by the crown, dexterously, and raised it just an inch and put it back in place. Black Bart, having crept out of the shadows sat down near Joan with his long red tongue lolling out. This procedure called a growl from him, but the master continued eating without the slightest interest, apparently, in Satan's insolence.
A velvety muzzle appeared, with the chin resting on the shoulder of Dan and the great, luminous eyes above. He whinnied so softly that it was not more than a human whisper, and meant almost as much.
“Oh,” said Dan, in all seeming just roused to attention, “hungry, old boy?”
He raised the morsel of “pone” between thumb and forefinger, holding it tightly. Then it was a joy to watch Satan. He tried to tug it all away at once, but only a fragment broke off. He stamped in impatience, and then went to work to nibble the bread away on all sides of Dan's fingers, very fine work for such broad, keen chisels as Satan's teeth, but he went about it with the skill of long practice, turning his head this way and that and always watching the face of the master with sidewise eyes, one ear forward and one ear back. Finally the tight fingers opened out, and Satan gathered the last crumbs from the smooth palm.
Two or three times during this performance Black Bart had half risen from his haunches and a growl swelled almost inaudibly in his throat, but now he stalked around the table and pushed his narrow head between Dan's shoulder and the stallion. A snarl of incredible ferocity made Satan turn, but without the slightest dread, apparently. For an instant the two stood nose to nose, Black Bart a picture of snarling danger and Satan with curiously pricking ears and bright eyes. The growling rose towards a crescendo, a terrible sound; then a lean hand shot out with that speed which Joan could never comprehend—and which always made her think, rather breathlessly, of the strike of a snake. The fingers settled around the muzzle of Bart.
“Of all the no-good houn'-dogs,” declared Dan, “you're the worst, and the most jealousest. Lie down!”
Bart obeyed, slowly, but his evil eyes were fixed upwards upon the head of Satan.
“If you got any manners,” remarked Dan, “you'll be sayin' that you're sorry.”
The ears flattened along the snaky head; otherwise no answer.
“Sorry!” repeated the master.
Out of the deep throat of Black Bart, infinitely, ludicrously small, came a whine which was more doglike than anything Joan had ever heard, before, from the wolf.
“Now,” continued the implacable master, “you go over in that corner, and lie down.”
Black Bart arose with a finally ugly look for Satan and sneaked with hanging head and tail to the outer edge of the circle of light.
“Farther! Clear over there in the dark,” came the order, and Bart had to uncoil himself again in the very act of lying down and retreat with another ominous growl clear into the darkness. Satan held his head high and watched triumphantly.
But Joan felt that this was a little hard on Bart; she wanted to run over and comfort him, but she knew from of old that it was dangerous to interfere where Daddy Dan was disciplining either horse or wolf; besides, she was not quite free from her new awe for Bart.
“All right,” said the master presently, and without raising his voice.
It brought a dark thunder bolt rushing into the circle of the light and stopping at Dan's side with such suddenness that his paws slid in the gravel. There he stood, actually wagging his bushy tail—an unprecedented outburst of joy for Bart!—and staring hungrily into the face of Dan. She saw a wonderful softening in the eyes of her father as he looked at the great, dangerous beast.
“You ain't a bad sort,” he said, “but you need puttin' in place continual.”
Black Bart whined agreement.
After that, when the dishes were being cleared away and cleaned with a speed fully as marvelous as the preparation of the supper, Joan remembered with a guilty start the message which she should have given to Daddy Dan, and she brought out the paper, much rumpled.
He stood by the fire to read the letter.
“Dan come back to us. The house is empty and there's no sign of you except your clothes and the skins you left drying in the vacant room. Joan sits all day, mourning for you, and my heart is breaking. Oh, Dan, I don't grieve so much for what has been done, but I tremble for what you may do in the future.”
With the letter still in his hand Dan walked thoughtfully to Satan and took the fine head between his fingers.
“S'pose some gent was to drop you, Satan,” he murmured. “S'pose he was to plug you while you was doin' your best to take me where I want to go. S'pose he shot you not for anything you'd done but because of something agin me. And s'pose after killin' you he was to sneak up on me with a lot of other gents and try to murder me before I had a chance to fight back. Satan, wouldn't I be right to trail 'em all—and kill 'em one by one? Wouldn't it?”
Joan heard very little of the words—only a soft murmur of anxiety, and she saw that Daddy Dan was very thoughtful indeed. The stallion reached for the brim of Dan's hat—it was withdrawn from his reach—his head bowed, like a nod of assent.
“Why, even Satan can see I'm right,” murmured Dan, and moving back to the fire, he tore the letter into many pieces which fluttered down in a white stream and made the blaze leap up.
Mrs. Johnny Sommers managed to preserve her dignity while she escorted the visitor into the front room, and even while she asked him to sit down and wait, but once she had closed the door behind her she cast dignity far away and did two steps at a time going upstairs. The result was that she, reached the room of Betty Neal entirely out of breath; two hundred pounds of fat, good-natured widowhood do not go with speed. She tossed open the door without any preliminary knock and stood there very red with a clearly defined circle of white in the center of each check. For a moment there was no sound except her panting and Betty Neal stared wildly at her from above her book.
“He's come!” gasped Mrs. Sommers.
“Who?”
“Him!”
As if this odd explanation made everything clear, Betty Neal sprang from her chair and she grew so pale that every freckle stood out.
“Him!” she echoed ungrammatically.
Then: “Where is he? Let me downstairs.”
But the widow closed the door swiftly behind her and leaned her comfortable bulk against it.
“You ain't goin',” she asserted. “You ain't goin', leastways not till you got time to think it over.”
“I haven't time to think. I—he—”
“That was the way with me,” nodded Mrs. Sommers, and her eyes were tragic. “I went ahead and married Johnny in spite of everything, and look at me now—a widder! No, I ain't sorry for myself because I was a fool.”
“Mrs. Sommers,” said Betty, “will you please step out of my way?”
“Honey, for heaven's sake think a minute before you go down and face that man. He's dangerous. When I opened the door and seen him, I tell you the shivers went up my back.”
“Is he thin? Is he pale?” cried Betty Neal. “How did he get away? Did he escape? Did they parole him? Did they pardon him? Did he—”
“Let me get down!” she cried.
Mrs. Sommers flung away from the door.
“Then go and marry your man-killer!”
But Betty Neal was already clattering down the stairs. Half way to the bottom her strength and courage ebbed suddenly from her; she went on with short steps, and when at last she closed the parlor door behind her, she was staring as if she looked at a ghost.
Yet Vic Gregg was not greatly changed—a little thinner perhaps, and just now he certainly did not have his usual color. The moment she appeared he jumped to his feet as if he had heard a shot, and now he stood with his feet braced a little to meet a shock, one hand twitching and playing nervously with the embroidered cloth on the table. She did not speak; merely stood with her fingers still gripping the handle of the door as if she were ready to dart away at the first alarm. A wave of pain went over the face of Vic Gregg and remained looking at her out of his eyes, for all that his single-track, concentrated mind could perceive in her was the thing he took for fear.
“Miss Neal,” he said. His voice shook, straightened out again. He made her think of one of her big school boys who had forgotten his lesson and now stood cudgeling his memory and dreading that terrible nightmare of “staying after school.” She had a wild desire to laugh.
“Miss Neal, I ain't here to try to take up things that can't be took up ag'in.” Apparently he had prepared the speech carefully, and now he went on with more ease: “I'm leavin' these here parts for some place unknown. Before I go I jest want to say I know I was wrong from the beginnin'. All I want to say is that I was jest all sort of tied up in a knot inside and when I seen you with him—” He stopped. “I hope you marry some gent that's worth you, only they ain't any such. An'—I want to wish you good-luck, an' say good-by—”
He swept the perspiration from his forehead, and caught up his hat; he had been through the seventh circle of torture.
“Oh, Vic, dear!” cried a voice he had never heard before. Then a flurry of skirts, then arms about him, then tears and laughter, and eyes which went hungrily over his face.
“I been a houn'-dog. My God, Betty, you don't mean—”
“That I love you, Vic. I never knew what it was to love you before.”
“After I been a man-killin', lyin', sneakin'—”
“Don't you say another word. Vic, it was all my fault.”
“It wasn't. It was mine. But if you'd only kind of held off a little and gone easy with me.”
“You didn't give me a chance.”
“When I looked back from the road you wasn't standin' in the door.”
“I was. And you didn't look back.”
“I did.”
“Vic Gregg, are you trying to—”
But the anger fled from her as suddenly as it had come.
“I don't care. I'll take all the blame.”
“I don't want you to. I won't let you.”
She laughed hysterically.
“Vic, tell me that you're free?”
“I'm paroled.”
“Thank God! Oh, I've prayed and prayed—Vic, don't talk. Sit down there—so! I just want to look and look at you. There's a hollow, hungry place in me that's filling up again.”
“It was Pete Glass,” said Gregg brokenly. “He—he trusted me clean through when the rest was lookin' at me like I was a snake. Pete got word to the governor, an'—”
There followed a long interval of talk that meant nothing, and then, as the afternoon waned towards evening, and the evening toward dark, he told her the whole story of the long adventure. He left out nothing, not a detail that might tell against him. When he came to the moment when Glass persuaded him to go back and betray Barry he winced, but set his jaw and plunged ahead. She, too, paled when she heard that, and for a moment she had to cover her eyes, but she was older by half a life-time than she had been when he was last with her, and now she read below the surface. Besides, Vic had offered to undo what he had done, had offered to stay and fight for Barry, and surely that evened the score!
There was a light rap on the door, and then Mrs. Sommers came in with a tray.
“Maybe you young folks forgot about supper,” she said. “I just thought I'd bring in a bite for you.”
She placed it on the table, and then lingered, delighted, while her eyes went over them together and one by one. Perhaps Betty Neal was a fool for throwing herself away on a gun-fighter, but at least Mrs. Sommers was furnished with a story which half Alder would know by tomorrow. The walls of her house were not sound proof. Besides, Mrs. Sommers had remarkably keen ears.
“They's been a gentleman here ask for you, Vic,” she said, “but I thought maybe you wouldn't like it much to be disturbed. So I told him you wasn't here.”
Her smile fairly glowed with triumph.
“Thanks,” said Gregg, “but who was he?”
“I never seen him before. Anyway, it didn't much matter. He wanted to see some of the rest of the boys quite bad: Pete Glass and Ronicky Joe, and Sliver Waldron, and Gus Reeve. He seemed to want to see 'em all particular bad.”
“Pete Glass and Ronicky and—the posse!” murmured Vic. He grew thoughtful. “He wanted to see me, too?”
“Very particular, and he seemed kind of down-hearted when he found that Pete was out of town. Wanted to know when he might be back.”
“What sort of a lookin' gent was he?” asked Vic, and his voice was sharp.
“Him? Oh, he looked like a tenderfoot to me. Terrible polite, though, and he had a voice that wasn't hardly rougher'n a girl's. Seemed like he was sort of embarrassed jest talkin' to me.” She smiled at the thought, but Gregg was on his feet now, his hands on the shoulders of Mrs. Sommers as though he would try to shake information from her loose bulk.
“Look quick, now,” he said. “Where did you send him?”
“How you talk! Why, where should I send him? I told him like as not Ronicky and Sliver and Gus would be down to Lorrimer's—”
The groan of Vic made her stop with a gasp.
“What did he look like?”
Mrs. Sommers was very sober. Her smile congealed.
“Black hair, and young, and good-lookin', and b-b-brown eyes, and—”
“God!”
“Vic,” cried Betty Neal, “what is it!” She looked around her in terror.
“It's Barry.”
He turned towards the door, and then stopped, in an agony of indecision. Betty Neal was before him, blocking the way with her arms outstretched.
“Vic, you shan't go. You shan't go. You've told me yourself that he's sure death.”
“God knows he is.”
“You won't go, Vic?”
“But the others! Ronicky—Gus—”
She stammered in her fear.
“That's their lookout! They're three to one. Let them kill—”
“But they don't know him. They've never been close enough to see his face. Besides, no three men I—he—for God's sake tell me what to do!”
“Stay here—if you love me. I won't let you go. I won't!”
“I got to warn them.”
“You'll be killed!”
He tore away her hands.
“I got to warn them—but who'll I help? Them three against Dan? He saved me—twice! But—I got. I got to go.”
“If you fight for him first he'll only turn on you afterwards. Vic, stay here.”
“What good's my life? What good's it if I'm a yaller dog ag'in? I'm goin' out—and be a man!”
The moment Vic Gregg stood in the open air, with the last appeal of Betty ringing still at his ear, he felt a profound conviction that he was about to die and he stood a moment breathing deeply, taking the faint alkali scent of the dust and looking up to the stars. It was that moment when night blends with day and there is no sign of light in the sky except that the stars burn more and more bright as the darkness thickens, and Vic Gregg watched the stars draw down more closely and believed that he was seeing this for the last time. Alder seemed inexpressibly dear to him as he stood there through a little space, and the vaguely discernible outlines of the shacks along the street were like the faces of friends. In that house behind him was Betty Neal, waiting, praying for him, and indeed, had it not been for shame, he would have weakened now and turned back. For he hardly knew which way to turn. He wanted to save Ronicky and the other two from the attack of Barry, yet he would not lay a trap for Dan. To Barry he owed a vast debt; his debt to the three was that which any human being owes to another. He had to save them from the wolf which ran through the night in the body of a man.
That thought sent him at a run for Captain Lorrimer's saloon. It was lighted brilliantly by the gasoline lamp within, but a short distance away from it he heard no sound and his imagination drew a terrible picture of the big, empty room, with three dead men lying in the center of it where the destroyer had reached them one by one. That was what took the blood from his face and made him a white mask of tragedy when he stepped into the door of the saloon. It was quiet, but half a dozen men sat at the tables in the corner, and among them were Ronicky and the other two. Sliver Waldron was in the very act of pulling back his chair, and perhaps all three had just come in. Perhaps Barry had come here to look for his quarry and found them not yet arrived; perhaps he was now hunting in other places through the town; perhaps he was even now crouched in the shadow near at hand and ready to attack.
It made the hand of Vic Gregg contract with a cruel pressure when it fell on the shoulder of Sliver Waldron.
“Now, what in hell!” grunted that hardened warrior.
He had no love for Vic Gregg since that day when the posse rode through the hills after him; neither had Ronicky or Gus Reeve, who rose from their chairs as if at a signal. “Come with me, gents,” said Vic. “An' come quick!”
They asked no questions and did not stay to argue the point for he had that in his face which meant action. He led them outside, and behind the horse shed of the saloon.
“We're alone?” he asked.
“Nothin' in sight.”
“Look sharp.”
They peered about them through the night, and a wan moon only helped to make the darkness visible.
“Gents, we may be alone now, but we ain't goin' to be alone long. Get your hosses and ride like hell. Barry is in town!”
“Vic, you're drunk.”
“I tell you, he's been seen—”
“Then by God,” growled Sliver Waldron, “lead me to him. I need to have a little talk with that gent.”
“Lead you to him?” echoed Vic Gregg. “Sliver, are you hungerin' to push daisies?”
“Look here, Bud,” answered the older man, and he laid a hand on the shoulder of Vic. “You been with this Barry, gent, and you've lived in his house. D'you mean to say you're one of the lot that talks about him like he was a ghost bullets couldn't harm? I tell you, son, they's been so much chatter about him that folks forget he's human. I'm goin' to remind 'em of that little fact.”
Vic Gregg groaned. Even while he talked he was glancing over his shoulder as if he feared the shadows under the moon. His voice was half gasp, half whisper.
“Sliver—Ronicky—don't ask me how I know—jest believe me when I say Dan Barry'll never die by the hand of any man. I tell you—he can see in the dark!”
A soft oath from Gus Reeve; a twitching of Ronicky's head told that this last had taken effect. Sliver Waldron suddenly altered his manner.
“All right, Vic. Trot back into town, or come with us. We're going to move out.”
“The wisest thing you ever done, Sliver.”
“I'm feelin' the same way,” breathed Gus Reeve.
“S'long,” whispered Vic Gregg, and faded into the night, running.
The others, without a word among themselves, gathered their horses and struck down the valley out of Alder. The padding and swish of the sand about the feet of their mounts; the very creaking of the saddle leather seemed to alarm them, and they were continually turning and looking back. That is, Gus Reeve and Ronicky Joe manifested these signs of trouble, but Sliver Waldron, riding in the center of the trio, never moved his head. They were hardly well out of the town when a swift rush of hoof beats swept up from behind, and a horseman darted into the pale mist of the valley bending low over his pommel to cut the wind of his riding.
“Who is it?”
“Vic Gregg!” muttered Gus Reeve. “Stir, along, Sliver. Vic ain't lingerin' any!”
But Sliver Waldron drew rein, and let his horse go on at a walk.
“Hearin' you talk, Ronicky,” he said, “you'd think you was really scared of Dan Barry.”
Ronicky Joe stiffened in his saddle and peered through the uncertain light to make out if Sliver were jesting. But the latter seemed perfectly grave.
“A gent would almost think,” went on Sliver, “that we three was runnin' away from Barry, instead of goin' out to set a trap for him.”
There was something nearly akin to a grunt from Gus Reeve, but Ronicky merely continued to stare at the leader.
“'S a matter of fact,” said Sliver, “when Vic was talkin' I sort of felt the chills go up my back. How about you, Ronicky?”
“I'll tell a man,” sighed Ronicky. “While Vic was talkin' I seen that devil comin' on his hoss like he done when he broke out of the cabin that night. I'll tell you straight, Sliver. I had my gun drilled on him. I couldn't of missed; but after I fired he kept straight on. It was like puncturin' a shadow!”
“Sure,” nodded Sliver. “Shootin' by night ain't ever a sure thing.”
Ronicky wiped his heated brow.
“So I sent Vic away before he had a chance to get real nervous. But when he comes back—well, boys, it'll be kind of amusin' to watch Vic's face when he saunters into town tomorrow and sees Dan Barry—maybe dead, maybe in the irons. Eh?”
Only a deep silence answered him, but in the interest which his words excited the terror seemed to have left Ronicky and Gus. They rode close, their heads toward Sliver alone.
“There goes Vic,” mused Sliver. “There he goes—go on. Mac, you old fool!—scared to death, ridin' for his life. And why? Because he believes some ghost stories he's heard about Dan Barry!”
“Ghost stories?” echoed Reeve. “Some of 'em ain't fairy tales, Sliver.”
“Jest name one that ain't!”
“Well, the way he trailed Jim Silent. We've all heard of Silent, and Barry—was too good for him.”
“Bah,” sneered Sliver. “Too good for Silent? Ye lied readily enough: booze done for Silent long before Barry come along.”
“That right?”
“I'll tell a man it is. Mind you, I don't say Barry ain't handy with his gun; but he's done a little and the gents have furnished the trimmin's. Look here, if Barry is the man-eater they say, why did he pick a time for comin' down when the sheriff was out of town?”
“By God!” exclaimed Ronicky. “I never thought of that!”
“Sure you didn't,” chuckled Sliver. “But this sucker figures that you and Gus and me will be easy pickin's. He figures we'll do what Vic did—hit for the tall pines. Then he'll blow around how he ran the four of us out of Alder. Be pleasant comin' back to talk like that, eh?”
There was a volley of rapid curses from the other two.
“We'll get this cheap skate, Sliver,” suggested Ronicky. “We'll get this ghost and tie him up and take him back to Alder and make a show of him.”
“We will,” nodded Sliver. “Have you figured how?”
“Lie out here in the bush. He'll hunt around Alder all night and when the mornin' comes he'll leave and he'll come out this way. We'll be ready for him where the valley's narrow down there. They say his hoss and his dog is as bad as any two ordinary men. Well, that's three of them and here's three of us. It's an even break, eh?”
“Ronicky,” murmured Sliver, “I always knowed you had the brains. We'll take this gent and tame him, and run him back to Alder on the end of a rope.”
Gus Reeve whooped and waved his hat at the thought.
So the three reached the point where the shadowy walls of the valley narrowed, drew almost together. There they placed the horses in a hollow near the southern cliff, and they returned to take post. There was only one bridle path which wound through the gulch here, and the three concealed themselves behind a thicket of sagebrush to wait.
They laid their plan carefully. Each man was to have his peculiar duty: Gus Reeve, an adept with the rope, would wait until the black stallion was cantering past and then toss his noose and throw the horse. At the same instant, Ronicky Joe would shoot the wolf-dog, and Sliver Waldron would perforate Dan Barry while the latter rolled in the dust, unless, indeed, he was pinioned by the fall of his horse, in which case they would have the added glory of taking him alive.
By the time all these details were settled the pale moonlight was shot through with the rose of dawn. Then, rapidly, the mountains lifted into view, range beyond range, all their gullies deep blue and purple, and here and there sharp triangles of snow. There was not a cloud, not a trace of mist, and through the crisp, thin air the vision carried as if through a telescope. They could count the trees on the upper ridges; and that while the floor of the valley was still in shadow. This in turn grew brilliant, and everywhere the sage brush glittered like foliage carved in gray-green quartz.
It was then that they saw Dan Barry, while the dawn was still around them, and before the sun pushed up in the east above the mountains. He came winding down the bridle path with the dawn glittering on the side of Satan, and a dark, swift form spiriting on ahead.
“Look at him!” muttered Sliver Waldron. “The damned wolf is a scout. See him nose around that hummock? Watch him smell behind that bush. The black devil!”
Bart, in fact, wove a loose course before his master, running here and there to all points of vantage, as if he knew that danger lurked ahead, but where he came close, with only the narrow passage between the cliffs, he seemed to make up his animal brain that there could be no trouble in so constricted a place, and darted straight ahead.
“They're ours,” whispered Waldron. “Steady, boys. Gus, get your rope, get ready!”
Gus tossed the noose a little wider, and gathered himself for the throw, but it seemed as if the wolf saw or heard the movement. He stopped suddenly and stood with his head high; behind him the rider checked the black horse; all three waited.
“He's tryin' to get the wind,” chuckled Waldron, “but the wind is ag'in' our faces!”
It was only a slight breeze, but it came directly against the lurking three; and moreover the scent of the sage was particularly keen at this time of the day, and quite sufficient to blur the scent of man even in the keen nostrils of Black Bart. Only for a second or so he stood there sniffing the wind, a huge animal, larger than any wolf the three had ever seen; his face wise in a certain bear-like fashion from the three gray marks in the center of his forehead. Now he trotted ahead, and the stallion broke into a gallop behind.
“My God,” whispered Sliver to Gus, “don't spoil that hoss when you daub the rope on him! Look at that action; like runnin' water!”
They came more rapidly. As if the rider knew that a point of danger was there to be passed, he spoke to his mount, and Satan lengthened into a racing gait that blew the brim of the rider's hat straight up. On they came. The wolf-dog darted past. Then as the horse swept by, Gus Reeve rose from behind his bush and the rope darted snakelike from his hand. The forefeet of Satan landed in the noose, and the next instant the back-flung weight of Gus tightened the rope, and Satan shot over upon his side, flinging the master clear of the saddle.
It sent him rolling over and over in the dust, and Sliver Waldron was on his feet with both guns in action, sending bullet after bullet towards the tumbling body. Gus Reeve was running towards the stallion, his rope in action to entangle one of the hindfeet and make sure of his prey; Ronicky Joe had leaped up with a yell and blazed away at Black Bart.
It was no easy mark to strike, for the moment the rope shot out from the hand of Gus, the wolf-dog whirled in his tracks and darted straight for the scene of action. It was that, perhaps, which troubled the aim of Ronicky more than anything else, for wild animals do not whirl in this fashion and run for an assailant. He had expected to find himself plugging away at a flying target in the distance; instead, the black monster was rushing straight for him, silently. Indeed, all that followed was in silence after that first wild Indian yell from Ronicky Joe. His gun barked, but Black Bart was running like a football player down a broken field, swerving here and there with uncanny speed. Again, again, Joe missed, and then flung up his arm toward the flying danger. But Black Bart shot from the ground to make his kill. He could bring down the strongest bull in the herd. What was the arm of a man to him? His snake-like head shot through that futile guard; his teeth cut off the screams of Ronicky Joe. Down they went. The gun flew from the hand of Ronicky; for an instant he struggled with hands and writhing legs, and then the murderous teeth of Bart sank deeper, found the life. The dead body was limp, but Bart, shaking his hold deeper to make sure, glared across to the fallen master.
The third man had died for Grey Molly.
All this had happened in a second, and the body of Barry was still rolling when a gun flashed in his hand, drawn while he tumbled. It spat fire, and Sliver Waldron staggered forward drunkenly, waved both his armed hands as if he were trying to talk by signal, and pitched on his face into the dust.
The fourth man had died for Grey Molly.
No gun was destined for Gus Reeve, however. Black Bart had left the lifeless body of his victim and was darting towards the third man; the master was on his knee, raising his gun for the last shot; but Gus Reeve was blind to all that had happened. He saw only the black stallion, the matchless prize of horseflesh. He tossed a loop in the taut rope to entangle a bind foot, but that slackening of the line gave Satan his instant's purchase, and a moment later he was on his feet, whirled, and two iron-hard hoofs crushed the whole framework of the man's chest like an egg-shell. The impact lifted him from his feet, but before that body struck the ground the life was fled from it. The fifth man had died for Grey Molly.