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 be 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!"



Chapter XXII. The Fifth 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
bosses 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.



Chapter XXIII. Bad News

News of the Killing at Alder, as they call that night's slaughter to this
day in the mountain-desert, traveled swiftly, and lost nothing of bulk and
burden on the way; so that two days later, when Lee Haines went down for
mail to the wretched little village in the valley, he heard the
store-keeper retailing the story to an awe-stricken group. How the tale had
crossed all the wild mountains which lay between in so brief a space no man
could say, but first there ran a whisper and then a stir, and then half a
dozen men came in at once, each with an elaboration of the theme more
horrible than the last. The store-keeper culled the choicest fragments from
every version, strung them together with a narrative of his own fertile
invention, polished off the tale by a few rehearsals in his home, and then
placed his product on the open market. The very first day he kept the
store-room well filled from dawn until dark.

And this was the creation to which Lee Haines had to listen, impatient,
sifting the chaff from the grains of truth. Down upon Alder, exactly at
midnight, had ridden a cavalcade headed by that notorious, half-legendary
man-slayer, Dan Barry--Whistling Dan. While his crew of two-score hardened
ruffians held the doors and the windows with leveled rifles, Barry had
entered with a gun and a wolf--a wild wolf, and had butchered ten men,
wantonly. To add to the mystery, there was no motive of robbery for the
crime. One sweeping visitation of death, and then the night-riders had
rushed away. Nor was this all, for Sheriff Pete Glass, hearing of the
tragedy, had ridden to Rickett, the county seat, and from this strategic
point of vantage he was sending out a call for the most practised fighters
on the mountain-desert. He wanted twenty men proved beyond the shadow of
question for courage, endurance, speed, and surety in action.

"And," concluded the store-keeper, fixing his eye upon Lee Haines, "if you
want a long ride free of charge, and ten bucks a day with chow thrown in--
some of you gents ought to go to Rickett and chin with Pete."

Haines waited to hear no more. He even forgot to ask for the Barry mail,
swung into his saddle, and rode with red spurs back to the cabin in the
mountains. There he drew Buck Daniels aside, and they walked among the
rocks while Haines told his story. When it was ended they sat on adjoining
boulders and chucked pebbles aimlessly into the emptiness beyond the cliff.

"Maybe," said Buck suddenly, "it wasn't Dan at all. He sure wouldn't be
ridin' with no crowd of gents like that."

"A fool like that store-keeper could make a crowd of Indians out of one
papoose," answered Haines. "It was Dan. Who else would be traipsing around
with a dog that looks like a wolf--and hunts men?"

"I remember when Dan cornered Jim Silent in that cabin, and all Jim's gang
was with him. Black Bart--"

"Buck," cut in Haines, "you've remembered plenty."

After a moment: "When are you going in to break the news to Kate?"

Buck Daniels regarded him with angry astonishment.

"Me?" he cried. "I'd sooner cut my tongue out!" He drew a great breath. "I
feel like--like Dan was dead!"

"The best thing for Kate if he were."

"That's a queer thing to say, Lee. The meat would be rotted off your bones
six years ago in Elkhead if it hadn't been for Whistlin' Dan."

"I know it, Buck. But I'll tell you straight that I could never feel
towards Dan as if he were a human being, but a wolf in the hide of a man.
He turned my blood cold; he always has."

Buck Daniels groaned aloud as thoughts poured back on him.

"Of all the pals that ever a man had," he said sadly, "there never was a
partner like Whistlin' Dan. There was never another gent that would go
through hell for you jest because you'd eaten meat with him. The first time
I met him I tried to double-cross him, because I had my orders from Silent.
And Dan played clean with me--by God, he shook hands with me when he left."

He straightened a little.

"So help me God, Lee, I've never done a crooked thing more since I shook
hands with Dan that day." He sat silent, but breathing hard. "Well, this is
the end of Whistlin' Dan. The law will never let up on him now; but I tell
you, Haines, I'm sick inside and I'd give my right hand plumb to the wrist
to set him straight and bring him back to Kate. Go in and tell her, Lee.
I--I'll wait for you here."

"You'll be damned," cried Haines. "I've done my share by bringing the word
this far. You can relay it."

Buck Daniels produced a silver dollar.

"Heads or tails?"

"Heads!" said Haines.

The dollar spun upwards, winking, and clanked on the rocks, tails up.
Haines stared at it with a grisly face.

"Good God," he muttered, "what'll I do, Buck, if she faints?"

"Faints?" echoed Daniels, "there's no fear of that! The first thing you'll
have to do is to saddle her horse."

"Now, what in hell are you driving at?"

"She'll be thinkin' of Joan. God knows she worried enough because Dan
hasn't brought the kid back before this, but when she hears what he's done
now, she'll know that he's wild for keeps and she'll be on the trail to
bring the young'un home."

He turned his back cleanly on the house and set his shoulders tense.

"Go on, Lee. Be a man."

He heard the steps of Haines start briskly enough for the house, but they
trailed away, slowly and more slowly, and finally there was a long pause.

"He's standing at the door," muttered Buck. "Thank God I ain't in his
boots."

He jerked out his papers and tobacco, but in the very act of twisting the
cigarette tight the door slammed and he ripped the flimsy thing in two. He
started to take another paper, but his fingers were so unsteady that he
could not pull away the single sheet of tissue which he wanted. Then his
hands froze in place.

A faint tapping came out to him.

"He--he's rapping on her door," whispered Buck, and remained fixed in
place, his eyes staring straight before him.

The seconds slipped away.

"He's turned yaller," murmured Buck. "He couldn't do it. It'll be up to
me!"

But he had hardly spoken the words when a low cry came out to him from the
house. Then the silence again, but Buck Daniels began to mop his forehead.

After that, once, twice, and again he made the effort to turn towards the
house, but when he finally succeeded it was whole minutes later, and Lee
Haines was leading a saddled horse from the coral. Kate stood beside the
cabin, waiting.

When he reached her, she was already mounted. He halted beside her,
panting, his hand on her bridle.

"Don't do it, Kate!" he pleaded. "Lemme go with you. Lemme go and try to
help."

The brisk wind up the gulch set her clothes fluttering, stirred the hair
about the rim of her hat, and she seemed to Buck more gracefully, more
beautifully young than he had ever seen her; but her face was like stone.

"You'd be no help," she answered. "When I get to the place I may have to
meet him! Would you face him, Buck?"

His hand fell away from the bridle. It was not so much what she said as the
cold, steady voice with which she spoke that unnerved him. Then, without a
farewell, she turned the brown horse around and struck across the meadow at
a swift gallop. Buck turned to meet the sick face of Haines.

"Well?" he said.

"Let me have that flask."

Buck produced a metal "life-saver," and Haines with nervous hands unscrewed
the top and lifted it to his lips. He lowered it after a long moment and
stood bracing himself against the wall.

"It was hell, Buck. God help me if I ever have to go through a thing like
that again."

"I see what you done," said Buck angrily. "You walked right in and took
your story in both hands and knocked her down with it. Haines, of all the
ornery, thick-headed cayuses I ever see, you're the most out-beatin'est!"

"I couldn't help it."

"Why not?"

"When I went in she took one look at me and then jumped up and stood as
straight as a pine tree.

"'Lee,' she said, 'what have you heard?'"

"'About what?' I asked her, and I looked sort of indifferent."

"Dan!" snorted Buck. "She could see death an' hell written all over your
face, most like."

"I suppose," muttered Haines, "I--I was sick!

"'Tell me!' she said, coming close up.

"'He's gone wild again,' was all I could put my tongue to.

"Then I blurted it out. I had to get rid of the damned story some way, and
the quickest way seemed the best--how Dan rode into Alder and did the
killing.

"When I got to that she gave one cry."

"I know," said Buck, shuddering. "Like something dying."

"Then she asked me to saddle her horse. I begged her to let me go with her,
and she said to me what she just now said to you. And so I stayed. What
good could we do against that devil?"



Chapter XXIV. The Music

To the last ravine Kate's horse carried her easily enough, but that
mountain pass was impenetrable through all its length to anything except
the uncanny agility of Satan, and so she left the cow-pony in the bottom of
the gorge and climbed the last rise on foot.

On the mountainside above her, it was not easy to locate the cave, for the
slope was clawed into ravines and confused with meaningless criss-cross
gulches. Whatever scrub evergreens grew there stood under the shade of
boulders which threatened each instant to topple over and go thundering to
the base. She had come upon the cave by chance in her ride with Dan, and
now she hunted vainly through the great stones for the entrance. A fresh
wind, chill with the snows of the upper peaks, pulled and tugged at her and
cut her face and hands with flying bits of sand. It kept up a whistling so
insistent that it was some time before she recognized in the hum of the
gale a different note, not of pleasant music, but a thin, shrill sound that
blended with the voice of the wind.

The instant she heard it she stopped short on the lee side of a tall rock
and looked about her in terror. The mountains walked away on every side,
and those resolute masses gave her courage. She listened, for the big rock
cut away the breath of the wind about her ears and she could make out the
whistling more clearly. It was a strain as delicate as a pin point ray of
light in a dark room, but it made Kate tremble.

Until the sound ended she stayed there by the rock, hearkening, but the
moment it ceased she gathered her resolution with a great effort and went
straight toward the source of the whistling. It was only a moment away,
although the wind had made it seem much farther, and she came on the tall,
narrow opening with Joan sitting on a rock just within. Instead of the blue
cloak, she was wrapped in a tawny hide, and the yellow hair blew this way
and that, unsheltered from the wind. The loneliness of the little figure
made Kate's heart ache, made her pause on her way, and while she hesitated,
Joan's head rested back against the rock, her eyes half closed, her lips
pursed, she began to whistle that same keen, eerie music.

It brought Kate to her in a rush.

"Oh Joan!" she cried. "My baby!"

And she would have swept the child into her arms, but Joan slipped out from
under her very fingers and stood a little distance off with her hands
pressed against the wall on either side of her, ready to dart one way or
the other. It was not sudden terror, but rather a resolute determination to
struggle against capture to the end, and her blue eyes were blazing with
excitement. Kate was on her knees with her arms held out.

"Joan, dear, have you forgotten munner?"

The wildness flickered away from the eyes of the child little by little.

"Munner?" she repeated dubiously.

No shout of welcome, no sudden rush, no arms to fling about her mother. But
if her throat was dry and closed Kate allowed no sign of it to creep into
her voice.

"Where's Daddy Dan?"

"He's gone away."

"Where?"

"Oh--over there!"

The mother rose slowly to her feet, and looked out across the mountains as
if in search of aid. For her mind had harked back to that story her father
used to tell of the coming of Dan Barry; how he had ridden across the hills
one evening and saw, walking against the sunset, a tattered boy who
whistled strangely as he went, and when old Joe Cumberland asked where he
was going he had only waved a vague hand toward the north and answered,
"Oh--over there. It was sufficient destination for him, it was sufficient
explanation now for the child. She remembered how she, herself a child
then, had sat at her father's table and watched the brown face of the
strange boy with fascination, and the wild, quick eyes which went
everywhere and rested in no one place. They were the eyes which looked up
to her now from Joan's face, and she felt suddenly divorced from her baby,
as if all the blood in Joan were the blood of her father.

"He left you here alone?" she murmured.

The child looked at her with a sort of curious amazement.

"Joan isn't alone."

She whistled softly, and around the corner of the rock peered two tiny,
beady-bright eyes, and the sharp nose of a coyote puppy. It disappeared at
once at the sight of the stranger, and now all the strength went from Kate.
She slipped helplessly down, and sat on a boulder trying to think, trying
to master the panic which chilled her; for she thought of the day when
Whistling Dan brought home to the Cumberland Ranch the wounded wolf-dog,
Black Bart. But the call of Joan had traveled far, and now a squirrel came
in at a gallop with his vast tail bobbing behind him, and ran right up the
rock until he was on the shoulder of the child. From this point of vantage,
however, he saw Kate, and was instantly on the floor of the cave and
scurrying for the entrance, chattering with rage.

The wild things came to Joan as they came to her father, and the eyes of
the child were the eyes of Dan Barry. It came home to Kate and she saw the
truth for the first time in her life. She had struggled to win him away
from his former life, but now she knew that it was not habit which
controlled him, for he was wild by instinct, by nature. Just as the tang of
his untamed blood had turned the child to this; and a few days more of life
with him would leave her wild forever.

"He left you alone here!" she repeated fiercely. "Where a thousand things
might happen. Thank God I've found you."

Even if her words conveyed little meaning to Joan, the intonation carried a
message which was perfectly clear.

"Don't you like Daddy Dan?"

"Joan, Joan, I love him! Of course."

But Joan sat with a dubious eye which quickly darkened into fear.

"Oh, Munner, don't take us back!"

Such horror and terror and sadness mixed! The tears rushed into the eyes of
Kate.

"Do you want to stay here, sweetheart?"

"Yes, munner."

"Without me?"

At first Joan shook her head decidedly, but thereafter she quickly became
thoughtful.

"No, except when we eat."

"You don't want me here at dinner-time? Poor munner will get so hungry."

A great concession was about to burst from the remorseful lips of Joan, but
again second thought sobered her. She remained in a quandary, unable to
speak.

"Don't you want me even when you wake up at night?"

"Why?"

"Because you're so afraid of the dark."

"Joan's not afraid. Oh, no! Joan loves the dark."

If Kate maintained a smile, it was a frozen grimace. It had only been a few
days--hardly yesterday--that Joan left, and already she was a little
stranger. Suppose Dan should refuse to come back himself; refuse even to
give up Joan! She started up, clutching the hand of the child.

"Quick, Joan, we must go!"

"Joan doesn't want to go!"

"We'll go--for a little walk. We--we'll surprise Daddy Dan."

"But Daddy Dan won't come back for long, long time. Not till the sun is
away down behind that hill."

That should mean two hours, at least, thought Kate. She could wait a
little.

"Joan, what taught you not to be afraid of the dark?"

This problem made Joan look about for an answer, but at length she called
softly: "Jackie!"

She waited, and then whistled; at once the bright eyes of the little coyote
appeared around the edge of the rock.

"Come here!" she commanded.

He slunk out with his head turned towards Kate and cowered at the feet of
the child. And the mother cringed inwardly at the sight; all wild things
which hated man instinctively with tooth and claw were the friends, the
allies of Whistling Dan, and now Joan was stepping in her father's path. A
little while longer and the last vestige of gentleness would pass from her.
She would be like Dan Barry, following calls which no other human could
even hear. It meant one thing: at whatever cost, Joan must be taken from
Dan and kept Away.

"Jackie sleeps near me," Joan was saying. "We can see in the dark, can't
we, Jackie?"

She lifted her head, and the moment her compelling eyes left him, Jackie
scooted for shelter. The first strangeness had worn away from Joan and she
began to chatter away about life in the cave, and how Satan played there by
the firelight with Black Bart, and how, sometimes--wonderful sight!--Daddy
Dan played with them. The recital was quite endless, as they pushed farther
and farther into the shadows, and it was the uneasiness which the dim light
raised in her that made Kate determine that the time had come to go home.

"Now," she said, "we're going for that walk."

"Not away down there!" cried Joan.

Kate winced.

"It's lots nicer here, munner. You'd ought to just see what we have to eat!
And my, Daddy Dan knows how to fix things."

"Of course he does. Now put on your hat and your cloak, Joan."

"This is lots warmer, munner."

"Don't you like it?" she added in alarm, stroking the delicate fur. 

"Take it off!"

Kate ripped away the fastenings and tossed the skin far away.

"Oh!" breathed Joan.

"It isn't clean! It isn't clean," cried Kate. "Oh, my poor, darling baby!
Get your bonnet and your cloak, Joan, quickly."

"We're coming back?"

"Of course."

Joan trudged obediently to the side of the cave and produced both articles,
sadly rumpled, and Kate buttoned her into them with trembling fingers.
Something akin to cold made her shake now. It was very much like a child's
fear of the dark.

But as she turned towards the entrance to the cave and caught the hand of
Joan, the child wrenched herself free.

"We'll never come back," she wailed. "Munner, I won't go!"

"Joan, come to me this instant."

Grief and fear and defiance had set the child trembling, but what the
mother saw was the glint of the eyes, uneasy, hunting escape with animal
cunning. It turned her heart cold, and she knew, with a sad, full knowledge
that Dan was lost forever and that only one power could save Joan. That
power was herself.

"I won't go!"

"Joan!"

A resolute silence answered her, and when she went threateningly forward,
Joan shrank into the shadows near the rock. It was the play of light
striking slantwise from the entrance, no doubt, but it seemed to Kate that
a flicker of yellow light danced across the eyes of the child. And it
stopped Kate took her breath with a new terror. Dan Barry, in the old days,
had lived a life as quiet as a summer's day until the time Jim Silent
struck him down in the saloon; and she remembered how Black Bart had come
for her and led her to the saloon, and how she found Dan lying on the
floor, streaked with blood, very pale; and how she had kneeled by him in a
panic, and how his eyes had opened and stared at her without answer and the
yellow, inhuman light swirled in them until she rose and backed out the
door and fled in a hysteria of fear up the road. That had been the
beginning of the end for Dan Barry, that instant when his eyes changed; and
now Joan--she ran at her swiftly and gathered her into her arms. One
instant of wild struggling, and then the child lay still, her head
straightened a little, a shrill whistle pealed through the cave.

Kate stopped that piercing call with her hand, but when she turned, she saw
in the entrance the dark body of Bart and his narrow, snake-like head.



Chapter XXV. The Battle

"It's Dan," whispered Kate. "He's come."

"Maybe Daddy Dan sent Bart back alone, munner."

"Does he do that often? Come quickly, Joan. Run!"

She ran towards the entrance, stumbling over the uneven ground and dragging
Joan behind her, but when they came close the wolf-dog bristled and sent
down the cavern a low growl that stopped them like an invisible barrier.
The softest sounds in his register were ominous warnings to those who did
not know Black Bart, but Kate and Joan understood that this muttering,
harsh thunder was an ultimatum. If she had worn her revolver, a light,
beautifully mounted thirty-two which Dan had given her, Kate would have
shot the wolf and gone on across his body; for she had learned from
Whistling Dan to shoot quickly as one points a finger and straight by
instinct. Even as she stood there barehanded she looked about her
desperately for a weapon, seeing the daylight and the promise of escape
beyond and only this dumb beast between her and freedom.

Once before, many a year before, she had gone like this, with empty hands,
and subdued Black Bart simply through the power of quiet courage and the
human eye. She determined to try again.

"Stand there quietly, Joan. Don't move until I tell you."

She made a firm step towards Bart.

"Manner, he'll bite!"

"Hush, Joan. Don't speak!"

At her forward movement the wolf-dog flattened his belly to the rock, and
she saw his forepaws, large, almost, as the hands of a man, dig and work
for a purchase from which he could throw himself at her throat.

"Steady, Bart!"

His silence was more terrible than a snarl; yet she stretched out her hand
and made another step. It brought a sharp tensing of the body of Bart--the
fur stood up about his throat like the mane of a lion, and his eyes were a
devilish green. Another instant she kept her place, and then she remembered
the story of Haines--how Bart had gone with his master to that killing at
Alder. If he had killed once, he would kill again; wild as he had been on
that other time when she quelled him, he had never before been like this.
The courage melted out of her; she forgot the pleasant day outside; she saw
only those blazing eyes and shrank back towards the center of the cave. The
muscles of the wolf relaxed visibly, and not till that moment did she
realize how close she had been to the crisis.

"Bad Bart!" cried Joan, running in between. "Bad, bad dog!"

"Stop, Joan! Don't go near him!"

But Joan was already almost to Bart. When Kate would have run to snatch the
child away that deep, rattling growl stopped her again, and now she saw
that Joan ran not the slightest danger. She stood beside the huge beast
with her tiny fist raised.

"I'll tell Daddy Dan on you," she shrilled.

Black Bart made a furtive, cringing movement towards the child, but
instantly stiffened again and sent his warning down the cave to Kate. Then
a shadow fell across the entrance and Dan stood there with Satan walking
behind. His glance ran from the bristling body of Bart to Kate, shrinking
among the shadows, and lingered without a spark of recognition.

"Satan," he ordered, "go on in to your place."

The black stallion glided past the master and came on until he saw Kate. He
stopped, snorting, and then circled her with his head suspiciously high,
and ears back until he reached the place where his saddle was usually hung.
There he waited, and Kate felt the eyes of the horse, the wolf, the man,
and even Joan, curiously upon her. "Evenin'," nodded Dan, "might you have
come up for supper?" That was all. Not a step towards her, not a smile, not a
greeting, and between them stood Joan, her hands clasped idly before her
while she looked from face to face, trying to understand. All the pangs of
heart which come to woman between girlhood and old age went burningly
through Kate in that breathing space, and afterwards she was cold, and saw
herself and all the others clearly.

"I haven't come for supper. I've come to bring you back, Dan."

Not that she had the slightest hope that he would come, but she watched him
curiously, almost as if he were a stranger, to see how he would answer.

"Come back?" he echoed. "To the cabin?"

"Where else?"

"It ain't happy there." He started. "You come up here with us, Kate."

"And raise Joan like a young animal in a cave?"

He looked at her with wonder, and then at the child.

"Ain't you happy, Joan, up here?"

"Oh, Daddy Dan, Joan's so happy!"

"You see," he said to Kate, "she's terribly happy."

It was his utter simplicity which convinced her that arguments and pleas
would be perfectly useless. Just behind the cool command which she kept
over herself now was hysteria. She knew that if she relaxed her
purposefulness for an instant the love for him would rush over her, weaken
her. She kept her mind clear and steady with a great effort which was like
divorcing herself from herself. When she spoke, there was another being
which stood aside listening in wonder to the words.

"You've chosen this life, Dan, I won't blame you for leaving me this time
any more than I blamed you the other times. I suppose it isn't you. It's
the same impulse, after all, that took you south after--after the wild
geese." She stopped, almost broken down by the memory, and then recalled
herself sternly. "It's the same thing that led you away after MacStrann
through the storm. But whether it's a weakness in you, or the force of
something outside your control, I see this thing clearly; we can't go on.
This is the end."

He seemed troubled, vaguely, as a dog is anxious when it sees a child weep
and cannot make out the reason.

"Oh, Dan," she burst out, "I love you more than ever! If it were I alone,
I'd follow you to the end of the world, and live as you live, and do as you
do. But it's Joan. She has to be raised as a child should be raised. She
isn't going to live with--with wild horses and wolves all her life. And if
she stays on here, don't you see that the same thing which is a curse in
you will grow strong and be a curse in her? Don't you see it growing? It's
in her eyes! Her step is too light. She's lost her fear of the dark. She's
drifting back into wildness. Dan, she has to go with me back to the cabin!"

At that she saw him start again, and his hand went out with a swift, subtle
gesture towards Joan.

"Let me have her! I have to have her! She's mine!" Then more gently: "You
can come to see her whenever you will. And, finally pray God you will come
and stay with us always."

He had stepped to Joan while she spoke, and his hands made a quick movement
of cherishing about her golden head, without touching it. For the first and
the last time in her life, she saw something akin to fear in his eyes.

"Kate, I can't come back. I got things to do--out here!"

"Then let me take her."

She watched the wavering in him.

"Things would be kind of empty if she was gone, Kate."

"Why?" she asked bitterly. "You say you have your work to do--out here?"

He considered this gravely.

"I dunno. Except that I sort of need her."

She knew from of old that such questions only puzzled him, and soon he
would cast away the attempt to decide, and act. Action was his sphere.
There was only one matter in which he was unfailingly, relentlessly the
same, and that was justice. To that sense in him she would make her last
appeal.

"Dan, I can't take her. I only ask you to see that I'm right. She belongs
to me, I bought her with pain."

It was a staggering blow to Whistling Dan. He took off his sombrero and
passed his hand slowly across his forehead, then looked at her with a dumb
appeal.

"I only want you to do the thing you think is square, Dan."

Once more he winced.

Then, slowly: "I'm tryin' to be square. Tryin' hard. I know you got a claim
in her. But it seems like I have, too. She's like a part of me, mostly.
When she's happy, I feel like smilin' sort of. When she cries it hurts me
so's I can't hardly stand it."

He paused, looking wistfully from the staring child to Kate.

He said with sudden illumination: "Let her do the judgin'! You ask her to
go to you, and I'll ask her to come to me. Ain't that square?"

For a moment Kate hesitated, but as she looked at Joan it seemed to her
that when she stretched out her arms to her baby nothing in the world could
keep them apart.

"It's fair," she answered. Dan dropped to one knee.

"Joan, you got to make up your mind. If you want to stay with, with Satan--
speak up, Satan!"

The stallion whinnied softly, and Joan smiled.

"With Satan and Black Bart"--the wolf-dog had glided near, and now stood
watching--"and with Daddy Dan, you just come to me. But if you want to go
to--to Munner, you just go." On his face the struggle showed--the struggle to
be perfectly just. "If you stay here, maybe it'll be cold, sometimes when
the wind blows, and maybe it'll be hard other ways. And if you go to
munner, she always be takin' care of you, and no harm'll ever come to you
and you'll sleep soft between sheets, and if you wake up in the night
she'll be there to talk to you. And you'll have pretty little dresses
with all kinds of colors on 'em, most like. Joan, do you want to go to
munner, or stay here with me?"

Perhaps the speech was rather long for Joan to follow, but the conclusion
was plain enough; and there was Kate, she also upon one knee and her arms
stretched out.

"Joan, my baby, my darling!"

"Munner!" whispered the child and ran towards her.

A growl came up in the throat of Black Bart and then sank away into a
whine; Joan stopped short, and turned her head.

"Joan!" cried Kate.

Anguish made her voice loud, and from the loudness Joan shrank, for there
was never a harsh sound in the cave except the growl of Bart warning away
danger. She turned quite around and there stood Daddy Dan, perfectly erect,
quite indifferent, to all seeming, as to her choice. She went to him with a
rush and caught at his hands.

"Oh, Daddy Dan, I don't want to go. Don't you want Joan?"

He laid a hand upon her head, and she felt the tremor of his fingers; the
wolf-dog lay down at her feet and looked up in her face; Satan, from the
shadows beyond, whinnied again.

After that there was not a word spoken, for Kate looked at the picture of
the three, saw the pity in the eyes of Whistling Dan, saw the wonder in the
eyes of Joan, saw the truth of all she had lost. She turned towards the
entrance and went out, her head bowed, stumbling over the pebbles.



Chapter XXVI. The Test

The most that could be said of Rickett was that it had a courthouse and
plenty of quiet so perfect that the minds of the office holders could turn
and turn and hear no sound saving their own turning. There were, of course,
more buildings than the courthouse, but not so many that they could not be
grouped conveniently along one street. The hush which rested over Rickett
was never broken except in the periods immediately after the spring and
fall round-ups when the saloons and gaming tables were suddenly flooded
with business. Otherwise it was a rare event indeed which injected
excitement into the village.

Such an event was the gathering of Sheriff Pete Glass' posse.

There had been other occasions when Pete and officers before his time had
combed the county to get the cream of the fighting men, but the gathering
of the new posse became different in many ways. In the first place the call
for members was not confined to the county, for though it stretched as
large as many a minor European kingdom, it had not the population of a
respectable manufacturing town, and Pete Glass went far beyond its bounds
to get his trailers. Everywhere he had the posters set up and on the
posters appeared the bait. The state began the game with a reward of three
thousand dollars; the county plastered two thousand dollars on top of that
to make it an even five: then the town of Alder dug into its deep pockets
and produced twenty-five hundred, while disinterested parties added
contributions which swelled the total to a round ten thousand. Ten thousand
dollars reward for the man described below, dead or alive. Ten thousand
dollars which might be earned by the investment of a single bullet and the
pressure on trigger; and above this the fame which such a deed would
bring--no wonder that the mountain-desert hummed through all its peaks and
plains, and stirred to life. Moreover, the news had gone abroad, the tale
of the Killing of Alder and everything that went before. It went West; it
appeared in newspapers; it cropped up at firesides; it gave a spark of
terror to a myriad conversations; and every one in Rickett felt that the
eye of the nation was upon it; every one in Rickett dreamed nightly of the
man described: "Daniel Barry, called Whistling Dan, about five feet nine or
ten, slender, black hair, brown eyes, age about thirty years."

Secretly, Rickett felt perfectly convinced that Sheriff Pete Glass alone
could handle this fellow and trim his claws for they knew how many a "bad
man" had built a reputation high as Babel and baffled posses and murdered
right and left, until the little dusty man on the little dusty roan went
out alone and came back alone, and another fierce name went from history
into legend. However, there were doubters, since this affair had new
earmarks. It had been buzzed abroad that Whistling Dan was not only the
hunted, but also the hunter, and that he had pledged himself to strike down
all the seven who first took his trail. Five of these were already gone;
two remained, and of these two one was Vic Gregg, no despicable fighter
himself, and the other was no less than the invincible little sheriff
himself. To imagine the sheriff beaten in the speed of his draw or the
accuracy of his shot was to imagine the First Cause, Infinity, or whatever
else is inconceivable; nevertheless, there were such possibilities as
bullets fired at night through the window, and attacks from the rear. So
Rickett waited, and held its breath and kept his eyes rather more behind
than in front.

In the meantime, there was no lack of amusement, for from the four corners,
blown by the four winds, men rode out of the mountain-desert and drifted
into Rickett to seek for a place on that posse. Twenty men, that was the
goal the sheriff had set. Twenty men trained to a hair. Beside the
courthouse was a shooting gallery not overmuch used except during the two
annual seasons of prosperity and reckless spending, and Pete Glass secured
this place to test out applicants. After, they passed this trial they were
mustered into his presence, and he gave them an examination for himself.
Just what he asked them or what he could never be known, but some men came
from his presence very red, and others extremely pale, and some men
blustered, and some men swore, and some men rode hastily out of town and
spoke not a word, but few, very few, were those who came out wearing a
little badge on their vest with the pride of a Knight of the Garter. At
first the hordes rode in, young and old, youths keen for a taste of
adventure, rusty fellows who had once been noted warriors; but these early
levies soon discovered that courage and willingness was not so much valued
as accuracy, and the old-timers learned, also, that accuracy must be
accompanied by speed; and even when a man possessed both these qualities of
hand and eye the gentle, inscrutable little man in his office might still
reject them for reasons they could not guess.

This one thing was certain: the next time Pete Glass ran for office he
would be beaten even by a greaser. He made enemies at the rate of a hundred
a day during that period of selection.

Still the twenty was not recruited to the full. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen
were gathered into the fold, but still five men were lacking to complete
the toll. Most men would have started their man-hunt with that formidable
force, but Pete Glass was methodical. In his own heart of hearts he would
have given his hope of heaven to meet Barry face to face and hand to hand,
and see which was the better man, but Pete Glass owed a duty to his state
before he owed a duty to himself. He stuck by his first plan. And every day
the inhabitants of Rickett gathered at the shooting gallery to watch the
tests and wonder at the successes and smile at the failures.

It was a very hard test which the sheriff had imposed. A man stood to one
side of the iron-plate back wall which served as the target. He stood
entirely out of sight and through an aperture in the side wall, at a
signal, he tossed a round ball of clay, painted white. The marksman stood a
good ten paces off, and he must strike that clay ball as it passed across
the target. The balls were so small that even to strike them when they were
stationary was a difficult task, and to hit them in motion was enough to
task the quickest eye and the cunningest hand.

It was old Pop Giersberg who stood with his ancient forty-five behind the
counter, with his feet braced, on this bright morning, and behind him half
of Rickett was gathered.

"D'you give me warnin', son?" he inquired of the man at the counter.

"Nary a warnin'," grinned the other, who was one of the chosen fifteen.

He wished Pop well. So did they all, but they had seen every man fail for
two days at that target and one and all they had their doubts. Pop had been
a formidable man in his day, but now his hand was stiff and his hair gray.
He was at least twenty years older than he felt.

He had hardly finished asking his question when a white ball was tossed
across the target. Up came the gun of Pop Giersberg, exploded, and the
bullet clanged on the iron; the white ball floated idly on across the wall
and disappeared on the other side.

"Gimme another chance!" pleaded Pop, with a quaver in his voice. "That was
just a try to get my eye in shape."

"Sure," chuckled the deputy. "Everybody gets three tries. It ain't hardly
nacheral to hit that ball the first crack. Leastways, nobody ain't done it
yet. You jest keep your eye peeled, Pop, and that ball will come out
ag'in."

And Pop literally kept his eye peeled.

He had double reason to pray for success, for his "old woman" had smiled
and shook her head when he allowed that he would try out for a place on
that posse. All his nerves grew taut and keen. He waited.

Once more the white streak appeared and surely he who threw the ball had
every wish to see Pop succeed, for he tossed it high and easily. Again the
gun barked from Giersberg's hand, and again the ball dropped almost slowly
out of sight.

"It's a trick!" gasped Pop. "It's something damned queer."

"They's a considerable pile of gents, that think the same way you do,"
admitted the deputy sheriff, dryly.

Pop glared at him and gritted his teeth.

"Lead the damn thing on ag'in," he said, and muttered the rest of his
sentence to himself. He jerked his hat lower over his eyes, spread his feet
a little more, and got ready for the last desperate chance.

But fate was against Pop. Twenty years before he might have struck that
mark if he had been in top condition, but today, though he put his very
soul into the effort, and though the ball for the third time was lobbed
with the utmost gentleness through the air, his bullet banged vainly
against the sheet of iron and the white, inoffensive ball continued on its
way.

Words came in the throat of Pop, reached his opened mouth, and died there.
He thrust the gun back into its holster, and turned slowly toward the
crowd. There was no smile to meet his challenging eye, for Pop was a known
man, and though he might have failed to strike this elusive mark that was
no sign that he would fail to hit something six feet in height by a couple
in breadth. When he found that no mockery awaited him, a sheepish smile
began at his eyes and wandered dimly to his lips.

"Well, gents," he muttered, "I guess I ain't as young as I was once.
S'long!"

He shouldered his way to the door and was gone.

"That's about all, friends," said the deputy crisply. "I guess there ain't
any more clamorin's for a place today?"

He swept the crowd with a complacent eye.

"If you got no objection," murmured a newcomer, who had just slipped into
the room, "I'd sort of like to take a shot at that."



Chapter XXVII. The Sixth Man

It caused a quick turning of heads.

"I don't want to put you out none," said the applicant gently. His voice
was extremely gentle, and there was about him all the shrinking aloofness
of the naturally timid. The deputy looked him over with quiet amusement--
slender fellow with the gentlest brown eyes--and then with a quick side
glance invited the crowd to get in on the joke.

"You ain't puttin' me out," he assured the other. "Not if you pay for your
own ammunition."

"Oh, yes," answered the would-be man-hunter, "I reckon I could afford
that."

He was so serious about it that the crowd murmured its amusement instead of
bursting into loud laughter. If the man was a fool, at least he was not
aggressive in his folly. They gave way and he walked slowly towards the
counter and stepped into the little open space beside the master of
ceremonies. Very obviously he was ill at ease to find himself the center of
so much attention.

"I s'pose you been practicin' up on tin-cans?" suggested the deputy,
leaning on the counter.

"Sometimes I hit things and sometimes I don't," answered the stranger.

"Well," and this was put more crisply as the deputy brought out a large pad
of paper, "jest gimme your name, partner."

"Joe Cumber." He grew still more ill at ease. "I hear that even if you hit
the mark you got to talk to the sheriff himself afterwards?"

"Yep."

The applicant sighed.

"Why d'you ask?"

"I ain't much on words."

"But hell with your gun, eh?" The deputy sheriff grinned again, but when
the other turned his head toward him, his smile went out, suddenly while
the wrinkle of mirth still lay in his cheek. The deputy stroked his chin
and looked thoughtful.

"Get your gun ready," he ordered. 

The other slipped his hand down to his gun-butt and moved his weapon to
make sure that it was perfectly loose in the leather.

"Ain't you goin' to take your gun out?" queried the deputy.

"Can I do that?"

"I reckon not," said the deputy, and looked the stranger straight in the
eyes.

His change to deadly earnestness put a hush over the crowd.

Across the target, not tossed easily as it had been for Pop Giersberg, but
literally thrown, darted the line of white, while the gun flipped out of
its holster as if it possessed life of its own and spoke. The white line
ended half way to the farther side of the target, and the revolver slid
again into hiding.

A clamor of amazement broke from the crowd, but the deputy looked steadily,
without enthusiasm, at the stranger.

"Joe Cumber," he said, when the noise fell away a little, "I guess you'll
see the sheriff. Harry, take Joe Cumber up to Pete, will you?"

One of the bystanders jumped at the suggestion and led the other from the
room, with a full half of the crowd following. The deputy remained behind,
thoughtful.

"What's the matter?" asked one of the spectators. "You look like you'd seen
a ghost."

"Gents," answered the deputy, "do any of you recollect seein' this feller
before?"

They did not.

"They's something queer about him," muttered the deputy.

"He may be word-shy," proffered a wit, "but he sure ain't gun-shy!"

"When he looked at me," said the deputy, more to himself than to the
others, "it seemed to me like they was a swirl of yaller come into his
eyes. Made me feel like some one had sneaked up behind me with a knife."

In his thoughtfulness his eyes wandered, and wandering, they fell upon the
notice of the reward for the capture, dead or alive, of Daniel Barry, about
five feet nine or ten, slender, with black hair and brown eyes.

"My God!" cried the deputy.

But then he relaxed against the counter.

"It ain't possible," he murmured.

"What ain't possible?"

"However, I'm goin' to go and hang around. Gents, I got a crazy idea."

He had no sooner started toward the door than he seemed to gain surety out
of the motion.

"It's him!" he cried. He turned toward the others, white of face. "Come on,
all of you! It's him! Barry!"

But in the meantime Harry had gone on swiftly to the office of the
sheriff with "Joe Cumber." Behind him swirled the curious crowd and for
their benefit he asked his questions loudly.

"Partner, that was sure a pretty play you made. I've seen 'em all try out
to crack them balls, but I never seen none do it the way you did--with your
gun in the leather at the start. What part of the country might you be
from?"

The other answered gently: "Why, from over yonder."

"The T O outfit, eh?"

"Beyond that."

"Up in the Gray Mountains? That so! I s'pose you been on trails like this
before?"

"Nothin' to talk about."

There might have been a double meaning in this remark, and Harry looked
twice to make sure that there was no guile.

"Well, here we are." He threw open a door which revealed a bald-headed
clerk seated at a desk in a little bare room. "Billy, here's a gent that
cracked it the first whack and started his gun from the leather, by God.
He--"

"Jest kindly close the door, Harry," said Billy. "Step in, partner. Gimme
your name?"

The door closed on the discomfited Harry, and "Joe Cumber" stood close to
it, apparently driven to shrinking into the wall in his embarrassment, but
while he stood there his hand fumbled behind him and turned the key in the
lock, and then extracted it.

"My name's Joe Cumber."

"Joe Cumber,"--this while inscribing it.

"Age?"

"About thirty-two, maybe."

"Don't you know?"

"I don't exactly."

His eyes were as vague as his words, gentle, and smiling.

"Thirty-two?" said Billy sharply. "You look more like twenty-five to me.
S'pose we split the difference, eh?"

And with a grin he wrote: "Age twenty-two or three."

"Business?"

"Trapper."

"Good! The sheriff is pretty keen for 'em. You gents in that game got a
sort of nose for the trail, mostly. All right, Cumber, you'll see Glass."

He stood at the door.

"By the way, Cumber, is that straight about startin' your shot with your
gun in the holster?"

"I s'pose it is."

"You s'pose?" grunted the clerk. "Well, come on in."

He banged once on the door and then threw it open. "Joe Cumber, Pete. And
he drilled the ball startin' his gun out of the leather. Here's his card."

He closed the door, and once more the stranger stood almost cringing
against it, and once more his fingers deftly turned the key--softly,
silently--and extracted it from the lock.

The sheriff had not looked up from the study of the card, for reading was
more difficult to him than man-killing, and Joe Cumber had an opportunity
to examine the room. It was hung with a score of pictures. Some large, some
small, but most of them enlargements, it was apparent of kodak snapshots,
for the eyes had that bleary look which comes in photographs spread over
ten times their intended space. The faces had little more than bleary eyes
in common, for there were bearded men, and smooth-shaven faces, and lean
and fat men; there were round, cherubic countenances, and lean, hungry
heads; there were squared, protruding chins, and there were chins which
sloped away awkwardly toward the neck; in fact it seemed that the sheriff
had collected twenty specimens to represent every phase of weakness and
strength in the human physiognomy. But beneath the pictures, almost without
exception, there hung weapons: rifles, revolvers, knives, placed
criss-cross in a decorative manner, and it came to "Joe Cumber" that he was
looking at the galaxy of the dead who had fallen by the hand of Sheriff
Pete Glass. Not a face meant anything to him but be knew, instinctively,
that they were the chosen bad men of the past twenty years.

"So you're Joe Cumber?"

The sheriff turned in his swivel chair and tossed his cigarette butt
through the open window.

"What can I do for you?"

"I got an idea, sheriff, that maybe you'd sort of like to have my picture."

The sheriff looked up from his study of the card, and having looked up his
eyes remained riveted. The other no longer cringed with embarrassment, but
every line of his body breathed a great happiness. He was like one who has
been riding joyously, with a sharp wind in his face.

There was a distant rushing of feet, a pounding on the door of the next
room.

"What's that?" muttered the sheriff, his attention called away.

"They want me."

"Wait a minute," called the voice of Billy without.

"I'll open the door. By God, it's locked!"

"They want me--five feet nine or ten, slender, black hair and brown
eyes--"

"Barry!"

"Glass, I've come for you."

"And I'm ready. And I'll say this"--he was standing, now, and his nervous
hands were at his sides--"I been hungerin' and hopin' for this time to
come. Barry, before you die, I want to thank you!"

"You've followed me like a skunk," said Barry, "from the time you killed a
hoss that had never done no harm to you. You got on my trail when I was
livin' peaceable."

There was a tremendous beating on the outer door of the other room, but
Barry went on: "You took a gent that was livin' straight and you made a
sneak and a crook out of him and sent him to double-cross me. You ain't
worth livin'. You've spent your life huntin' men, and now you're at the end
of your trail. Think it over. You're ready to kill ag'in, but are you ready
to die?"

The little dusty man grew dustier still. His mouth worked.

"Damn you," he whispered, and went for his gun.

It was out, his finger on the trigger, the barrel whipping into line, when
the weapon in Barry's hand exploded. The sheriff spun on his heel and fell
on his face. Three times, as he lay there, dead in all except the
instinctive movement of his muscles, his right hand clawed at the empty
holster at his side. The sixth man had died for Grey Molly.

The outer door of Billy's room crashed to the floor, and heavy feet
thundered nearer. Barry ran to the window and whistled once, very high and
thin. It brought a black horse racing around a corner nearby; it brought a
wolf-dog from an opposite direction, and as they drew up beneath the
window, he slid out and dropped lightly, catlike, to the ground. One leap
brought him to the saddle, and Satan stretched out along the street.



Chapter XXVIII. The Blood Of The Father

On the night of her failure at the cave, Kate came back to the cabin and
went to her room without any word to Buck or Lee Haines, but when they sat
before the fire, silent, or only murmuring, they could hear her moving
about. Whatever sleep they got before morning was not free from dreams, for
they knew that something was impending, and after breakfast they learned
what it was. She struck straight out from the shoulder. She was going up to
the cave and if Dan was away she would take Joan by force; she needed help;
would they give it? They sat for a long time, looking at each other and
then avoiding Kate with their eyes. It was not the fear of death but of
something more which both of them connected with the figure of Whistling
Dan. It was not until she took her light cartridge belt from the wall and
buckled on her gun that they rose to follow. Before the first freshness of
the morning passed they were winding up the side of the mountain, Kate a
little in the lead, for she alone knew the way.

Where they rounded the shoulder, the men reined the horses with which Kate
had provided them and sat looking solemnly at each other.

"Maybe we'll have no chance to talk alone again," said Lee Haines. "This is
the last trail either for Barry or for us. And I don't think that Barry is
that close to the end of his rope. Buck, give me your hand and say
good-bye. All that a man can do against Whistling Dan, and that isn't much,
I'll do. Having you along won't make us a whit stronger."

"Thanks," growled Buck Daniels. "Jes save that kind farewell till I show
yaller. Hurry up, she's gettin' too far ahead."

At the bottom of the ravine, where they dismounted for the precipitous
slope above, Kate showed her first hesitation.

"You both know what it means?" she asked them.

"We sure do," replied Buck.

"Dan will find out that you've helped me, and then he'll never forgive you.
Will you risk even that?"

"Kate," broke in Lee Haines, "don't stop for questions. Keep on and we'll
follow. I don't want to think of what may happen."

She turned without a word and went up the steep incline.

"What d'you think of your soft girl now?" panted Buck at the ear of Haines.
The latter flashed a significant look at him but said nothing. They reached
the top of the canyon wall and passed on among the boulders.

Kate had drawn back to them now, and they walked as cautiously as if there
were dried leaves under foot.

She had only lifted a finger of warning, and they knew that they were near
to the crisis. She came to the great rock around which she had first seen
the entrance to the cave on the day before. Inch by inch, with Buck and Lee
following her example, they worked toward the edge of the boulder and
peered carefully around it.

There opened the cave, and in front of it was Joan playing with what seemed
to be a ball of gray fur. Her hair tumbled loose and bright about her
shoulders; she wore the tawny hide which Kate had seen before, and on her
feet, since the sharp rocks had long before worn out her boots, she had
daintily fashioned moccasins. Bare knees, profusely scratched, bare arms
rapidly browning to the color of the fur she wore, Haines and Buck had to
rub their eyes and look again before they could recognize her.

They must have made a noise--perhaps merely an intaking of breath inaudible
even to themselves but clear to the ears of Joan. She was on her feet, with
bright, wild eyes glancing here and there. There was no suggestion of
childishness in her, but a certain willingness to flee from a great danger
or attack a weaker force. She stood alert, rather than frightened, with her
head back as if she scented the wind to learn what approached. The ball of
gray fur straightened into the sharp ears and the flashing teeth of a
coyote puppy. Buck Daniels' foot slipped on a pebble and at the sound the
coyote darted to the shadow of a little shrub and crouched there, hardly
distinguishable from the shade which covered it, and the child, with
infinitely cunning instinct, raced to a patch of yellow sand and tawny
rocks among which she cowered and remained there moveless.

One thing at least was certain. Whistling Dan was not in the cave, for if
he had been the child would have run to him for protection, or at least
cried out in her alarm. This information Haines whispered to Kate and she
nodded, turning a white face toward him. Then she stepped out from the rock
and went straight toward Joan.

There was no stir in the little figure. Even the wind seemed to take part
in the secret and did not lift the golden hair. Once the eyes of the child
glittered as they turned toward Kate, but otherwise she made no motion,
like a rabbit which will not budge until the very shadow of the reaching
hand falls over it.

So it was with Joan, and as Kate leaned silently over her she sprang to her
feet and darted between the hands of her mother and away among the rocks.
Past the reaching hands of Lee Haines she swerved, but it was only to run
straight into the grip of Buck Daniels. Up to that moment she had not
uttered a sound, but now she screamed out, twisted in his arms, and beat
furiously against his face.

"Joan!" cried Kate. "Joan!"

She reached Buck and unwound his arms from the struggling body of the
child.

"Honey, why are you afraid? Oh, my baby!"

For an instant Joan stood free, wavering, and her eyes held steadily upon
her mother bright with nothing but fear and strangeness. Then something
melted in her little round face, she sighed.

"Munner!" and stole a pace closer. A moment later Kate sat with Joan in her
arms, rocking to and fro and weeping.

"What's happened?" gasped Haines to Daniels. "What's happened to the kid?"

"Don't talk," answered Buck, his face gray as that of Kate. "It's Dan's
blood."

He drew a great breath.

"Did you see her try to--to bite me while I was holdin' her?"

Kate had started to her feet, holding Joan in one arm and dashing away her
tears with the free hand. All weakness was gone from her.

"Hurry!" she commanded. "We haven't any time to lose. Buck, come here! No,
Lee, you're stronger. Honey, this is your Uncle Lee. He'll take care of
you; he won't hurt you. Will you go to him?"

Joan shrank away while she examined him, but the instincts of a child move
with thrice the speed of a mature person's judgment; she read the kindly
honesty which breathed from every line of Haines' face, and held out her
arms to him.

Then they started down the slope for the horses, running wildly, for the
moment they turned their backs on the cave the same thought was in the mind
of each, the same haunting fear of that small, shrill whistle pursuing.
Half running, half sliding, they went down to the bottom of the gorge.
While the pebble they started rushed after them in small avalanches, and
they even had to dodge rocks of considerable size which came bounding
after, Joan, alert upon the shoulder of Lee Haines, enjoyed every moment of
it; her hair tossed in the sun, her arms were outstretched for balance. So
they reached the horses, and climbed into the saddles. Then, without a word
from one to the other, but with many a backward look, they started on the
flight.

By the time they reached the shoulder of the hill on the farther side, with
a long stretch of down slope before, they had placed a large handicap
between them and the danger of pursuit, but still they were not at ease. On
their trail, sooner or later, would come three powers working towards one
end, the surety of Black Bart following a scent, the swiftness of Satan
which never tired, and above all the rider who directed them both and kept
them to their work. His was the arm which could strike from the distance
and bring them down. They spurted down the hill.

No sooner were they in full motion than Joan, for the first time, seemed to
realize what it was all about. She was still carried by Lee Haines, who
cradled her easily in his powerful left arm, but now she began to struggle.
Then she stiffened and screamed: "Daddy Dan! Daddy Dan!"

"For God's sake, stop her mouth or he'll hear!" groaned Buck Daniels.

"He can't!" said Haines. "We're too far away even if he were at the cave
now."

"I tell you he'll hear! Don't talk to me about distance."

Kate reined her horse beside Lee. 

"Joan!" she commanded.

They were sweeping across the meadow now at an easy gallop. Joan screamed
again, a wild plea for help.

"Joan!" repeated Kate, and her voice was fierce. She raised her quirt and
shook it. "Be quiet, Munner whip--hard!"

Another call died away on the lips of Joan. She looked at her mother with
astonishment and then with a new respect.

"If you cry once more, munner whip!"

And Joan was silent, staring with wonder and defiance.

When they came close to the cabin, Lee Haines drew rein, but Kate motioned
him on.

"Where to?" he called.

"Back to the old ranch," she answered. "We've got to have help."

He nodded in grim understanding, and they headed on and down the slope
towards the valley.



Chapter XXIX. Billy The Clerk

If Sheriff Pete Glass had been the typical hard-riding, sure-shooting
officer of the law as it is seen in the mountain-desert, his work would
have died with his death, but Glass had a mind as active as his hands, and
therefore, for at least a little while, his work went on after him. He had
gathered fifteen practiced fighters who represented, it might be said, the
brute body of the law, and when they, with most of Rickett at their heels,
burst down the door of the Sheriff's office and found his body, they had
only one thought, which was to swing into the saddle and ride on the trail
of the killer, who was even now in a diminishing cloud of dust down the
street. He was riding almost due east, and the cry went up: "He's streakin'
it for the Morgan Hills. Git after him, boys!" So into the saddle they went
with a rush, fifteen tried men on fifteen chosen horses, and went down the
street with a roar of hoof-beats. That was the body and muscle of the
sheriff's work going out to avenge him, but the mind of the law remained
behind.

It was old Billy, the clerk. No one paid particular attention to Billy, and
they never had. He was useless on a horse and ridiculous with a gun, and
the only place where he seemed formidable was behind a typewriter. Now he
sat looking, down into the dead face of Pete Glass, trying to grasp the
meaning of it all. From the first he had been with Pete, from the first the
invincibility of the little dusty man had been the chief article of Billy's
creed, and now his dull eyes, bleared with thirty years of clerical labor,
wandered around on the galaxy of dead men who looked down at him from the
wall. He leaned over and took the hand of the sheriff as one would lean to
help up a fallen man, but the fingers were already growing cold, and then
Billy realized for the first time that this was death. Pete Glass had been;
Pete Glass was not.

Next he knew that something had to be done, but what it was he could not
tell, for he sat in the sheriff's office and in that room he was accustomed
to stop thinking and receive orders. He went back to his own little
cubby-hole, and sat down behind the typewriter; at once his mind cleared,
thoughts came, and linked themselves into ideas, pictures, plans.

The murderer must be taken, dead or alive, and those fifteen men had ridden
out to do the necessary thing. They had seemed irresistible, as they
departed; indeed, no living thing they met could withstand them, human or
otherwise, as Billy very well knew. Yet he recalled a saying of the
sheriff, a thing he had insisted upon: "No man on no hoss will ever ride
down Whistlin' Dan Barry. It's been tried before and it's never worked.
I've looked up his history and it can't be done. If he's goin' to be ran
down it's got to be done with relays, like you was runnin' down a wild
hoss." Billy rubbed his bald head and thought and thought.

With that orderliness which had become his habit of mind, from work with
reports and papers, sorting and filing away, Billy went back to the
beginning. Dan Barry was fleeing. He started from Rickett, and nine chances
out of ten he was heading, eventually, towards those practically
impenetrable mountain ranges where the sheriff before had lost the trail
after the escape from the cabin and the killing of Mat Henshaw. Towards
this same region, again, he had retreated after the notorious Killing at
Alder. There was no doubt, then, humanly speaking, that he would make for
the same safe refuge.

At first glance this seemed quite improbable, to be sure, for the Morgan
Hills lay due east, or very nearly east, while the place from which Barry
must have sallied forth and to which be would return was somewhere well
north of west, and a good forty miles away. It seemed strange that he
should strike off in the opposite direction, so Billy closed his eyes,
leaned back in his chair, and summoned up a picture of the country.

Five miles to the east the Morgan Hills rolled, sharply broken ups and
downs of country--bad lands rather than real hills, and a difficult region
to keep game in view. That very idea gave Billy his clue. Barry knew that
he would be followed hard and fast, and he headed straight for the Morgan's
to throw the posse off the final direction he intended to take in his
flight. In spite of the matchless speed of that black stallion of which the
sheriff had learned so much, he would probably let the posse keep within
easy view of him until he was deep within the bad-lands. Then he would
double, sharply around and strike out in the true direction of his flight.

Having reached this point in his deductions, Billy smote his hands
together. He was trembling with excitement so that he filled his pipe with
difficulty. By the time it was drawing well he was back examining his
mental picture of the country.

West of Rickett about the same distance as Morgan Hills, ran the Wago
Mountains, low, rolling ranges which would hardly form an impediment for a
horseman. Across these Barry might cut at a good speed on his western
course, but some fifteen or twenty miles from Rickett he was bound to reach
a most difficult barrier. It was the Asper river, at this season of the
year swollen high and swift with snow-water--a rare feat indeed if a man
could swim his horse across such a stream. There were only two places in
which it could be forded.

About fifty miles north and a little east of the line from Rickett the
Asper spread out into a broad, shallow bed, its streams dispersed for
several miles into a number of channels which united again, farther down
the course, and made the same strong river. Towards this ford, therefore,
it was possible that Dan Barry would head, in the region of Caswell City.

There was, however, another way of crossing the stream. Almost due west of
Rickett, a distance of fifteen miles, Tucker Creek joined the Asper. Above
the point of junction both the creek and the river were readily fordable,
and Barry could cross them and head straight for his goal.

It was true that to make Tucker Creek he would have to double out of the
Morgan Hills and brush back perilously close to Rickett, but Billy was
convinced that this was the outlaw's plan; for though the Caswell City
fords would be his safest route it would take him a day's ride, on an
ordinary horse, out of his way. Besides, the sheriff had always said:
"Barry will play the chance!"

Billy would have ventured his life that the fugitive would strike straight
for the Creek as soon as he doubled out of Morgan Hills.

Doors began to bang; a hundred pairs of boots thudded and jingled towards
Billy; the noise of voices rolled through the outer hall, poured through
the door, burst upon his ears. He looked up in mild surprise; the first
wave of Rickett's men had swept out of the courthouse to take the trail of
the fugitive or to watch the pursuit; in this second wave came the
remnants, the old men, the women; great-eyed children. In spite of their
noise of foot and voice they appeared to be trying to walk stealthily, talk
so softly. They leaned about his desk and questioned him with
gesticulations, but he only stared. They were all dim as dream people to
Billy the clerk, whose mind was far away struggling with his problem.

"Pore old Billy is kind of dazed," suggested a woman. "Don't bother him,
Bud. Look here!"

The tide of noise and faces broke on either side of the desk and swayed off
towards the inner office and vaguely Billy felt that they should not be
there--the sheriff's privacy--the thought almost drew him back to complete
consciousness, but he was borne off from them, again, on a wave of study,
pictures. Off there to the east went the fifteen best men of the mountain-
desert on the trail of the slender fellow with the black hair and the soft
brown eyes. How he had seemed to shrink with aloofness, timidity, when he
stood there at the door, giving his name. It was not modesty. Billy knew
now; it was something akin to the beasts of prey, who shrink from the eyes
of men until they are mad with hunger, and in the slender man Billy
remembered the same shrinking, the same hunger. When he struck, no wonder
that even the sheriff went down; no wonder if even the fifteen men were
baffled on that trail; and therefore, it was sufficiently insane for him,
Billy the clerk, to sit in his office and dream with his ineffectual hands
of stopping that resistless flight. Yet he pulled himself back to his
problem.

Considering his problem in general, the thing was perfectly simple: Barry
was sure to head west, and to the west there were only two gates--fording
the creek and the river above the junction in the first place, or in the
second place cutting across the Asper far north at Caswell City.

If he could be turned from the direction of Tucker Creek he would head for
the second possible crossing, and when he drew near Caswell City if he were
turned by force of numbers again he would unquestionably skirt the Asper,
hoping against hope that he might find a fordable place as he galloped
south. But, going south, he might be fenced again from Tucker Creek, and
then his case would be hopeless and his horse worn down.

It was a very clever plan, quite simple after it was once conceived, but in
order to execute it properly it was necessary that the outlaw be pressed
hard every inch of the way and never once allowed to get out of sight. He
must be chased with relays. In ordinary stretches of the mountain-desert
that would have been impossible, but the country around Rickett was not
ordinary.

Between the Morgan Hills and Wago there were considerable stretches of
excellent farm land in the center of which little towns had grown up.
Running north from the country seat, they were St. Vincent, Wago, and
Caswell City. Coming south again along the Asper River there were Ganton
and Wilsonville, and just above the junction of the river with Tucker Creek
lay the village of Bly Falls. There was no other spot in the
mountain-desert, perhaps, which could show so many communities. Also it was
possible to get in touch with the towns from Rickett, for in a wild spirit
of enterprise telephones had been strung to connect each village of the
group.

His hand went out mechanically and pushed in an open drawer of his filing
cabinet as if he were closing up the affair, putting away the details of
the plan. Each point was now clear, orderly assembled. It meant simply
chasing Barry along a course which covered close to a hundred miles and
which lay in a loosely shaped U. St. Vincent's was the tip of the eastern
side of that U. The men of St. Vincent's were to be called out to turn the
outlaw out of his course towards Tucker Creek, and then, as he struck
northeast towards Caswell City, they were to furnish the posse with fifteen
fresh horses, the best they could gather on such short notice. Swinging
north along that side of the U, Wago would next be warned to get its
contribution of fifteen horses ready, and this fresh relay would send Barry
thundering along towards Caswell City at full speed. Then Caswell City
would send out its contingent of men and horses, and turn the fugitive back
from the fords. By this time, unless his horse were better winded than any
that Billy had ever dreamed of, it would be staggering at every stride, and
the fresh horses from Caswell City would probably ride him down before he
had gone five miles. Even in case they failed in this, there was the little
town of Ganton, which would be ready with its men and mounts. Perhaps they
could hem in the desperado from the front and shoot him down there, as he
skirted along the river. At the worst they would furnish the fresh horses
and the fifteen hardy riders would spur at full speed south along the
river. If again, by some miracle, the black stallion lasted out this run,
Wilsonville lay due ahead, and that place would again give new horses to
the chase.

Last of all, the men of Bly Falls could be warned. Bly Falls was a town of
size and it could turn out enough men to block a dozen Dan Barrys, no
matter how desperate. If he reached that point, he must turn back. The
following posse would catch him from the rear, and between two fires he
must die ingloriously. Taking the plan as a whole it meant running Barry
close to a hundred miles with six sets of horses.

It all hinged, however, on the first step: Could the men of St. Vincent
turn him out of his western course and send him north towards Caswell City?
If they could, he was no better than a dead man. All things favored Billy.
In the first place it was still morning, and eight hours of broad daylight
would keep the fugitive in view every inch of the way. In the second place,
much of the distance was cut up by the barb-wire fences of the farm-lands,
and he must either jump these or else stop to cut them.

A crackle of laughter cut in on Billy the clerk. They were laughing in that
inner office, where the sheriff lay dead. Blood swept across his eyes, set
his brain whirling, and he rushed to the door.

"You yelpin' coyotes!" shouted Billy the clerk. "Get out. I got to be
alone! Get out, or by God--"

It was not so much his words, or the fear of his threats, but the very fact
that Billy the clerk, harmless, smiling old Billy, had burst into noisy
wrath, scared them as if an earthquake had gripped the building. They went
out sidling, and left the rooms in quiet. Then Billy took up the phone.

"Pete Glass is dead," he was saying a moment later to the owner of the
general merchandise store at St. Vincent. "Barry came in this morning and
shot him. The boys have run him east to the Morgan Hills. Johnny, listen
hard and shut up. You got half an hour to turn out every man in your town.
Ride south till you get in the hills on a bee-line east of where Tucker
Creek runs into the old Asper. D'ye hear? Then keep your eyes peeled to
the east, and watch for a man on a black hoss ridin' hard, because Barry is
sure as hell goin' to double back out of the Morgan Hills and come west
like a scairt coyote. The posse will be behind him, but they most like be a
hell of a ways to the bad. Johnny, everything hangs on your turnin' Barry
back. And have fifteen fresh hosses, the best St. Vincent has, so that the
boys in the posse can climb on 'em and ride hell-bent for Wago. Johnny, if
we get him started north he's dead--and if you turn him like I say I'll
see that you come in on the reward. D'ye hear?"

But there was only an inarticulate whoop from the other end of the
wire.

Billy hung up. A little later he was talking to Wago.



Chapter XXX. The Morgan Hills

Once out of Rickett, Barry pulled the stallion back to an easy canter. He
had camped during the latter part of the night near the town and ridden in
in the morning, so that Satan was full of running. He rebelled now against
this easy pace, and tossed his head with impatience. No curb restrained
him, not even a bit; the light hackamore could not have held him for an
instant, but the voice of the rider kept him in hand. Now, out of Rickett's
one street, came the thing for which Barry had waited, and delayed his
course--a scudding dust cloud. On the top of a rise of ground he brought
Satan to a halt and looked back, though Black Bart ran in a circle around
him, and whined anxiously. Bart knew that they should be running; there was
no good in that ragged dust-cloud. Finally he sat down on his haunches and
looked his master in the face, quivering with eagerness. The posse came
closer, at the rate of a racing horse, and near at hand the tufts of dust
which tossed up above and behind the riders dissolved, and Whistling Dan
made them out clearly, and more clearly.

For one form he looked above all, a big man who rode somewhat slanting; but
Vic Gregg was not among the crowd, and for the rest, Barry had no wish to
come within range of their harm. The revolver at his side, the rifle in the
case, were for the seventh man who must die for Grey Molly. These who
followed him mattered nothing--except that he must not come within their
reach. He studied them calmly as they swept nearer, fifteen chosen men as
he could tell by their riding, on fifteen choice horses as he could tell by
their gait. If they pushed him into a corner--well, five men were odds
indeed, yet he would not have given them a thought; ten men made it a grim
affair, but still he might have taken a chance; however, fifteen men made a
battle suicide--he simply must not let them corner him. Particularly
fifteen such men as these, for in the mountain-desert where all men are
raised gun in hand, these were the quickest and the surest marksmen. Each
one of them had struck that elusive white ball in motion, and each had done
it with a revolver. What could they do with a rifle?

That thought might have sent him rushing Satan down the farther slope, but
instead, he raised his head a little more and began to whistle softly to
himself. Satan locked an ear back to listen; Black Bart rose with a muffled
growl. The posse rode in clear view now, and at their head was a tall, lean
man with the sun glinting now and again on his yellow moustaches. He threw
out his arm and the posse scattered towards the left. Obviously he was the
accepted leader, and indeed few men in the mountain-desert would not willingly
have followed Mark Retherton. Another gesture from Retherton, and at
once a dozen guns gleaned, and a dozen bullets whizzed perilously close to
Barry, then the reports came barking up to him; he was just a little out of
range.

Still he lingered for a moment before he turned Satan reluctantly, it
seemed, and started him down the far slope, straightaway for the Morgan
Hills as old Billy had prophesied. It would be no exercise canter even for
Satan, for the horses which followed were rare of their kind, and the
western horse at the worst has manifold fine points. His ancestor is the
Barb or the Arab which the Spaniards brought with them to Mexico and the
descendants of that finest of equine bloods made up the wild herds which
soon roamed the mountain-desert to the north. Long famines of winter, hot
deserts in summer, changed their appearance. Their heads grew lumpier,
their necks more scraggy, their croups more slanting, their legs shorter;
but their hoofs grew denser, hardier, their shorter coupling gave them
greater weight-carrying possibilities, the stout bones and the clean lines
of their legs meant speed, and above all they kept the stout heart of the
thoroughbred and they gained more than this, an indomitable, bulldog
persistence. The cheapest Western cow-pony may look like the cartoon of a
horse, but he has points which a judge will note, and he will run a picture
horse to death in three days.

Such were the horses which took the trail of Satan and they were chosen
specimens of their kind. Up the slope they stormed and there went Satan
skimming across the hollow beneath them. Their blood was his blood, their
courage his courage, their endurance his endurance. The difference between
them was the difference between the factory machine and the hand made work
of art. From his pasterns to his withers, from his hoofs to his croup every
muscle was perfectly designed and perfectly placed for speed, tireless
running; every bone was the maximum of lightness and strength combined. A
feather bloom on a steady wind, such was the gait of Satan.

Down the hollow the posse thundered, and up the farther slope, and still
the black slipped away from them until Mark Retherton cursed deeply to
himself.

"Don't race your hosses, boys," he shouted. "Keep 'em in hand. That devil
is playing with us."

As a result, they checked their mounts to merely a fast gallup, and Barry,
looking back, laughed softly with understanding. Far different the
laborious pounding of the posse and the light stretch of Satan beneath him.
He leaned a little until he could catch the sound of the breathing, big,
steady draughts with comfortable intervals between. He could run like that
all day, it seemed, and Whistling Dan ran his fingers luxuriously down the
shining neck. Instantly the head tossed up, and a short whinney whipped
back to him like a question. Just before them the Morgan Hills jutted up,
like stiff mud chopped by the tread of giants. "Now, partner," murmured
Barry, "show 'em what you can do! Jest lengthen out a bit."

The steady breeze from the running sharpened into a gale, whisking about
his face; there was no longer the wave-like rock of that swinging gallup
but a smooth, swift succession of impulses. Rocks, shrubs darted past him,
and he felt a gradual settling of the horse beneath him as the strides
lengthened, From behind a yell of dismay, and with a backward glance he
saw every man of the posse leaning forward and swinging his quirt. An
instant later half a dozen of the ragged little hills closed between them.

Once fairly into the heart of the Morgans, he called the stallion back from
the racing stride to a long canter, and from the gallop to a rapid trot,
for in this broken country it was wearing on an animal to maintain a lope
up hill and down the quick, jerking falls. The cowpuncher hates the trot,
for his ponies are not built for it, but the deep play of Satan's fetlock
joints broke the hard impacts; his gait now was hardly more jarring than
the flow of the single-foot in an ordinary animal.

Black Bart, who had been running directly under the nose of the stallion,
now skirted away in the lead. Here and there he twisted among the gullies
at a racing clip, his head high, and always he picked out the smoothest
ground, the easiest rise, the gentlest descent which lay more or less
straight in the line of his master's flight. It cut down the work of the
stallion by half to have this swift, sure scout run before and point out
the path, yet it was stiff labor at the best and Barry was glad when he
came on the hard gravel of an old creek bed cutting at right angels to his
course.

From the first he had intended to run towards the Morgans only to cover the
true direction of his flight, and now, since the posse was hopelessly left
behind him, well out of hearing, he rode Satan into the middle of the creek
bed and swung him north.

It was bad going for a horse carrying a rider, and even the catlike
certainty of Satan's tread could not avoid sharp edges here and there that
might cut his hoofs. So Barry leaped to the ground and ran at full speed
down the bed. Behind him Satan followed, his ears pricked uneasily, and
Black Bart, at a signal from the master, dropped back and remained at the
first bend of the old, empty stream. In a moment they wound out of sight
even of Bart, but Barry kept steadily on. It would take a magnifying glass
to read his trail over those rocks.

He had covered a mile, perhaps, when Bart came scurrying again and leaped
joyously around the master.

"They've hit the creek, eh?" said Whistling Dan. "Well, they'll mill around
a while and like as not they'll run a course south to pick me up agin."

He gestured toward the side, and as soon as Satan stood on the good going
once more, Barry swung into the saddle and headed straight back west. No
doubt the posse would ride up and down the creek bed until they found his
trail turning back, but they would lose precious minutes picking it up,
and in the meantime he would be far, far away toward the ford of Tucker
Creek. Then, clearly, but no louder than the snapping of a dry twig near
his ear, he heard the report of a revolver and it spoke to him of many
things as the baffled posse rode up and down the creek bed hunting for the
direction of his escape. Some one had fired that shot to relieve his anger.

He neither spoke to Satan nor struck him, but there was a slight leaning
forward, an imperceptible flexing of the leg muscles, and in response the
black sprang again into the swift trot which sent him gliding over the
ground, and twisting back and forth among the sharp-sided gullies with a
movement as smooth as the run of the wolf-dog, which once again raced
ahead.

When they came out in view of the rolling plain Barry stopped again and
glanced to the west and the north, while Black Bart ran to the top of the
nearest hill and looked back, an ever vigilant outpost. To the north lay
the fordable streams near Caswell City, and that way was perfect safety, it
seemed. Not perfect, perhaps, for Barry knew nothing of the telephones by
which the little bald headed clerk at the sheriff's office was rousing the
countryside, but if he struck toward Caswell City from the Morgans, there
was not a chance in ten that scouts would catch him at the river which was
fordable for mile after mile.

That way, then, lay the easiest escape, but it meant a long detour out of
the shortest course, which struck almost exactly west, skirting dangerously
close to Rickett. But, as Billy had presupposed, it was the very danger
which lured the fugitive. Behind him, entangled in the gullies of the
bad-lands, were the fifteen best men of the mountain-desert. In front of
him lay nothing except the mind of Billy the clerk. But how could he know
that?

Once again he swayed a little forward and this time the stallion swung at
once into his ranging gallop, then verged into a half-racing gait, for
Barry wished to get out of sight among the rolling ground before the posse
came out from the Morgan Hills on his back trail.



Chapter XXXI. The Trap

He had already covered a good ten miles, and a large part of that through
extremely rough going, but the black ran with his head as high as the
moment he pulled out of Rickett that morning, and there was only enough
sweat to make his slender neck and greyhound flanks flash in the sun. Back
he winged toward Rickett, running as freely as the wild leader of a herd,
sometimes turning his fine head to one side to look back at the master or
gaze over the hills, sometimes slackening to a trot up a sharper ascent or
lengthening into a fuller gallop on an easy down-slope. There seemed no
purpose in the reins which were kept just taut enough to give the rider the
feel of his mount, and the left hand which held them was never still for a
moment, but played back and forth slightly with the motion of the head.
Except in times of crisis those reins were not for the transmission of
orders, it seemed, but they served as the wires through which the mind of
the man and the mind of the horse kept in telegraphic touch.

In the meantime Black Bart loafed behind, lingering on the crest of each
rise to look back, and then racing to catch up, but halfway back to Rickett
he came up beside the master, whining, and leaping as high as Barry's knee.

"You seen something?" queried Barry. "Are they comin' on the trail again?"

He swayed a bit to one side and diverted Satan out of his course so as to
climb one of the more commanding swells. From this point he glanced back
and saw a dust cloud, much like that which a small whirlwind picks up,
rolling down the nearest slope of the Morgan Hills. At that distance the
posse looked hardly larger than one unit, and certainly they could not see
the single horseman they followed; however, they could follow the trail
easily across this ground. Satan had turned to look back.

"Shall we go back and play around 'em, boy?" asked Barry.

Black Bart had run on ahead, and now he turned with a short howl.

"The partner says 'no,'" continued the master. "Of all the dogs I ever see,
Bart plays the most careful game, but out on the trail, Satan"--here he
sent the stallion into the sweeping lope--"Bart knows more'n you an' me put
together, so we'll do what he says."

For answer, Satan lengthened a little into his stride. As for the wolf-dog,
he went off like a black bolt into the eye of the wind, streaking it west
to hunt out the easiest course. A wolf--and surely there was more of wolf
than of dog in Black Bart--has a finer sense for the lay of ground than
anything on four feet. He knows how to come down the wind on his quarry
keeping to the depressions and ravines so that not a taint of his presence
is blown to the prey; and he will skulk across an open plain, stealing from
hollow to hollow and stalking from bush to bush, so that the wariest are
taken by surprise. As for Black Bart, he knew the kind of going which the
stallion liked as well, almost, as he knew his own preferences, and he
picked out a course which a surveyor with line and spirit-level could
hardly have bettered. He wove across the country in loosely thrown
semicircles, and came back in view of the master at the proper point. There
was hardly much point in such industry in a country as smooth as this, not
much more difference, say, than the saving of distance which the horse
makes who hugs the fence on the turn and on account of that sticks his head
under the finish wire a nose in front; and Bart clung to his work with
scrupulous care.

Sometimes he ran back with lolling, red tongue, when the course lay clear
even to the duller sense of a human, and frisked under the nose of Satan
until a word from Barry sent him scurrying away like a pleased child. His
duties comprehended not only the selection of the course but also an eagle
vigilance before and behind, so that when he came again with a peculiar
whine, Barry leaned a little from the saddle and spoke to him anxiously.

"D'you mean to say that they been gainin' ground on us old boy?"

Black Bart leaped sidewise, keeping his head toward the master, and he
howled in troubled fashion.

"Whereaway are they now?" muttered Barry, and looked back again. 

A great distance behind, hardly distinguishable now, the dust of the posse
was blending into the landscape and losing itself against a gray
background.

"If they's nothin' wrong behind, what's bitin' you, Bart. You gettin'
hungry, maybe? Want to hurry home?"

Another howl, still louder, answered him.

"Go on, then, and show me where they's trouble."

Black Bart whirled and darted off almost straight ahead, but bearing up a
hill slightly south of their course. Toward the top of this eminence he
changed his lope for a skulking trot that brought his belly fur trailing on
the ground.

"They's somethin' ahead of us, Satan!" cried the master softly. "What could
that be? It's men, by the way Bart sneaks up to look at 'em. They's nothin'
else that he'd do that way for. Easy, boy, and go soft!"

The stallion cut his gallop into a slinking trot, his head lowered, even
his ears flat back, and glided up the hillside. Barry swung to the ground
and crawled to the top of the hill. What he saw was a dozen mounted men
swinging down into the low, broad scoop of ground beyond the hill. They
raced with their hatbrims standing stiff up in the wind.

"They've been watchin' us with glasses!" whispered Dan to Bart, and the
wolf-dog snarled savagely, his neck-fur ruffling up.

The dozen directly in front were not all, for to the right, bearing
straight across his original course, came another group almost as strong,
and to the left eight more riders spurred at top speed.

"We almost walked into 'em," said Barry, "but they ain't got us yet. Back,
boy!"

The wolf dog slunk down the hill until it was out of sight from the farther
side of the slope, and the master imitated these tactics until he was close
to Satan. Once in the saddle he made up his mind quickly. Someone in
Rickett had guessed his intention to double back toward Tucker Creek, and
they had cut him off cleverly enough and in overwhelming force. However, no
one in Rickett could guess that another way out remained for him in the
fords below Caswell City, and even if they knew, their knowledge would do
them no good. They could not wing a message to that place to head him off;
it was not humanly possible. For Dan knew nothing of the telephone lines
which brought Caswell City itself within speaking distance of far away
Rickett. Caswell City, then, was his goal, but to get toward it he must
circle far back toward the Morgan Hills, back almost into the teeth of the
posse in order to skirt around the right wing of these new enemies. Even
then, to double that flank, he must send Satan ahead at full speed. As he
swung around, the eight men of that end party crashed over the hill five
hundred yards away, and their yell at the view of the quarry went echoing
up the shallow valley.

The slayer of Pete Glass, he who had done the notorious Killing at Alder,
was almost in touch of their revolvers--and their horses were fresh. Not one
of that eight but would have given odds on his chances of sharing the
capture money. There were no spurs on the heels of Barry to urge Satan, and
no quirt in his hand, but a single word sent the black streaking down the
hill.

Going into the Morgan Hills he had gone like the wind, but now he rushed
like a thoroughbred standing a challenge in the homestretch. His nose, and
his flying tail were a straight line and the flash of his legs was a tangle
which no eye could follow as he shot east on the back trail, straight
toward the posse. For a mile or more that speed did not slacken, and at the
end of that distance he began to edge to the right.

The men behind him knew well enough what the plan of the fugitive was, and
they angled farther toward the north; there in the distance came the posse,
the cloud of dust breaking up now into the dark figures of the fifteen, and
if the men from St. Vincent could hold the pace a little longer they would
drive Barry between two fires. They flattened themselves along their
horses' necks at infinite risk to their necks in case of a stumble, and
every spur in the crowd was dripping red; horseflesh could do no more, and
still the black drew ahead inches and inches with every stride.

If they could not turn him with their speed another way remained, and by
swift agreement the four best horses were sent ahead at full speed while
the other riders caught their reins over the pommels and jerked out their
rifles; a quartet of bullets went screaming after the black horse.

Indeed, there was little enough chance that a placed shot would go home,
but their magazines were full, and a chance hit would do the work and kill
both man and horse at that rate of speed. Dan Barry knew it, and when the
bullets sang he whirled in the saddle and swept out his rifle from its case
in the same movement. That yellow devil of anger flared in his eyes as he
pitched the butt to his shoulder and straight into the circle of the sight
rode Johnny Gasney of St. Vincent. Another volley whistled about him and
his finger trembled on the trigger. No chance work with Barry, for he knew
the gait of Satan as a practized naval gunner knows the swing of his ship
in a smooth sea, and that circle of doom wavered over Johnny Gasney for a
dozen strides before Dan turned with a faint moan and jammed the rifle back
in its case. Once again he was balancing in his stirrups, leaning close to
cut the wind with his shoulders.

"I can't do it, Satan. I got nothin' agin them. They think they're playin'
square. I can't do it. Stretch out, old boy. Stretch out!" It seemed
impossible that the stallion could increase his exertions, but with that
low voice at his ear he did literally stretch along the ground and jerked
himself away from the pursuit like a tall ship when a new sail spreads in a
gale.

The men from St. Vincent saw that the game was lost. Every one of the eight
had his rifle at the shoulder and the bullets hissed everywhere about him.
Right into his face, but a greater distance away, rode the posse from
Rickett, the fifteen tried men and true; and having caught the scheme of
the trap they were killing their horses with a last effort.

It failed through no fault of theirs. Just as the jaws of the trap were
about to close the black stallion whisked out from danger, lunged over a
swell of ground, and was out of view. When they reached that point,
yelling, Barry raced his black out of range of all except the wildest
chance shot. The eight from St. Vincent drove their weapons sullenly into
the holsters; for the last five minutes they had been silently dividing ten
thousand dollars by eight, and the awakening left a taste of ashes.

They could only follow him now at a moderate pace in the hope of wearing
him down, and since a slight pause made little difference in the result--it
would even be an advantage to breathe their horses after that burst,--they
drew rein and cursed in chorus.



Chapter XXXII. Relays

The horses from St. Vincent already wheezed from the run, but the mounts of
the posse were staggering completely blown. Ever since they left Rickett
they had been going at close to top speed and the last rush finished them;
at least seven of that chosen fifteen would never be worth their salt
again, and they stood with hanging heads, bloody foam upon their breasts
and dripping from their mouths, their sides laboring, and breathing with
that rattle which the rider dreads. The posse, to a man, swung sullenly to
the ground.

"Who's boss, boys?" called Johnny Gasney, puffing in his saddle as he rode
up. "By God, we'll get him yet! They's a devil in that black hoss! Who's
boss?"

"I ain't exactly boss," answered Mark Retherton, whom not even fear of
death could hurry in his ways of speech, "but maybe I can talk for the
boys. What you want, Johnny?"

"You gents'll be needin' new hosses?"

"We'll be needin' graves for the ones we got," growled Mark, and he stared
gloomily at the dull eye of his pinto. "The best cuttin' out hoss I ever
throwed a leg over, and now--look at him!"

"Here's your relay!" cut in Johnny Gasney. "Old Billy 'phoned down." Five
men came leading three spare horses apiece. "He phoned down and asked me to
get fifteen hosses ready. He must of guessed where Barry would head. And
here they are--the best ponies in St. Vincent--but for God's sake use 'em
better'n you did that set!"

The other members of the posse set to work silently changing their saddles
to the new relay, and Mark Retherton tossed his answer over his shoulder to
Johnny Gasney while he drew his cinch brutally tight.

"They's a pile of hoss-flesh in these parts, but they ain't more'n one
Barry. You gents can say good-bye to your hosses unless we nail him
before they're run down,"

Johnny Gasney rubbed his red, fat forehead, perplexed.

"It's all right," he decided, "because it ain't possible the black hoss can
outlast these. But--he sure seemed full of runnin! One thing more, Mark.
You don't need to fear pressin' Barry, because he won't shoot. He had his
gun out, but I guess he don't want to run up his score any higher'n it is.
He put it back without firin' a shot. Go on, boys, and go like hell. Billy
has lined up a new relay for you at Wago."

They made no pause to start in a group, but each sent home the spurs as
soon as he was in the saddle. They had ridden for the blood of Pete Glass
before, but now at least seven of them rode for the sake of the horses they
had ruined, and to a cow-puncher a favorite mount is as dear as a friend.

They expected to find the black out of sight, but it was a welcome surprise
to see him not half a mile away wading across St. Vincent Creek; for Barry
quite accurately guessed that there would be a pause in the pursuit after
that hair-breadth escape, and at the creek he stopped to let Satan get his
wind. He would not trust the stallion to drink, but gave him a bare mouthful
from his hat and loosened the cinches for an instant.

Not that this was absolutely necessary, for Satan was neither blown nor
leg-weary. He stood dripping with sweat, indeed, but poised lightly, his
head high, his ears pricked, his nostrils distended to transparency as he
drew in great breaths. Even that interval Barry used, for he set to work
vigorously massaging the muscles of shoulders and hips and whipping off the
sweat from neck and flank. It was several moments, and already Satan's
breath came easily, when Black Bart shot down from his watch-post and
warned them on with a snarl, but still, before he tightened the cinches
again and climbed to the saddle Barry took the fine head of the stallion
between his hands.

"Between you and me, Satan," he murmured, "our day's work is jest
beginnin'. Are you feelin' fit?"

Satan nuzzled the shoulder of the master and snorted his answer; Black Bart
had given the warning, and the stallion was eager to be off.

They crossed the creek at a place where the stones came almost to the
surface, since nothing is more detrimental to the speed of a horse than a
plunge in cold water, and with the hoofbeats of the posse growing up behind
they cantered off again a little cast of north, straight for Caswell City.

There was little work for Black Bart in such country as this, for there was
rarely a rise of ground over which a man on horseback could not look, and
the surface was race-track fast. Once Satan knew the direction there was
nothing for it but to sit the saddle and let him work, and he fell into his
long-distance gait. It was a smart pace for any ordinary animal to follow
through half a day's journey, and Barry knew with perfect certainty that
there was not the slightest chance of even the fresh horses behind him
wearing down Satan before night; but to his astonishment the trailers rode
as if they had limitless horseflesh at their command. Perhaps they were
unaware of the running that was still in Satan, so Barry sent the stallion
on at a free gallop that shunted the sagebrush past him in a dizzy whirl.

A mile of this, but when he looked back the posse were even closer. They
were riding still with the spur! It was madness, but it was not his part to
worry for them, and it was necessary that he maintain at least this
interval, so he leaned a little forward to cut the wind more easily, and
Satan leaped into a faster pace. He had several distinct advantages over
the mounts of the posse. At their customary rolling lope they will travel
all day with hardly a break, but they have neither the size nor the length
of leg for sustained bursts of speed. Moreover, most of the cowponies who
now raced on the trail of Satan carried riders who outweighed Barry by
twenty pounds and in addition to this they were burdened by saddles made
ponderously to stand the strain of roping cattle, whereas Barry's specially
made saddle was hardly half that weight. Perhaps more than all this, the
cowponies rode by compulsion, urged with sharp spurs, checked and guided by
the jaw-breaking curb, whereas Satan frolicked along at his own will, or at
least at the will of a master which was one with his. No heavy bit worried
his mouth, no pointed steel tormented his flanks. He had only one
handicap--the weight of his rider, and that weight was balanced and
distributed with the care of a perfect horseman.

With all this in mind it was hardly wonderful that the stallion kept the
posse easily in play. His breathing was a trifle harder, now, and perhaps
there was not quite the same light spring in his gallop, but Barry, looking
back, could tell by the tossing heads of the horses which followed that
they were being quickly run down to the last gasp. Mile after mile there
was not a pause in that murderous pace, and then, cutting the sky with a
row of sharply pointed roofs, he saw a town straight ahead and groaned in
understanding.

It was rather new country to Barry, but the posse must know it like a book.
They were spending their horses freely because they hoped to arrange for a
fresh series of mounts in Wago. However, it would take some time for them
to arrange the details of the loan, and by that time he would be out of
sight among the hills which stretched ahead. That would give him a
sufficient start, and he would make the fords near Caswell City comfortably
ahead. At Caswell City, indeed, they might get a still other relay, but
just beyond the Asper River rose the Grizzly Peaks--his own country, and
once among them he could laugh the posse to scorn.

He patted Satan on the shoulder and swept on at redoubled speed, skirting
close to the town, while the posse plunged straight into it.

Listening closely, he could hear their shouts as they entered the village,
could mark the cessation of their hoof-beats.

Ten minutes, five minutes at least for the change of horses, and that time
would put him safety among the hills.

But the impossible happened. There was no pause of minutes, hardly a pause
of seconds, when the rush of hoofbeats began again and poured out from the
town, fifteen desperate riders on fifteen fresh mounts. By some miracle
Wago had been warned and the needed horses had been kept there saddled and
ready for the relay.

It turned an easy escape into a close chance, but still his faith in Satan
was boundless to reach the fords in time, and the safety of the mountains
beyond. Another word, and with a snort the great-hearted stallion swept up
the slope, with Black Bart at his old work, skirting ahead and choosing the
easiest way. That was another great handicap in favor of the fugitive, and
every advantage counted with redoubled significance now, every foot of
distance saved, every inch of climb avoided.

A new obstacle confronted him, for the low, rolling hills were everywhere
checkered with squares and oblongs of plowed ground, freshly turned, and
guarded by tall fences of barbed-wire. They could be jumped, but jumping
was no easy matter for a tiring horse, and Barry saw, with a sigh of
relief, a sharp gulch to the left which cut straight through that region of
broken farms and headed north and east pointing like an arrow in the
direction of the fords. He swung down into it without a thought and pressed
on. The bottom was gravelly, here and there, from the effect of the waters
which had once washed through the ravine and cut these sides so straight,
but over the greater part of the bottom sand had drifted, and the going was
hardly worse than the hilly stretches above.

The sides grew higher, now, with great rapidity. Already they were up to
the shoulder of Satan, now up to his withers, and from behind the roar of
the posse racing at full speed, filled the gulch with confusion of echoes.
They must be racing their horses as if they were entering the homestretch,
as if they were sure of the goal. It was strange.



Chapter XXXIII. The Jump

He brought Satan back to a hand canter, and so he pulled around the next
curve of the gulch and saw the trap squarely in front. He came to a full
halt. For he saw a tall, strong barbed-wire fence stretching across the
stream-bed, and beyond the fence were a litter of chicken-coops, iron bands
from broken barrels, and a thousand other of those things which brand the
typical western farm-yard; above the top of the bank to his left he caught
a glimpse of the sharp roof of the house.

He looked back, but it was far too late to turn, ride down the ravine to a
place where the bank could be scaled, and cut across country once more. The
posse came like a whirlwind, yelling, shooting as if they hoped to attract
attention, and attention they certainly won, for now Dan saw a tall
middle-aged fellow, his long beard blowing over one shoulder as he ran,
come down into the farm-yard with a double-barreled shotgun in his hands.
He was a type of those who do not know what it is to miss their
target--probably because ammunition comes so high; and with a double load of
buckshot it was literally death to come within his range.

Dan knew that a great many chances may be taken against a revolver and even
a rifle can be tricked, but it is suicide to flirt with a shotgun in the
hands of one used to bring down doves as they sloped out of the air toward
a water-hole. The farmer stood with his broad-brimmed straw hat pushed far
back on his head looking up and down the ravine, a perfect target, and
Barry's hand slipped automatically over his rifle.

His fingers refused to close upon it.

"I can't do it, Satan," he whispered. "We got to take our chances of
gettin' by, that's all. He couldn't have no hand with Grey Molly."

Narrow chances indeed, by this time, for the brief pause had brought the
posse fairly upon his heels; the farmer saw the fugitive and brought his
shotgun to the ready; and Black Bart in an agony of impatience raced round
and round the master. A wild cheer rose from the posse and came echoing
about him; they had sighted their quarry. From Rickett to Morgan Hills,
from Morgan Hills to St. Vincent, from St. Vincent to Wago and far beyond;
but this was the end of an historic run.

"D'ye see?" whispered Barry, leaning close to Satan's ears. "Lad, d'ye see
what you've got to do?"

The black stood with his head very high, quivering through his whole body
while he eyed the fence. It was murderously high, and all things were
against him, the long run, the rise of the ground going toward the fence,
and the gravel from which he must take off for the jump.

"You can do it," said the master. "You got to do it! Go for it, boy. We win
or lose together!"

He swayed forward, and Satan leaped ahead at full speed, gathering impetus,
scattering the gravel on either side. The farmer on the inside of the fence
raised his shotgun leisurely to his shoulder and took a careful aim. He
knew what it all meant. He had heard of the outlaw, Barry, with his
black horse and his wolf-dog--everyone in the desert had, for that matter--
and even had he been ignorant the shouting of the posse which now raced
down the canyon in full view would have told him all that he needed to
know. How many things went through his mind while he squinted down the
gleaming barrel! He thought of the long labor on the farm and the mortgage
which still ate the life of his produce every year; he thought of the
narrow bowed shoulders of his wife; he thought of the meager faces of his
children; and he thought first and last of ten thousand dollars reward! No
wonder the hand which supported the barrels was steady as an iron prop. He
was shooting for his life and the happiness of five souls!

He would save his fire till he literally saw the white of the enemy's eyes:
until the outlaw reached the fence, No horse on the mountain-desert could
top that highest strand of wire as he very well knew; and in his youth,
back in Kentucky, he had ridden hunters. That fence came exactly to the top
of his head, and the top of his head was six feet and two inches from the
ground. To make assurance doubly sure he dropped upon one knee and made
that shotgun an unstirring part and portion of himself.

Nobly, nobly the black came on, his ears pricking as he judged the great
task and his head carried a little high and back as any good jumper knows
his head must be carried.

The practiced eye of the farmer watched the outlaw gather his horse under
him. Well he knew the meaning of that shortening grip on the reins to give
the horse the last little lift that might mean success or failure in the
jump. Well he knew that rise in the stirrups, that leaning forward, and his
heart rose in unison and went back to the blue grass of Kentucky glittering
in the sun.

Before them went the wolf-dog, skimming low, reached the fence, and shot
over it in a graceful, high-arched curve.

Then the shout of the rider: "Up! Up!"

And the stallion reared and leaped. He seemed to graze it coming up, so
close was his take-off; he seemed to be pawing his way over with the
forefeet; and then with both legs doubled close, hugging his body, he shot
across and left the highest strand of the wire quivering and humming.

The farmer hurled his best shotgun a dozen yards away and threw up his
hat.

"Go it, lad! God bless ye; and good luck!"

The hand of the rider lifted in mute acknowledgment, and as he shot past,
the farmer caught a glimpse of a delicately handsome face that smiled down
at him.

"The left gate! The left gate!" he shouted through his cupped hands, and as
the fugitive rushed through the upper gate he turned to face the posse
which was already pulling up at the fence and drawing their wirecutters.

As Barry shot out onto the higher ground on the other side of the farmhouse
he could see them severing the wires and the interruption of the chase
would be only a matter of seconds. But seconds counted triply now, and the
halt and the time they would spend getting up impetus all told in favor of
the fugitive.

Thirty-five miles, or thereabouts, since they left Rickett that morning,
and still the black ran smoothly, with a lilt to his gallop. Dan Barry
lifted his head and his whistling soared and pulsed and filled the air. It
made Bart come back to him; it made Satan toss his head and glance at the
master from the corner of his bright eye, for this was an assurance that
the battle was over and the rest not far away.

On they drove, straight as a bird flies for Caswell City, and Black Bart,
ranging ahead among the hills, was picking the way once more. If the
stallion were tired, he gave no sign of it. The sweep of his stride brushed
him past rocks and shrubs, and he literally flowed uphill and down, far
different from the horses which scampered in his rear, for they pounded the
earth with their efforts, grunting under the weight of fifty pound saddles
and heavy riders. Another handicap checked them, for while Satan ran on
alone, freely, the bunched pursuers kept a continual friction back and
forth. The leaders reined in to keep back with the mass of the posse, and
those in the rear by dint of hard spurring would rush up to the front in
turn until some spirited nag challenged for the lead, so that there was a
steady interplay among the fifteen. Their gait at the best could not be
more than the pace, of their slowest member, but even that pace was
diminished by the difficulties of group riding. Yet Mark Retherton refused
to allow his men to scatter and stretch out. He kept them in hand steadily,
a bunched unit ready to strike together, for he had seen the dead body of
Pete Glass and he kept in mind a picture of what might happen if this
fellow should whirl and pick off the posse man by man. Better prolong the
run, for in the end no single horse could stand up against so many relays.
Yet it was maddening to watch the stallion float over hill and dale with
that same unbroken stride.

Once and again he sent the fresh horses from Wago after the fugitive in a
sprinting burst, but each time the black drifted farther away, and mile
after mile Mark Retherton pulled his field glasses to his eyes and strained
his vision to make out some sign of labor in the gait of Satan. There was
no change. His head was still high, the rhythm of his lope unfaltering.

But here the Wago Mountains--not more than ragged hills, to be sure--cut
across the path of the outlaw and in those hills, unless the message which
waited for him at Wago had been false, should be the men of Caswell City,
two score or more besides the fifteen fresh horses for the posse. Two score
of men, at least, Caswell could send out, and from the heights they could
surely detect the coming of Barry and plant themselves in his way. An
ambush, a volley, would end this famous ride.

The hills came up on them swiftly, now, and if the men of Caswell failed in
their duty it meant safety for the fugitive, because two miles beyond were
the willows of the marshes and the fords across the Asper River. There
could only be two alternatives, since not a man showed on the hills. Either
they waited in ambush, or else they had mistaken the route along which
Barry would come, and the latter was hardly possible. With his glasses Mark
Retherton scanned the hills anxiously and it was then that he saw the dark
form of the wolf-dog skulking on before the outlaw. He had watched Black
Bart before this, of course, but never with suspicion until he noted the
peculiar manner in which the animal skirted here and there through the
rough ground, pausing on high places, weaving back and forth across the
course of his master.

"Like a scout," thought Retherton. "And by God, there he comes to report!"

For Black Bart had whirled and raced straight back for Dan. There was no
need of howl or whine to give the reason of his coming; the speed of his
running meant business, and Barry shortened the pace of Satan while he
looked over the hills, incredulous, despairing.

It could not be that men lurked there to cut him off. No living thing could
have raced from Rickett to Caswell City to warn them of his coming.
Nevertheless, there came Bart with the ill tidings, and it only remained to
skirt swiftly east, round the dangerous ground, and strike the marshes
first. He swung Satan around on the new course with a pressure of his knees
and loosed him into a freer gallop.

They must have sensed the meaning of this maneuver at once, for hardly had
he stretched out east when voices shouted out of the hills, and around and
over several low knolls came forty horsemen, racing. Half a dozen were
already due east--no escape that way; and the long line of the others came
straight at him with the slope of the ground to give them velocity.



Chapter XXXIV. The Warning

All in a grim instant he saw the trap. It closed upon his consciousness
with a click, and as he doubled Satan around he knew that the only escape
was in running southeast along the banks of the Asper. Even that was a
desperate, a forlorn chance, for if that omnipotent voice could reach from
Rickett to Caswell City, fifty miles away, certainly it must have warned
the river towns of Ganton and Wilsonville and Bly Falls where Tucker Creek
ran into the Asper. But this was no time for thinking. Already, looking
back, he saw the posse changing their saddles to fifteen fresh mounts, and
he headed Satan across the Wago Hills, West and South.

It was hot work. Even the steel-wire muscles of Black Bart were weakening
under the tremendous labors of that day, and as he scouted ahead his head
was low and his red tongue lolled, and surest sign of all, the bushy tail
drooped; yet it was time to make a new call upon both wolf-dog and horse,
for the posse was racing after him as before, giving even the fresh, willing
mounts the urge of spurs and quirts. He ran his hand down the dripping
neck and shoulder of Satan; he called to him; and with a snort the stallion
responded. He felt the quiver as the muscles tightened for the work; he
felt the settling as Satan lengthened to racing speed.

Through the Wago Hills, then, with Bart picking the way as before, and
never a falter in the sweep of Satan's running. If his head was a little
lower, if his ears lay flat, only the master knew the meaning, and still,
when he spoke, the glistening ears pricked up, and they bounded on to a
greater speed than before. The flight of a gull on unstirring wings when
the wind buoys it, the glide of water over the descent of smooth rock, with
never a ripple, like all things effortless, swift, and free, such was the
gait of Satan as he fled. Let them spur the fresh horses from Caswell City
till their flanks dripped red, they would never gain on him.

On through the hills, and now the heave of his great breaths told of the
strain, down like an arrow into the rolling ground, and now they galloped
beside the Asper banks. The master looked darkly upon that water.

Ten days before, when the snows had not yet reached the climax of melting,
ten days later when that climax was overpassed, the Asper would have been
fordable, but now a brown flood stormed along the gully, ate away the
banks, undermined the willows here and there, and rolled stones larger than
a man could lift. It went with an angry shouting as if it defied the
fugitive. It was narrow, maddeningly narrow, almost small enough to attempt
a leap across to the safety of the thickets on the farther side, but the
force of the water alone was enough to warn the bravest swimmer away, and
here and there, like teeth in the mouth of the shark, jagged stones cut the
surface with white foam streaking out below them; as if to prove its power,
even while Dan turned South along the bank a dead trunk shot down the
stream and split on one of the Asper's teeth.

Even then he felt the temptation. There lay the forest on the farther side,
a forest which would shelter him, and above the forest, hardly a mile back,
began the Grizzly Peaks. They lunged straight up to snowy summits, and all
along their sides blue shadows of the afternoon drifted through a network
of ravines--a promise of peace, a surety of safety if he could reach that
labyrinth.

He was almost glad when he left the mockery of the river's noise to turn
aside for Ganton. There it lay in a bend of the Asper in the low-lands, and
every town where men lived was an enemy. He could see them now gathered
just outside the village, twenty men, perhaps and fifteen spare horses, the
best they had, for the posse.

On past Ganton, and again a call upon Satan to meet the first spurt of the
posse on its new horses. There was something in the stallion to answer,
some incredible reserve of nerve strength and courage. There was a slight
labor, now, and something of the same heave and pitch which comes in the
gait of a common horse; also, when he put Satan up the first slope beyond
Ganton he noted a faltering, a deeper lowering of the head. When his hoofs
struck a loose rock he no longer had the easy recoil of the morning. He
staggered like a graceful yacht chopped by a cross-current. Now down the
slope, now back to the roar of the Asper once more, for there the going was
most level, but always the strides were shortening, shortening, and the
head of the stallion nodded at his work.

All that was seen by Mark Retherton through his glasses, though they were
almost close enough now to see details through the naked eye. He turned in
the saddle to the posse, grim faces, sweat and dust clotted in their
moustaches, their faces drawn and gray with streaks over the nose and under
the eyes where perspiration ran. They rode crookedly, now, for seventy
miles at full speed had racked them, twisted them, cramped their muscles.
Scotty kept his head tilted far back, for his spinal column seemed about to
snap. Walsh leaned to his right side which a tormenting pain drew at every
stride, and Hendricks cursed in gasps through a wry mouth. It had been an
hour since Mark Retherton last spoke, and when he attempted it now his
voice was as hoarse as a croaking frog.

"Boys, buck up! He's done! D'ye see the black laborin'. D'ye see it? Hey,
Lew, Garry, we've got the best hosses among us three. Now's the time for a
spurt, and by God, we'll run him down. I'm startin!"

He made his word good with an Indian yell and a wave of his hat that sent
his buckskin leaping straight into the air, to land with stiff legs,
"swallowing its head," but then it straightened out in earnest. That
buckskin had a name from Bly Falls to Caswell City speed and courage, and
it lived up to the record in the time of need. Close behind it came Lew and
Garry ponies scarcely slower than the buckskin, and they closed rapidly on
Satan. The plan of Retherton was plain: now that the black was running on
its nerve a spurt might bring them within striking distance and if they
could check the flight for an instant by opening advance guard fire, they
might drive the fugitive into a corner by the river and hold him there
until the main body the posse came up. The three of them running alone the
lead could do five yards for every four of the slow horses, and the effect
showed at once.

Going up a slope the trot of the stallion maintained or even increased his
lead, but when they reached the easier ground beyond they drew rapidly upon
him. They saw Barry bend low; they saw the stallion increase its pace.

"By God," shouted Retherton in involuntary admonition, "I'd rather have
that hoss than the ten thousand. But feed 'em the spurs, boys, and he'll
come back to us inside a mile."

And Retherton was right. Before that mile was over the black slipped back
inch by inch, until at length Retherton called: "Now grab your guns boys
and see if you can salt him down with lead. Give your hosses their heads
and turn loose!"

They pulled their guns to their shoulders and sent a volley at the outlaw.
One bullet clipped a spark from the rocks just behind the stallion's feet;
the other two must have gone wide. Once more Barry flinched closer over the
neck of Satan and once again the horse answered with a fresh burst of
speed, but in a few moments he came back to them. Flesh could not stand
that pace after seventy-five miles of running.

They saw the rider straighten and look back; then the sun flashed on his
rifle.

"Feed 'em the spur!" shouted Retherton. "If we can't hit him shooting
ahead, he ain't got a chance to hit us shootin' backwards." For it is
notoriously hard to turn in the saddle and accomplish anything with a
rifle. One is moving away from the target instead of toward it, and every
condition of ordinary shooting is reversed; above all, the moment a man
turns his head he is completely out of touch with his horse. Apparently the
fugitive knew this and made no attempt to place his shots. He merely jerked
his gun to the shoulder and blazed away as soon as it was in place; half a
dozen yards in front of Retherton the bullet kicked up the dust.

"I told you," he shouted. "He can't do nothin' that way. Close in, boys.
Close in for God's sake!"

He himself was flailing with his quirt, and the buckskin grunted at every
strike. Once more the rifle pitched to the outlaw's shoulder, and this time
the bullet clicked on a rock not ten feet from Retherton, and again on a
straight line for him.

"Damned if that ain't shootin'!" called Garry, and Retherton, alarmed,
swung the buckskin out to one side to throw the marksman out of line. He
had turned again in the saddle, and as though the episode were at an end,
restored his rifle to its case, but when they poured in another volley
about him, he swung sharply roundabout again, gun in hand. Once more the
rifle went to his shoulder, and this time the bullet knocked a puff of dust
into the very nostrils of the buckskin. Retherton reined in with an oath.

"He's been warn in' me, boys," he called. "That devil has the range like he
was sitting in a rockin' chair shooting at a tin-can. He's warnin' us back
to the rest of the gang. And damned if we ain't goin'!"

It was quite patent that he was right, for three bullets sent on a line for
one horse, and each of them closer, could mean only one thing. They checked

their horses, and in a moment the rest of the posse was clattering around
them.

"It don't make no difference," called Retherton, "savin' in time. Maybe
he'll last to Wilsonville, but he can't stay in three miles when we hang
onto him with fresh hosses. The black is runnin' on nothin' but guts right
now."



Chapter XXXV. The Asper

Ninety miles of ground, at least, had been covered by the black stallion,
since he left Rickett that morning, yet when he galloped across the plain
in full sight of Wilsonville there were plenty of witnesses who vowed that
Satan ran like a colt frolicking over a pasture. Mark Retherton knew
better, and the posse to a man felt the end was near. They changed saddles
in a savage silence and went down the street out of town with a roar of
racing hoofs.

And Barry too, as he watched them whip around the corner of the last house
and streak across the fields, knew that the end of the ride was near.
Strength, wind and nerve were gone from Satan; his hoofs pounded the ground
with the stamp of a plowhorse; his breath came in wheezes with a rattle
toward the end; the tail no longer fluttered out straight behind. Yet when
the master leaned and called he found something in his great heart with
which to answer. A ghost of his old buoyancy came in his stride, the
drooping head rose, one ear quivered up, and he ran against the challenge
of those fresh ponies from Wilsonville. There were men who doubted it when
the tale was told, but Mark Retherton swore to the truth of it.

Even then that desperate effort was failing. Not all the generous will in
the heart of the stallion could give his legs the speed they needed; and he
fell back by inches, by feet, by yards, toward the posse. They disdained
their guns now, and kept them in the cases; for the game was theirs.

And then they noted an odd activity in the fugitive, who had slipped to one
side and was fumbling at his cinches. They could not understand for a time,
but presently the saddle came loose, the cinches flipped out, and the whole
apparatus crashed to the ground. Nor was this all. The rider leaned forward
and his hands worked on the head of his mount until the hackamore also came
free and was tossed aside. To that thing fifteen good men and true swore
the next day with strange oaths, and told how a man rode for his life on a
horse that wore neither saddle nor bridle but ran obediently to voice and
hand.

Every ounce counted, and there were other ounces to be spared. He was
leaning again, to this side and then to that, and presently the posse
rushed past the discarded riding-boots.

There lay the rifle in its case on the saddle far behind. And with the
rifle remained all the fugitive's chances of fighting at long range. Now,
following, came the heavy cartridge belt and the revolver with it. The very
sombrero was torn from his head and thrown away.

His horse was failing visibly; not even this lightening could keep it away
from the posse long; and yet the man threw away his sole chance of safety.
And the fifteen pursuers cursed solemnly as they saw the truth. He would
run his horse to death and then die with it empty handed rather than let
either of them fall a captive.

Unburdened by saddle or gun or trapping, the stallion gave himself in the
last effort. There ahead lay safety, if they could shake off this last
relay of the posse, and for a time he pulled away until Retherton grew
anxious, and once more the bullets went questing around the fugitive. But
it was a dying effort. They gained; they drew away; and then they were only
holding the posse even, and then once more, they fell back gradually toward
the pursuit. It was the end, and Barry sat bolt erect and looked around
him; that would be the last of him and the last scene he should see.

There came the posse, distant but running closer. With every stride Satan
staggered; with every stride his head drooped, and all the lilt of his
running was gone. Ten minutes, five minutes more and the fifteen would be
around him. He looked to the river which thundered there at his side.

It was the very swiftest portion of all the Asper between Tucker Creek and
Caswell City. Even at that moment, a few hundred yards away, a tall tree
which had been undermined, fell into the stream and dashed the spray high;
yet even that fall was silent in the general roar of the river. Checked by
the body and the branches of the tree for an instant before it should be
torn away from the bank and shot down stream, the waters boiled and left a
comparatively smooth, swift sliding current beyond the obstruction; and it
gave to Barry a chance or a ghost of a chance:

The central portion of the river bed was chopped with sharp rocks which
tore the stream into white rages of foam; but beyond these rocks, a little
past the middle, the tree like a dam smoothed out the current; it was still
swift but not torn with swirls or cross-currents, and in that triangle of
comparatively still water of which the base was the fallen tree, the apex
lay on a sand bar, jutting a few yards from the bank. And the forlorn hope
of Barry was to swing the stallion a little distance away from the banks,
run him with the last of his ebbing strength straight for the bank, and try
to clear the rocky portion of the river bed with a long leap that might, by
the grace of God, shoot him into the comparatively protected current. Even
then it would be a game only a tithe won, for the chances were ten to one
that before they could struggle close to the shore, the currents would
suck them out toward the center. They would never reach that shelving bit
of sand, but the sharp rocks of the stream would tear them a moment later
like teeth. Yet the dimmest chance was a good chance now.

He called Satan away from his course, and at the change of direction the
stallion staggered, but went on, turned at another call, and headed
straight for the stream. He was blind with running; he was numbed by the
long horror of that effort, no doubt, but there was enough strength left in
him to understand the master's mind. He tossed his head high, he flaunted
out his tail, and sped with a ghost of his old sweeping gallop toward the
bank.

"Bart!" shouted the master, and waved his arm.

And the wolf saw too. He seemed to cringe for a moment, and then, like some
old leader of a pack who knows he is about to die and defies his death, he
darted for the river and flung himself through the air.

An instant later Satan reared on the bank and shot into the air. Below him
the teeth of the rocks seemed to lift up in hunger, and the white foam
jumped to take him. The crest of the arc of his jump was passed; he shot
lower and grazing the last of the stones he plunged out of sight in the
swift water beyond. There were two falls, not one, for even while the black
was in the air Barry slipped from his back and struck the water clear of
Satan.

They came up again struggling in the last effort toward the shore. The
impetus of their leap had washed them well in toward the bank, but the
currents dragged them out again toward the center of the stream where the
rocks waited. Down river they went, and Black Bart alone had a ghost of a
chance for success. His leap had been farther and he skimmed the surface
when he struck so that by dint of fierce swimming he hugged close to the
shore, and then his claws bedded in the sand-bank.

As for Barry, the waters caught him and sent him spinning over and over,
like a log, whipping down stream, while the heavier body of Satan was
struggling whole yards above. There was no chance for the master to reach
the sand-bank, and even if he reached it he could not cling; but the
wolf-dog knew many things about water. In the times of famine long years
before the days of the master there had been ways of catching fish.

He edged forward until the water foamed about his shoulders. Down came Dan,
his arms tumbling as he whirled, and on the sleeve of one of those arms the
teeth of Bart closed. The cloth was stout, and yet it ripped as if it were
rotten veiling, and the tug nearly swept Bart from his place. Still, he
clung; his teeth shifted their hold with the speed of light and closed over
the arm of the master itself, slipped, sank deeper, drew blood, and held.
Barry swung around and a moment later stood with his feet buried firmly in
the bank.

He had not a moment to spare, for Satan, only his eyes and his nose
showing, rushed down the current, making his last fight. Barry thrust his
feet deeper in the sand, leaned, buried both hands in the mane of the
stallion. It was a far fiercer tug-of-war this time, for the ample body of
the horse gave the water a greater surface to grapple on, yet the strength
of the man sufficed. His back bowed; his shoulders ached with the strain;
and then the forefeet of Satan pawed the sand, and all three staggered up
the shelving bank, reeled among the trees, and collapsed in safety.

So great was the roar of the water that they heard neither shouts nor the
reports of the guns, but for several minutes the bullets of the posse
combed the shrubbery as high as the breast of a man.



Chapter XXXVI. The Empty Cave

Through ten months of the year a child of ten could wade the Asper but now
its deep roaring that set the ground quivering under Barry gave him perfect
assurance of safety. Not one of that posse would attempt the crossing, he
felt, but he slipped back through the shrubbery close to the bank to make
sure. He was in time to see Mark Retherton give a command with gestures
that sent reluctant guns into the holsters. Fists were brandished toward
the green covert on the farther side of the river, so close, such an
unreachable distance. One or two rode their horses down to the very edge of
the water, but they gave up the thought and the whole troop turned back
toward Wilsonville; even the horses were down-headed.

Back in the covert he found Bart lying with his head on his paws, his eyes
closed, his sides swelling and closing till every rib seemed broken; yet
now and then he opened one red eye to look at Satan. The stallion lay in
almost exactly the same position, and the rush and rattle of his breathing
was audible even in the noise of the Asper; Barry dropped prone and pressed
his ear against the left side of the horse, just behind the shoulder. The
fierce vibration fairly shook his head; he could hear the rush of the blood
except when that deadly rattling of the breath came. When he rose to his
knees the face of the master was serious, thoughtful.

"Satan!" he called, but the river must have drowned his voice. Only when he
passed his fingers down the wet neck, one of Satan's ears pricked, and fell
instantly back. It would not do to let him lie there in the cool mold by
the water, for he knew that the greatest danger in overheating a horse is
that it may cool too quickly afterward.

He stooped directly in front of Satan and swept up an arm in command; it
brought only a flicker of the eyelid, the eyelid which drooped over a
glazing eye.

"Up!" he commanded.

One ear again pricked; the head lifted barely clear of the ground; the
forelegs stiffened with effort, trembled, and were still again.

"Bart!" shouted the master, "wake him up!"

The voice could not have carried to the wolf through the uproar of the
waters, but the gesture, the expression brought home the order, and Black
Bart came to his feet, staggering. Right against the nose of Satan he bared
his great teeth and his snarl rattled. No living creature could hear that
sound without starting, and the head of Satan raised high. Still before him
Bart growled and under his elbow and his chest the hands of the master
strained up. He swayed with a snort very like a human groan, struggled, the
forelegs secured their purchase, and he came slowly to his feet. There he
stood, braced and head low; a child might have caught him by the mane and
toppled him upon his side, and already his hind legs were buckling.

"Get on!" cried Barry.

There was a lift of the head, a quivering of the tensed nostrils, but that
was all. He seemed to be dying on his feet, when the master whistled. The
sound cut through the rushing of the Asper as a ray of light probes a dark
room, shrill, harsh, like the hissing of some incredible snake, and Satan
went an uncertain step forward, reeled, almost fell; but the shoulder of
the master was at his side lifting up, and the arm of the master was under
his chest, raising. He tried another step; he went on among the trees with
his forelegs sprawling and his head drooped as though he were trying to
crop grass. Black Bart did his part to recall that flagging spirit.
Sometimes it was his snarl that startled the black; sometimes he leaped,
and his teeth clashed a hair's breadth from Satan's nose.

By degrees the congealing blood flowed freely again through Satan's body;
he no longer staggered; and now he lifted a forepaw and struck vaguely at
Bart as the wolf-dog leaped. Barry stepped away.

"Bart!" he called, and the shouting of the Asper was now so far away that
he could be heard. "Come round here, old boy, and stop botherin' him. He's
goin' to pull through."

He leaned against a willow, his face suddenly old and white with something
more than exhaustion, and laughed in such an oddly pitched, cracked tone
that the wolf-dog slunk to him on his belly and licked the dangling hand.
He caught the scarred head of Bart and looked steadily down into the eyes
of the wolf.

"It was a close call, Bart. There wasn't more than half an inch between
Satan and--"

The black turned his head and whinnied feebly.

"Listen to him callin' for help like a new-foaled colt," said the master,
and went to Satan.

The head of the stallion rested on his shoulder as they went slowly on.

"Tonight," said the master, "you get two pieces of pone without askin'."
The cold nose of the jealous wolf-dog thrust against his left hind. "You
too, Bart. You showed us the way."

The rattle had left the breathing of Satan, the stagger was gone from his
walk; with each instant he grew perceptibly larger as they approached the
border of the wood. It fell off to a scattering thicket with the Grizzly
Peaks stepping swiftly up to the sky. This was their magic instant in all
the day, when the sun, grown low in the west, with bulging sides, gave the
mountains a yellow light. They swelled up larger with warm tints of gold
rolling off into the blue of the canyons; at the foot of the nearest slope
a thicket of quaking aspens was struck by a breeze and flashed all silver.
Not many moments more, and all the peaks would be falling back into the
evening,

It seemed that Satan saw this, for he raised his head from the shoulder of
the master and stopped to look.

"Step on," commanded Barry.

The stallion shook himself violently as a dog that knocks the water from
his pelt, but he took no pace forward.

"Satan!"

The order made him sway forward, but he checked the movement.

"I ask you man to man, Bart," said the master in sudden anger, "was there
ever a worse fool hoss than him? He won't budge till I get on his back."

The wolf-dog shoved his nose again into Barry's hand and growled. He seemed
quite willing to go on alone with the master and leave Satan forgotten.

"All right," said Barry. "Satan, are you comin'?"

The horse whinnied, but would not move.

"Then stay here."

He turned his back and walked resolutely across the meadow, but slowly, and
more slowly, until a ringing neigh made him stop and turn. Satan had not
stirred from his first halting place, but now his head was high and his
cars pricked anxiously. He pawed the ground in his impatience.

"Look there, Bart," observed the master gloomily. "There's pride for you.
He won't let on that he's too weak to carry me. Now I'd ought to let him
stay there till he drops."

He whistled suddenly, the call sliding up, breaking, and rising again with
a sharp appeal. Satan neighed again as it died away.

"If that won't bring him, nothin' will. Back we got to go. Bart, you jest
take this to heart: It ain't any use tryin' to bring them to reason that
ain't got any sense."

He went back and sprang lightly to the back of the horse and Satan
staggered a little under the weight but once, as if to prove that his
strength was more than equal to the task, he broke into a trot. A harsh
order called him back to a walk, and so they started up into the Grizzly
Peaks.

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 be
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, but 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.

But where Kate left off, chance took up the battle and turned the scales.
Old Li, the Chinese cook, had not seen Kate for six long years, and now he
celebrated the return by hanging about her on a thousand pretexts. It was
just after he had brought in some delicacy from the kitchen, leaving the
door a little ajar, when a small ball of gray fur nosed its way through the
aperture and came straight for the glare of the fire on the hearth. It was
a small shepherd puppy, and having observed the faces of the men with
bright, unafraid eyes, it went wobbling on to the very hearth, sniffling.
Even at that age it knew enough to keep away from the bright coals of wood,
but how could it know that the dark, cold-looking andirons had been heated
to the danger point by the fire? It thrust out a tentative nose, touched
the iron, and then its shrill yelp of pain went startlingly through the
room. It pulled the three grown-ups out of their thoughts; it brought Joan
scampering across the room with a little happy cry.

The puppy would have escaped if it could, for it had in mind the dark,
warm, familiar corner in Li's kitchen where no harm ever came near, but the
agile hands of Joan caught him; he was swept into her arms. That little
wail of helpless pain, the soft fluff of fur against her cheek, wiped all
other things from Joan's mind. Out the window and across the gloomy hills
she had been staring at the picture of the cave, and bright-eyed Satan, and
the shadowy form of Bart, and the swift, gentle hand of Daddy Dan; but the
cry of the puppy blotted the picture out. She was no longer lonely, having
this small, soft body to protect. There sat her mother, leaning a little
toward her with a glance at once misted and bright, and she forgot forthwith
all the agency of Kate in carrying her away from that cave of delight.

"Look, munner! He's burned his nose!"

The puppy was licking the injured nose industriously and whimpering the
while. And Joan heard no answer from her mother except an inarticulate
little sound somewhere deep in Kate's throat. Over her child mind, vaguely,
like all baby memories, moved a recollection of the same sound, coming
deeply from the throat of the mother and marvelously soothing, reassuring.
It moved a fiber of trust and sympathy in Joan, an emotion as real as the
sound of music, and with the puppy held idly in her arms for a moment, she
looked curiously into Kate's face. On her own, a faint smile began in the
eyes and spread to the lips.

"Poor little puppy, munner," said Joan.

The hands of Kate trembled with desire to bring Joan closer to her, but
very wisely she merely stroked the cringing head of the dog.

"Poor little puppy," she echoed.



Chapter XXXIX. Victory

The entrance of the puppy, to liken small things to great, was the coming
of Blucher in Kate's life, for the battle turned, and all in five minutes
she had gone from defeat to victory. She sat by the fire with Joan sleeping
in her arms, and the puppy in turn in the arms of Joan. It was such a
foolish trick of chance that had given her all this, she was almost
inclined to laugh, but something of tragedy in the faces of Buck and Lee
Haines made her thoroughly serious. And she readily saw the truth for after
all a child's brain is a small affair; it holds so much and no more. One
instant the longing for Dan was all that Joan could think of; the next she
had no room for anything more than the burned nose of the puppy--if there
were other phases to this matter--such as Buck Daniels had pointed out--fear
that in some future crisis the blood of the father might show in the child,
Kate pushed such thoughts away. She was too full of the present happiness.

Now, while she sat there in the firelight, she sang softly into the dreams
of Joan, and watched the smile of sleep grow and wane faintly on the lips
of the child as the rhythm of her singing lifted and fell. One half of her
mind was empty, that part where Dan should have been, and a dozen times she
checked an impulse to turn to him in the place where he should be sitting
and invite him with a smile to share her happiness. When her eyes moved
they only fell on the gaunt, intent face of Buck or the leonine head of
Haines. Whistling Dan was gone and if he ever came again her fear of him,
her fear for Joan, would be greater than her love. Yet Dan being gone so
finally, she knew that she would never be truly happy again. Her spring of
life was ended, but even now she was grateful for the full richness of
those six years with Dan; and if she turned from him now it was only
because a mighty instinct commanded her and a voice without words drove
her--Joan must go on to a normal, womanly happiness. Dan Barry lived from
day to day, glutting himself with a ride in the wind, or the whistle of a
far-off bird, or the wail of a mountain-lion through the night. Each
instant was to him complete, but the eye of Kate looked far away and saw
the night when this daughter of hers should sit holding an infant by such a
fire, and her heart was both empty and full.

It was no wonder, then, that she heard the first sound long before either
Haines or Buck Daniels, for her mind was on guard against dangers which
might threaten her baby. It was a faint slipping, scratching noise on the
veranda; then a breathing at the front door. Kate turned, and the men
followed the terror of her eyes in time to see the door fall open, and a
broad paw appear in the interval. The snaky head of Black Bart thrust into
the room.

Without a word, Daniels drew his gun.

"Wait!" commanded Kate. Joan awoke with a start at the sharpness of this
voice. "Don't shoot, Buck. See that bit of paper under his throat. He's
bringing a message."

"Bart!" cried Joan, slipping to the floor from her mother's lap, but when
she ran toward the wolf-dog, that tremendous snarl of warning stopped her
short. Bart slunk toward Kate.

"Look out, Kate!" cried Haines. "The black devil means murder."

"Don't move, or he'll go at your throat," she answered. "There's no danger
to me. He's been ordered to go to me and he won't let even Joan touch him.
See!"

He had glided past the amazed, outstretched arms of Joan and went straight
to Kate and stopped beside her, obviously expectant. She reached for the
slip of folded paper, and as her hand approached he crouched a little,
growling; but it was only to caution her, apparently, and though he
distrusted the hand, he allowed it to unfasten the missive.

She untwisted the note, she read aloud: "Kate, send Joan back to me or I
come for her. Send her with Bart."

It seemed as though the wolf-dog understood the written words, for now he
moved toward Joan and she, with a cry, dropped the squealing puppy and
caught the great head of Bart in her arms. The puppy wailed, sitting down
on his haunches, and quivering with grief.

"Daddy Dan wants me," explained Joan with bright eyes. "He's sent for me. Go
quick, Bart!"

The big animal lay down to facilitate her mounting.

"Joan!" called Kate. The child hesitated and turned toward her. Her mother
had taken up that light revolver which Dan had taught her to use so well,
and now, as she leveled it at the wolf-dog, Bart laid his fangs bare in
silent hate. The weapons of Buck and Lee Haines were ready, and now Bart
raised himself a little and commenced to drag gradually forward to leaping
distance.

"Drop your gun, Kate," cautioned Buck. "For God's sake drop your gun. Even
if you hit him with a bullet, he'll be at your throat. Unless you kill him
with the first shot he'll have you. Drop your gun, and then he'll go at
us."

But Joan knew perfectly well what those gleaming bits of steel meant. She
had seen Daddy Dan shoot and kill, and now she ran screaming between Bart
and danger.

"Munner!" she cried. "You bad, bad men. I won't let you hurt Bart."

"They won't hurt you, Bart," explained Joan, taming much mollified to the
great wolf-dog. "They're just playin'. Now we'll go."

And she started toward the door, with Bart slinking in front and keeping a
watchful lookout from a corner of his eye.

"Are you going to leave the poor little puppy, Joan?" said the mother,
keeping her voice steady, for all the force of the two men could not help
her now. It rested with her wit.

"I'll take him with me," answered Joan, and caught up the howling puppy
from the floor. His wails died out against her breast.

"But you mustn't do that, honey. He'd die in this cold night wind long
before you got there."

"Oh!" sighed Joan, and considered her mother with great eyes. Black Bart
turned and uneasily tugged at her dress.

"Will you take good care of him, munner? Till I come back?"

"But I don't know how to take care of him, dear. If you go he'll cry and
cry and cry until he dies."

Joan sighed.

"See how quiet he is when you hold him, Joan!"

"Oh," muttered Joan again. The distress of the problem made her wrinkle her
forehead. She turned to Kate for help.

"Munner, what'll I do?"

"You'd best stay here until the puppy is strong enough to go with you."

She kept her voice well under control; it would not do to show the
slightest emotion, and now she sat down and half turned away from the
child. With her eyes she flashed a signal at the two troubled men and they
followed her lead. Their center of vision was now upon the fire. It left
Joan, to all appearances, quite out of notice.

"Oh, that'll be a long, long time, munner."

"Only a little while, Joan."

"But Daddy Dan'll be lonesome up there."

"He has Satan and Bart to keep him company."

"Don't you think he wants Joan, munner?"

"Not as much as the poor little puppy wants you, Joan."

She added, with just the slightest tremor: "You decide for yourself, Joan.
Go if you think it is best."

"Bart, what'll Joan do?" queried the child, turning in dismay toward the
wolf-dog, but as soon as he saw the puppy in her arms, he greeted her with
a murderous snarl.

"You see," suggested her mother, "that Black Bart would eat up the poor
little puppy if you went now with him."

At this alarming thought, Joan shrank away from Bart and when he followed
her, anxiously, she cried: "Go away! Bad dog! Bad Bart!"

He caught the edge of her dress and drew back toward the door, and this
threw Joan into a sudden panic. She struck Bart across his wrinkled
forehead.

"Go away!" he slunk back, snarling at the puppy.

"Go back to Daddy Dan." Then, as he pricked his ears, still growling like
distant thunder: "Go tell Daddy Dan that Joan has to stay here a while.
Munner, how long?"

"Maybe a week, dear."

"A whole week?" she cried, dismayed.

"Perhaps only one or two or three days," said Kate.

Some of her tenseness was leaving as she saw victory once more inclining to
her standards.

"One, two, five days," counted Joan, "and then come for me again. Tell
Daddy Dan that, Bart."

His eyes left her and wandered around the room, lingering for a vicious
instant on the face of each, then he backed toward the door.

"He's clear of Joan now, Kate," whispered Buck. "Let me shoot!"

"No, no! Don't even look at him."

Then, with a scratching of sudden claws, Bart whirled at the door and was
gone like a bolt down the hall. Afterwards for a time there was no sound in
the room except the murmurings of Joan to her puppy, and then they heard
that most mournful of sounds on the mountain-desert, the long howl of a
wolf which has missed its kill, and hunts hungry on a new trail.



Chapter XL. The Failure

When Black Bart returned without Joan, without even a note of answer about
his neck, the master made ready to take by force. First he went over his
new outfit of saddle and guns, looking to every strap of the former, and
the latter, revolvers and rifle, he weighed and balanced with a meditative
look, as if he were memorizing their qualities against a time of need. With
Satan saddled and Bart on guard at the mouth of the cave, he gathered up
all the accumulation of odds and ends, provisions, skins, and made a
stirring bonfire in the middle of the gravel floor. It was like burning his
bridges before starting out to the battle; he turned his back to the cave
and started on his journey.

He had to travel in a loose semicircle, for there were two points which he
must reach on the ride, the town of Alder, where lived the seventh man who
must die for Grey Molly, and the Cumberland ranch, last of all, where he
would take Joan. Very early after his start he reached the plateau where he
had lived all those years with Kate, and he found it already sinking back
to ruin, with nothing in the corrals, and the front door swinging to and
fro idly in the wind, just as Joan had often played with it. Inside, he
knew, the rooms were empty; a current of air down the chimney had scattered
the ashes from the hearth all about the living room. Here must be a chair
overturned, and there the sand had drifted through the open door. All this
he saw clearly enough with his mind's eye, and urged Satan forward. For a
chill like the falling of sudden night had swept over him, and he shrugged
his shoulders with relief when he swept past the house. Yet when he came to
the long down-slope which pitched into the valley so far below him, he
called Satan to a halt again, and swung to look at the house. He could hear
the clatter of the front door as it swung; it seemed to be waving a
farewell to him.

It was all the work of a moment, to ride back, gather a quantity of paper
and readily inflammable materials, soak them in oil, and scratch a match.
The flames swept up the sides of the logs and caught on the ceiling first
of all, and Dan Barry stood in the center of the room until the terrified
whining of Black Bart and the teeth of the wolf-dog at his trousers made
him turn and leave the house. Outside, he found Satan trembling between two
temptations, the first to run as far and as fast as he could from that most
terrible thing--fire; and the second to gallop straight into the blaze. The
voice of the master, a touch quieted him, and Black Bart lay down at the
feet of the master and looked up into his face.

By this time the fire had licked away a passage through the roof and
through this it sent up a yellow hand that flicked up and down like a
signal, or a beckoning, and then shot up a tall, steady, growing, roaring
column of red. No man could say what went through the mind of Dan Barry as
he stood there watching the house of his building burn, but now he turned
and threw his arms over the neck and back of Satan, and dropped his
forehead against the withers of the black. It troubled the stallion. He
turned his head, and nosed the shoulder of the master gently, and Black
Bart, in an agony of anxiety, reared up beside Dan and brought his head
almost up to the head of the man; there he whined pleadingly for never
before had he seen the master hide his face.

A deep, short report made the master stand away from Satan. The fire had
reached a small stock of powder, and the shock of the explosion was
followed by a great crashing and rending as an inner wall went down. That
fall washed a solid mass of yellow flame across the front door, but the
fire fell back, and then Dan saw the doll which he himself had made for
Joan; it had been thrown by the smashing of the wall squarely in front of
the door, and now the fire reached after it--long arms across the floor. It
was an odd contrivance, singularly made of carved wood and with arms and
legs fastened on by means of bits of strong sinew, and Joan prized it above
all the rosy faced dolls which Kate had bought for her. For an instant Dan
stood watching the progress of the fire, then he leaped through the door,
swerved back as an arm of fire shot out at him, ran forward again, caught
up the doll and was outside rubbing away the singed portions of brows and
lashes.

He did not wait until the house was consumed, but when the flames stood
towering above the roof, shaking out to one side with a roar when the wind
struck them, he mounted Satan once more, and made for the valley.

He wanted to reach Alder at dark, and he gauged the time of his ride so
accurately that when he pulled out of the mouth of Murphy's Pass, the last
light of the day was still on the mountains and in the pass, but it was
already dark in the village, and a score of lights twinkled up at him like
eyes.

He left Satan and Bart well outside the town, for even in the dark they
might easily be recognized, and then walked straight down the street of
Alder. It was a bold thing to do, but he knew that the first thing which is
seen and suspected is the skulker who approaches from covert to covert.
They knew he had ridden into Alder before in the middle of the night and
they might suspect the danger of such another attack, but they surely would
not have fear of a solitary pedestrian unless a telltale light were thrown
upon his face.

He passed Captain Lorrimer's saloon. Even in this short interval it had
fallen into ill-repute after the killing at Alder. And a shanty farther
down the street now did the liquor business of the town; Captain Lorrimer's
was closed, and the window nailed across with slats. He went on. Partly by
instinct, and partly because it was aflame with lights, he moved straight
to the house at which he had learned tidings of three men he sought on his
last visit to Alder. Now there were more lights showing from the windows of
that place than there were in all the rest of Alder; at the hitching racks
in front, horses stood tethered in long double rows, and a noise of voices
rolled out and up and down the street. Undoubtedly, there was a festival
there, and all Alder would turn out to such an affair. All Alder, including
Vic Gregg, the seventh man. A group came down the street for the widow's
house; they were laughing and shouting, and they carried lanterns; away
from them Barry slipped like a ghost and stood in the shadow of the house.

There might be other such crowds, and they were dangerous to Barry, so now
he hunted for a means of breaking into the house of the widow unseen. The
windows, as he went down the side of the building, he noted to be high, but
not too high to be reached by a skillful, noiseless climber. In the back of
the house he saw the kitchen door, illumined indeed, but the room, as far
as he could see, empty.

Then very suddenly a wave of silence began somewhere in a side of the house
and swept across it, dying to a murmur at the edges. Barry waited for no
more maneuvers, but walked boldly up the back stairs and entered the house,
hat in hand.

The moment he passed the door he was alert, balanced. He could have swung
to either side, or whirled and shot behind him with the precision of a
leisurely marksman, and as he walked he smiled, happily with his head held
high. He seemed so young, then, that one would have said he had just come
in gaily from some game with the other youths of Alder.

Out of the kitchen he passed into the hall, and there he understood the
meaning of the silence, for both the doors to the front room were open, and
through the doors he heard a single voice, deep and solemn, and through the
doors he saw the crowd standing motionless. Their heads did not stir,--
heads on which the hair was plastered smoothly down--and when some one
raised a hand to touch an itching ear, or nose, he moved his arm with such
caution that it seemed he feared to set a magazine of powder on fire. All
their backs were towards Barry, where he stood in the hall, and as he
glided toward them, he heard the deep voice stop, and then the trembling
voice of a girl speak in reply.

At the first entrance he paused, for the whole scene unrolled before him.
It was a wedding. Just in front of him, on chairs and even on benches, sat
the majority of adult Alder,--facing these stood the wedding pair with the
minister just in front of them. He could see the girl to one side of the
minister's back, and she was very pretty, very femininely appealing, now,
in a dress which was a cloudy effect of white; but Barry gave her only one
sharp glance. His attention was for the men of the crowd. And although
there were only backs of heads, and side glimpses of faces he hunted
swiftly for Vic Gregg.

But Gregg was not there. He surveyed the assembly twice, incredulous, for
surely the tall man should be here, but when he was on the very point of
turning on his heel and slinking down the hall to pursue his hunt in other
quarters, the voice of the minister stopped, and the deep tone of Vic
himself rolled through the room.

It startled Barry like a voice out of the sky; he stared about, bewildered,
and then as the minister shifted his position a little he saw that it was
Gregg who stood there beside the girl in white,--it was Gregg being
married. And at the same moment, the eyes of Vic lifted, wandered, fell
upon the face which stood there framed in the dark of the doorway. Dan saw
the flush die out, saw the narrow, single-purposed face of Gregg turn
white, saw his eyes widen, and his own hand closed on his gun. Another
instant; the minister turned his head, seemed to be waiting, and then Gregg
spoke in answer: "I will!"

A thousand pictures rushed through the mind of Barry, and he remembered
first and last the wounded man on the gray horse who he had saved, and the
long, hard ride carrying that limp body to the cabin in the mountains. The
man would fight. By the motion of Gregg's hand, Dan knew that he had gone
even to his wedding armed. He had only to show his own gun to bring on the
crisis, and in the meantime the eyes of Vic held steadily upon him past the
shoulder of the minister, without fear, desperately. In spite of himself
Dan's hand could not move his gun. In spite of himself he looked to the
confused happy face of the girl. And he felt as he had felt when he set
fire to his house up there in the hills. The wavering lasted only a moment
longer; then he turned and slipped noiselessly down the hall, and the
seventh man who should have died for Grey Molly was still alive.



Chapter XLI. The Wild Geese

Twenty-four hours from Alder to Elkhead, and beyond Elkhead to the
Cumberland ranch, is long riding and hard riding, but not far after dark on
the following night, Joan lifted her head, where she played with the puppy
on the hearth, and listened. There was no sound audible to the others in
the living room; they did not even mark the manner in which she sat up, and
then rose to her feet. But when she whispered "Daddy Dan!" it brought each
of the three out of his chair. Still they heard nothing, and Buck and Lee
Haines would have retaken their chairs had not Kate gone to the window and
thrown it wide. Then they caught it, very far off, very thin and small, a
delicate thread of music, an eerie whistling. Without a word, she closed
the window, crossed the room and from the table she took up a cartridge
belt from which hung the holster with the revolver which Whistling Dan
taught her to use so well. She buckled it about her. Lee Haines and
Daniels, without a word, imitated her actions. Their guns were already on--
every moment since they reached the ranch they had gone armed but now they
looked to them, and tried the actions a few times before they thrust them
back into the holsters.

It was odd to watch them. They were like the last remnant of a garrison,
outworn with fighting, which prepares in grim quiet for the final stand.

The whistling rose a little in volume now. It was a happy sound, without a
recognizable tune, but a gay, wild improvisation as if a violinist, drunk,
was remembering snatches of masterpieces, throwing out lovely fragments
here and there and filling the intervals out of his own excited fancy. Joan
ran to the window, forgetful of the puppy, and kneeled there in the chair,
looking out. The whistling stopped as Kate drew down the curtain to cut out
Joan's view. It was far too dark for the child to see out, but she often
would sit like this, looking into the dark.

The whistling began again as Joan turned silently on her mother,
uncomplaining, but with a singular glint in her eyes, a sort of flickering,
inward light that came out by glances and starts. Now the sound of the
rider blew closer and closer. Kate gestured the men to their positions, one
for each of the two inner doors while she herself took the outer one. There
was not a trace of color in her face, but otherwise she was as calm as a
stone, and from her an atmosphere pervaded the room, so that men also stood
quietly at their posts, without a word, without a sign to each other. They
had their unspoken order from Kate. She would resist to the death and she
expected the same from them. They were prepared.

Still that crescendo of the whistling continued; it seemed as if it would
never reach them; it grew loud as a bird singing in that very room, and
still it continued to swell, increase--then suddenly went out. As if it
were the signal for which she had been waiting all these heartbreaking
moments, Kate opened the front door, ran quickly down the hall, and stood
an instant later on the path in front of the house. She had locked the
doors as she went through, and now she heard one of the men rattling the
lock to follow her. The rattling ceased. Evidently they decided that they
would hold the fort as they were.

Her heel hardly sank in the sand when she saw him. He came out of the night
like a black shadow among shadows, with the speed of the wind to carry him.
A light creak of leather as he halted, a glimmer of star light on Satan as
he wheeled, a clink of steel, and then Dan was coming up the path.

She knew him perfectly even before she could make out the details of the
form; she knew him by the light, swift, almost noiseless step, like the
padding footfall of a great cat--a sense of weight without sound. Another
form skulked behind him--Black Bart.

He was close, very close, before he stopped, or seemed to see her, though
she felt that he must have been aware of her since he first rode up. He was
so close, indeed, that the starlight--the brim of his hat standing up
somewhat from the swift riding--showed his face quite clearly to her. It
was boyish, almost, in its extreme youth, and so thinly molded, and his
frame so lightly made, that he seemed one risen from a wasting bed of
sickness. The wind fluttered his shirt and she wondered, as she had
wondered so often before, where he gained that incredible strength in so
meager a body. In all her life she had never loved him as she loved him
now. But her mind was as fixed as a star.

"You can't have her, Dan. You can't have her! Don't you see how terrible a
thing you'd make her? She's my blood, my pain, my love, and you want to
take her up yonder to the mountains and the loneliness--I'll die to keep
her!"

Now the moon, which had been buried in a drift of clouds, broke through
them, and seemed in an instant to slide a vast distance towards the earth,
a crooked half moon with its edges eaten by the mist. Under this light she
could see him more clearly, and she became aware of the thing she dreaded,
the faint smile which barely touched at the corners of his mouth; and in
his eyes a swirl of yellow light, half guessed at, half real. All her
strength poured out of her. She felt her knees buckle, felt the fingers
about the light revolver butt relax, felt every nerve grow slack. She was
helpless, and it was not fear of the man, but of something which stalked
behind him, inhuman, irresistible; not the wolf-dog, but something more
than Satan, and Bart, and Whistling Dan, something of which they were only
a part.

He began to whistle, thoughtfully, like one who considers a plan of action
and yet hesitates to begin. She felt his eyes run over her, as if judging
how he should put her most gently to one side; then from the house, very
lightly, hardly more than an echo of Dan's whistling, came an answer--the
very same refrain. Joan was calling to him.

At that he stepped forward, but the thing which stirred him, had hardened
the mind of Kate. The weakness passed in a flash. It was Joan, and for
Joan!

"Not a step!" she whispered, and jerked out her gun. "Not a step!"

He stood with one hand trailing carelessly from his hip, and at the gleam
of her steel his other hand dropped to a holster, fumbled there, and came
away empty; he could not touch her, not with the weight of a finger. That
thoughtful whistle came again: once more the answering whistle drifted out
from the house; and he moved forward another pace.

She had chosen her mark carefully, the upper corner of the seam of the
pocket upon his shirt, and before his foot struck the ground she fired. For
an instant she felt that she missed the mark, for he stood perfectly
upright, but when she saw that the yellow was gone from his eyes. They were
empty of everything except a great wonder. He wavered to his knees, and
then sank down with his arms around Black Bart. He seemed, indeed, to
crumple away into the night. Then she heard a shouting and trampling in
the house, and a breaking open of doors, and she knew that she had killed
Whistling Dan. She would have gone to him, but the snarl of Bart drove her
back. Then she saw Satan galloping up the path and come to a sliding halt
where he stood with his delicate nose close to the face of the master.
There was no struggle with death, only a sigh like a motion of wind in far
off trees, and then, softly, easily Black Bart extricated himself from the
master, and moved away down the path, all wolf, all wild. Behind him, Satan
whirled with a snort, and they rushed away into the night each in an
opposite direction. The long companionship of the three was ended, and the
seventh man was dead for Grey Molly.

Lee Haines and Buck Daniels were around her now. She heard nothing
distinctly, only a great, vague clamor of voices while she kneeled and
turned the body of Barry on its back. It was marvelously light; she could
almost have picked it up in her arms, she felt. She folded the hands across
his breast, and the limp fingers were delicate as the fingers of a sick
child. Buck Daniels lay prone by the dead man weeping aloud; and Lee Haines
stood with his face buried in his hands; but there was no tear on the face
of Kate.

As she closed the eyes, the empty, hollow eyes, she heard a distant
calling, a hoarse and dissonant chiming. She looked up and saw a wedge of
wild geese flying low across the moon.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Seventh Man, by Max Brand