Chapter XIX. The Venture
From the moment Joan gave the name of Daddy Dan, the wolf-dog kept tothe trail with arrowy straightness. Whatever the limitations ofBart's rather uncanny intelligence, upon one point he was usuallyletter-perfect, and even when a stranger mentioned Dan in the hearing ofthe dog it usually brought a whine or at least an anxious look. He hewedto his line now with that animal sense of direction which men can neverwholly understand. Boulders and trees slipped away on either side ofJoan; now on a descent of the mountain-side he broke into a lope thatset the flowers fluttering on her bonnet; now he prowled up the ravinebeyond, utterly tireless.
He was strictly business. When she slipped a little from her place as heveered around a rock he did not slow up, as usual, that she might regainher seat, but switched his head back with a growl that warned her intoposition. That surprise was hardly out of her mind when she saw a gaypatch of wild-flowers a little from the line of his direction, and shetugged at his ear to swing him towards it. A sharp jerk of his headtossed her hand aside, and again she caught the glint of wild eyes as helooked back at her. Then she grew grave, puzzled. She trusted Black Bartwith all her heart, as only a child can trust dumb animals, but now shesensed a change in him. She had guessed at a difference on that nightwhen Dan came home for the last time; and the same thing seemed to be inthe dog today.
Before she could make up her mind as to what it might be, Black Bartswung aside up a steep slope, and whisked her into the gloom of a cave.Into the very heart of the darkness he glided and stopped.
"Daddy Dan!" she called.
A faint echo, after a moment, came back to her from the depths of thecave, making her voice strangely deep. Otherwise, there was no answer.
"Bart!" she whispered, suddenly frightened by the last murmur of thatecho, "Daddy Dan's not here. Go back!"
She tugged at his ear to turn him, but again that jerk of the head freedhis ear. He caught her by the cloak, crouched close to the floor, andshe found herself all at once sitting on the gravelly floor of the cavewith Bart facing her.
"Bad Bart!" she said, scrambling to her feet.
"Naughty dog!"
She was still afraid to raise her voice in that awful silence, and inthe dark. When she glanced around her, she made out vague forms throughthe dimness that might be the uneven walls of the cave, or might bestrange and awful forms of night.
"Take me home!"
A growl that went shuddering down the cave stopped her, and now she sawthat the eyes of Bart glowed green and yellow. Even then she could notbelieve that he would harm her, and stretched out a tentative hand. Thistime she made out the flash of his teeth as he snarled. He was no longerthe Bart she had played with around the cabin, but a strange wild thing,and with a scream she darted past him toward the door. Never had thosechubby legs flown so fast, but even as the light from the mouth of thecave glimmered around her, she heard a crunching on the gravel frombehind, and then a hand, it seemed, caught her cloak and jerked her to astop.
She fell sprawling, head over heels, and when she looked up, there satBart upon his haunches above her, growling terribly, and gripping theend of the cloak. No doubt about it now. Black Bart would have his teethin her throat if she made another movement toward the entrance. A citychild would have either gone mad with terror or else made that fatalstruggle to reach the forbidden place, but Joan had learned many thingsamong the mountains, and among others, she knew the difference betweenthe tame and the free. The old dappled cow was tame, for instance;and the Maltese cat, which came too close to Bart the year before andreceived a broken back for its carelessness, had been tame; and thebrown horse with the white face and the dreary eyes was tame. Theycould be handled, and teased, and petted and bossed about at will. Othercreatures were different. For instance, the scream of the hawkalways made her shrink a little closer to the ground, or else runhelter-skelter for the house, and sometimes, up the gulches, she hadheard the wailing of a mountain lion on the trail, hunting swiftly, andvery hungry. There was even something about the dead eyes of certainlynxes and coyotes and bobcats which Daddy Dan trapped that made Joanfeel these animals belonged to a world where the authority of man wasonly the strength of his hand or his cunning. Not that she phrasedthese thoughts in definite words, but Joan was very close to nature, andtherefore her instincts gave her a weird little touch of wisdom in suchmatters.
And when she lay there tangled in her cloak and looked up into theglowing eyes of Bart and heard his snarling roll around her, and pass increepy chills up her back, she nearly died of fear, to be sure, but shelay as still as still, frozen into a part of the rock. Black Bart wasgone, and in his place was a terrible creature which belonged thereamong the shadows, for it could see in the night.
Presently the bright eyes disappeared, and now she saw that Bart laystretched across the entrance to the cave, where the long shadow was nowcreeping down the slope. Inches by inches she ventured to sit up, andall it brought from Bart was a quick turn of the head and a warninggrowl. It meant as plainly as though he had spoken in so many words:"Stay where you are and I don't care in the least what you do, but don'ttry to cross this entrance if you fear the length of my teeth and thekeenness thereof." And she did fear them, very much, for she rememberedthe gashes across the back and the terrible rips up the side, of thedead Maltese cat.
She even took a little heart, after a time. A grownup cannot feel terroror grief as keenly as a child, but neither does terror or grief passaway a tithe as fast. She seemed at liberty to roam about in the caveas long as she did not go near the entrance, and now the shadows and thedimness no longer frightened her. Nothing was terrible except that long,dark body which lay across the entrance to the cave, and she finally gotto her feet and began to explore. She came first on a quantity of deadgrass heaped in a corner that was where Satan was stalled, no doubt, andit made all the cave seem almost homelike. She found, too, a number ofstones grouped together with ashes in the hollow circle-that was wherethe fires were built, and there to the side lay the pile of dead wood. Alittle down the cave and directly in the center of the top, she nextsaw the natural aperture where the smoke must escape and last of all shecame on the bed. Boughs heaped a foot thick with the blankets on top,neatly stretched out, and the tarpaulin over all, made a couch as softas down and fragrant with the pure scent of evergreens.
Joan tried the surface with a foot that sank to her ankle, then with herhands, and finally sat down to think. The first fear was almost gone;she understood that Bart was keeping her here until Dan came home, andfear does not go hand in hand with understanding. She only wondered,now, at the reason that kept Daddy Dan living in this cave so far fromthe warm comfort of the cabin, and so far away from her mother; butthinking makes small heads drowsy, and in five minutes Joan lay with herhead pillowed on her arm, sound asleep.
When she awoke, the evening-gray of the cave had given place to utterblackness, alarming and thick. Joan sat up with a start; she would havecried out, bewildered, but now she heard a noise on the gravel, andturned to see Daddy Dan entering the cave with Satan behind him, quitedistinctly outlined by the sunset outside. Black Bart walked first,looking back over his shoulder as though he led the way.
It was partly because the black, silhouetted figures awed her, somewhat,and partly because she wished to give Daddy Dan a gay surprise, thatJoan did not run to him. And then, in the darkness, she heard Satanmunching the dried grass, and the squeak and rattle as the saddle wasdrawn off and hung up, scraping against the rock.
"What you been doin', Bart?" queried the voice of Daddy Dan, and thelast of Joan's fears fell from her as she listened. "You act kind ofworried. If you been runnin' rabbits all day and got your pads full ofthorns I'll everlastin'ly treat you rough."
The wolf-dog whined.
"Well, speak up. What you want? Want me over there?"
It would have been a trifle unearthly to most people, but Joan knewthe ways of Daddy Dan with Satan and Black Bart. She lay quite still,shivering with pleasure as the
footsteps approached her. Then a matchscratched--she saw by the blue spurt of flame that he was lighting apine torch, then whirling it until the flame ate down to the pitchyknot. He held it above his head, and now she saw him plainly: the lightcascaded over his shoulders, glowed on his eyes, and then puffed outsidewise in a draught.
Joan was upon her feet, and running toward him with a cry of joy, untilshe remembered that he was not to be approached like her mother. Therewere never any bear-hugs from him, no caresses, not much laughter. Shestopped barely in time, and stood with her fingers interlaced, staringup at him, half delighted, half afraid. She read his mind by microscopicchanges in his eyes and lips.
"Munner sent me."
That was wrong, she saw at once.
"And Bart brought me." Much better, now. "And oh, Daddy Dan, I've beenlonesome for you!"
He continued to stare at her for another moment, and even Joan could nottell whether he were angry or indifferent or pleased.
"Well," he murmured at length, "I guess you're hungry, Joan?"
She knew it was complete acceptance, and she could hardly keep from ashout of happiness. Daddy Dan had a great aversion to sudden outcries.
"I guess I am," said Joan.