Chapter XLI. The Wild Geese
Twenty-four hours from Alder to Elkhead, and beyond Elkhead to theCumberland ranch, is long riding and hard riding, but not far after darkon the following night, Joan lifted her head, where she played with thepuppy on the hearth, and listened. There was no sound audible to theothers in the living room; they did not even mark the manner in whichshe sat up, and then rose to her feet. But when she whispered "DaddyDan!" it brought each of the three out of his chair. Still they heardnothing, and Buck and Lee Haines would have retaken their chairs had notKate gone to the window and thrown it wide. Then they caught it, veryfar off, very thin and small, a delicate thread of music, an eeriewhistling. Without a word, she closed the window, crossed the room andfrom the table she took up a cartridge belt from which hung the holsterwith the revolver which Whistling Dan taught her to use so well. Shebuckled it about her. Lee Haines and Daniels, without a word, imitatedher actions. Their guns were already on--every moment since they reachedthe ranch they had gone armed but now they looked to them, and tried theactions 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, withouta recognizable tune, but a gay, wild improvisation as if a violinist,drunk, was remembering snatches of masterpieces, throwing out lovelyfragments here and there and filling the intervals out of his ownexcited fancy. Joan ran to the window, forgetful of the puppy, andkneeled there in the chair, looking out. The whistling stopped as Katedrew down the curtain to cut out Joan's view. It was far too dark forthe child to see out, but she often would sit like this, looking intothe dark.
The whistling began again as Joan turned silently on her mother,uncomplaining, but with a singular glint in her eyes, a sort offlickering, inward light that came out by glances and starts. Now thesound of the rider blew closer and closer. Kate gestured the men totheir positions, one for each of the two inner doors while she herselftook the outer one. There was not a trace of color in her face, butotherwise she was as calm as a stone, and from her an atmospherepervaded the room, so that men also stood quietly at their posts,without a word, without a sign to each other. They had their unspokenorder from Kate. She would resist to the death and she expected the samefrom them. They were prepared.
Still that crescendo of the whistling continued; it seemed as if itwould never reach them; it grew loud as a bird singing in that veryroom, and still it continued to swell, increase--then suddenly wentout. As if it were the signal for which she had been waiting all theseheartbreaking moments, Kate opened the front door, ran quickly down thehall, and stood an instant later on the path in front of the house. Shehad locked the doors as she went through, and now she heard one of themen rattling the lock to follow her. The rattling ceased. Evidently theydecided that they would hold the fort as they were.
Her heel hardly sank in the sand when she saw him. He came out of thenight like a black shadow among shadows, with the speed of the windto carry him. A light creak of leather as he halted, a glimmer of starlight on Satan as he wheeled, a clink of steel, and then Dan was comingup the path.
She knew him perfectly even before she could make out the details of theform; she knew him by the light, swift, almost noiseless step, likethe 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 rodeup. He was so close, indeed, that the starlight--the brim of his hatstanding up somewhat from the swift riding--showed his face quiteclearly to her. It was boyish, almost, in its extreme youth, and sothinly molded, and his frame so lightly made, that he seemed one risenfrom a wasting bed of sickness. The wind fluttered his shirt and shewondered, as she had wondered so often before, where he gained thatincredible strength in so meager a body. In all her life she had neverloved 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 terriblea thing you'd make her? She's my blood, my pain, my love, and you wantto take her up yonder to the mountains and the loneliness--I'll die tokeep her!"
Now the moon, which had been buried in a drift of clouds, broke throughthem, and seemed in an instant to slide a vast distance towards theearth, a crooked half moon with its edges eaten by the mist. Under thislight she could see him more clearly, and she became aware of the thingshe dreaded, the faint smile which barely touched at the corners of hismouth; and in his eyes a swirl of yellow light, half guessed at, halfreal. All her strength poured out of her. She felt her knees buckle,felt the fingers about the light revolver butt relax, felt every nervegrow slack. She was helpless, and it was not fear of the man, but ofsomething which stalked behind him, inhuman, irresistible; not thewolf-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 ofaction and yet hesitates to begin. She felt his eyes run over her, asif judging how he should put her most gently to one side; then from thehouse, very lightly, hardly more than an echo of Dan's whistling, camean answer--the very same refrain. Joan was calling to him.
At that he stepped forward, but the thing which stirred him, hadhardened 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 thegleam 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 ofa finger. That thoughtful whistle came again: once more the answeringwhistle drifted out from the house; and he moved forward another pace.
She had chosen her mark carefully, the upper corner of the seam of thepocket 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 perfectlyupright, but when she saw that the yellow was gone from his eyes. Theywere 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 tramplingin the house, and a breaking open of doors, and she knew that she hadkilled Whistling Dan. She would have gone to him, but the snarl of Bartdrove her back. Then she saw Satan galloping up the path and come to asliding halt where he stood with his delicate nose close to the face ofthe master. There was no struggle with death, only a sigh like a motionof wind in far off trees, and then, softly, easily Black Bart extricatedhimself from the master, and moved away down the path, all wolf, allwild. Behind him, Satan whirled with a snort, and they rushed away intothe night each in an opposite direction. The long companionship of thethree was ended, and the seventh man was dead for Grey Molly.
Lee Haines and Buck Daniels were around her now. She heard nothingdistinctly, only a great, vague clamor of voices while she kneeled andturned the body of Barry on its back. It was marvelously light; shecould almost have picked it up in her arms, she felt. She folded thehands across his breast, and the limp fingers were delicate as thefingers of a sick child. Buck Daniels lay prone by the dead man weepingaloud; and Lee Haines stood with his face buried in his hands; but therewas no tear on the face of Kate.
As she closed the eyes, the empty, hollow eyes, she heard a distantcalling, a hoarse and dissonant chiming. She looked up and saw a wedgeof wild geese flying low across the moon.
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