The Max Brand Megapack (137 page)

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 s
o,” 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 p
uppy, 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.