The Seventh Man Page 12

  Chapter XII. The Crisis

  Those mountains above the Barry cabin were, as he told Vic Gregg,inaccessible to men on horseback except by one path, yet there was asingle class of travelers who roamed at will through far more difficultground than this. Speaking in general, where a man can go a burro cango, and where a burro can go he usually manages to carry his pack. Hecrawls up a raged down-pitch of rocks that comes dangerously close tothe perpendicular; he walks securely along a crumbling ledge with halfhis body over a thousand yards of emptiness. Therefore the prospectorswith their burros have combed the worst mountains of the West and itwas hardly a surprise to Kate Barry when she saw two men come down thesteepest slope above the cabin with two little pack animals scramblingand sliding before them. It was still some time before nightfall, butthe sun had dropped out of sight fully an hour ago and now the westernmountains were blackening against a sky whose thin, clear blue grewyellow towards evening.

  Against that dark mass of the mountainside, she could not make out thetwo travelers clearly, so she shaded her eyes and peered up, high up.The slope was so sheer that if one of the four figures lost footing itwould come crashing to her very feet. When they saw her and shouted downthe sound fell as clearly as if they had called from the cabin, yet theyhad a good half hour's labor between that greeting and the moment theycame out on the level before Kate. From the instant they called sheremained in motionless, deep thought, and when they came now into fullview, she cried out joyously: "Buck, oh Buck!" and ran towards them.Even the burros stopped and the men stood statue-like; it is rarelyenough that one finds a human being in those mountains, almost an actof Providence that lead to a house, and a miracle when the trail crossesthe path of a friend. The prospectors came out of their daze with ashout and rushed to meet her. Each of them had her by a hand, wringingit; they talked all together in a storm of words.

  "Kate, I'm dreamin'!--Dear old Buck!--Have you forgotten me?--LeeHaines! I should say not.--Don't pay any attention to him. Fiveyears. And I've been hungerin' to see you all that--.--Where have youbeen?--Everywhere! but this is the best thing I've seen.--Come in.--Waittill we get these packs off the poor little devils.--Oh, I'm so glad tosee you; so glad!--Hurry up, Lee. Your fingers asleep?--How long haveyou been out?--Five months.--Then you're hungry.--We've just ate.--But apiece of pie?--pie? I've been dreamin' of pie!"

  A fire already burned in the big living-room of the cabin, for at thisseason, at such an altitude, the shadows were always cold, and aroundthe fire they gathered, each of the men with half a huge pie before him.They were such as one might expect that mountain region to produce, big,gaunt, hard-muscled. They had gone unshaven for so long that their faceswere clothed not with an unsightly stubble but with strong, short beardthat gave them a certain grim dignity and made their eyes seem sunken.They were opposite types, which is usually the case when two men strikeout together. Buck Daniels was black-haired, with an ugly, shrewd faceand a suggestion of rather dangerous possibilities of swift action; butLee Haines was a great bulk of a man, with tawny beard, handsome, in aleonine fashion, more poised than Daniels, fitted to crush. The sharpglance of Buck flitted here and there, in ten seconds he knew everythingin the room; the steady blue eye of Lee Haines went leisurely from placeto place and lingered; but both of them stared at Kate as if they couldnot have enough of her. They talked without pause while they ate. Astranger in the room would have sealed their lips in utter taciturnity,but here they sat with a friend, five months of loneliness and laborbehind them, and they gossiped like girls.

  Into the jangle of talk cut a thin, small voice from outside, a burst oflaughter. Then: "Bart, you silly dog!" and Joan stood at the open doorwith her hand buried in the mane of the wolf-dog. The fork of BuckDaniels stopped halfway to his lips and Lee Haines straightened untilthe chair groaned.

  They spoke together, hushed voices: "Kate!"

  "Come here, Joan!" Her face glistened with pride, and Joan came forwardwith wide eyes, tugging Black Bart along in a reluctant progress.

  "It ain't possible!" whispered Buck Daniels. "Honey, come here and shakehands with your Uncle Buck." The gesture called forth deep throatedwarning from Bart, and he caught back his hand with a start.

  "It's always that way," said Kate, half amused, half vexed; "Bart won'tlet a soul touch her when Dan isn't home. Good old Bart, go away, youfoolish dog! Don't you see these are friends?"

  He cringed a little under the shadow of the hand which waved him off buthis only answer was a silent baring of the teeth.

  "You see how it is. I'm almost afraid to touch her myself when Dan'saway; she and Bart bully me all day long."

  In the meantime the glance of Joan had cloyed itself with sufficientexamination of the strangers, and now she turned back towards the doorand the meadow beyond.

  "Bart!" she called softly. The sharp ears of the dog quivered; he cameto attention with a start. "Look! Get it for me!"

  One loud scraping of his claws on the floor as he started, and BlackBart went like a bolt through the door with Joan scrambling after him,screaming with excitement; from the outside, they heard the cry ofa frightened squirrel, and then its angry chattering from a place ofsafety up a tree.

  "Shall I call her back again?" asked Kate.

  "Not if Bart comes with her," answered Lee Haines. "I've seen enough ofhim to last me a while."

  "Well, we'll have her to ourselves when Dan comes; of course Bart leavesher to tag around after Dan."

  "When is he comin' back?" asked Buck, with polite interest.

  "Anytime. I don't know. But he's always here before it's completelydark."

  The glance of Buck Daniels kicked over to Lee Haines, exchanged meaningswith him, and came back to Kate.

  "Terrible sorry," he said, "but I s'pose we'll have to be on our waybefore it's plumb dark."

  "Go so soon as that? Why, I won't let you."

  "I--" began Haines, fumbling for words.

  "We got to get down in the valley before it's dark," filled in Buck.

  Suddenly she laughed, frankly, happily.

  "I know what you mean, but Dan is changed; he isn't the same man he usedto be."

  "Yes?" queried Buck, without conviction.

  "You'll have to see him to believe; Buck, he doesn't even whistle anymore."

  "What?"

  "Only goes about singing, now."

  The two men exchanged glances of such astonishment that Kate could nothelp but notice and flush a little.

  "Well," murmured Buck, "Bart doesn't seem to have changed much from theold days."

  She laughed slowly, letting her mind run back through such happiness asthey could not understand and when she looked up she seemed to debatewhether or not it would be worth while to let them in on the delightfulsecret. The moment she dwelt on the burning logs they gazed at her andthen to each other with utter amazement as if they sat in the same roomwith the dead come to life. No care of motherhood had marked her face,but on the white, even forehead was a sign of peace; and drifting overher hands and on the white apron across her lap the firelight pooled dimgold, the wealth of contentment.

  "If you'd been here today you would have seen how changed he is. Wehad a man with us whom Dan had taken while he was running from a posse,wounded, and kept him here until he was well, and--"

  "That's Dan," murmured Lee Haines. "He's gold all through when a man'sin trouble."

  "Shut up, Lee," cut in Buck. He sat forward in his chair, drinking upher story.

  "Go on."

  "This morning we saw the same posse skirting through the valley and knewthat they were on the old trail. Dan sent Gregg over the hills and rodeVic's horse down so that the posse would mistake him, and he could leadthem out of the way. I was afraid, terribly, I was afraid that if theposse got close and began shooting Dan would--"

  She stopped; her eyes begged them to understand.

  "Go on," said Lee Haines, shuddering slightly. "I know what you mean."

  "But I watched him ride down the slope," she cried joyo
usly, "and I sawthe posse close on him--almost on top of him when he reached the valley.I saw the flash of their guns. I saw them shoot. I wasn't afraid thatDan would be hurt, for he seems to wear a charm against bullets--Iwasn't much afraid of that, but I dreaded to see him turn and go backthrough that posse like a storm. But--" she caught both hands to herbreast and her bright face tilted up--"even when the bullets must havebeen whistling around him he didn't look back. He rode straight on andon, out of view, and I knew"--her voice broke with emotion--"oh, Buck,I knew that he had won, and I had won; that he was safe forever; thatthere was no danger of him ever slipping back into that terrible otherself; I knew that I'd never again have to dream of that whistling in thewind; I knew that he was ours--Joan's and mine."

  "By God," broke out Buck, "I'm happier than if you'd found a gold mine,Kate. It don't seem no ways--but if you seen that with your own eyes,it's possible true. He's changed."

  "I've been almost afraid to be happy all these years," she said, "butnow I want to sing and cry at the same time. My heart is so full thatit's overflowing, Buck."

  She brushed the tears away and smiled at them.

  "Tell me all about yourselves. Everything. You first, Lee. You've beenlonger away."

  He did not answer for a moment, but sat with his head fallen, watchingher thoughtfully. Women had been the special curse in Lee Haines' life;they had driven him to the crime that sent him West into outlawry longyears before; through women, as he himself foreboded, he would come atlast to some sordid, petty end; but here sat the only one he had lovedwithout question, without regret, purely and deeply, and as he watchedher, more beautiful than she had been in her girlhood, it seemed, as heheard the fitful laughter of Joan outside, the old sorrow came stormingup in him, and the sense of loss.

  "What have I been doing?" he murmured at length. He shrugged away hislast thoughts. "I drifted about for a while after the pardon came downfrom the governor. People knew me, you see, and what they knew about medidn't please them. Even today Jim Silent and Jim Silent's crew isn'tforgotten. Then don't look at me like that, Kate; no, I played straightall the time---then I ran into Buck and he and I had tried each otherout, we had at least one thing in common"--here he looked at Buck andthey both flushed--"and we made a partnership of it. We've been togetherfive years now."

  "I knew you could break away, Lee. I used to tell you that."

  "You helped me more than you knew," he said quietly.

  She smiled and then turned to escape him. "And now you, Buck?"

  "Since then we've made a bit of coin punching cows and we've blown it inagain prospecting. Blown it in? Kate, we've shot enough powder to liftthat mountain yonder but all we've got is color. You could gild the skywith what we've seen but we haven't washed enough dust to wear a hole ina tissue-paper pocket. I'll tell you the whole story. Lee packs a jinxwith him. But--Haines, did you ever see a lion as big as that?"

  The dimness of evening had grown rapidly through the room while theytalked and now the light from the door was far less than the glow of thefire. The yellow flicker picked out a dozen pelts stretching as rugs onthe floor or hanging along the wall; that to which Buck pointed was anenormous skin of a mountain lion stretched sidewise, for if it had beenhung straight up a considerable portion of the tail must have dragged onthe floor. Buck went to examine it. Presently he exclaimed in surpriseand he passed his fingers over it as though searching for something.

  "Where was it shot, Kate? I don't find nothin' but this cut that lookslike his knife slipped when he was skinnin'."

  "It was a knife that killed it."

  "What!"

  "Don't ask me about it; I see the picture of it in my dreams still. Thelion had dragged the trap into a cave and Bart followed it. Dan went inpushing his rifle before him, but--when he tried to fire it jammed."

  "Yes?" they cried together.

  "Don't ask me the rest!"

  They would hardly have let her off so easily if it had not been for theentrance of Joan who had come back on account of the darkness. BlackBart went promptly to a corner of the hearth and lay down with his headon his paws and the little girl sat beside him watching the fire, herhead leaning wearily on his shoulder. Kate went to the door.

  "It's almost night," she said. "Why isn't he here?"

  "Buck, they couldn't have overtaken--"

  She started. "Dan?"

  Buck Daniels grinned reassuringly.

  "Not unless his hoss is a pile of bones; if it has any heart in it,Dan'll run away from anything on four legs. No call for worryin', Kate.He's simply led 'em a long ways off and waited for evenin' before hedoubled back. He'll come back right enough. If they didn't catch himthat first run they'll never get the wind of him."

  It quieted her for a time, but as the minutes slipped away, as thedarkness grew more and more heavy until a curtain of black fell acrossthe open door, they could see that she was struggling to control hertrouble, they could see her straining to catch some distant sound. LeeHaines began to talk valiantly, to beguile the waiting time, and BuckDaniels did his share with stories of their prospecting, but eventuallymore and more often silences came on the group. They began to watch thefire and they winced when a log crackled, or when the sap in a greenplace hissed. By degrees they pushed farther and farther back so thatthe light would not strike so fully upon them, for in some way it becamedifficult to meet each other's eyes.

  Only Joan was perfectly at ease. She played for a time with the ears ofBlack Bart, or pried open his mouth and made him show the great whitefangs, or scratched odd designs on the hearth with pieces of charcoal;but finally she lost interest in all these things and let her head lieon the rough pelt of the wolf-dog, sound asleep. The firelight made herhair a patch of gold.

  Black Bart slept soundly, too, that is, as soundly as one of his naturecould sleep, for every now and then one of his ears twitched, or hestirred a paw, or an eyelid quivered up. Yet they all started when hejumped from his sleep into full wakefulness; the motion made Joan situp, rubbing her eyes, and Black Bart reached the center of the roomnoiselessly. He stood facing the door, motionless.

  "It's Dan," cried Kate. "Bart hears him! Good old Bart!"

  The dog pointed up his nose, the hair about his neck bristled into aruff, and out of his quaking body came a sound that seemed to moan andwhimper from the distance at first, but drew nearer, louder, packed theroom with terror, the long drawn howl of a wolf.