The Night Horseman

THE BATTLE

The chain which fastened Black Bart had been passed around the trunk of a tree that stood behind the ranch house, and there the great dog lay tethered.  Doctor Byrne had told Whistling Dan, with some degree of horror, that the open air was in the highest degree dangerous to wounds, but Whistling Dan had returned no answer.  So Black Bart lay all day in the soft sand, easing himself from time to time into a new position, and his thoughtful eyes seemed to be concentrated on the desire to grow well.  Beside him was the chair in which Dan Barry sat for many an hour of the day and even the night.

Kate Cumberland watched the animal from the shadow of the house; his eyes were closed, and the long, powerful head lay inert on the sand, yet she knew that the wolf-dog was perfectly aware of her presence.  Day after day since he lay there, she had attempted to approach Black Bart, and day after day he had allowed her to come within reaching distance of him, only to drive her back at the last moment by a sudden display of the murderous, long fangs; or by one of those snarls which came out of the black depths of his heart.  Now, a dog snarls from not far down in its throat, but the noise of an angered wild beast rolls up out of its very entrails—­a passion of hate and defiance.  And when she heard that sound, or when she saw the still more terrible silent rage of the beast, Kate Cumberland’s spirit failed, and she would shrink back again to a safe distance.

She was not easily discouraged.  She had that grim resolution which comes to the gambler after he has played at the same table night after night, night after night, and lost, lost, lost, until, playing with the last of his money, he begins to mutter through his set teeth:  “The luck must change!” So it was with Kate Cumberland.  For in Black Bart she saw the only possible clue to Whistling Dan.  There was the stallion, to be sure, but she knew Satan too well.  Nothing in the wide world could induce that wild heart to accept more than one master—­more than one friend.  For Satan there was in the animal world Black Bart, and in the world of men, Dan Barry.  These were enough.  For all the rest he kept the disdainful speed of his slender legs or the terror of his teeth and trampling hoofs.  Even if she could have induced the stallion to eat from her hand she could never have made him willing to trust himself to her guidance.  Some such thing she felt that she must accomplish with Black Bart.  To the wild beast with the scarred and shaggy head she must become a necessary, an accepted thing.

One repulse did not dishearten her.  Again and again she made the trial.  She remembered having read that no animal can resist the thoughtful patience of thinking man, and hour after hour she was there, until a new light in the eye of the wolf-dog warned her that the true master was coming.

Then she fled, and from a post of vantage in the house she would watch the two.  An intimacy surpassing the friendships and devotions of human beings existed between them.  She had seen the wolf lie with his great head on the foot of his master and the unchanging eyes fixed on Barry’s face—­and so for an hour at a stretch in mute worship.  Or she had watched the master go to the great beast to change the dressing—­a thing which could not be done too often during the day.  She had seen the swift hands remove the bandages and she had seen the cleansing solution applied.  She knew what it was; it stung even the unscratched skin, and to a wound it must be torture, but the wolf lay and endured—­not even shuddering at the pain.

It had seemed to her that this was the great test.  If she could make the wolf lie like this for her, then, truly, she might feel herself in some measure admitted to that mystic fellowship of the three—­the man, the stallion, and the wolf.  If she could, with her own unaided hands, remove the bandages and apply that solution, then she could know many things, and she could feel that she was nearer to Whistling Dan than ever before.

So she had come, time and again, with the basin and the roll of cloth in her arm, and she had approached with infinite patience, step by step, and then inch by inch.  Once it had taken a whole hour for her to come within a yard of the beast.  And all that time Black Bart had lain with closed eyes.  But at the critical instant always there was the silent writhing up of the lips and the gleam of hate—­or the terrible snarl while the eyes fastened on her throat.  Her heart had stopped in mid-beat; and that day she ran back into the house and threw herself on her bed, and would not come from her room till the following morning.

Now, as she watched from the shadow of the house, with the basin of antiseptic under her arm, the gambler’s desperation rose stronger and stronger.  She came out, at length, and walked steadily towards Black Bart.  She had grown almost heedless of fear at this moment, but when she was within a pace, once more the head reared back; the teeth flashed.  And the heart of Kate Cumberland, as always, stopped.  Yet she did not retreat this time.  All the colour left her face, so that her eyes seemed amazingly blue and wide.  One foot drew back, tremblingly ready to spring to safety; yet she held her place.  She moved—­and it was towards Black Bart.

At that came a snarl that would have made the heart of a lone grizzly quake and leave his new-found nuts.  One further pace she made—­and the beast plunged up, and braced itself with its one strong fore leg.  A devil of yellow-green gleamed in either eye, and past the grinning fangs she saw the hot, red throat, and she saw the flattened ears, the scars on the bony forehead, the muscles that bulged on the base of the jaw.  Ay, strength to drive those knife-like teeth through flesh and bone at a single snap.  More—­she had seen their effect, and the throat of a bull cut at a single slash.  And yet—­she sank on her knees beside the monster.

His head was well nigh as high as hers, then; if he attacked there could be no dream of escape for her.  Or she might drag herself away from the tearing teeth—­a disfigured horror forever.  Think not that an iota of all these terrors missed her mind.  No, she felt the fangs buried in her throat and heard the snarl of the beast stifled with blood.  Yet—­she laid her hand on the bandage across the shoulder of Black Bart.

His head whirled.  With those ears flattened, with that long, lean neck, it was like the head of a striking snake.  Her sleeve was rolled up to the elbow, and over the bare skin the teeth of the wolf-dog were set.  The snarl had grown so deep and hideous that the tremor of it fairly shook her, and she saw that the jaws of the beast slavered with hunger.  She knew—­a thousand things about Black Bart, and among the rest that he had tasted human blood.  And there is a legend which says that once a wild beast has tasted the blood of man he will taste it a second time before he dies.  She thought of that—­she dared not turn her head lest she should encounter the hellfire of Bart’s eyes.  Yet she had passed all ordinary fear.  She had reached that exquisite frenzy of terror when it becomes one with courage.  The very arm over which the wolf’s teeth were set moved—­raised—­and with both hands she untied the knot of the bandage.

The snarling rose to a pitch of maniacal rage; the teeth compressed—­if they broke the skin it was the end; the first taste of blood would be enough!—­and drew away her arm.  If she had started then, all the devil in the creature would be loosed, for her terror taught her that.  And by some mysterious power that entered her at that moment she was able to turn her head, slowly, and look deep into those terrible eyes.

Her arm was released.

But Black Bart crouched and the snakelike head lowered; he was quivering throughout that steel-muscled body to throw himself at her throat.  The finger was on the hair-trigger; it needed a pressure not greater than a bodiless thought.  And still she looked into the eyes of the wolf-dog; and her terror had made her strangely light of body and dizzy of mind.  Then the change came, suddenly.  The yellow-green changed, swirled in the eyes of Black Bart; the eyes themselves wavered, and at last looked away; the snarl dropped to a sullen growl.  And Black Bart lay down as he had been before.

His head was still turned towards her, to be sure.  And the teeth were still bared, as with rapid, deft fingers she undid the bandage; and from instant to instant, as the bandage in spite of her care pressed against the wound, the beast shivered and wicked glances flashed up at her face.  The safe-blower who finds his “soup” cooling and dares not set it down felt as Kate Cumberland felt then.

She never knew what kept her hands steady, but steady they were.  The cloth was removed, and now she could see the red, angry wound, with the hair shaven away to a little distance on every side.  She dipped her cloth into the antiseptic; it stung her fingers!  She touched the cloth lightly against the wound; and to her astonishment the wolf-dog relaxed every muscle and let his head fall to the ground; also the growl died into a soft whine, and this in turn ended.

She had conquered!  Ay, when the wound was thoroughly cleansed and when she started to wind the bandage again, she had even the courage to touch Black Bart’s body and make him rise up so that she could pass the cloth freely.  At her touch he shuddered, to be sure, as a man might shudder at the touch of an unclean thing, but there was no snarl, and the teeth were not bared.

As she tied the knot which secured the bandage in its place she was aware that the eyes of Bart, no longer yellow-green, watched her; and she felt some vague movement of the wonder that was passing through the brute mind.  Then the head of the wolf-dog jerked up; he was staring at something in the distance, and there was nothing under heaven that Bart would raise his head to look at in this manner except one thing.  The fingers of Kate grew stiff, and trembled.  Slowly, in a panic, she finished the knot, and then she was aware of someone who had approached without sound and now stood behind her.

She looked up, at length, before she rose to her feet.

Thankfulness welled up warm in her heart to find her voice steady and commonplace when she said:  “The wound is much better.  Bart will be well in a very few days now.”

Whistling Dan did not answer, and his wondering eyes glanced past her own.  She saw that he was staring at a double row of white indentations on her forearm, where the teeth of Black Bart had set.  He knew those marks, and she knew he knew.  Strength was leaving her, and weakness went through her—­water where blood should have been.  She dared not stay.  In another moment she would be hopelessly in the grip of hysteria.

So she rose, and passed Dan without a word, and went slowly towards the house.  She tried to hurry, indeed, but her legs would not quicken their pace.  Yet at length she had reached shelter and no sooner was she past the door of the house than her knees buckled; she had to steady herself with both hands as she dragged herself up the stairs to her room.  There, from the window, she looked down and saw Whistling Dan standing as she had left him, staring blankly at the wolf-dog.