The Night Horseman

THE TRAIL

Bandages and antiseptics and constant care, by themselves could not have healed Black Bart so swiftly, but nature took a strong hand.  The wound closed with miraculous speed.  Three days after he had laid his head on the feet of Kate Cumberland, the wolf-dog was hobbling about on three legs and tugging now and again at the restraining chain; and the day after that the bandages were taken off and Whistling Dan decided that Bart might run loose.  It was a brief ceremony, but a vital one.  Doctor Byrne went out with Barry to watch the loosing of the dog; from the window of Joe Cumberland’s room he and Kate observed what passed.  There was little hesitancy in Black Bart.  He merely paused to sniff the foot of Randall Byrne, snarl, and then trotted with a limp towards the corrals.

Here, in a small enclosure with rails much higher than the other corrals, stood Satan, and Black Bart made straight for the stallion.  He was seen from afar, and the black horse stood waiting, his head thrown high in the air, his ears pricking forward, the tail flaunting, a picture of expectancy.  So under the lower rail Bart slunk and stood under the head of Satan, growling terribly.  Of this display of anger the stallion took not the slightest notice, but lowered his beautiful head until his velvet nose touched the cold muzzle of Bart.  There was something ludicrous about the greeting—­it was such an odd shade close to the human.  It was as brief as it was strange, for Black Bart at once whirled and trotted away towards the barns.

By the time Doctor Byrne and Whistling Dan caught up with him, the wolf-dog was before the heaps and ashes which marked the site of the burned barn.  Among these white and grey and black heaps he picked his way, sniffing hastily here and there.  In the very centre of the place he sat down suddenly on his haunches, pointed his nose aloft, and wailed with tremendous dreariness.

“Now,” murmured the doctor to Dan, “that strikes me as a singular manifestation of intelligence in an animal—­he has found the site of the very barn where he was hurt—­upon my word!  Even fire doesn’t affect his memory!”

Here he observed that the face of Whistling Dan had grown grim.  He ran to Bart and crouched beside him, muttering; and Byrne heard.

“That’s about where you was lyin’,” said Dan, “and you smell your own blood on the ground.  Keep tryin’, Bart.  They’s something else to find around here.”

The wolf-dog looked his master full in the face with pricking ears, whined and then started off sniffling busily at the heaps of ashes.

“The shooting of the dog is quite a mystery,” said Byrne, by way of conversation.  “Do you suppose that one of the men from the bunk-house could have shot him?”

But Dan seemed no longer aware of the doctor’s presence.  He slipped here and there with the wolf-dog among the ash-heaps, pausing when Bart paused, talking to the brute continually.  Sometimes he pointed out to Bart things which the doctor did not perceive and Bart whined with a terrible, slavering, blood-eagerness.

The wolf-dog suddenly left the ash-heaps and now darted in swiftly entangled lines here and there among the barns.  Dan Barry stood thoughtfully still, but now and then he called a word of encouragement.

And Black Bart stayed with his work.  Now he struck out a wide circle, running always with his nose close to the ground.  Again he doubled back sharply to the barn-site, and began again in a new direction.  He ran swiftly, sometimes putting his injured leg to the ground with hardly a limp, and again drawing it up and running on three feet.  In a moment he passed out of sight behind a slight rise of ground to the left of the ash-heaps, and at some little distance.  He did not reappear.  Instead, a long, shrill wail came wavering towards the doctor and Dan Barry.  It raised the hair on the head of the doctor and sent a chill through his veins; but it sent Whistling Dan racing towards the place behind which Black Bart had disappeared.  The doctor hurried after as fast as he might and came upon the wolf-dog making small, swift circles, his nose to the ground, and then crossing to and fro out of the circles.  And the face of the master was black while he watched.  He ran again to Bart and began talking swiftly.

“D’you see?” he asked, pointing.  “From behind this here hill you could get a pretty good sight of the barn—­and you wouldn’t be seen, hardly, from the barn.  Someone must have waited here.  Look about, Bart, you’ll be findin’ a pile of signs, around here.  It means that them that done the shootin’ and the firin’ of the barn stood right here behind this hill-top and watched the barn burn—­and was hopin’ that Satan and you wouldn’t ever come out alive.  That’s the story.”

He dropped to his knees and caught Bart as the big dog ran by.

“Find’em, Bart!” he whispered.  “Find’em!”

And he struck sharply on the scar where the bullet had ploughed its way into Bart’s flesh.

The answer of Bart was a yelp too sharp and too highly pitched to have come from the throat of any mere dog.  Once more he darted out and ran here and there, and Doctor Byrne heard the beast moaning as it ran.  Then Bart ceased circling and cut down the slope away from the hill at a sharp trot.

A cry of inarticulate joy burst from Dan, and then:  “You’ve found it!  You have it!” and the master ran swiftly after the dog.  He followed the latter only for a short distance down the slope and then stood still and whistled.  He had to repeat the call before the dog turned and ran back to his master, where he whined eagerly about the man’s feet.  There was something uncanny and horrible about it; it was as if the dumb beast was asking for a life, and the life of a man.  The doctor turned back and walked thoughtfully to the house.

At the door he was met by Kate and a burst of eager questions, and he told, simply, all that he had seen.

“You’ll get the details from Mr. Barry,” he concluded.

“I know the details,” answered the girl.  “He’s found the trail and he knows where it points, now.  And he’ll want to be following it before many hours have passed.  Doctor Byrne, I need you now—­terribly.  You must convince Dan that if he leaves us it will be a positive danger to Dad.  Can you do that?”

“At least,” said the doctor, “there will be little deception in that.  I will do what I can to persuade him to stay.”

“Then,” she said hurriedly, “sit here, and I shall sit here.  We’ll meet Dan together when he comes in.”

They had hardly taken their places when Barry entered, the wolf at his heels; at the door he paused to flash a glance at them and then crossed the room.  On the farther side he stopped again.

“I might be tellin’ you,” he said in his soft voice, “that now’s Bart’s well I got to be travellin’ again.  I start in the morning.”

The pleading eyes of Kate raised Byrne to his feet.

“My dear Mr. Barry!” he called.  The other turned again and waited.  “Do you mean that you will leave us while Mr. Cumberland is in this critical condition?”

A shadow crossed the face of Barry.

“I’d stay if I could,” he answered.  “But it ain’t possible!”

“What takes you away is your affair, sir,” said the doctor.  “My concern is Mr. Cumberland.  He is in a very precarious condition.  The slightest nerve shock may have—­fatal—­results.”

Dan Barry sighed.

“Seemed to me,” he answered, “that he was buckin’ up considerable.  Don’t look so thin, doc.”

“His body may be well enough,” said the doctor calmly, “but his nerves are wrecked.  I am afraid to prophesy the consequences if you leave him.”

It was apparent that a great struggle was going on in Barry.  He answered at length:  “How long would I have to stay?  One rain could wipe out all the sign and make me like a blind man in the desert.  Doc, how long would I have to stay?”

“A few days,” answered Byrne, “may work wonders with him.”

The other hesitated.

“I’ll go up and talk with him,” he said, “and what he wants I’ll do.”