The Night Horseman

THE PIEBALD

The morning of the doctor’s departure witnessed quite a ceremony at the Cumberland ranch, for old Joe Cumberland insisted that he be brought down from his room to his old place in the living-room.  When he attempted to rise from his bed, however, he found that he could not stand; and big Buck Daniels lifted the old man like a child and carried him down the stairs.  Once ensconced on the sofa in the living-room Joe Cumberland beckoned his daughter close to him, and whispered with a smile as she leaned over:  “Here’s what comes of pretendin’, Kate.  I been pretending to be too sick to walk, and now I can’t walk; and if I’d pretended to be well, I’d be ridin’ Satan right now!”

He looked about him.

“Where’s Dan?” he asked.

“Upstairs getting ready for the trip.”

“Trip?”

“He’s riding with Doctor Byrne to town and he’ll bring back Doctor Byrne’s horse.”

The old man grew instantly anxious.

“They’s a lot of things can happen on a long trip like that, Kate.”

She nodded gravely.

“But we have to try him,” she said.  “We can’t keep him here at the ranch all the time.  And if he really cares, Dad, he’ll come back.”

“And you let him go of your own free will?” asked Joe Cumberland, wonderingly.

“I asked him to go,” she answered quietly, but some of the colour left her face.

“Of course it’s going to come out all right,” nodded her father.

“I asked him when he’d be back, and he said he would be here by dark to-night.”

The old man sighed with relief.

“He don’t never slip up on promises,” he said.  “But oh, lass, I’ll be glad when he’s back again!  Buck, how’d you and Dan come along together?”

“We don’t come,” answered Buck gloomily.  “I tried to shake hands with him yesterday and call it quits.  But he wouldn’t touch me.  He jest leaned back and smiled at me and hated me with his eyes, that way he has.  He don’t even look at me except when he has to, and when he does I feel like someone was sneaking up behind me with a knife ready.  And he ain’t said ten words to me since I come back.”  He paused and considered Kate with the same dark, lowering glance.  “To-morrow I leave.”

“You’ll think better of that,” nodded Joe Cumberland.  “Here’s the doctor now.”

He came in with Dan Barry behind him.  A changed man was the doctor.  He was a good two inches taller because he stood so much more erect, and there was a little spring in his step which gave aspiration and spirit to his carriage.  He bade them good-bye one by one, and by Joe Cumberland he sat down for an instant and wished him luck.  The old ranchman drew the other down closer.

“They’s no luck for me,” he whispered, “but don’t tell none of ’em.  I’m about to take a longer trip than you’ll ride to-day.  But first I’ll see ’em settled down here—­Dan quiet and both of ’em happy.  S’long, doc—­thanks for takin’ care of me.  But this here is something that can’t be beat no way.  Too many years’ll break the back of any man, doc.  Luck to ye!”

“If you’ll step to the door,” said the doctor, smiling upon the rest, “you’ll have some fun to watch.  I’m going to ride on the piebald.”

“Him that throwed you yesterday?” grinned Buck Daniels.

“The same,” said the doctor.  “I think I can come to a gentleman’s understanding with him.  A gentleman from the piebald’s point of view is one who is never unintentionally rude.  He may change his mind this morning—­or he may break my back.  One of the two is sure to happen.”

In front of the house Dan Barry already sat on Satan with Black Bart sitting nearby watching the face of his master.  And beside them the lantern-jawed cowpuncher held the bridle of the piebald mustang.  Never in the world was there a lazier appearing beast.  His lower lip hung pendulous, a full inch and a half below the upper.  His eyes were rolled so that hardly more than the whites showed.  He seemed to stand asleep, dreaming of some Nirvana for equine souls.  And the only signs of life were the long ears, which wobbled, occasionally, back and forth.

When the doctor mounted, the piebald limited all signs of interest to opening one eye.

The doctor clucked.  The piebald switched his tail.  Satan, at a word from Dan Barry, moved gracefully into a soft trot away from the house.  The doctor slapped his mount on the neck.  An ear flicked back and forth.  The doctor stretched out both legs, and then he dug both spurs deep into the flanks of the mustang.

It was a perfectly successful maneuvre.  The back of the piebald changed from an ugly humped line to a decidedly sharp parabola and the horse left the ground with all four feet.  He hit it again, almost in the identical hoof-marks, and with all legs stiff.  The doctor sagged drunkenly in the saddle, and his head first swung far back, and then snapped over so that the chin banged against his chest.  Nevertheless he clung to the saddle with both hands, and stayed in his seat.  The piebald swung his head around sufficiently to make sure of the surprising fact, and then he commenced to buck in earnest.

It was a lovely exhibition.  He bucked with his head up and his head between his knees.  He bucked in a circle and in a straight line and then mixed both styles for variety.  He made little spurts at full speed, leaped into the air, and came down stiff-legged at the end of the run, his head between his braced forefeet, and then he whirled as if on a peg and darted back the other way.  He bucked criss-cross, jumping from side to side, and he interspersed this with samples of all his other kinds of bucking thrown in.  That the doctor stuck on the saddle was a miracle beyond belief.  Of course he pulled leather shamelessly throughout the contest, but riding straight up is a good deal of a myth.  Fancy riding is reserved for circus men.  The mountain-desert is a place where men stick close to utility and let style go hang.

And the doctor stuck in the saddle.  He had set his teeth, and he was a sea-sick greenish-white.  His hat was a-jog over one ear—­his shirt tails flew out behind.  And still he remained to battle.  Aye, for he ceased the passive clinging to the saddle.  He gathered up the long quirt which had hitherto dangled idly from his wrist, and at the very moment when the piebald had let out another notch in his feats, the doctor, holding on desperately with one hand, with the other brandished the quirt around his head and brought it down with a crack along the flanks of the piebald.

The effect was a little short of a miracle.  The mustang snorted and leaped once into the air, but he forgot to come down stiff-legged, and then, instantly, he broke into a little, soft dog trot, and followed humbly in the trail of the black stallion.  The laughter and cheers from the house were the sweetest of music in the ears of Doctor Randall Byrne; the most sounding sentences of praise from the lips of the most learned of professors, after this, would be the most shabby of anticlimaxes.  He waved his arm back to a group standing in front of the house—­Buck Daniels, Kate, the lantern-jawed cowboy, and Wung Lu waving his kitchen apron.  In another moment he was beside the rider of the stallion, and the man was whistling one of those melodies which defied repetition.  It simply ran on and on, smoothly, sweeping through transition after transition, soaring and falling in the most effortless manner.  Now it paused, now it began again.  It was never loud, but it carried like the music of a bird on wing, blown by the wind.  There was about it, also, something which escaped from the personal.  He began to forget that it was a man who whistled, and such a man!  He began to look about to the hills and the sky and the rocks—­for these, it might be said, were set to music—­they, too, had the sweep of line, and the broken rhythms, the sense of spaciousness, the far horizons.

That day was a climax of the unusual weather.  For a long time the sky had been periodically blanketed with thick mists, but to-day the wind had freshened and it tore the mists into a thousand mighty fragments.  There was never blue sky in sight—­only, far up, a diminishing and lighter grey to testify that above it the yellow sun might be shining; but all the lower heavens were a-sweep with vast cloud masses, irregular, huge, hurling across the sky.  They hung so low that one could follow the speed of their motion and almost gauge it by miles per hour.  And in the distance they seemed to brush the tops of the hills.  Seeing this, the doctor remembered what he had heard of rain in this region.  It would come, they said, in sheets and masses—­literal water-falls.  Dry arroyos suddenly filled and became swift torrent, rolling big boulders down their courses.  There were tales of men fording rivers who were suddenly overwhelmed by terrific walls of water which rushed down from the higher mountains in masses four and eight feet high.  In coming they made a thundering among the hills and they plucked up full grown trees like twigs thrust into wet mud.  Indeed, that was the sort of rain one would expect in such a country, so whipped and naked of life.  Even the reviving rainfall was sent in the form of a scourge; and that which should make the grass grow might tear it up by the roots.

That was a time of change and of portent, and a day well fitted to the mood of Randall Byrne.  He, also, had altered, and there was about to break upon him the rain of life, and whether it would destroy him or make him live, and richly, he could not guess.  But he was naked to the skies of chance—­naked as this landscape.

Far past the mid-day they reached the streets of Elkhead and stopped at the hotel.  As the doctor swung down from his saddle, cramped and sore from the long ride, thunder rattled over the distant hills and a patter of rain splashed in the dust and sent up a pungent odor to his nostrils.  It was like the voice of the earth proclaiming its thirst.  And a blast of wind leaped down the street and lifted the brim of Barry’s hat and set the bandana at his throat fluttering.  He looked away into the teeth of the wind and smiled.

There was something so curious about him at the instant that Randall Byrne wanted to ask him into the hotel—­wanted to have him knee to knee for a long talk.  But he remembered an old poem—­the sea-shell needs the waves of the sea—­the bird will not sing in the cage.  And the yellow light in the eyes of Barry, phosphorescent, almost—­a thing that might be nearly seen by night—­that, surely, would not shine under any roof.  It was the wind which made him smile.  These things he understood, without fear.

So he said good-bye, and the rider waved carelessly and took the reins of the piebald and turned the stallion back.  He noted the catlike grace of the horse in moving, as if his muscles were steel springs; and he noted also that the long ride had scarcely stained the glossy hide with sweat—­while the piebald reeked with the labour.  Randall Byrne drew thoughtfully back onto the porch of the hotel and followed the rider with his eyes.  In a moment a great cloud of dust poured down the street, covered the rider, and when it was gone he had passed around a corner and out of the life of the doctor.