THE VOICE OF BLACK BART
Her father lay propped high with pillows among which
his head lolled back. The only light in the room
was near the bed and it cast a glow upon the face
of Joe Cumberland and on the white linen, the white
hair, the white, pointed beard. All the rest
of the room swam in darkness. The chairs were
blotches, indistinct, uncertain; even the foot of the
bed trailed off to nothingness. It was like one
of those impressionistic, very modern paintings, where
the artist centres upon one point and throws the rest
of his canvas into dull oblivion. The focus here
was the face of the old cattleman. The bedclothes,
never stirred, lay in folds sharply cut out with black
shadows, and they had a solid seeming, as the mort-cloth
rendered in marble over the effigy. That suggested
weight exaggerated the frailty of the body beneath
the clothes. Exhausted by that burden, the old
man lay in the arms of a deadly languor, so that there
was a kinship of more than blood between him and Kate
at this moment. She stepped to the side of the
bed and stood staring down at him, and there was little
gentleness in her expression. So cold was that
settled gaze that her father stirred, at length, shivered,
and without opening his eyes, fumbled at the bed-spread
and drew it a little more closely about his shoulders.
Even that did not give him rest; and presently the
wrinkled eyelids opened and he looked up at his daughter.
A film of weariness heavier than sleep at first obscured
his sight, but this in turn cleared away; he frowned
a little to clear his vision, and then wagged his
head slowly from side to side.
“Kate,” he said feebly, “I done
my best. It simply wasn’t good enough.”
She answered in a voice as low as his, but steadier:
“What could have happened? Dad, what happened
to make you give up every hold on Dan? What was
it? You were the last power that could keep him
here. You knew it. Why did you tell him
he could go?”
The monotone was more deadly than any emphasis of
a raised word.
“If you’d been here,” pleaded Joe
Cumberland, “you’d have done what I done.
I couldn’t help it. There he sat on the
foot of the bed—see where them covers still
kind of sag down—after he told me that he
had something to do away from the ranch and that he
wanted to go now that Black Bart was well enough to
travel in short spells. He asked me if I still
needed him.”
“And you told him no?” she cried.
“Oh Dad, you know it means everything to me—but
you told him no?” He raised a shaking hand to
ward off the outburst and stop it.
“Not at first, honey. Gimme a chance to
talk, Kate. At first I told him that I needed
him—and God knows that I do need
him. I dunno why—not even Doc Byrne
knows what there is about Dan that helps me. I
told Dan all them things. And he didn’t
say nothin’, but jest sat still on the foot
of the bed and looked at me.
