In the full tide of conscious power she was able to
drop her hand from her face, raise her head, turn
her glance carelessly upon Dan Barry; she was met
by ominously glowing eyes. Anger—at
least it was not indifference.
He rose and stepped in his noiseless way behind her,
but he reappeared instantly on the other side, and
reached out his hand to where her fingers trailed
limp from the arm of the chair. There he let them
lie, white and cool, against the darkness of his palm.
It was as if he sought in the hand for the secret
of her power over the wolf-dog. She let her head
rest against the back of the chair and watched the
nervous and sinewy hand upon which her own rested.
She had seen those hands fixed in the throat of Black
Bart himself, once upon a time. A grim simile
came to her; the tips of her fingers touched the paw
of the panther. The steel-sharp claws were sheathed,
but suppose once they were bared, and clutched.
Or she stood touching a switch which might loose, by
the slightest motion, a terrific voltage. What
would happen?
Nothing! Presently the hand released her fingers,
and Dan Barry stepped back and stood with folded arms,
frowning at the fire. In the weakness which overcame
her, in the grip of the wild excitement, she dared
not stay near him longer. She rose and walked
into the dining-room.
“Serve breakfast now, Wung,” she commanded,
and at once the gong was struck by the cook.
Before the long vibrations had died away the guests
were gathered around the table, and the noisy marshal
was the first to come. He slammed back a chair
and sat down with a grunt of expectancy.
“Mornin’, Dan,” he said, whetting
his knife across the table-cloth, “I hear you’re
ridin’ this mornin’? Ain’t going
my way, are you?”
Dan Barry sat frowning steadily down at the table.
It was a moment before he answered.
“I ain’t leavin,” he said softly,
at length, “postponed my trip.”
CHAPTER XXXIII
DOCTOR BYRNE SHOWS THE TRUTH
On this day of low-lying mists, this day so dull that
not a shadow was cast by tree or house or man, there
was no graver place than the room of old Joe Cumberland;
even lamp light was more merciful in the room, for
it left the corners of the big apartment in obscurity,
but this meagre daylight stripped away all illusion
and left the room naked and ugly. Those colours
of wall and carpet, once brighter than spring, showed
now as faded and lifeless as foliage in the dead days
of late November when the leaves have no life except
what keeps them clinging to the twig, and when their
fallen fellows are lifted and rustled on the ground
by every faint wind, with a sound like breathing in
the forest. And like autumn, too, was the face
of Joe Cumberland, with a colour neither flushed nor
pale, but a dull sallow which foretells death.
Beside his bed sat Doctor Randall Byrne and kept the
pressure of two fingers upon the wrist of the rancher.
