Her glance wandered past him and at once the heavy
step of Buck Daniels approached.
“At least,” she murmured, “I am
glad that you are frank. I don’t want to
have anything kept from me, please. Buck, will
you take the doctor up to his room?” She managed
a faint smile. “This is an old-fashioned
house, Doctor Byrne, but I hope we can make you fairly
comfortable. You’ll ask for whatever you
need?”
The doctor bowed, and was told that they would dine
in half an hour, then the girl went back towards the
room in which Joe Cumberland lay. She walked
slowly, with her head bent, and her posture seemed
to Byrne the very picture of a burden-bearer.
Then he followed Daniels up the stairs, led by the
jingling of the spurs, great-rowelled spurs that might
grip the side of a refractory horse like teeth.
A hall-light guided them, and from the hall Buck Daniels
entered a room and fumbled above him until he had
lighted a lamp which was suspended by two chains from
the ceiling, a circular burner which cast a glow as
keen as an electric globe. It brought out every
detail of the old-fashioned room—the bare,
painted floor; the bed, in itself a separate and important
piece of architecture with its four tall posts, a relic
of the times when beds were built, not simply made;
and there was a chest of drawers with swelling, hospitable
front, and a rectangular mirror above with its date
in gilt paint on the upper edge. A rising wind
shook the window and through some crack stirred the
lace curtains; it was a very comfortable retreat,
and the doctor became aware of aching muscles and a
heavy brain when he glanced at the bed.
The same gust of wind which rattled the window-pane
now pushed, as with invisible and ghostly hand, a
door which opened on the side of the bedroom, and
as it swung mysteriously and gradually wide the doctor
found himself looking into an adjoining chamber.
All he could see clearly was a corner on which struck
the shaft of light from the lamp, and lying on the
floor in that corner was something limp and brown.
A snake, he surmised at first, but then he saw clearly
that it was a chain of formidable proportions bolted
against the wall at one end and terminating at the
other in a huge steel collar. A chill started
in the boots of the doctor and wriggled its uncomfortable
way up to his head.
“Hell!” burst out Buck Daniels. “How’d
that door get open?” He slammed it with
violence. “She’s been in there again,
I guess,” muttered the cowpuncher, as he stepped
back, scowling.
“Who?” ventured the doctor.
Buck Daniels whirled on him.
“None of your—” he began hotly,
but checked himself with choking suddenness and strode
heavily from the room.
THE WAITING
The doctor removed his coat with absent-minded slowness,
and all the time that he was removing the dust and
the stains of travel, he kept narrowing the eye of
his mind to visualise more clearly that cumbersome
chain which lay on the floor of the adjoining room.
Now, the doctor was not of a curious or gossipy nature,
but if someone had offered to tell him the story of
that chain for a thousand dollars, the doctor at that
moment would have thought the price ridiculously small.
