And Dan Barry? Twice men had stood before him,
armed, and twice he had failed to kill. Wonder
rose in him; wonder and a great fear. Was he
losing the desert, and was the desert losing him?
Were the chains of humanity falling about him to drag
him down to a tamed and sordid life? A sudden
hatred for all men, Mac Strann, Daniels, Kate, and
even poor Joe Cumberland, welled hot in the breast
of Whistling Dan. The strength of men could not
conquer him; but how could their very weakness disarm
him? He leaped again on the back of Satan, and
rode furiously back into the storm.
THE FALLING OF NIGHT
It had been hard to gauge the falling of night on
this day, and even the careful eyes of the watchers
on the Cumberland Ranch could not tell when the greyness
of the sky was being darkened by the coming of the
evening. All day there had been swift alterations
of light and shadow, comparatively speaking, as the
clouds grew thin or thick before the wind. But
at length, indubitably, the night was there. Little
by little the sky was overcast, and even the lines
of the falling rain were no longer visible. Before
the gloom of the darkness had fully settled over the
earth, moreover, there came a change in the wind, and
the watchers at the rain-beaten windows of the ranch-house
saw the clouds roll apart and split into fragments
that were driven from the face of the sky; and from
the clean washed face of heaven the stars shone down
bright and serene. And still Dan Barry had not
come.
After the tumult of that long day the sudden silence
of that windless night had more ill omen in it than
thunder and lightning. For there is something
watching and waiting in silence. In the living
room the three did not speak.
Now that the storm was gone they had allowed the fire
to fall away until the hearth showed merely fragmentary
dances of flame and a wide bed of dull red coals growing
dimmer from moment to moment. Wung Lu had brought
in a lamp—a large lamp with a circular wick
that cast a bright, white light—but Kate
had turned down the wick, and now it made only a brief
circle of yellow in one corner of the room. The
main illumination came from the fireplace and struck
on the faces of Kate and Buck Daniels, while Joe Cumberland,
on the couch at the end of the room, was only plainly
visible when there was an extraordinarily high leap
of the dying flames; but usually his face was merely
a glimmering hint in the darkness—his face
and the long hands which were folded upon his breast.
Often when the flames leapt there was a crackling of
the embers and the last of the log, and then the two
nearer the fire would start and flash a glance, of
one accord, towards the prostrate figure on the couch.
That silence had lasted so long that when at length
the dull voice of Joe Cumberland broke in, there was
a ring of a most prophetic solemnity about it.
