“The wolf!” he whispered to Mac Strann.
“Mac, what’re we goin’ to do?”
The other had not time to answer, for the shadow at
the door of the barn now leaped towards them, silently,
without growl or yelp or snarl. As if to guide
the battle, the kindling wood behind them now ignited
and sent up a yellow burst of light. By it Haw-Haw
Langley saw the great beast clearly, and he leaped
back behind the sheltering form of Mac Strann.
As for Mac, he did not move or flinch from the attack.
His revolver was in his hand, levelled, and following
the swift course of Black Bart.
PATIENCE
There is one patience greater than the endurance of
the cat at the hole of the mouse or the wolf which
waits for the moose to drop, and that is the patience
of the thinking man; the measure of the Hindoo’s
moveless contemplation of Nirvana is not in hours
but in weeks or even in months. Randall Byrne
sat at his sentinel post with his hands folded and
his grave eyes steadily fixed before him, and for
hour after hour he did not move. Though the wind
rose, now and again, and whistled through the upper
chambers or mourned down the empty halls, Randall Byrne
did not stir so much as an eyelash in observance.
Two things held him fascinated. One was the girl
who had passed up yonder stairs so wearily without
a single backward glance at him; the other was the
silent battle which went on in the adjoining room.
Now and then his imagination wandered away to secondary
pictures. He would see Barry meeting Buck Daniels,
at last, and striking him down as remorselessly as
the hound strikes the hare; or he would see him riding
back towards Elkhead and catch a bright, sad vision
of Kate Cumberland waving a careless adieu to him,
and then hear her singing carelessly as she turned
away. Such pictures as these, however, came up
but rarely in the mind of Byrne. Mostly he thought
of the stranger leaning over the body of old Joe Cumberland,
reviving him, storing him with electric energy, paying
back, as it were, some ancient debt. And he thought
of the girl as she had turned at the landing place
of the stairs, her head fallen; and he thought of
her lying in her bed, with her arm under the mass of
bright hair, trying to sleep, very tired, but remorsely
held awake by that same power which was bringing Joe
Cumberland back from the verge of death.
It was all impossible. This thing could not be.
It was really as bad as the yarn of the Frankenstein
monster. He considered how it would seem in print,
backed by his most solemn asseverations, and then he
saw the faces of the men who associated with him,
pale thoughtful faces striving to conceal their smiles
and their contempt. But always he came back,
like the desperate hare doubling on his course, upon
the picture of Kate Cumberland there at the turning
of the stairs, and that bent, bright head which confessed
defeat. The man had forgotten her. It made
Byrne open his eyes in incredulity even to imagine
such a thing. The man had forgotten her!
She was no more to him than some withered hag he might
ride past on the road.
