“He has stepped out for an instant,” answered
Byrne smoothly. “He will be back shortly.”
“He—has—stepped—out?”
echoed the old man slowly. Then he rose to the
full of his gaunt height. His white hair, his
triangle of beard and pointed moustache gave him a
detached, a mediaeval significance; a portrait by
Van Dyck had stepped from its frame.
“Doc, you’re lyin’ to me! Where
has he gone?”
A sudden, almost hysterical burst of emotion swept
Doctor Byrne.
“Gone to heaven or hell!” he cried with
startling violence. “Gone to follow the
wind and the wild geese—God knows where!”
Like a period to his sentence, a gun barked outside,
there was a howl of demoniac pain and rage, and then
a scream that would tingle in the ear of Doctor Randall
Byrne till his dying day.
HOW MAC STRANN KEPT THE LAW
For when the dog sprang, Mac Strann fired, and the
wolf was jerked up in the midst of his leap by the
tearing impact of the bullet. It was easy for
Strann to dodge the beast, and the great black body
hurtled past him and struck heavily on the floor of
the barn. It missed Mac Strann, indeed, but it
fell at the very feet of Haw-Haw Langley, and a splash
of blood flirted across his face. He was too
terrified to shriek, but fell back against the wall
of the barn, gasping. There he saw Black Bart
struggle to regain his feet, vainly, for both of the
animal’s forelegs seemed paralyzed. Now
the yellow light of the fire rose brightly, and by
it Haw-Haw marked the terrible eyes and the lolling,
slavering tongue of the great beast, and the fangs
like ivory daggers. It could not regain its feet,
but it thrust itself forward by convulsive efforts
of the hind legs towards Mac Strann.
Haw-Haw Langley stared for a single instant in white
faced fear, but when he realised that Black Bart was
helpless as a toothless old dog, the tall cowpuncher,
twisted his lean fingers with a silent joy. Once
more Bart pushed himself towards Mac Strann, and then
Haw-Haw Langley stepped forward, and with all the
force of his long leg smashed his heavy riding boot
into the face of the dog. Black Bart toppled back
against the base of the manger, struggled vainly to
regain his poise, and it was then that he pointed
his nose up, and wailed like a lost soul, wailed with
the fury of impotent hate. Mac Strann caught Haw-Haw
by the arm and dragged him back towards the door.
“I don’t want to kill the dog,”
he repeated. “Get out of here, Haw-Haw.
Barry’ll be comin’ any minute.”
He could have used no sharper spur to urge on the
laggard. Haw-Haw Langley raced out of the barn
a full stride before Mac Strann. They hurried
together to the little rise of ground behind which
they had left their horses, and as they ran the scream
which had curdled the blood of Randall Byrne rang
through the night. In a thousand years he could
never have guessed from what that yell issued; his
nearest surmise would have been a score of men screaming
in unison under the torture. But Mac Strann and
Haw-Haw Langley knew the sound well enough.
