“I don’t know,” she answered quickly.
“All I understand is that it is beautiful.
Where are your theories and explanations now, Doctor
Byrne?”.
“It is beautiful—God knows!—but
doesn’t the wolf-dog understand it better than
either you or I?”
She turned and faced Byrne, standing very close, and
when she spoke there was something in her voice which
was like a light. In spite of the dark he could
guess at every varying shade of her expression.
“To the rest of us,” she murmured, “Dan
has nothing but silence, and hardly a glance.
Buck saved his life to-night, and yet Dan remembered
nothing except the blow which had been struck.
And now—now he pours out all the music
in his soul for a dumb beast. Listen!”
He saw her straighten herself and stand taller.
“Then through the wolf—I’ll
conquer through the dumb beast!”
She whipped past Byrne and disappeared into the house;
at the same instant the whistling, in the midst of
a faint, high climax, broke, shivered, and was ended.
There was only the darkness and the silence around
Byrne, and the unsteady wind against his face.
WERE-WOLF
Doctor Byrne, pacing the front veranda with his thoughtful
head bowed, saw Buck Daniels step out with his quirt
dangling in his hand, his cartridge belt buckled about
his waist, and a great red silk bandana knotted at
his throat.
He was older by ten years than he had been a few days
before, when the doctor first saw him. To be
sure, his appearance was not improved by a three days’
growth of beard. It gave his naturally dark skin
a dirty cast, but even that rough stubble could not
completely shroud the new hollows in Daniels’
cheeks. His long, black, uncombed hair, sagged
down raggedly across his forehead, hanging almost
into his eyes; the eyes themselves were sunk in such
formidable cavities that Byrne caught hardly more
than two points of light in the shadows. All the
devil-may-care insouciance of Buck Daniels was quite,
quite gone. In its place was a dogged sullenness,
a hang-dog air which one would not care to face of
a dark night or in a lonely place. His manner
was that of a man whose back is against the wall,
who, having fled some keen pursuit, has now come to
the end of his tether and prepares for desperate even
if hopeless battle. There was that about him which
made the doctor hesitate to address the cowpuncher.
At length he said: “You’re going
out for an outing, Mr. Daniels?”
Buck Daniels started violently at the sound of this
voice behind him, and whirled upon the doctor with
such a set and contorted expression of fierceness
that Byrne jumped back.
“Good God, man!” cried the doctor, “What’s
up with you?”
“Nothin’,” answered Buck, gradually
relaxing from his first show of suspicion. “I’m
beating it. That’s all.”
