Max Brand - Essential Novelists - Max Brand

“Somewhere,” he murmured, “something's happening. I felt it on the wind when I was comin' up the pass.”

“If you—oh, Dan, you're breaking my heart!”

“Stand out of the door.”

“Wait till the morning.”

“Don't you see I can't wait?”

“One hour, ten minutes. Buck—Lee Haines—”

She could not finish, but Buck Daniels stepped closer, trying to make a smile grow on his ashen face.

“Another minute, Dan, and I'll tell a man you've forgotten me.”

Barry pivoted suddenly as though uneasy at finding something behind him, and Daniels winced.

“Hello, Buck. Didn't see you was here. Lee Haines? Lee, this is fine.”

He passed from one to the other and his handshake was only the elusive passage of his fingers through their palms. Haines shrugged his shoulders to get rid of a weight that clung to him; a touch of color came back to his face.

“Look here, Dan. If you're afraid that gang may trail you here and start raising the devil—how many are there?”

“Five.”

“I'm as good with a gun as I ever was in the old days. So is Buck. Partner, let's make the show down together. Stick here with Kate and Joan and Buck and I will help you hold the fort. Don't look at me like that. I mean it. Do you think I've forgotten what you did for me that night in Elkhead? Not in a thousand years. Dan, I'd rather make my last play here than any other place in the world. Let 'em come! We'll salt them down and plant them where they won't grow.”

As he talked the pallor quite left him, and the fighting fire blazed in his eyes, he stood lion-like, his feet spread apart as if to meet a shock, his tawny head thrown back, and there was about him a hair-trigger sensitiveness, in spite of his bulk, a nervousness of hand and coldness of glance which characterizes the gun-fighter. Buck Daniels stepped closer, without a word, but one felt that he also had walked into the alliance. As Barry watched them the yellow which swirled in his eyes flickered away for a moment.

“Why, gents,” he murmured, “they ain't any call for trouble. The posse? What's that got to do with me? Our accounts are all squared up.”

The two stared dumbly.

“They killed Grey Molly; I killed one of them.”

“A horse—for a man?” repeated Lee Haines, breathing hard.

“A life for a life,” said Dan simply. “They got no call for complainin'.”

Glances of wonder, glances of meaning, flashed back and forth from Haines to Buck.

“Well, then,” said the latter, and he took in Kate with a caution from the corner of his eye, “if that's the case, let's sit down and chin for a minute.”

Dan stood with his head bowed a little, frowning; two forces pulled him, and Kate leaned against the wall off in the shadow with her eyes closed, waiting, waiting, waiting through the crisis.

“I'd like to stay and chin with you, Buck—but, I got to be off. Out there—in the night—something may happen before mornin'.” Black Bart licked the hand of the master and whined. “Easy, boy. We're startin'.”

“But the night's just beginnin',” said Buck Daniels genially. “You got a world of time before you, and with Satan to fall back on you don't have to count your minutes. Pull up a chair beside me, Dan, and—”

The latter shook his head, decided. “Buck, I can't do it. Just to sit here”—he looked about him—“makes me feel sort of choked. Them walls are as close—as a coffin.”

He was already turning; Kate straightened in the shadow, desperate.

“As a matter of fact, Dan,” said Lee Haines, suddenly, “we need your help badly.”

“Help?”

The heart of Kate stood in her eyes as she looked at Lee Haines.

“Sit down a minute, Dan, and I'll tell you about it.”

Barry slipped into a chair which he had pulled to one side—so that the back of it was towards the wall, and every one in the room was before him.

The help which Lee Haines wanted, it turned out, was guidance across a difficult stretch of country which he and Buck Daniels wanted to prospect, and while he talked Barry listened uneasily. It was constitutionally impossible for him to say no when a favor was asked of him, and Haines counted heavily on that characteristic; in the meantime Black Bart lay on the hearth with his wistful eyes turned steadily up to the master; and Buck Daniels went to Kate on the farther side of the room. She sat quivering, alternately crushing and soothing Joan with the strength of her caresses. Buck drew a chair close, with his back half towards the fire.

“Turn around a little, Kate,” he cautioned. “Don't let Dan see your face.”

She obeyed him automatically.

“Is there a hope, Buck? What have I done to deserve this? I don't want to live; I want to die! I want to die!”

“Steady, steady!” he cut in, and his face was working. “If you keep on like this you'll bust down in a minute or two. And you know what tears do to Dan; he'll be out of this house like a scairt coyote. Brace up!”

She struggled and won a partial control.

“I'm fighting hard, Buck.”

“Fight harder still. You ought to know him better than I do. When he's like this it drives him wild to have other folks thinkin' about him.”

He looked over to Dan. In spite of the bowed head of the latter as he listened to Haines yarning he gave an impression of electric awareness to all that was around him.

“Talk soft,” whispered Buck. “Maybe he knows we're talkin' about him.”

He raised his voice out of the whisper, breaking in on a sentence about Joan, as if this were the tenor of their talk. Then he lowered his tone again.

“Think quick. Talk soft. Do you want Dan kept here?”

“For God's sake, yes.”

“Suppose the posse gets him here?”

“We musn't dodge the law.”

They were gauging their voices with the closest precision. Talking like this so close to Barry was like dancing among flasks of nitroglycerine. Once, and once only, Lee Haines cast a desperate eye across to them, begging them to come to his rescue, then he went back to his talk with Dan, raising his voice to shelter the conference of the other two.

“If they come, he'll fight.”

“No, he isn't at the fighting pitch yet, I know!”

“If you're wrong they'll be dead men here.”

“He sees no difference between the death of a horse and the death of a man. He feels that the law has no score against him. He'll go quietly.”

“And we'll find ways of fightin' the law?”

“Yes, but it needs money.”

“I've got a stake.”

“God bless you, Buck.”

“Take my advice.”

“What?”

“Let him go now.”

She glanced at him wildly.

“Kate, he's gone already.”

“No, no, no!”

“I say he's gone. Look at his eyes.”

“I don't dare.”

“The yaller is comin' up in 'em. He's wild again.” She shook her head in mute agony. Buck Daniels groaned, softly.

“Then they's goin' to be a small-sized hell started around this cabin before mornin'.”

He got up and went slowly back towards the fire. Lee Haines was talking steadily, leisurely, going round and round his subject again and again, and Barry listened with bowed head, but his eyes were fixed upon those of the wolf-dog at his feet. When he grew restless, Haines chained him to the chair with some direct question, yet it was a hard game to play. All this time the posse might be gathering around the cabin; and the forehead of Haines whitened and glistened with sweat. His voice was the only living thing in the cabin, after a time, sketching his imaginary plans for the benefit of Barry—his voice and the wistful eyes of Joan which kept steadily on Daddy Dan. Something has come between them and lifted a barrier which she could not understand, and with all her aching child's heart she wondered at it.