The Essential Max Brand - 29 Westerns in One Edition. Max Brand
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The wolf-dog licks his hand at the point of death. There is the profound difference, always. You try to reconcile him with other men; you give him the attributes of other men. Open your eyes; see the truth: that he is no more akin to man than Black Bart is like a man. And when you give him your affection, Miss Cumberland, you are giving your affection to a wild wolf! Do you believe me?"
He knew that she was shaken. He could feel it, even without the testimony of his eyes to witness. He went on, speaking with great rapidity, lest she should escape from the influence which he had already gained over her.
"I felt it when I first saw him—a certain nameless kinship with elemental forces. The wind blew through the open door—it was Dan Barry. The wild geese called from the open sky—for Dan Barry. These are the things which lead him. These the forces which direct him. You have loved him; but is love merely a giving? No, you have seen in him a man, but I see in him merely the animal force."
She said after a moment: "Do you hate him—you plead against him so passionately?"
He answered: "Can you hate a thing which is not human? No, but you can dread it. It escapes from the laws which bind you and which bind me. What standards govern it? How can you hope to win it? Love? What beauty is there in the world to appeal to such a creature except the beauty of the marrow-bone which his teeth have the strength to snap?"
"Ah, listen!" murmured the girl. "Here is your answer!"
And Doctor Randall Byrne heard a sound like the muted music of the violin, thin and small and wonderfully penetrating. He could not tell, at first, what it might be. For it was as unlike the violin as it was like the bow and the rosined strings. Then he made out, surely, that it was the whistling of a human being.
It followed no tune, no reasoned theme. The music was beautiful in its own self. It rose straight up like the sky-lark from the ground, sheer up against the white light of the sky, and there it sang against heaven's gate. He had never heard harmony like it. He would never again hear such music, so thin and yet so full that it went through and through him, until he felt the strains take a new, imitative life within him. He would have whistled the strains himself, but he could not follow them. They escaped him, they soared above him. They followed no law or rhythm. They flew on wings and left him far below. The girl moved away from him as if led by an invisible hand, and now she stood at the extremity of the porch. He followed her.
"Do you hear?" she cried, turning to him.
"What is it?" asked the doctor.
"It is he! Don't you understand?"
"Barry? Yes! But what does the whistling mean; is it for his wolf-dog?"
"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.
XXV. 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."
"Leaving us?"
"Yes."
"Not really!"
"D'you think I ought to stay?" asked Buck, with something of a sneer.
The doctor hesitated, frowning in a puzzled way. At length he threw out his hands in a gesture of mute abandonment.
"My dear fellow," he said with a faint smile, "I've about stopped trying to think."
At this Buck Daniels grinned mirthlessly.
"Now you're talkin' sense," he nodded. "They ain't no use in thinking."
"But why do you leave so suddenly?"
Buck Daniels shrugged his broad shoulders.
"I am sure," went on Byrne, "that Miss Cumberland will miss you."
"She will not," answered the big cowpuncher. "She's got her hands full with—him."
"Exactly. But if it is more than she can do, if she makes no headway with that singular fellow—she may need help—"
He was interrupted by a slow, long-drawn, deep-throated curse from Buck Daniels.
"Why in hell should I help her with—him?"
"There is really no reason," answered the doctor, alarmed, "except, I suppose, old friendship—"
"Damn old friendship!" burst out Buck Daniels. "There's an end to all things and my friendship is worn out—on both sides. It's done!"
He turned and scowled at the house.
"Help her to win him over? I'd rather stick the muzzle of my gun down my throat and pull the trigger. I'd rather see her marry a man about to hang. Well—to hell with this place. I'm through with it. S'long, doc."
But Doctor Byrne ran after him and halted him at the foot of the steps down from the veranda.
"My dear Mr. Daniels," he urged, touching the arm of Buck. "You really mustn't leave so suddenly as this. There are a thousand questions on the tip of my tongue."
Buck Daniels regarded the professional man with a hint of weariness and disgust.
"Well," he said, "I'll hear the first couple of hundred. Shoot!"
"First: the motive that sends you away."
"Dan Barry."
"Ah—ah—fear