DOCTOR BYRNE LOOKS INTO THE PAST
The black head of Barry, the brown head of Randall Byrne, the golden
head of Kate Cumberland, were all bowed around the limp body of Black
Bart. Buck Daniels, still gasping for breath, stood reeling nearby.
"Let me attempt to resuscitate the animal," offered the doctor.
He was met by a blank look from Barry. The hair of the man was scorched,
his skin was blistered and burned. Only his hands remained uninjured,
and these continued to move over the body of the great dog. Kate
Cumberland was on her knees over the brute.
"Is it fatal, Dan?" she asked. "Is there no hope for Bart?"
There was no answer from Barry, and she attempted to raise the fallen,
lifeless head of the animal; but instantly a strong arm darted out and
brushed her hands away. Those hands fell idly at her sides and her head
went back as though she had been struck across the face. She found
herself looking up into the angry eyes of Randall Byrne. He reached down
and raised her to her feet; there was no colour in her face, no life in
her limbs.
"There's nothing more to be done here, apparently," said the doctor
coldly. "Suppose we take your father and go back to the house."
She made neither assent nor dissent. Dan Barry had finished a swift,
deft bandage and stopped the bleeding of the dog's wounds. Now he raised
his head and his glance slipped rapidly over the faces of the doctor and
the girl and rested on Buck Daniels. There was no flash of kindly
thanks, no word of recognition. His right hand raised to his cheek, and
rested there, and in his eyes came that flare of yellow hate. Buck
Daniels shrank back until he was lost in the crowd. Then he turned and
stumbled back towards the house.
Instantly, Barry began to work at expanding and depressing the lungs of
the huge animal as he might have worked to bring a man back to life.
"Watch him!" whispered the doctor to Kate Cumberland. "He is closer to
that dog--that wolf, it looks like--than he has ever been to any human
being!"
She would not answer, but she turned her head quickly away from the man
and his beast.
"Are you afraid to watch?" challenged Byrne, for his anger at Barry's
blunt refusals still made his blood hot. "When your father lay at
death's door was he half so anxious as he is now? Did he work so hard,
by half? See how his eyes are fixed on the muzzle of the beast as if he
were studying a human face!"
"No, no!" breathed the girl.
"I fell you, look!" commanded the doctor. "For there's the solution of
the mystery. No mystery at all. Barry is simply a man who is closer akin
to the brute forces in nature. See! By the eternal heavens, he's
dragging that beast--that dumb beast--back from the door of death!"
Barry had ceased his rapid manipulations, and turned the big dog back
upon its side. Now the eyes of Black Bart opened, and winked shut again.
Now the master kneeled at the head of the beast and took the scarred,
shaggy head between his hands.
"Bart!" he commanded.
Not a stir in the long, black body. The stallion edged a pace closer,
dropped his velvet muzzle, and whinnied softly at the very ear of the
dog. Still, there was not an answering quiver.
"Bart!" called the man again, and there was a ring of wild grief--of
fear--in his cry.
"Do you hear?" said Byrne savagely, at the ear of the girl. "Did you
ever use such a tone with a human being? Ever?"
"Take me away!" she murmured. "I'm sick--sick at heart. Take me away!"
Indeed, she was scarcely sure of her poise, and tottered where she
stood. Doctor Byrne slipped his arm about her and led her away,
supporting half her weight. They went slowly, by small, soft steps,
towards the house, and before they reached it, he knew that she was
weeping. But if there was sadness in Byrne, there was also a great joy.
He was afire, for there is a flamelike quality in hope. Loss of blood
and the stifling smoke, rather than a mortal injury or the touch of
fire, had brought Black Bart close to death, but now that his breathing
was restored, and almost normal, he gained rapidly. One instant he
lingered on the border between life and death; the next, the brute's
eyes opened and glittered with dim recognition up towards Dan, and he
licked the hand which supported his head. At Dan's direction, a blanket
was brought, and after Dan had lifted Black Bart upon it, four men
raised the corners of the blanket and carried the burden towards the
house. One of the cowpunchers went ahead bearing the light. This was the
sight which Doctor Byrne and Kate Cumberland saw from the veranda of the
ranch-house as they turned and looked back before going in.
"A funeral procession," suggested the doctor.
"No," she answered positively. "If Black Bart were dead, Dan wouldn't
allow any hands save his own to touch the body. No, Black Bart is alive!
Yet, it's impossible."
The word "impossible," however, was gradually dropping from the
vocabulary of Randall Byrne. True, the wolf-dog had seemed dead past
recovery and across the eyes of Byrne came a vision of the dead rising
from their graves. Yet he merely shook his head and said nothing.
"Ah!" she broke in. "Look!"
The procession drew nearer, heading towards the back of the big house,
and now they saw that Dan Barry walked beside the body of Black Bart, a
smile on his lifted face. They disappeared behind the back of the
house.
Byrne heard the girl murmuring, more to herself than to him: "Once he
was like that all the time."
"Like what?" he asked bluntly.
She paused, and then her hand dropped lightly on his arm. He could not
see more than a vague outline of her in the night, only the dull glimmer
of her face as she turned her head, and the faint whiteness of her hand.
"Let's say good-night," she answered, at length. "Our little worlds have
toppled about our heads to-night--all your theories, it seems, and, God
knows, all that I have hoped. Why should we stay here and make ourselves
miserable by talk?"
"But because we have failed," he said steadily, "is that a reason we
should creep off and brood over our failure in silence? No, let's talk
it out, man to man."
"You have a fine courage," said the girl. "But what is there we can
say?"
He answered: "For my part, I am not so miserable as you think. For I
feel as if this night had driven us closer together, you see; and I've
caught a perspective on everything that has happened here."
"Tell me what you know."
"Only what I think I know. It may be painful to hear."
"I'm very used to pain."
"Well, a moment ago, when Barry was walking beside his dog, smiling, you
murmured that he once was like that always. It gave me light. So I'd
say that there was a time when Dan Barry lived here with you and your
father. Am I right?"
"Yes, for years and years."
"And in those times he was not greatly different from other men. Not on
the surface."
"No."
"You came to be very fond of him."
"We were to marry," answered Kate Cumberland, and Byrne winced.
He went on: "Then something happened--suddenly--that took him away from
you, and you did not see him again until to-night. Am I right?"
"Yes. I thought you must have heard the story--from the outside. I'll
tell you the truth. My father found Dan Barry wandering across the hills
years ago. He was riding home over the range and he heard a strange and
beautiful whistling, and when he looked up he saw on the western ridge,
walking against the sky, a tattered figure of a boy. He rode up and
asked the boy his name. He learned it was Dan Barry--Whistling Dan, he
was called. But the boy could not, or would not, tell how he came to be
there in the middle of the range without a horse. He merely said that he
came from 'over there,' and waved his hand to the south and east. That
was all. He didn't seem to be alarmed because he was alone, and yet he
apparently knew nothing of the country; he was lost in this terrible
country where a man could wander for days without finding a house, and
yet the boy was whistling as he walked! So Dad took him home and sent
out letters all about--to the railroad in particular--to find out if
such a boy was missing.
"He received no answer. In the meantime he gave Dan a room in the house;
and I remember how Dan sat at the table the first night--I was a very
little girl then--and how I laughed at his strange way of eating. His
knife was the only thing he was interested in and he made it serve for
knife, fork, and spoon, and he held the meat in his fingers while he cut
it. The next morning he was missing. One of Dad's range riders picked up
Dan several miles to the north, walking along, whistling gayly. The next
morning he was missing again and was caught still farther away. After
that Dad had a terrible scene with him--I don't know exactly what
happened--but Dan promised to run away no more, and ever since then Dad
has been closer to Dan than anyone else.
"So Dan grew up. From the time I could first distinctly remember, he was
very gentle and good-natured, but he was different, always. After a
while he got Black Bart, you know, and then he went out with a halter
and captured Satan. Think of capturing a wild mustang with nothing but a
halter! He played around with them so much that I was jealous of them.
So I kept with them until Bart and Satan were rather used to me. Bart
would even play with me now and then when Dan wasn't near. And so
finally Dan and I were to be married.
"Dad didn't like the idea. He was afraid of what Dan might become. And
he was right. One day, in a saloon that used to stand on that hill over
there, Dan had a fight--his first fight--with a man who had struck him
across the mouth for no good reason. That man was Jim Silent. Of course
you've heard of him?"
"Never."
"He was a famous long-rider--an outlaw with a very black record. At the
end of that fight he struck Dan down with a chair and escaped. I went
down to Dan when I heard of the fight--Black Bart led me down, to be
exact--but Dan would not come back to the house, and he'd have no more
to do with anyone until he had found Jim Silent. I can't tell you
everything that happened. Finally he caught Jim Silent and killed
him--with his bare hands. Buck Daniels saw it. Then Dan came back to us,
but on the first night he began to grow restless. It was last Fall--the
wild geese were flying south--and while they were honking in the sky Dan
got up, said good-bye, and left us. We have never seen him again until
to-night. All we knew was that he had ridden south--after the wild
geese."
A long silence fell between them, for the doctor was thinking hard.
"And when he came back," he said, "Barry did not know you? I mean you
were nothing to him?"
"You were there," said the girl, faintly.
"It is perfectly clear," said Byrne. "If it were a little more
commonplace it might be puzzling, but being so extraordinary it clears
itself up. Did you really expect the dog, the wolf-dog, Black Bart, to
remember you?"
"I may have expected it."
"But you were not surprised, of course!"
"Naturally not."
"Yet you see that Dan Barry--Whistling Dan, you call him--was closer to
Black Bart than he was to you?"
"Why should I see that?"
"You watched him a moment ago when he was leaning over the dog."
He watched her draw her dressing gown closer about her, as though the
cold bit more keenly then.
She said simply: "Yes, I saw."
"Don't you see that he is simply more in tune with the animal world? And
it's really no more reasonable to expect Black Bart to remember you than
it is to expect Dan Barry to remember you? It's quite plain. When you go
back to the beginning man was simply an animal, without the higher
senses, as we call them. He was simply a brute, living in trees or in
caves. Afterwards he grew into the thing we all know. But why not
imagine a throw-back into the earlier instincts? Why not imagine the
creature devoid of the impulses of mind, the thing which we call man,
and see the splendid animal? You saw in Dan Barry simply a biological
sport--the freak--the thing which retraces the biological progress and
comes close to the primitive. But of course you could not realise this.
He seemed a man, and you accepted him as a man. In reality he was no
more a man than Black Bart is a man. He had the face and form of a man,
but his instincts were as old as the ages. The animal world obeys him.
Satan neighs in answer to his whistle. 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.