THE FALLING OF NIGHT
It had been hard to gauge the falling of night on this day, and even the
careful eyes of the watchers on the Cumberland Ranch could not tell when
the greyness of the sky was being darkened by the coming of the evening.
All day there had been swift alterations of light and shadow,
comparatively speaking, as the clouds grew thin or thick before the
wind. But at length, indubitably, the night was there. Little by little
the sky was overcast, and even the lines of the falling rain were no
longer visible. Before the gloom of the darkness had fully settled over
the earth, moreover, there came a change in the wind, and the watchers
at the rain-beaten windows of the ranch-house saw the clouds roll apart
and split into fragments that were driven from the face of the sky; and
from the clean washed face of heaven the stars shone down bright and
serene. And still Dan Barry had not come.
After the tumult of that long day the sudden silence of that windless
night had more ill omen in it than thunder and lightning. For there is
something watching and waiting in silence. In the living room the three
did not speak.
Now that the storm was gone they had allowed the fire to fall away
until the hearth showed merely fragmentary dances of flame and a wide
bed of dull red coals growing dimmer from moment to moment. Wung Lu had
brought in a lamp--a large lamp with a circular wick that cast a bright,
white light--but Kate had turned down the wick, and now it made only a
brief circle of yellow in one corner of the room. The main illumination
came from the fireplace and struck on the faces of Kate and Buck
Daniels, while Joe Cumberland, on the couch at the end of the room, was
only plainly visible when there was an extraordinarily high leap of the
dying flames; but usually his face was merely a glimmering hint in the
darkness--his face and the long hands which were folded upon his breast.
Often when the flames leapt there was a crackling of the embers and the
last of the log, and then the two nearer the fire would start and flash
a glance, of one accord, towards the prostrate figure on the couch.
That silence had lasted so long that when at length the dull voice of
Joe Cumberland broke in, there was a ring of a most prophetic solemnity
about it.
"He ain't come," said the old man. "Dan ain't here."
The others exchanged glances, but the eyes of Kate dropped sadly and
fastened again upon the hearth.
Buck Daniels cleared his throat like an orator.
"Nobody but a fool," he said, "would have started out of Elkhead in a
storm like this."
"Weather makes no difference to Dan," said Joe Cumberland.
"But he'd think of his hoss----"
"Weather makes no difference to Satan," answered the faint, oracular
voice of Joe Cumberland. "Kate!"
"Yes?"
"Is he comin'?"
She did not answer. Instead, she got up slowly from her place by the
fire and took another chair, far away in the gloom, where hardly a
glimmer of light reached to her and there she let her head rest, as if
exhausted, against the back of the seat.
"He promised," said Buck Daniels, striving desperately to keep his voice
cheerful, "and he never busts his promises."
"Ay," said the old man, "he promised to be back--but he ain't here."
"If he started after the storm," said Buck Daniels.
"He didn't start after the storm," announced the oracle. "He was out in
it."
"What was that," cried Buck Daniels sharply.
"The wind," said Kate, "for it's rising. It will be a cold night,
to-night."
"And he ain't here," said the old man monotonously.
"Ain't there things that might hold him up?" asked Buck, with a touch of
irritation.
"Ay," said the old rancher, "they's things that'll hold him up. They's
things that'll turn a dog wild, too, and the taste of blood is one of
'em!"
The silence fell again.
There was an old clock standing against the wall. It was one of those
tall, wooden frames in which, behind the glass, the heavy, polished disk
of the pendulum, alternated slowly back and forth with wearisome
precision. And with every stroke of the seconds there was a faint,
metallic clangor in the clock--a falter like that which comes in the
voice of a very old man. And the sound of this clock took possession of
every silence until it seemed like the voice of a doomsman counting off
the seconds. Ay, everyone in the room, again and again, took up the tale
of those seconds and would count them slowly--fifty, fifty-one,
fifty-two, fifty-three--and on and on, waiting for the next speech, or
for the next popping of the wood upon the hearth, or for the next wail
of the wind that would break upon the deadly expectancy of that count.
And while they counted each looked straight before him with wide and
widening eyes.
Into one of these pauses the voice of Buck Daniels broke at length; and
it was a cheerless and lonely voice in that large room, in the dull
darkness, and the duller lights.
"D'you remember Shorty Martin, Kate?"
"I remember him."
He turned in his chair and hitched it a little closer to her until he
could make put her face, dimly, among the shadows. The flames jumped on
the hearth, and he saw a picture that knocked at his heart.
"The little bow-legged feller, I mean."
"Yes, I remember him very well."
Once more the flames sputtered and he saw how she looked wistfully
before her and above. She had never seemed so lovely to Buck Daniels.
She was pale, indeed, but there was no ugly pinching of her face, and if
there were shadows beneath her eyes, they only served to make her eyes
seem marvelously large and bright. She was pallid, and the firelight
stained her skin with touches of tropic gold, and cast a halo of the
golden hair about her face. She seemed like one of those statues wrought
in the glory and the rich days of Athens in ivory and in gold--some
goddess who has heard the tidings of the coming fall, the change of the
old order, and sits passive in her throne waiting the doom from which
there is no escape. Something of this filtered through to the sad heart
of Buck Daniels. He, too, had no hope--nay, he had not even her small
hope, but somehow he was able to pity her and cherish the picture of her
in that gloomy place. It seemed to Buck Daniels that he would give ten
years from the best of his life to see her smile as he had once seen her
in those old, bright days. He went on with his tale.
"You would have busted laughin' if you'd seen him at the Circle Y Bar
roundup the way I seen him. Shorty ain't so bad with a rope. He's always
talkin' about what he can do and how he can daub a rope on anything
that's got horns. He ain't so bad, but then he ain't so good, either.
Specially, he ain't so good at ridin'--you know what bowed legs he's
got, Kate?"
"I remember, Buck."
She was looking at him, at last, and he talked eagerly to turn that look
into a smile.
"Well, they was the three of us got after one two year old--a bull and a
bad 'un. Shorty was on one side and me and Cuttle was on the other side.
Shorty daubed his rope and made a fair catch, but when his hoss set back
the rope busted plumb in two. Now, Shorty, he had an idea that he could
ease the work of his hoss a whole pile if he laid holts on the rope
whenever his hoss set down to flop a cow. So Shorty, he had holt on this
rope and was pulling back hard when the rope busted, and Shorty, he
spilled backwards out'n that saddle like he'd been kicked out.
"Whilst he was lyin' there, the bull, that had took a header when the
rope busted, come up on his feet agin, and I'll tell a man he was rarin'
mad! He seen Shorty lyin' on the ground, and he took a run for Shorty.
Me and Cuttle was laughin' so hard we couldn't barely swing our ropes,
but I made a throw and managed to get that bull around both horns. So my
Betty sits down and braces herself for the tug.
"In the meantime little Shorty, he sits up and lays a hand to his head,
and same time he sees that bull come tarin' for him. Up he jumps. And
jest then the bull come to the end of the line and wonk!--down he goes,
head over heels, and hits the sand with a bang that must of jostled his
liver some, I'll be sayin'!
"Well, Shorty, he seen that bull fly up into the air and he lets out a
yell like the world was comin' to an end, and starts runnin'. If he'd
run straight back the other way the bull couldn't of run a step, because
I had him fast with my rope, but Shorty seen me, and he come tarin' for
my hoss to get behind him.
"That bull was like a cat gettin' to his feet, and he sights Shorty
tarin' and lights out after him. There they went lickety-split. That
bull was puffin' on the seat of Shorty's trowsers and tossin' his horns
and jest missin' Shorty by inches; and Shorty had his mouth so wide open
hollerin' that you could have throwed a side of beef down his throat;
and his eyes was buggin' out. Them bow-legs of his was stretchin' ten
yards at a clip, most like, and the boys says they could hear him
hollerin' a mile away. But that bull, stretch himself all he could,
couldn't gain an inch on Shorty, and Shorty couldn't gain an inch on the
bull, till the bull come to the other end of the forty-foot rope, and
then, whang! up goes the heels of the bull and down goes his head, and
his heels comes over--wonk! and hits Shorty right square on the head.
"Been an ordinary feller, and he wouldn't of lived to talk about it
afterwards, but seein' it was Shorty, he jest goes up in the air and
lands about ten yards away, and rolls over and hits his feet without
once gettin' off his stride--and then he _did_ start runnin', and he
didn't stop runnin' nor hollerin' till he got plumb back to the house!"
Buck Daniels sat back in his chair and guffawed at the memory. In the
excitement of the tale he had quite forgotten Kate, but when he
remembered her, she sat with her head craned a little to one side, her
hand raised for silence, and a smile, indeed, upon her lips, but never a
glance for Buck Daniels. He knew at once.
"Is it him?" he whispered. "D'you hear him?"
"Hush!" commanded two voices, and then he saw that old Joe Cumberland
also was listening.
"No," said the girl suddenly, "it was only the wind."
As if in answer, a far, faint whistling broke upon them. She drew her
hands slowly towards her breast, as if, indeed, she drew the sound in
with them.
"He's coming!" she cried. "Oh, Dad, listen! Don't you hear?"
"I do," answered the rancher, "but what I'm hearin' don't warm my blood
none. Kate, if you're wise you'll get up and go to your room and don't
pay no heed to anything you might be hearin' to-night."