To the last ravine Kate's horse carried her easily enough, but that
mountain pass was impenetrable through all its length to anything except
the uncanny agility of Satan, and so she left the cow-pony in the bottom
of the gorge and climbed the last rise on foot.
On the mountainside above her, it was not easy to locate the cave,
for the slope was clawed into ravines and confused with meaningless
criss-cross gulches. Whatever scrub evergreens grew there stood under
the shade of boulders which threatened each instant to topple over and
go thundering to the base. She had come upon the cave by chance in her
ride with Dan, and now she hunted vainly through the great stones for
the entrance. A fresh wind, chill with the snows of the upper peaks,
pulled and tugged at her and cut her face and hands with flying bits of
sand. It kept up a whistling so insistent that it was some time before
she recognized in the hum of the gale a different note, not of pleasant
music, but a thin, shrill sound that blended with the voice of the wind.
The instant she heard it she stopped short on the lee side of a tall
rock and looked about her in terror. The mountains walked away on every
side, and those resolute masses gave her courage. She listened, for the
big rock cut away the breath of the wind about her ears and she could
make out the whistling more clearly. It was a strain as delicate as a
pin point ray of light in a dark room, but it made Kate tremble.
Until the sound ended she stayed there by the rock, hearkening, but the
moment it ceased she gathered her resolution with a great effort and
went straight toward the source of the whistling. It was only a moment
away, although the wind had made it seem much farther, and she came
on the tall, narrow opening with Joan sitting on a rock just within.
Instead of the blue cloak, she was wrapped in a tawny hide, and the
yellow hair blew this way and that, unsheltered from the wind. The
loneliness of the little figure made Kate's heart ache, made her pause
on her way, and while she hesitated, Joan's head rested back against the
rock, her eyes half closed, her lips pursed, she began to whistle that
same keen, eerie music.
It brought Kate to her in a rush.
“Oh Joan!” she cried. “My baby!”
And she would have swept the child into her arms, but Joan slipped out
from under her very fingers and stood a little distance off with her
hands pressed against the wall on either side of her, ready to dart
one way or the other. It was not sudden terror, but rather a resolute
determination to struggle against capture to the end, and her blue eyes
were blazing with excitement. Kate was on her knees with her arms held
out.
“Joan, dear, have you forgotten munner?”
The wildness flickered away from the eyes of the child little by little.
“Munner?” she repeated dubiously.
No shout of welcome, no sudden rush, no arms to fling about her mother.
But if her throat was dry and closed Kate allowed no sign of it to creep
into her voice.
“Where's Daddy Dan?”
“He's gone away.”
“Where?”
“Oh--over there!”
The mother rose slowly to her feet, and looked out across the mountains
as if in search of aid. For her mind had harked back to that story her
father used to tell of the coming of Dan Barry; how he had ridden across
the hills one evening and saw, walking against the sunset, a tattered
boy who whistled strangely as he went, and when old Joe Cumberland asked
where he was going he had only waved a vague hand toward the north and
answered, “Oh--over there. It was sufficient destination for him, it
was sufficient explanation now for the child. She remembered how she,
herself a child then, had sat at her father's table and watched the
brown face of the strange boy with fascination, and the wild, quick eyes
which went everywhere and rested in no one place. They were the eyes
which looked up to her now from Joan's face, and she felt suddenly
divorced from her baby, as if all the blood in Joan were the blood of
her father.
“He left you here alone?” she murmured.
The child looked at her with a sort of curious amazement.
“Joan isn't alone.”
She whistled softly, and around the corner of the rock peered two tiny,
beady-bright eyes, and the sharp nose of a coyote puppy. It disappeared
at once at the sight of the stranger, and now all the strength went from
Kate. She slipped helplessly down, and sat on a boulder trying to think,
trying to master the panic which chilled her; for she thought of the
day when Whistling Dan brought home to the Cumberland Ranch the wounded
wolf-dog, Black Bart. But the call of Joan had traveled far, and now a
squirrel came in at a gallop with his vast tail bobbing behind him, and
ran right up the rock until he was on the shoulder of the child. From
this point of vantage, however, he saw Kate, and was instantly on the
floor of the cave and scurrying for the entrance, chattering with rage.
The wild things came to Joan as they came to her father, and the eyes of
the child were the eyes of Dan Barry. It came home to Kate and she saw
the truth for the first time in her life. She had struggled to win him
away from his former life, but now she knew that it was not habit which
controlled him, for he was wild by instinct, by nature. Just as the tang
of his untamed blood had turned the child to this; and a few days more
of life with him would leave her wild forever.
“He left you alone here!” she repeated fiercely. “Where a thousand
things might happen. Thank God I've found you.”
Even if her words conveyed little meaning to Joan, the intonation
carried a message which was perfectly clear.
“Don't you like Daddy Dan?”
“Joan, Joan, I love him! Of course.”
But Joan sat with a dubious eye which quickly darkened into fear.
“Oh, Munner, don't take us back!”
Such horror and terror and sadness mixed! The tears rushed into the eyes
of Kate.
“Do you want to stay here, sweetheart?”
“Yes, munner.”
“Without me?”
At first Joan shook her head decidedly, but thereafter she quickly
became thoughtful.
“No, except when we eat.”
“You don't want me here at dinner-time? Poor munner will get so hungry.”
A great concession was about to burst from the remorseful lips of Joan,
but again second thought sobered her. She remained in a quandary, unable
to speak.
“Don't you want me even when you wake up at night?”
“Why?”
“Because you're so afraid of the dark.”
“Joan's not afraid. Oh, no! Joan loves the dark.”
If Kate maintained a smile, it was a frozen grimace. It had only been a
few days--hardly yesterday--that Joan left, and already she was a little
stranger. Suppose Dan should refuse to come back himself; refuse even to
give up Joan! She started up, clutching the hand of the child.
“Quick, Joan, we must go!”
“Joan doesn't want to go!”
“We'll go--for a little walk. We--we'll surprise Daddy Dan.”
“But Daddy Dan won't come back for long, long time. Not till the sun is
away down behind that hill.”
That should mean two hours, at least, thought Kate. She could wait a
little.
“Joan, what taught you not to be afraid of the dark?”
This problem made Joan look about for an answer, but at length she
called softly: “Jackie!”
She waited, and then whistled; at once the bright eyes of the little
coyote appeared around the edge of the rock.
“Come here!” she commanded.
He slunk out with his head turned towards Kate and cowered at the feet
of the child. And the mother cringed inwardly at the sight; all wild
things which hated man instinctively with tooth and claw were the
friends, the allies of Whistling Dan, and now Joan was stepping in her
father's path. A little while longer and the last vestige of gentleness
would pass from her. She would be like Dan Barry, following calls which
no other human could even hear. It meant one thing: at whatever cost,
Joan must be taken from Dan and kept Away.
“Jackie sleeps near me,” Joan was saying. “We can see in the dark, can't
we, Jackie?”
She lifted her head, and the moment her compelling eyes left him, Jackie
scooted for shelter. The first strangeness had worn away from Joan and
she began to chatter away about life in the cave, and how Satan played
there by the firelight with Black Bart, and how, sometimes--wonderful
sight!--Daddy Dan played with them. The recital was quite endless,
as they pushed farther and farther into the shadows, and it was the
uneasiness which the dim light raised in her that made Kate determine
that the time had come to go home.
“Now,” she said, “we're going for that walk.”
“Not away down there!” cried Joan.
Kate winced.
“It's lots nicer here, munner. You'd ought to just see what we have to
eat! And my, Daddy Dan knows how to fix things.”
“Of course he does. Now put on your hat and your cloak, Joan.”
“This is lots warmer, munner.”
“Don't you like it?” she added in alarm, stroking the delicate fur.
“Take it off!”
Kate ripped away the fastenings and tossed the skin far away.
“Oh!” breathed Joan.
“It isn't clean! It isn't clean,” cried Kate. “Oh, my poor, darling
baby! Get your bonnet and your cloak, Joan, quickly.”
“We're coming back?”
“Of course.”
Joan trudged obediently to the side of the cave and produced both
articles, sadly rumpled, and Kate buttoned her into them with trembling
fingers. Something akin to cold made her shake now. It was very much
like a child's fear of the dark.
But as she turned towards the entrance to the cave and caught the hand
of Joan, the child wrenched herself free.
“We'll never come back,” she wailed. “Munner, I won't go!”
“Joan, come to me this instant.”
Grief and fear and defiance had set the child trembling, but what the
mother saw was the glint of the eyes, uneasy, hunting escape with
animal cunning. It turned her heart cold, and she knew, with a sad, full
knowledge that Dan was lost forever and that only one power could save
Joan. That power was herself.
“I won't go!”
“Joan!”
A resolute silence answered her, and when she went threateningly
forward, Joan shrank into the shadows near the rock. It was the play of
light striking slantwise from the entrance, no doubt, but it seemed to
Kate that a flicker of yellow light danced across the eyes of the child.
And it stopped Kate took her breath with a new terror. Dan Barry, in the
old days, had lived a life as quiet as a summer's day until the time Jim
Silent struck him down in the saloon; and she remembered how Black Bart
had come for her and led her to the saloon, and how she found Dan lying
on the floor, streaked with blood, very pale; and how she had kneeled
by him in a panic, and how his eyes had opened and stared at her without
answer and the yellow, inhuman light swirled in them until she rose and
backed out the door and fled in a hysteria of fear up the road. That had
been the beginning of the end for Dan Barry, that instant when his eyes
changed; and now Joan--she ran at her swiftly and gathered her into her
arms. One instant of wild struggling, and then the child lay still, her
head straightened a little, a shrill whistle pealed through the cave.
Kate stopped that piercing call with her hand, but when she turned, she
saw in the entrance the dark body of Bart and his narrow, snake-like
head.