“And so,” said Lee Haines, when he joined Buck Daniels in the
living-room, “there goes our reinforcements. That whole crew will
scatter like dead leaves when Barry breezes in. It looks to me--”
“Shut up!” cut in Daniels. “Shut up!”
His dark, homely face turned to the larger man with a singular
expression of awe. He whispered: “D'you hear? She's in the next room
whippin' Joan for runnin' away, and never a yap out of the kid!”
He held up a lean finger for caution and then Haines heard the sound of
the willow switch. It stopped.
“If you run away again,” warned Kate, her voice pitched high and
trembling, “munner will whip harder, and put you in a dark place for a
long, long time.”
Still there was not a sound of the child's voice, not even the pulse of
stifled weeping. Presently the door opened and Kate stood there.
“Go out in the kitchen and tell Li to give you breakfast. Naughty girls
can't eat with munner.”
Through the door came Joan, her little round face perfectly white,
perfectly expressionless. She did not cringe, passing her mother; she
walked steadily across the room, rose on tip-toe to open the kitchen
door, and disappeared through it. Kate dropped into a chair, shaking.
“Out!” whispered Buck to Lee Haines. “Beat it. I got to talk alone.”
And as soon as Haines obeyed, Buck sat down close to the girl. She was
twisting and untangling her fingers in a dumb agony.
“What has he done to her, Buck? What has he done?”
It was a maxim with Buck that talk is to woman what swearing is to man;
it is a safety valve, and therefore he waited in silence until the first
rush of her grief had passed.
“She only looked at me when I whipped her. My heart turned in me. She
didn't cry; she wasn't even angry. She just stood there--my baby!--and
looked at me!”
She threw herself back in the chair with her eyes closed, and he saw
where the trouble had marked her face. He wanted to lean over and take
her in his arms.
“I'm going mad, Buck. I can't stand it. How could he have changed her to
this?”
“Listen to me, Kate. Joan ain't been changed. She's only showin' what
she is.”
The mother stared wildly at him.
“Don't look like I was a murderer. God knows I'm sorry, Kate, but if
they's Dan's blood in your little girl it ain't my fault. It ain't
anything he's taught her. It's just that bein' alone with him has
brought out what she really is.”
“I won't believe you, Buck. I don't dare listen to you!”
“You got to listen, Kate, because you know I'm right. D'you think that
any kind of teachin' could make her learn how to stand and keep from
cryin' when she was whipped?”
“I know.”
She spoke softly, as if some terrible power might overhear them talk,
and Buck lowered his voice in turn.
“She's wild, Kate, I knew it when I seen the way she handled Bart. She's
wild!”
“Then I'll have her tame again.”
“You tried that once and failed.”
“Dan was a man when I tried, and his nature was formed. Joan is only a
baby--my baby. She's half mine. She has my hair and my eyes.”
“I don't care what the color of her eyes is, I know what's behind them.
Look at 'em, and then tell me who she takes after.”
“Buck, why do you talk like this? What do you want me to do?”
“A hard thing. Send Joan back to Dan.”
“Never!”
“He'll never give her up, I tell you.”
“Oh, God help me. What shall I do? I'll keep her! I'll make her tame.”
“But you'll never keep her that way. Think of Dan. Think of the yaller
in his eyes, Kate.”
“Until I die,” she said with sudden quiet, “I'll fight to keep her.”
And he answered with equal solemnity: “Until Dan dies he'll fight to
have her. And he's never been beat yet.”
Through a breathing space he stared at her and she at him, and the eyes
of Buck Daniels were the first to turn. Everything that was womanly and
gentle had died from her face, and in its stead was something which made
Buck rise and wander from the room.
He found Lee Haines and told him briefly all that had passed. The great
battle, they decided, had begun between Kate and Barry for the sake of
the child, and that battle would go on until one of them was dead or the
prize for which they struggled lost. Barry would come on the trail and
find them at the ranch, and then he would strike for Joan. And they had
no help for the struggle against him. The cowpunchers would scatter
at the first sign of Barry, at the first shrill of his ill-omened
whistling. They might ride for Elkhead and raise a posse from among the
citizens, but it would take two days to do that and gather a number of
effective fighters for the crisis, and in the meantime the chances were
large that Barry would strike the ranch while the messenger was away.
There was really nothing to do but sit patiently and wait. They were
both brave men, very; and they were both not unpracticed fighters; but
they began to wait for the coming of Barry as the prisoner waits for the
day of his execution.
It spoke well for the quality of their nerves that they would not speak
to Kate of the time to come; they sat back like spectators at a play and
watched the maneuvers of the mother to win back Joan.
There was not an idle moment from breakfast to dark. They went out to
gather wildflowers on the western hill from the house; they sat on the
veranda where Kate told Joan stories of the ranch and pointed out the
distant mountains which were its boundaries, and explained that all
between them would one day be her own land; that the men who rode yonder
were doing her work; that the cattle who ranged the hills were marked
with her brand. She said it all in small words so that Joan could
understand, but as far as Buck and Lee could make out, there was never a
flicker of intelligence or interest in the eyes of the child.
It was a hard battle every hour, and after supper Kate sat in a big
chair by the fire with her eyes half closed, admitting defeat, perhaps.
For Joan was curled up on the couch at the farthest, dimmest end of
the room, and with her chin propped in both small hands she stared in
silence through the window and over the darkening hills. Buck and Lee
were there, never speaking, but now and then their eyes sought
each other with a vague hope. For Kate might see that her task was
impossible, send Joan back, and that would free them of the danger.
But where Kate left off, chance took up the battle and turned the
scales. Old Li, the Chinese cook, had not seen Kate for six long years,
and now he celebrated the return by hanging about her on a thousand
pretexts. It was just after he had brought in some delicacy from the
kitchen, leaving the door a little ajar, when a small ball of gray fur
nosed its way through the aperture and came straight for the glare
of the fire on the hearth. It was a small shepherd puppy, and having
observed the faces of the men with bright, unafraid eyes, it went
wobbling on to the very hearth, sniffling. Even at that age it knew
enough to keep away from the bright coals of wood, but how could it know
that the dark, cold-looking andirons had been heated to the danger point
by the fire? It thrust out a tentative nose, touched the iron, and then
its shrill yelp of pain went startlingly through the room. It pulled the
three grown-ups out of their thoughts; it brought Joan scampering across
the room with a little happy cry.
The puppy would have escaped if it could, for it had in mind the dark,
warm, familiar corner in Li's kitchen where no harm ever came near, but
the agile hands of Joan caught him; he was swept into her arms. That
little wail of helpless pain, the soft fluff of fur against her cheek,
wiped all other things from Joan's mind. Out the window and across
the gloomy hills she had been staring at the picture of the cave, and
bright-eyed Satan, and the shadowy form of Bart, and the swift, gentle
hand of Daddy Dan; but the cry of the puppy blotted the picture out. She
was no longer lonely, having this small, soft body to protect. There sat
her mother, leaning a little toward her with a glance at once misted and
bright, and she forgot forthwith all the agency of Kate in carrying her
away from that cave of delight.
“Look, munner! He's burned his nose!”
The puppy was licking the injured nose industriously and whimpering the
while. And Joan heard no answer from her mother except an inarticulate
little sound somewhere deep in Kate's throat. Over her child mind,
vaguely, like all baby memories, moved a recollection of the same sound,
coming deeply from the throat of the mother and marvelously soothing,
reassuring. It moved a fiber of trust and sympathy in Joan, an emotion
as real as the sound of music, and with the puppy held idly in her arms
for a moment, she looked curiously into Kate's face. On her own, a faint
smile began in the eyes and spread to the lips.
“Poor little puppy, munner,” said Joan.
The hands of Kate trembled with desire to bring Joan closer to her, but
very wisely she merely stroked the cringing head of the dog.
“Poor little puppy,” she echoed.