When Black Bart returned without Joan, without even a note of answer
about his neck, the master made ready to take by force. First he went
over his new outfit of saddle and guns, looking to every strap of the
former, and the latter, revolvers and rifle, he weighed and balanced
with a meditative look, as if he were memorizing their qualities against
a time of need. With Satan saddled and Bart on guard at the mouth of the
cave, he gathered up all the accumulation of odds and ends, provisions,
skins, and made a stirring bonfire in the middle of the gravel floor.
It was like burning his bridges before starting out to the battle; he
turned his back to the cave and started on his journey.
He had to travel in a loose semicircle, for there were two points which
he must reach on the ride, the town of Alder, where lived the seventh
man who must die for Grey Molly, and the Cumberland ranch, last of all,
where he would take Joan. Very early after his start he reached the
plateau where he had lived all those years with Kate, and he found it
already sinking back to ruin, with nothing in the corrals, and the front
door swinging to and fro idly in the wind, just as Joan had often played
with it. Inside, he knew, the rooms were empty; a current of air down
the chimney had scattered the ashes from the hearth all about the living
room. Here must be a chair overturned, and there the sand had drifted
through the open door. All this he saw clearly enough with his mind's
eye, and urged Satan forward. For a chill like the falling of sudden
night had swept over him, and he shrugged his shoulders with relief when
he swept past the house. Yet when he came to the long down-slope which
pitched into the valley so far below him, he called Satan to a halt
again, and swung to look at the house. He could hear the clatter of the
front door as it swung; it seemed to be waving a farewell to him.
It was all the work of a moment, to ride back, gather a quantity of
paper and readily inflammable materials, soak them in oil, and scratch
a match. The flames swept up the sides of the logs and caught on the
ceiling first of all, and Dan Barry stood in the center of the room
until the terrified whining of Black Bart and the teeth of the wolf-dog
at his trousers made him turn and leave the house. Outside, he found
Satan trembling between two temptations, the first to run as far and as
fast as he could from that most terrible thing--fire; and the second to
gallop straight into the blaze. The voice of the master, a touch quieted
him, and Black Bart lay down at the feet of the master and looked up
into his face.
By this time the fire had licked away a passage through the roof and
through this it sent up a yellow hand that flicked up and down like
a signal, or a beckoning, and then shot up a tall, steady, growing,
roaring column of red. No man could say what went through the mind of
Dan Barry as he stood there watching the house of his building burn, but
now he turned and threw his arms over the neck and back of Satan, and
dropped his forehead against the withers of the black. It troubled
the stallion. He turned his head, and nosed the shoulder of the master
gently, and Black Bart, in an agony of anxiety, reared up beside Dan
and brought his head almost up to the head of the man; there he whined
pleadingly for never before had he seen the master hide his face.
A deep, short report made the master stand away from Satan. The fire
had reached a small stock of powder, and the shock of the explosion was
followed by a great crashing and rending as an inner wall went down.
That fall washed a solid mass of yellow flame across the front door, but
the fire fell back, and then Dan saw the doll which he himself had made
for Joan; it had been thrown by the smashing of the wall squarely in
front of the door, and now the fire reached after it--long arms across
the floor. It was an odd contrivance, singularly made of carved wood
and with arms and legs fastened on by means of bits of strong sinew, and
Joan prized it above all the rosy faced dolls which Kate had bought for
her. For an instant Dan stood watching the progress of the fire, then he
leaped through the door, swerved back as an arm of fire shot out at him,
ran forward again, caught up the doll and was outside rubbing away the
singed portions of brows and lashes.
He did not wait until the house was consumed, but when the flames stood
towering above the roof, shaking out to one side with a roar when the
wind struck them, he mounted Satan once more, and made for the valley.
He wanted to reach Alder at dark, and he gauged the time of his ride so
accurately that when he pulled out of the mouth of Murphy's Pass, the
last light of the day was still on the mountains and in the pass, but
it was already dark in the village, and a score of lights twinkled up at
him like eyes.
He left Satan and Bart well outside the town, for even in the dark they
might easily be recognized, and then walked straight down the street of
Alder. It was a bold thing to do, but he knew that the first thing
which is seen and suspected is the skulker who approaches from covert to
covert. They knew he had ridden into Alder before in the middle of the
night and they might suspect the danger of such another attack, but they
surely would not have fear of a solitary pedestrian unless a telltale
light were thrown upon his face.
He passed Captain Lorrimer's saloon. Even in this short interval it had
fallen into ill-repute after the killing at Alder. And a shanty farther
down the street now did the liquor business of the town; Captain
Lorrimer's was closed, and the window nailed across with slats. He went
on. Partly by instinct, and partly because it was aflame with lights, he
moved straight to the house at which he had learned tidings of three men
he sought on his last visit to Alder. Now there were more lights showing
from the windows of that place than there were in all the rest of Alder;
at the hitching racks in front, horses stood tethered in long double
rows, and a noise of voices rolled out and up and down the street.
Undoubtedly, there was a festival there, and all Alder would turn out to
such an affair. All Alder, including Vic Gregg, the seventh man. A
group came down the street for the widow's house; they were laughing and
shouting, and they carried lanterns; away from them Barry slipped like a
ghost and stood in the shadow of the house.
There might be other such crowds, and they were dangerous to Barry,
so now he hunted for a means of breaking into the house of the widow
unseen. The windows, as he went down the side of the building, he noted
to be high, but not too high to be reached by a skillful, noiseless
climber. In the back of the house he saw the kitchen door, illumined
indeed, but the room, as far as he could see, empty.
Then very suddenly a wave of silence began somewhere in a side of the
house and swept across it, dying to a murmur at the edges. Barry waited
for no more maneuvers, but walked boldly up the back stairs and entered
the house, hat in hand.
The moment he passed the door he was alert, balanced. He could have
swung to either side, or whirled and shot behind him with the precision
of a leisurely marksman, and as he walked he smiled, happily with his
head held high. He seemed so young, then, that one would have said he
had just come in gaily from some game with the other youths of Alder.
Out of the kitchen he passed into the hall, and there he understood the
meaning of the silence, for both the doors to the front room were open,
and through the doors he heard a single voice, deep and solemn, and
through the doors he saw the crowd standing motionless. Their heads did
not stir,--heads on which the hair was plastered smoothly down--and when
some one raised a hand to touch an itching ear, or nose, he moved his
arm with such caution that it seemed he feared to set a magazine of
powder on fire. All their backs were towards Barry, where he stood in
the hall, and as he glided toward them, he heard the deep voice stop,
and then the trembling voice of a girl speak in reply.
At the first entrance he paused, for the whole scene unrolled before
him. It was a wedding. Just in front of him, on chairs and even on
benches, sat the majority of adult Alder,--facing these stood the
wedding pair with the minister just in front of them. He could see the
girl to one side of the minister's back, and she was very pretty, very
femininely appealing, now, in a dress which was a cloudy effect of
white; but Barry gave her only one sharp glance. His attention was for
the men of the crowd. And although there were only backs of heads, and
side glimpses of faces he hunted swiftly for Vic Gregg.
But Gregg was not there. He surveyed the assembly twice, incredulous,
for surely the tall man should be here, but when he was on the very
point of turning on his heel and slinking down the hall to pursue his
hunt in other quarters, the voice of the minister stopped, and the deep
tone of Vic himself rolled through the room.
It startled Barry like a voice out of the sky; he stared about,
bewildered, and then as the minister shifted his position a little he
saw that it was Gregg who stood there beside the girl in white,--it was
Gregg being married. And at the same moment, the eyes of Vic lifted,
wandered, fell upon the face which stood there framed in the dark of the
doorway. Dan saw the flush die out, saw the narrow, single-purposed face
of Gregg turn white, saw his eyes widen, and his own hand closed on
his gun. Another instant; the minister turned his head, seemed to be
waiting, and then Gregg spoke in answer: “I will!”
A thousand pictures rushed through the mind of Barry, and he remembered
first and last the wounded man on the gray horse who he had saved,
and the long, hard ride carrying that limp body to the cabin in the
mountains. The man would fight. By the motion of Gregg's hand, Dan knew
that he had gone even to his wedding armed. He had only to show his own
gun to bring on the crisis, and in the meantime the eyes of Vic held
steadily upon him past the shoulder of the minister, without fear,
desperately. In spite of himself Dan's hand could not move his gun. In
spite of himself he looked to the confused happy face of the girl. And
he felt as he had felt when he set fire to his house up there in the
hills. The wavering lasted only a moment longer; then he turned and
slipped noiselessly down the hall, and the seventh man who should have
died for Grey Molly was still alive.