In the full tide of conscious power she was able to drop her hand from her face, raise her head, turn her glance carelessly upon Dan Barry; she was met by ominously glowing eyes. Anger—at least it was not indifference.
He rose and stepped in his noiseless way behind her, but he reappeared instantly on the other side, and reached out his hand to where her fingers trailed limp from the arm of the chair. There he let them lie, white and cool, against the darkness of his palm. It was as if he sought in the hand for the secret of her power over the wolf-dog. She let her head rest against the back of the chair and watched the nervous and sinewy hand upon which her own rested. She had seen those hands fixed in the throat of Black Bart himself, once upon a time. A grim simile came to her; the tips of her fingers touched the paw of the panther. The steel-sharp claws were sheathed, but suppose once they were bared, and clutched. Or she stood touching a switch which might loose, by the slightest motion, a terrific voltage. What would happen?
Nothing! Presently the hand released her fingers, and Dan Barry stepped back and stood with folded arms, frowning at the fire. In the weakness which overcame her, in the grip of the wild excitement, she dared not stay near him longer. She rose and walked into the dining-room.
"Serve breakfast now, Wung," she commanded, and at once the gong was struck by the cook.
Before the long vibrations had died away the guests were gathered around the table, and the noisy marshal was the first to come. He slammed back a chair and sat down with a grunt of expectancy.
"Mornin', Dan," he said, whetting his knife across the table-cloth, "I hear you're ridin' this mornin'? Ain't going my way, are you?"
Dan Barry sat frowning steadily down at the table. It was a moment before he answered.
"I ain't leavin," he said softly, at length, "postponed my trip."
XXXIII. DOCTOR BYRNE SHOWS THE TRUTH
On this day of low-lying mists, this day so dull that not a shadow was cast by tree or house or man, there was no graver place than the room of old Joe Cumberland; even lamp light was more merciful in the room, for it left the corners of the big apartment in obscurity, but this meagre daylight stripped away all illusion and left the room naked and ugly. Those colours of wall and carpet, once brighter than spring, showed now as faded and lifeless as foliage in the dead days of late November when the leaves have no life except what keeps them clinging to the twig, and when their fallen fellows are lifted and rustled on the ground by every faint wind, with a sound like breathing in the forest. And like autumn, too, was the face of Joe Cumberland, with a colour neither flushed nor pale, but a dull sallow which foretells death. Beside his bed sat Doctor Randall Byrne and kept the pressure of two fingers upon the wrist of the rancher.
When he removed the thermometer from between the lips of Cumberland the old man spoke, but without lifting his closed eyelids, as if even this were an effort which he could only accomplish by a great concentration of the will.
"No fever to-day, doc?"
"You feel a little better?" asked Byrne.
"They ain't no feelin'. But I ain't hot; jest sort of middlin' cold."
Doctor Byrne glanced down at the thermometer with a frown, and then shook down the mercury.
"No," he admitted, "there is no fever."
Joe Cumberland opened his eyes a trifle and peered up at Byrne.
"You ain't satisfied, doc?"
Doctor Randall Byrne was of that merciless modern school which believes in acquainting the patient with the truth.
"I am not," he said.
"H-m-m!" murmured the sick man. "And what might be wrong?"
"Your pulse is uneven and weak," said the doctor.
"I been feelin' sort of weak since I seen Dan last night," admitted the other. "But that news Kate brought me will bring me up! She's kept him here, lad, think of that!"
"I am thinking of it," answered the doctor coldly. "Your last interview with him nearly—killed you. If you see him again I shall wash my hands of the case. When he first came you felt better at once—in fact, I admit that you seemed to do better both in body and mind. But the thing could not last. It was a false stimulus, and when the first effects had passed away, it left you in this condition. Mr. Cumberland, you must see him no more!"
But Joe Cumberland laughed long and softly.
"Life," he murmured, "ain't worth that much! Not half!"
"I can do no more than advise," said the doctor, as reserved as before. "I cannot command."
"A bit peeved, doc?" queried the old man. "Well, sir, I know they ain't much longer for me. Lord, man, I can feel myself going out like a flame in a lamp when the oil runs up. I can feel life jest makin' its last few jumps in me like the flame up the chimney. But listen to me—" he reached out a long, large knuckled, claw-like hand and drew the doctor down over him, and his eyes were earnest—"I got to live till I see 'em standin' here beside me, hand in hand, doc!"
The doctor, even by that dim light, had changed colour. He passed his hand slowly across his forehead.
"You expect to see that?"
"I expect nothin'. I only hope!"
The bitterness of Byrne's heart came up in his throat.
"It will be an oddly suited match," he said, "if they marry. But they will not marry."
"Ha!" cried Cumberland, and starting up in bed he braced himself on a quaking elbow. "What's that?"
"Lie down!" ordered the doctor, and pressed the ranchman back against the pillows.
"But what d'you mean?"
"It would be a long story—the scientific explanation."
"Doc, where Dan is concerned I got more patience than Job."
"In brief, then, I will prove to you that there is no mystery in this Daniel Barry."
"If you can do that, doc, you're more of a man than I been guessing you for. Start now!"
"In primitive times," said Doctor Randall Byrne, "man was nearly related to what we now call the lower animals. In those days he could not surround himself with an artificial protective environment. He depended on the unassisted strength of his body. His muscular and sensuous development, therefore, was far in advance of that of the modern man. For modern man has used his mind at the expense of his body. The very quality of his muscles is altered; and the senses of sight and hearing, for instance, are much blunted. For in the primitive days the ear kept guard over man even when he slept in terror of a thousand deadly enemies, each stronger than he; and the eye had to be keenly attuned to probe the shadows of the forest for lurking foes.
"Now, sir, there is in biology the thing known as the sport. You will have heard that all living organisms undergo gradual processes of change. Season by season and
