The Wild Geese

: The Seventh Man

Twenty-four hours from Alder to Elkhead, and beyond Elkhead to the

Cumberland ranch, is long riding and hard riding, but not far after dark on

the following night, Joan lifted her head, where she played with the puppy

on the hearth, and listened. There was no sound audible to the others in

the living room; they did not even mark the manner in which she sat up, and

then rose to her feet. But when she whispered "Daddy Dan!" it brough each

of the three out of his chair. Still they heard nothing, and Buck and Lee

Haines would have retaken their chairs had not Kate gone to the window and

thrown it wide. Then they caught it, very far off, very thin and small, a

delicate thread of music, an eerie whistling. Without a word, she closed

the window, crossed the room and from the table she took up a cartridge

belt from which hung the holster with the revolver which Whistling Dan

taught her to use so well. She buckled it about her. Lee Haines and

Daniels, without a word, imitated her actions. Their guns were already on--

every moment since they reached the ranch they had gone armed but now they

looked to them, and tried the actions a few times before they thrust them

back into the holsters.



It was odd to watch them. They were like the last remnant of a garrison,

outworn with fighting, which prepares in grim quiet for the final stand.



The whistling rose a little in volume now. It was a happy sound, without a

recognizable tune, but a gay, wild improvisation as if a violinist, drunk,

was remembering snatches of masterpieces, throwing out lovely fragments

here and there and filling the intervals out of his own excited fancy. Joan

ran to the window, forgetful of the puppy, and kneeled there in the chair,

looking out. The whistling stopped as Kate drew down the curtain to cut out

Joan's view. It was far too dark for the child to see out, but she often

would sit like this, looking into the dark.



The whistling began again as Joan turned silently on her mother,

uncomplaining, but with a singular glint in her eyes, a sort of flickering,

inward light that came out by glances and starts. Now the sound of the

rider blew closer and closer. Kate gestured the men to their positions, one

for each of the two inner doors while she herself took the outer one. There

was not a trace of color in her face, but otherwise she was as calm as a

stone, and from her an atmosphere pervaded the room, so that men also stood

quietly at their posts, without a word, without a sign to each other. They

had their unspoken order from Kate. She would resist to the death and she

expected the same from them. They were prepared.



Still that crescendo of the whistling continued; it seemed as if it would

never reach them; it grew loud as a bird singing in that very room, and

still it continued to swell, increase--then suddenly went out. As if it

were the signal for which she had been waiting all these heartbreaking

moments, Kate opened the front door, ran quickly down the hall, and stood

an instant later on the path in front of the house. She had locked the

doors as she went through, and now she heard one of the men rattling the

lock to follow her. The rattling ceased. Evidently they decided that they

would hold the fort as they were.



Her heel hardly sank in the sand when she saw him. He came out of the night

like a black shadow among shadows, with the speed of the wind to carry him.

A light creak of leather as he halted, a glimmer of star light on Satan as

he wheeled, a clink of steel, and then Dan was coming up the path.



She knew him perfectly even before she could make out the details of the

form; she knew him by the light, swift, almost noiseless step, like the

padding footfall of a great cat--a sense of weight without sound. Another

form skulked behind him--Black Bart.



He was close, very close, before he stopped, or seemed to see her, though

she felt that he must have been aware of her since he first rode up. He was

so close, indeed, that the starlight--the brim of his hat standing up

somewhat from the swift riding--showed his face quite clearly to her. It

was boyish, almost, in its extreme youth, and so thinly molded, and his

frame so lightly made, that he seemed one risen from a wasting bed of

sickness. The wind fluttered his shirt and she wondered, as she had

wondered so often before, where he gained that incredible strength in so

meager a body. In all her life she had never loved him as she loved him

now. But her mind was as fixed as a star.



"You can't have her, Dan. You can't have her! Don't you see how terrible a

thing you'd make her? She's my blood, my pain, my love, and you want to

take her up yonder to the mountains and the loneliness--I'll die to keep

her!"



Now the moon, which had been buried in a drift of clouds, broke through

them, and seemed in an instant to slide a vast distance towards the earth,

a crooked half moon with its edges eaten by the mist. Under this light she

could see him more clearly, and she became aware of the thing she dreaded,

the faint smile which barely touched at the corners of his mouth; and in

his eyes a swirl of yellow light, half guessed at, half real. All her

strength poured out of her. She felt her knees buckle, felt the fingers

about the light revolver butt relax, felt every nerve grow slack. She was

helpless, and it was not fear of the man, but of something which stalked

behind him, inhuman, irresistible; not the wolf-dog, but something more

than Satan, and Bart, and Whistling Dan, something of which they were only

a part.



He began to whistle, thoughtfully, like one who considers a plan of action

and yet hesitates to begin. She felt his eyes run over her, as if judging

how he should put her most gently to one side; then from the house, very

lightly, hardly more than an echo of Dan's whistling, came an answer--the

very same refrain. Joan was calling to him.



At that he stepped forward, but the thing which stirred him, had hardened

the mind of Kate. The weakness passed in a flash. It was Joan, and for

Joan!



"Not a step!" she whispered, and jerked out her gun. "Not a step!"



He stood with one hand trailing carelessly from his hip, and at the gleam

of her steel his other hand dropped to a holster, fumbled there, and came

away empty; he could not touch her, not with the weight of a finger. That

thoughtful whistle came again: once more the answering whistle drifted out

from the house; and he moved forward another pace.



She had chosen her mark carefully, the upper corner of the seam of the

pocket upon his shirt, and before his foot struck the ground she fired. For

an instant she felt that she missed the mark, for he stood perfectly

upright, but when she saw that the yellow was gone from his eyes. They were

empty of everything except a great wonder. He wavered to his knees, and

then sank down with his arms around Black Bart. He seemed, indeed, to

crumple away into the night. Then she heard a shouting and trampling in

the house, and a breaking open of doors, and she knew that she had killed

Whistling Dan. She would have gone to him, but the snarl of Bart drove her

back. Then she saw Satan galloping up the path and come to a sliding halt

where he stood with his delicate nose close to the face of the master.

There was no struggle with death, only a sigh like a motion of wind in far

off trees, and then, softly, easily Black Bart extricated himself from the

master, and moved away down the path, all wolf, all wild. Behind him, Satan

whirled with a snort, and they rushed away into the night each in an

opposite direction. The long companionship of the three was ended, and the

seventh man was dead for Grey Molly.



Lee Haines and Buck Daniels were around her now. She heard nothing

distinctly, only a great, vague clamor of voices while she kneeled and

turned the body of Barry on its back. It was marvelously light; she could

almost have picked it up in her arms, she felt. She folded the hands across

his breast, and the limp fingers were delicate as the fingers of a sick

child. Buck Daniels lay prone by the dead man weeping aloud; and Lee Haines

stood with his face buried in his hands; but there was no tear on the face

of Kate.



As she closed the eyes, the empty, hollow eyes, she heard a distant

calling, a hoarse and dissonant chiming. She looked up and saw a wedge of

wild geese flying low across the moon.