The Wild Geese
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 brought 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.
