Page:Max Brand--The Seventh Man.djvu/115

Rh At the whisper Buck turned a livid face; one could see him gather his strength.

“I stick,” he said with difficulty, as though his lips were numb. “She'll need me now.”

Lee Haines stood in a moment's indecision but then settled back in his chair and gripped his hands together. They both sat watching the door as if the darkness were a magnet of inescapable horror. Only Joan, of all in that room, showed no fear after the first moment. Her face was blanched indeed, but she tilted it up now, smiling; she stole towards the door, but Kate caught the child and gathered her close with strangling force. Joan made no attempt to escape.

“S-sh!” she cautioned, and raised a plump little forefinger. “Munner, don't you hear? Don't you like it?”

As if the sound had turned a corner, it broke all at once clearly over them in a rain of music; a man's whistling. It went out; it flooded about them again like beautiful, cold light. Once again it stopped, and now they sensed, rather than heard, a light, rapid, padding step that approached the cabin. Dan Barry stood in the door and in that shadowy place his eyes seemed luminous. He no longer whistled, but a spirit went from him which carried the same sense of the untamed, the wild happiness which died out with his smile as he looked around the room. The brim of his hat curved up, his neckerchief seemed to flutter a little. The wolf-dog reached the threshold in the same instant and