"Nobody but a fool," he said, "would have started out of Elkhead in a
storm like this."
"Weather makes no difference to Dan," said Joe Cumberland.
"But he'd think of his hoss----"
"Weather makes no difference to Satan," answered the faint, oracular
voice of Joe Cumberland. "Kate!"
"Yes?"
"Is he comin'?"
She did not answer. Instead, she got up slowly from her place by the
fire and took another chair, far away in the gloom, where hardly a
glimmer of light reached to her and there she let her head rest, as if
exhausted, against the back of the seat.
"He promised," said Buck Daniels, striving desperately to keep his voice
cheerful, "and he never busts his promises."
"Ay," said the old man, "he promised to be back--but he ain't here."
"If he started after the storm," said Buck Daniels.
"He didn't start after the storm," announced the oracle. "He was out in
it."
"What was that," cried Buck Daniels sharply.
"The wind," said Kate, "for it's rising. It will be a cold night,
to-night."
"And he ain't here," said the old man monotonously.
"Ain't there things that might hold him up?" asked Buck, with a touch of
irritation.
"Ay," said the old rancher, "they's things that'll hold him up. They's
things that'll turn a dog wild, too, and the taste of blood is one of
'em!"
The silence fell again.
There was an old clock standing against the wall. It was one of those
tall, wooden frames in which, behind the glass, the heavy, polished disk
of the pendulum, alternated slowly back and forth with wearisome
precision.
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