nutes passed before she
roused herself, and then it was to drag herself slowly up the stairs to
the door of her father's room. She opened it without knocking, and then
closed it and stood with her back against it, in the shadow.

CHAPTER XXX

THE VOICE OF BLACK BART

Her father lay propped high with pillows among which his head lolled
back. The only light in the room was near the bed and it cast a glow
upon the face of Joe Cumberland and on the white linen, the white hair,
the white, pointed beard. All the rest of the room swam in darkness. The
chairs were blotches, indistinct, uncertain; even the foot of the bed
trailed off to nothingness. It was like one of those impressionistic,
very modern paintings, where the artist centres upon one point and
throws the rest of his canvas into dull oblivion. The focus here was the
face of the old cattleman. The bedclothes, never stirred, lay in folds
sharply cut out with black shadows, and they had a solid seeming, as the
mort-cloth rendered in marble over the effigy. That suggested weight
exaggerated the frailty of the body beneath the clothes. Exhausted by
that burden, the old man lay in the arms of a deadly languor, so that
there was a kinship of more than blood between him and Kate at this
moment. She stepped to the side of the bed and stood staring down at
him, and there was little gentleness in her expression. So cold was
that settled gaze that her father stirred, at length, shivered, and
without opening his eyes, fumbled at the bed-spread and drew it a little
more closely about his shoulders. Even that did not give him rest; and
presently the wrinkled eyelids opened and he looked up at his daughter.
A film of weariness heavier than sleep at first obscured his sight, but
this in turn cleared away; he frowned a little to clear his vision, and
then wagged his head slowly from side to side.

"Kate," he said feebly, "I done my best. It simply wasn't good enough."

She answered in a voice as low as his, but steadier: "What could have
happened? Dad, what happened to make you give up every hold on Dan? What
was it? You were the last power that could keep him here. You knew it.
Why did you tell him he could go?"

The monotone was more deadly than any emphasis of a raised word.

"If you'd been here," pleaded Joe Cumberland, "you'd have done what I
done. I couldn't help it. There he sat on the foot of the bed--see where
them covers still kind of sag down--after he told m