d twice he had
failed to kill. Wonder rose in him; wonder and a great fear. Was he
losing the desert, and was the desert losing him? Were the chains of
humanity falling about him to drag him down to a tamed and sordid life?
A sudden hatred for all men, Mac Strann, Daniels, Kate, and even poor
Joe Cumberland, welled hot in the breast of Whistling Dan. The strength
of men could not conquer him; but how could their very weakness disarm
him? He leaped again on the back of Satan, and rode furiously back into
the storm.

CHAPTER XLI

THE FALLING OF NIGHT

It had been hard to gauge the falling of night on this day, and even the
careful eyes of the watchers on the Cumberland Ranch could not tell when
the greyness of the sky was being darkened by the coming of the evening.
All day there had been swift alterations of light and shadow,
comparatively speaking, as the clouds grew thin or thick before the
wind. But at length, indubitably, the night was there. Little by little
the sky was overcast, and even the lines of the falling rain were no
longer visible. Before the gloom of the darkness had fully settled over
the earth, moreover, there came a change in the wind, and the watchers
at the rain-beaten windows of the ranch-house saw the clouds roll apart
and split into fragments that were driven from the face of the sky; and
from the clean washed face of heaven the stars shone down bright and
serene. And still Dan Barry had not come.

After the tumult of that long day the sudden silence of that windless
night had more ill omen in it than thunder and lightning. For there is
something watching and waiting in silence. In the living room the three
did not speak.

Now that the storm was gone they had allowed the fire to fall away
until the hearth showed merely fragmentary dances of flame and a wide
bed of dull red coals growing dimmer from moment to moment. Wung Lu had
brought in a lamp--a large lamp with a circular wick that cast a bright,
white light--but Kate had turned down the wick, and now it made only a
brief circle of yellow in one corner of the room. The main illumination
came from the fireplace and struck on the faces of Kate and Buck
Daniels, while Joe Cumberland, on the couch at the end of the room, was
only plainly visible when there was an extraordinarily high leap of the
dying flames; but usually his face was merely a glimmering hint in the
darkness--his face and the long hands which were folded upon his breas