The Night Horseman | Page 3

to the ranch at once; my father is critically ill."
Randall Byrne rubbed his lean chin.
"I am not practicing at present," he said reluctantly. Then he saw that
she was watching him closely, weighing him with her eyes, and it came
to the mind of Randall Byrne that he was not a large man and might not
incline the scale far from the horizontal.
"I am hardly equipped--" began Byrne.
"You will not need equipment," she interrupted. "His trouble lies in his
nerves and the state of his mind."
A slight gleam lighted the eyes of the doctor.
"Ah," he murmured. "The mind?"
"Yes."
He rubbed his bloodless hands slowly together, and when he spoke his
voice was sharp and quick and wholly impersonal. "Tell me the
symptoms!"

"Can't we talk those over on the way to the ranch? Even if we start now
it will be dark before we arrive."
"But," protested the doctor, "I have not yet decided--this
precipitancy--"
"Oh," she said, and flushed. He perceived that she was on the verge of
turning away, but something withheld her. "There is no other physician
within reach; my father is very ill. I only ask that you come as a
diagnostician, doctor!"
"But a ride to your ranch," he said miserably. "I presume you refer to
riding a horse?"
"Naturally."
"I am unfamiliar with that means of locomotion," said the doctor with
serious eyes, "and in fact have not carried my acquaintance with the
equine species beyond a purely experimental stage. Anatomically I
have a superficial knowledge, but on the one occasion on which I sat in
a saddle I observed that the docility of the horse is probably a poetic
fallacy."
He rubbed his left shoulder thoughtfully and saw a slight tremor at the
corners of the girl's mouth. It caused his vision to clear and concentrate;
he found that the lips were, in fact, in the very act of smiling. The face
of the doctor brightened.
"You shall ride my own horse," said the girl. "She is perfectly gentle
and has a very easy gait. I'm sure you'll have not the slightest trouble
with her."
"And you?"
"I'll find something about town; it doesn't matter what."
"This," said the doctor, "is most remarkable. You choose your mounts
at random?"

"But you will go?" she insisted.
"Ah, yes, the trip to the ranch!" groaned the doctor. "Let me see: the
physical obstacles to such a trip while many are not altogether
insuperable, I may say; in the meantime the moral urge which compels
me towards the ranch seems to be of the first order." He sighed. "Is it
not strange, Miss Cumberland, that man, though distinguished from the
lower orders by mind, so often is controlled in his actions by ethical
impulses which override the considerations of reason? An observation
which leads us towards the conclusion that the passion for goodness is
a principle hardly secondary to the passion for truth. Understand that I
build the hypothesis only tentatively, with many reservations, among
which--"
He broke off short. The smile was growing upon her lips.
"I will put together a few of my things," said the doctor, "and come
down to you at once."
"Good!" said the girl, "I'll be waiting for you with two horses before
you are ready."
He turned away, but had taken hardly a step before he turned, saying:
"But why are you so sure that you will be ready before I--" but she was
already down the steps from the veranda and stepping briskly down the
street.
"There is an element of the unexplainable in woman," said the doctor,
and resumed his way to his room. Once there, something prompted him
to act with the greatest possible speed. He tossed his toilet articles and a
few changes of linen into a small, flexible valise and ran down the
stairs. He reached the veranda again, panting, and the girl was not in
sight; a smile of triumph appeared on the grave, colourless lips of the
doctor. "Feminine instinct, however, is not infallible," he observed to
himself, and to one of the cowboys, lounging loosely in a chair nearby,
he continued his train of thoughts aloud: "Though the verity of the
feminine intuition has already been thrown in a shade of doubt by many
thinkers, as you will undoubtedly agree."

The man thus addressed allowed his lower jaw to drop but after a
moment he ejaculated: "Now what in hell d'you mean by that?"
The doctor already turned away, intent upon his thoughts, but he now
paused and again faced the cowboy. He said, frowning: "There is
unnecessary violence in your remark, sir."
"Duck your glasses," said the worthy in question. "You ain't talkin' to a
book, you're talking to a man."
"And in your attitude," went