Joan Disobeys
What he next knew was a fire of agony that wrapped his whole body and consciousness flashed back on him.Strong arms lifted him up, up; above him he sensed the eyes of his torturer, dim in moonlight, and he beat his clubbed left fist into that face.After that he knew he was being dragged onto a saddle, but a wave of pain rushed up his side and numbed his brain.
Thereafter his senses returned by fits and starts, vaguely.Once he felt a steel cable that girdled his waist and breast and held him erect, though his head flopped back and forth; once his eyes opened and above him glittered the bright field of stars towards which he drifted through space, a mind without a body; once a stab of torment wakened him enough to hear:
"Easy Satan; watch them stones.One more jolt like that will send him clear to--" And the voice glided into an eternity of distance.Yet again he swung tip from the pit of darkness and became aware of golden hair around a woman's face, and a marvelous soft, cool hand upon his forehead.Her voice reached him, too, and made him think of all things musical, all things distant, like the sounds of birds falling from the sky and though he understood not a syllable, a sweet assurance of safety flooded through him.
He slept.
When he woke again, it was from a dream of fleeing through empty air swifter than the wind with a wolf-dog looming behind him out of space, but presently he found that he was lying in a bed with a stream of sunlight washing across a white coverlet.A door at his right swung open and there in the entrance stood the wolf-dog of his vision with a five-year-old girl upon its back.
"Don't go in there, Bart!" whispered the child."Go on back!"She took one of those pointed wolf-ears in her chubby fist and tugged to swing him around, but Bart, with a speed which the eye could not follow, twisted his head and the rows of great teeth closed over her hand.It was so horrible that the cry froze in the throat of Gregg, yet the child, with only a little murmur of anger, reached over with her other hand and caught the wolf by the nose.
"Bad Bart!" she whispered, and raised the hand which he instantly released.
White marks showed on the pudgy tan."Bad dog!" she repeated, and beat his neck with an impotent little fist.The wolf-dog cringed, and turned from the door.
"Come in," invited Gregg.He was surprised to find his voice thin, apt to swing up to a high pitch beyond his control.A shower of golden curls tossed away from her face as she looked to him."Oh!" she cried, still with a guarded voice.She leaned far over, one hand buried in the ruff of Bart's neck to secure her balance, and with the other she laid hold of his right ear and drew him around facing the door once more.This time he showed his teeth but submitted, only twitching the ear back and forth a time or two when she relaxed her hold.
"Come in," repeated Gregg.
She canted her head to one side and considered him with fearless blue eyes.
"I want to," she sighed.
"Why can't you, honey?"
"Munner says no."
He attempted to turn further towards her, but the pain in his right shoulder prevented.He found that his arm was bandaged to the elbow and held close to his side by a complex swathing.
"Who is your mother?" asked Vic.
"Munner?" she repeated, frowning in wonder."Why, munner is--my munner.""Oh," smiled he, "and who's your pa?"
"What?"
"Who's your father? Who's your dad?"
"Daddy Dan.You ask a lot of things," she added, disapprovingly.
"Come on in," pleaded Vic Gregg, "and I won't ask nothin' more about you.""Munner says no," she repeated.
She employed the moment of indecision by plucking at the hair of Bart's shoulders; he growled softly, terribly, but she paid not the slightest heed.
"Your mother won't care," asserted Vic.
"I know," she nodded, "but Daddy will."
"Spanking?"
She looked blankly at him.
"What will he do, then, if you come in to see me?""He'll look at me." She grew breathless at the thought, and cast a guilty glance over her shoulder.
"Honey," chuckled Gregg, weakly, "I'll take all the blame.Just you come along in and he'll do his lookin' at me."He thought of the slender fellow who had rescued him and his large, gentle brown eyes, but to a child even those mild eyes might seem terrible with authority.
"Will you, true?" said the child, wistfully.
"Honest and true."
