Max Brand (11 page)

"But there's a difference with this girl. I've named the quality of
her before—it disarms a man."

Pierre looked to his friend with some alarm, for there was a saying
among the followers of Boone that a woman would be the downfall of big
Dick Wilbur again, as a woman had been his downfall before. The
difference would be that this fall must be his last.

And Wilbur went on: "She's Eastern, Pierre, and out here visiting the
daughter of old Barnes who owns about a thousand miles of range, you
know. How long will she be here? That's the question I'm trying to
answer for her. I met her riding over the hills—she was galloping
along a ridge, and she rode her way right into my heart. Well, I'm a
fool, of course, but about this girl I can't be wrong. Tonight I'm
taking her to a masquerade."

He pulled his horse to a full stop.

"Pierre, you have to come with me."

Pierre stared at his companion with almost open-mouthed astonishment.

"I? A dance?"

And then his head tilted back and he laughed.

"My good times, Dick, come out of the hills and the skyline, and the
gallop of Mary. But as for women, they bore me, Dick."

"Even Jack?"

"She's more man than woman."

It was the turn of Wilbur to laugh, and he responded uproariously
until Pierre frowned and flushed a little.

"When I see you out here on your horse with your rifle in the boot and
your six-gun swinging low in the scabbard, and riding the fastest bit
of horseflesh on the ranges," explained Wilbur, "I get to thinking
that you're pretty much king of the mountains; but in certain
respects, Pierre, you're a child."

Pierre stirred uneasily in his saddle. A man must be well over thirty
before he can withstand ridicule.

He said dryly: "I've an idea that I know Jack's about as well as the
next man." "Let it drop," said Wilbur, sober again, for he shared
with all of Boone's crew a deep-rooted unwillingness to press Red
Pierre beyond a certain point. "The one subject I won't quarrel about
is Jack, God bless her."

"She's the best pal," said Pierre soberly, "and the nearest to a man
I've ever met."

"Nearest to a man?" queried Wilbur, and smiled, but so furtively that
even the sharp eye of Red Pierre did not perceive the mockery. He went
on: "But the dance, what of that? It's a masquerade. There'd be no
fear of being recognized."

Pierre was silent a moment more. Then he said: "This girl—what did
you call her?"

"Mary."

"And about her hair—I think you said it was black?"

"Golden, Pierre."

"Mary, and golden hair," mused Red Pierre. "I think I'll go to that
dance."

"With Jack? She dances wonderfully, you know."

"Well—with Jack."

So they reached a tumbled ranch house squeezed between two hills so
that it was sheltered from the storms of the winter but held all the
heat of the summer.

Once it had been a goodly building, the home of some cattle king. But
bad times had come. A bullet in a saloon brawl put an end to the
cattle king, and now his home was a wreck of its former glory. The
northern wing shelved down to the ground as if the building were
kneeling to the power of the wind, and the southern portion of the
house, though still erect, seemed tottering and rotten throughout and
holding together until at a final blow the whole structure would
crumple at once.

To the stables, hardly less ruinous than the big house, Pierre and
Wilbur took their horses, and a series of whinnies greeted them from
the stalls. To look down that line of magnificent heads raised above
the partitions of the stalls was like glancing into the stud of some
crowned head who made hunting and racing his chief end in life, for
these were animals worthy of the sport of kings.

They were chosen each from among literal hundreds, and they were cared
for far more tenderly than the masters cared for themselves. There was
a reason in it, for upon their speed and endurance depended the life
of the outlaw. Moreover, the policy of Jim Boone was one of actual
"long riding."

Here he had come to a pause for a few days to recuperate his horses
and his men. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would be on the spur again and
sweeping off to a distant point in the mountain-desert to strike and
be gone again before the rangers knew well that he had been there.
Very rarely did one settler have another neighbor at a distance of
less than two hundred miles. It meant arduous and continual riding,
and a horse with any defect was worse than useless because the speed
of the gang had to be the speed of the slowest horse in the lot.

It was some time before the two long riders had completed the grooming
of their horses and had gone down the hill and into the house. In the
largest habitable room they found a fire fed with rotten timbers from
the wrecked portion of the building, and scattered through the room a
sullen and dejected group: Mansie, Branch, Jim Boone, and Black
Morgan Gandil.

At a glance it was easy to detect their malady; it was the horrible
ennui which comes to men who are always surrounded by one set of
faces. If a man is happily married he may bear with his wife and his
children constantly through long stretches of time, but the glamour of
life lies in the varying personalities which a man glimpses in
passing, but never knows.

This was a rare crew. Every man of them was marked for courage and
stamina and wild daring. Yet even so in their passive moments they
hated each other with a hate that passed the understanding of
common men.

Through seven years they had held together, through fair weather and
foul, and now each knew from the other's expression the words that
were about to be spoken, and each knew that the other was reading him,
and loathing what he read.

So they were apt to relapse into long silences unless Jack was with
them, for being a woman her variety was infinite, or Pierre le Rouge,
whom all except Black Gandil loved and petted, and feared.

They were a battered crowd. Wind and hard weather and a thousand suns
had marked them, and the hand of man had branded them. Here and there
was a touch of gray in their hair, and about the mouth of each were
lines which in such silent moments as this one gave an expression
of yearning.

"What's up? What's wrong?" asked Wilbur from the door, but since no
answer was deigned he said no more.

But Pierre, like a charmed man who dares to walk among lions, strolled
easily through the room, and looked into the face of big Boone, who
smiled faintly up to him, and Black Gandil, who scowled doubly dark,
and Bud Mansie, who shifted uneasily in his chair and then nodded, and
finally to Branch. He dropped a hand on the massive shoulder of the
blacksmith.

"Well?" he asked.

Branch let himself droop back into his chair. His big, dull, colorless
eyes stared up to his friend.

"I dunno, lad. I'm just weary with the sort of tired that you can't
help by sleepin'. Understand?"

Pierre nodded, slowly, because he sympathized. "And the trouble?"

Branch stared about as if searching for a reason. "Jack's upstairs
sulking; Patterson hasn't come home yet."

And Black Gandil, who heard all things, said without looking up: "A
man that saves a shipwrecked fellow, he gets bad luck for thanks."

Pierre turned a considerable eye on him, and Gandil scowled back.

"You've been croaking for six years, Morgan, about the bad luck that
would come to Jim from saving me out of the snow. It's never
happened, has it?"

Gandil, snarling from one side of his mouth, answered: "Where's
Patterson?"

"Am I responsible if the blockhead has got drunk someplace?"

"Patterson doesn't get drunk—not that way. And he knows that we were
to start again today."

"There ain't no doubt of that," commented Branch.

"It's the straight dope. Patterson keeps his dates," said Bud Mansie.

The booming bass of Jim Boone broke in: "Shut up, the whole gang of
you. We've had luck for the six years Pierre has been with us. Who
calls him a Jonah?"

And Black Gandil answered: "I do. I've sailed the seas. I know bad
luck when I see it."

"You've been seeing it for six years."

"The worst storms come on a voyage that starts with fair weather.
Patterson? He's gone; he ain't just delayed; he's gone."

It was not the first of these gloomy prophecies which Gandil had made,
but each time a heavy gloom broke over Red Pierre. For when he summed
up the good fortune which the cross of Father Victor had brought him,
he found that he had gained a father, and lost him at their first
meeting; and he had won money on that night of the gambling, but it
had cost the life of another man almost at once. The horse which
carried him away from the vengeance in Morgantown had died on the way
and he had been saved from the landslide, but the girl had perished.

He had driven McGurk from the ranges, and where would the penalty fall
on those who were near and dear to him? In a superstitious horror he
had asked himself the question a thousand times, and finally he could
hardly bear to look into the ominous, brooding eyes of Black Gandil.
It was as if the man had a certain and evil knowledge of the future.

The knowledge of the torment he was inflicting made the eye of Black
Gandil bright with triumph.

He continued, and now every man in the room was sitting up, alert,
with gloomy eyes fixed upon Pierre: "Patterson is the first, but he
ain't the last. He's just the start. Who's next?" He looked
slowly around.

"Is it you, Bud, or you, Phil, or you, Jim, or maybe me?"

And Pierre said: "What makes you think you know that trouble's coming,
Morgan?"

"Because my blood runs cold in me when I look at you."

Red Pierre grew rigid and straightened in a way they knew.

"Damn you, Gandil, I've borne with you and your croaking too long,
d'ye hear? Too long, and I'll hear no more of it, understand?"

"Why not? You'll hear from me every time I sight you in the offing.
You c'n lay to that!"

The others were tense, ready to spring for cover, but Boone reared up
his great figure.

"Don't answer him, Pierre. You, Gandil, shut your face or I'll break
ye in two."

The fierce eyes of Pierre le Rouge never wavered from his victim, but
he answered: "Keep out of this. This is
my
party. I'll tell you why
you'll stop gibbering, Gandil."

He made a pace forward and every man shrank a little away from him.

"Because the cold in your blood is part hate and more fear, Black
Gandil."

The eyes of Gandil glared back for an instant. With all his soul he
yearned for the courage to pull his gun, but his arm was numb; he
could not move it, and his eyes wavered and fell.

The shaggy gray head of Jim Boone fell likewise, and he was murmuring
to his savage old heart: "The good days are over. They'll never rest
till one of 'em is dead, and then the rest will take sides and we'll
have gun-plays at night. Seven years, and then to break up!"

Dick Wilbur, as usual, was the pacifier. He strode across the room,
and the sharp sound of his heels on the creaking floor broke the
tension. He said softly to Pierre: "You've raised hell enough. Now
let's go and get Jack down here to undo what you've just finished.
Besides, you've got to ask her for that dance, eh?"

The glance of Pierre still lingered on Gandil as he turned and
followed Wilbur up the complaining stairs to the one habitable room in
the second story of the house. It was set aside for the use of
Jacqueline.

At the door Wilbur said: "Shrug your shoulders back; you look as if
you were going to jump at something. And wipe the wolf look off your
face. After all, Jack's a girl, not a gunfighter."

Then he knocked and opened the door.

She lay face down on her bunk, her head turned from them toward the
wall. Slender and supple and strong, it was still only the size of her
boots and her hands that would make one look at her twice and then
guess that this was a woman, for she was dressed, from trousers even
to the bright bandanna knotted around her throat, like any prosperous
range rider.

Now, to be sure, the thick coils of black hair told her sex, but when
the broad-brimmed sombrero was pulled well down on her head, when the
cartridge-belt and the six-gun were slung about her waist, and most of
all when she spurred her mount recklessly across the hills no one
could have suspected that this was not some graceful boy born and bred
in the mountain-desert, willful as a young mountain lion, and as
dangerous.

"Sleepy?" called Wilbur.

She waited a moment and then queried with exaggerated impudence:
"Well?"

Ennui unspeakable was in that drawling monotone.

"Brace up; I've got news for you. And I've brought Pierre along to
tell you about it."

"Oh!"

And she sat bolt upright with shining eyes. Instantly she remembered
to yawn again, but her glance smiled on them above her hand.

She apologized. "Awfully sleepy, Dick."

But he was not deceived. He said: "There's a dance down near the
Barnes place, and Pierre wants you to go with him."

"Pierre! A dance?"

He explained: "Dick's lost his head over a girl with yellow hair, and
he wants me to go down and see her. He thought you might want to go
along." Her face changed like the moon when a cloud blows across it.
She answered with another slow, insolent yawn: "Thanks! I'm staying
home tonight."

Wilbur glared his rage covertly at Pierre, but the latter was blandly
unconscious that he had made any
faux pas
.

He said carelessly: "Too bad. It might be interesting. Jack?"

At his voice she looked up—a sharp and graceful toss of her head.

"What?"