Riders of the Silences (11 page)

One thing was certain: if he was to act a man's part and die a man's death he
must not stand long before McGurk. It seemed to him then that he would die happy
if he had the strength to fire one shot before the end.

Then he tiptoed from the house and went over the snow to the barn and saddled
the horse of Hal Boone. It was already morning, and as he led the horse to the
door of the barn a shadow, a faint shadow in that early light, fell across the
snow before him.

He looked up and saw Jacqueline. She stepped close, and the horse nosed her
shoulder affectionately.

She said: "Isn't there anything that will keep you from going?"

"It's just a little ride before breakfast. I'll be back in an hour."

It was foolish to try to blind her, as he saw by her wan, unchildish smile.

"Is there no other way, Pierre?"

"I don't know of any, do you?"

"You have to leave us, and never come back?"

"Is he as sure as that, Jack?"

"Sure? Who?"

She had not known, after all; she thought that he was merely riding away from
the region where McGurk was king. Now she caught his wrists and shook them.

"Pierre, you are not going to face McGurk? Pierre!"

It was sweet and bitter-sweet that the child should wish him to stay, and it
made the heart of Pierre old and stern to look down on her.

"If you were a man, you would understand."

"I know; because of your father. I do understand, but oh, Pierre, it makes me
so unhappyso terribly sad, Pierre."

Inspiration made her catch her breath.

"Listen! I can shoot as straight as almost any man. We will ride down
together. We will go through the doors togetherme first to take his fire, and
you behind to shoot him down."

"I guess no man can be as brave as a woman, Jack. No; I have to see McGurk
alone. He faced my father alone and shot him down. I'll face McGurk alone and
live long enough to put my mark on him."

"But you don't know him. He can't be hurt. Do you think my father andand
Dick Wilbur would fear any man who could be hurt? No, but McGurk has been in a
hundred fights and never been touched. There's a charm over him, don't you see?"

"I'll break the charm, that's all."

"You're only a boy, Pierre."

"I, also, carry a charm with me. Good-by."

He was up in the saddle.

"Then I'll call dadI'll call them allif you die they shall all follow you.
I swear they shall, Pierre!"

He merely leaned forward and touched the horse with his spurs, but after he
had raced the first hundred yards he glanced back. She was running hard for the
house, and calling as she went. Pierre cursed and spurred the horse again.

Yet even if Jim Boone and his men started out after him they could never
overtake him. Before they were in their saddles and up with him, he'd be a full
three miles out in the hills. Not even black Thunder could make up as much
ground as that.

So all the fifteen miles to Gaffney's place he urged his horse. The
excitement of the race kept the thought of McGurk back in his mind. Only once he
lost time when he had to pull up beside a buckboard and inquire the way. After
that he flew on again. Yet as he clattered up to the door of Gaffney's
crossroads saloon and swung to the ground he looked back and saw a cluster of
horsemen swing around the shoulder of a hill and come tearing after him. Surely
his time was short.

He thrust open the door of the place and called for a drink. The bartender
spun the glass down the bar to him.

"Where's McGurk?"

The other stopped in the very act of taking out the bottle from the shelf,
and his curious glance went over the face of Pierre le Rouge. He decided,
apparently, that it was foolish to hold suspicions against so young a man.

"In that room," and he jerked his hand toward a door. "What do you want with
him?"

"Got a message for him."

"Tell it to me, and I'll pass it along."

Pierre met the eye of the other and smiled faintly.

"Not
this
message."

"Oh," said the other, and then shouted: "McGurk!"

Far away came the rush of hoofs over a hard trail. Only a minute more and
they would be here; only a minute more and the room would be full of fighting
men ready to die with him and for him. Yet Pierre was glad; glad that he could
meet the danger alone; ten minutes from now, if he lived, he could answer
certainly one way or the other the greatest of all questions: "Am I a man?"

Out of the inner room the pleasant voice which he dreaded answered: "What's
up?"

The barkeeper glanced Pierre le Rouge over again and then answered: "A friend
with a message."

The door opened and framed McGurk. He did not start, seeing Pierre.

He said: "None of the rest of them had the guts even to bring me the message,
eh?"

Pierre shrugged his shoulders. It was a mighty effort, but he was able to
look his man fairly in the eyes.

"All right, lad. How long is it going to take you to clear out of the
country?"

"That's not the message," answered a voice which Pierre did not recognize as
his own.

"Out with it, then."

"It's in the leather on my hip."

And he went for his gun. Even as he started his hand he knew that he was too
slow for McGurk, yet the finest split-second watch in the world could not have
caught the differing time they needed to get their guns out of the holsters.

Just a breath before Pierre fired there was a stunning blow on his right
shoulder and another on his hip. He lurched to the floor, his revolver
clattering against the wood as he fell, but falling, he scooped up the gun with
his left and twisted.

That movement made the third shot of McGurk fly wide and Pierre fired from
the floor and saw a spasm of pain contract the face of the outlaw.

Instantly the door behind him flew open and Boone's men stormed into the
room. Once more McGurk fired, but his wound made his aim wide and the bullet
merely tore up a splinter beside Pierre's head. A fusillade from Boone and his
men answered, but the outlaw had leaped back through the door.

"He's hurt," thundered Boone. "By God, the charm of McGurk is broken. Dick,
Bud, Gandil, take the outside of the place. I'll force the door."

Wilbur and the other two raced through the door and raised a shout at once,
and then there was a rattle of shots. Big Patterson leaned over Pierre.

He said in an awe-stricken voice: "Lad, it's a great work that you've done
for all of us, if you've drawn the blood from McGurk."

"His left shoulder," said Pierre, and smiled in spite of his pain.

"And you, lad?"

"I'm going to live; I've got to finish the job. Who's that beside you?
There's a mist over my eyes."

"It's Jack. She outrode us all."

Then the mist closed over the eyes of Pierre and his senses went out in the
dark.

Those who are curious about the period which followed during which the title
"Le Rouge" was forgotten and he became known only as "Red" Pierre through all
the mountain-desert, can hear the tales of his doing from the analists of the
ranges. This story has to do only with his struggle with McGurk, and must end
where that struggle ended.

The gap of six years which occurs here is due to the fact that during that
period McGurk vanished from the mountain-desert. He died away from the eyes of
men and in their minds he became that tradition which lives still so vividly,
the tradition of the pale face, the sneering, bloodless lips, and the hand which
never failed.

During this lapse of time there were many who claimed that he had ridden off
into some lonely haunt and died of the wound which he received from Pierre's
bullet. A great majority, however, would never accept such a story, and even
when the six years had rolled by they still shook their heads and "had their
doubt on the matter" like
Wouter Van Twiller
of immortal memory.

They awaited his return just as certain stanch old Britons await the second
coming of Arthur from the island of Avalon. In the mean time the terror of his
name passed on to him who had broken the "charm" of McGurk.

Not all that grim significance passed on to "Red" Pierre, indeed, because he
never impressed the public imagination as did the terrible ruthlessness of
McGurk. At that he did enough to keep tongues wagging.

Cattlemen loved to tell those familiar exploits of the "two sheriffs," or
that "thousand-mile pursuit of Canby," with its half-tragic, half-humorous
conclusion, or the "Sacking of Two Rivers," or the "three-cornered battle"
against Rodriguez and Blond.

But men could not forget that in all his work there rode behind Red Pierre
six dauntless warriors of the mountain-desert, while McGurk had been always a
single hand against the world, a veritable lone wolf.

Whatever kept him away through those six years, the memory of the wound he
received at Gaffney's place never left McGurk, and now he was coming back with a
single great purpose in his mind, and in his heart a consuming hatred for Pierre
and all the other of Boone's men.

Certainly if he had sensed the second coming of McGurk, Pierre would not have
ridden so jauntily through the hills this day, or whistled so carelessly, or
swept the hills with such a complacent, lordly eye. A man of mark cannot bear
himself too modestly, and Pierre, from boots to high-peaked, broad-brimmed
sombrero, was the last word in elegance for a rider of the mountain-desert.

Even his mount seemed to sense the pride of his master. It was a
cream-colored mustang, not one of the lump-headed, bony-hipped species common to
the ranges, but one of those rare reversions to the Spanish thoroughbreds from
which the Western cow-pony is descended. The mare was not over-large, but the
broad hips and generous expanse of chest were hints, and only hints, of her
strength and endurance. There was the speed of the blooded racer in her and the
tirelessness of the mustang.

Now, down the rocky, half broken trail she picked her way as daintily as any
debutante tiptoeing down a great stairway to the ballroom. Life had been easy
for Mary since that thousand-mile struggle to overtake Canby, and now her sides
were sleek from good feeding and some casual twenty miles a day, which was no
more to her than a canter through the park is to the city horse.

The eye which had been so red-stained and fierce during the long ride after
Canby was now bright and gentle. At every turn she pricked her small sharp ears
as if she expected home and friends on the other side of the curve. And now and
again she tossed her head and glanced back at the master for a moment and then
whinnied across some echoing ravine.

It was Mary's way of showing happiness, and her master's acknowledgment was
to run his gloved left hand up through her mane and with his ungloved right,
that tanned and agile hand, pat her shoulder lightly.

Passing to the end of the down-grade, they reached a slight upward incline,
and the mare, as if she had come to familiar ground, broke into a gallop, a
matchless, swinging stride. Swerving to right and to left among the great
boulders, like a football player running a broken field, she increased the
gallop to a racing pace.

That twisting course would have shaken an ordinary horseman to the toes, but
Pierre, swaying easily in the saddle, dropped the reins into the crook of his
left arm and rolled a cigarette in spite of the motion and the wind. It was a
little feat, but it would have drawn applause from a circus crowd.

He spoke to the mare while he lighted a match and she dropped to an easy
canter, the pace which she could maintain from dawn to dark, eating up the gray
miles of the mountain and the desert, and it was then that Red Pierre heard a
gay voice singing in the distance.

His attitude changed at once. He caught a shorter grip on the reins and swung
forward a little in the saddle, while his right hand touched the butt of the
revolver in its holster and made sure that it was loose; for to those who hunt
and are hunted every human voice in the mountain-desert is an ominous token.

The mare, sensing the change of her master through that weird telegraphy
which passed down the taut bridle reins, held her head high and flattened her
short ears against her neck.

The song and the singer drew closer, and the vigilence of Pierre ceased as he
heard a mellow barytone ring out:

"They call me poor, yet I am rich
In the touch of her golden hair,
My heart is
filled like a miser's hands
With the red-gold
of her hair.
The sky I ride beneath all day
Is the blue of her dear eyes;
The only heaven
I desire
Is the blue of her dear
eyes."

And here Dick Wilbur rode about the shoulder of a hill, broke off his song at
the sight of Pierre le Rouge, and shouted a welcome. They came together and
continued their journey side by side. The half-dozen years had hardly altered
the blond, handsome face of Wilbur, and now, with the gladness of his singing
still flushing his face, he seemed hardly more than a boyyounger, in fact, than
Red Pierre, into whose eyes there came now and then a grave sternness.

"After hearing that song," said Pierre smiling, "I feel as if I'd listened to
a portrait."

"Right!" said Wilbur, with unabated enthusiasm. "It's the bare and unadorned
truth, Prince Pierre. My fine
Galahad
, if you came within eye-shot of her
there'd be a small-sized hell raised."

"No. I'm immune there, you know."

"Nonsense. The beauty of a really lovely woman is like a fine perfume. It
strikes right to a man's heart; there's no possibility of resistance. I know.
You, Pierre, act like a man already in love or a boy who has never known a
woman. Which is it, Pierre?"