Riders of the Silences (12 page)

The other made a familiar gesture with those who knew him, a touching of his
left hand against his throat where the cross lay.

He said: "I suppose it seems like that to you."

"Like what? Dodging me, eh? Well, I never press the point, but I'd give the
worth of your horse, Pierre, to see you and Mary together."

Red Pierre started, and then frowned.

"Irritates you a little, eh? Well, a woman is like a spur to most men."

He added, with a momentary gloom: "God knows, I bear the marks of 'em."

He raised his head, as if he looked up in response to his thought.

"But there's a difference with this girl. I've named the quality of her
beforea fragrance, you know, that disarms a man, and like a fragrance there's
just a touch of melancholy about her and an appeal that follows after you when
she's gone."

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 hillsshe 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. To-night 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 sky-line, 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 horse-flesh
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. Ha, ha,
ha! a regular infant."

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 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 girlwhat did you call her?"

"Mary."

"And about her hairI 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."

"Wellwith 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 thousands, 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. To-morrow, 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 infinite and wistful 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 up-stairs sulking; Patterson hasn't come home yet."

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

Pierre turned a considering 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 some place?"

"Patterson doesn't get drunknot that way. And he knows that we were to start
again to-day."

"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 up 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 gun-fighter."

Then he knocked and opened the door.

She lay face down on her bunk, her head turned from them and 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, wilful 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."

Her hand moved and all the graceful body, but it was only with a yawn. What
need was there to speak? She wished to be alone.

"And I've brought Pierre along to tell you about it.