The Max Brand Megapack (108 page)

She covered her eyes and crouched, waiting for the wrath that would fall on her, but he only smiled bitterly on the bowed head, saying: “Why have I waited so long to hear you say what I knew already? I suppose because I wouldn’t believe until I heard the whole abominable truth from your own lips. Jack, why did you do it?”

“Won’t you see? Because I’ve loved you always, Pierre!”

“Love—you—your tiger-heart? No, but you were like a cruel, selfish child. You were jealous because you didn’t want the toy taken away. I knew it. I knew that even if I rode after her it would be hopeless. Oh, God, how terribly you’ve hurt me, partner!”

It wrung a little moan from her. He said after a moment: “It’s only the ghost of a chance, but I’ll have to take it. Tell me which way she rode? No? Then I’ll try to find her.”

She leaped between him and the door, flinging her shoulders against it with a crash and standing with outspread arms to bar the way.

“You must not go!”

He turned his head somewhat.

“Don’t stand in front of me, Jack. You know I’ll do what I say, and just now it’s a bit hard for me to face you.”

“Pierre, I feel as if there were a hand squeezing my heart small, and small, and small. Pierre, I’d die for you!”

“I know you would. I know you would, partner. It was only a mistake, and you acted the way any cold-hearted boy would act if—if some one were to try to steal his horse, for instance. But just now it’s hard for me to look at you and be calm.”

“Don’t try to be! Swear at me—curse—rave—beat me; I’d be glad of the blows, Pierre. I’d hold out my arms to ’em. But don’t go out that door!”

“Why?”

“Because—if you found her—she’s not alone.”

“Say that slowly. I don’t understand. She’s not alone?”

“I’ll try to tell you from the first. She started out for you with Dick Wilbur for a guide.”

“Good old Dick, God bless him! I’ll fill all his pockets with gold for that; and he loves her, you know.”

“You’ll never see Dick Wilbur again. On the first night they camped she missed him when he went for water. She went down after a while and saw the mark of his body on the sand. He never appeared again.”

“Who was it?”

“Listen. The next morning she woke up and found that some one had taken care of the fire while she slept, and her pack was lashed on one of the saddles. She rode on that day and came at night to a camp-fire with a bed of boughs near it and no one in sight. She took that camp for herself and no one showed up.

“Don’t you see? Some one was following her up the valley and taking care of the poor baby on the way. Some one who was afraid to let himself be seen. Perhaps it was the man who killed Dick Wilbur without a sound there beside the river; perhaps as Dick died he told the man who killed him about the lonely girl and this other man was white enough to help Mary.

“But all Mary ever saw of him was that second night when she thought that she saw a streak of white, traveling like a galloping horse, that disappeared over a hill and into the trees—”

“A streak of white—”

“Yes, yes! The white horse—McGurk!”

“McGurk!” repeated Pierre stupidly; then: “And you knew she would be going out to him when she left this house?”

“I knew—Pierre—don’t look at me like that—I knew that it would be murder to let you cross with McGurk. You’re the last of seven—he’s a devil—no man—”

“And you let her go out into the night—to him.”

She clung to a last thread of hope: “If you met him and killed him with the luck of the cross it would bring equal bad luck on some one you love—on the girl, Pierre!”

He was merely repeating stupidly: “You let her go out—to him—in the night! She’s in his arms now—you devil—you tiger—”

She threw herself down and clung about his knees with hysterical strength.

“Pierre, you shall not go. Pierre, you walk on my heart if you go!”

He tore the little cross from his neck and flung it into her upturned face.

“Don’t make me put my hands on you, Jack. Let me go!”

There was no need to tear her grasp away. She crumpled and slipped sidewise to the floor. He leaned over and shook her violently by the shoulder.

“Which way did she ride? Which way did they ride?”

She whispered: “Down the valley, Pierre; down the valley; I swear they rode that way.”

And as she lay in a half swoon she heard the faint clatter of galloping hoofs over the rooks and a wild voice yelling, fainter and fainter with distance:

“McGurk!”

CHAPTER XXXV

JACK HEARS A SMALL VOICE

It came back to her like a threat; it beat at her ears and roused her, that continually diminishin
g cry: “McGurk!” It went down the valley, and Mary Brown, and McGurk with her, perhaps, had gone up the gorge, but it would be a matter of a short time before Pierre le Rouge discovered that there was no camp-fire to be sighted in the lower valley and whirled to storm back up the cañon with that battle-cry: “McGurk!” still on his lips.

And if the two met she knew the result. Seven strong men had ridden together, fought together, and one by one they had fallen, disappeared like the white smoke of the camp-fire, jerked off into thin air by the wind, until only one remained.

How clearly she could see them all! Bud Mansie, meager, lean, with a shifting eye; Garry Patterson, of the red, good-natured face; Phil Branch, stolid and short and muscled like a giant; Handsome Dick Wilbur on his racing bay; Black Gandil, with his villainies from the South Seas like an invisible mantle of awe about him; and her father, the stalwart, gray Boone.

All these had gone, and there remained only Pierre le Rouge to follow in the steps of the six who had gone before.

She crawled to the door, feeble in mind and shuddering of body like a runner who has spent his last energy in a long race, and drew it open. The wind blew up the valley from the Old Crow, but no sound came back to her, no calling from Pierre; and over her rose the black pyramid of the western peak of the Twin Bears like a monstrous nose pointing stiffly toward the stars.

She closed the door, dragged herself back to her feet, and stood with her shoulders leaning against the wall. Her weakness was not weariness—it was as if something had been taken from her. She wondered at herself somewhat vaguely. Surely she had never been like this before, with the singular coldness about her heart and the feeling of loss, of infinite loss.

What had she lost? She began to search her mind for an answer. Then she smiled uncertainly, a wan, small smile. It was very clear; what she had lost was all interest in life and all hope for the brave to-morrow. Nothing remained of all those lovely dreams which she had built up by day and night about the figure of Pierre le Rouge. He was gone, and the bright-colored bubble she had blown vanished at once.

She felt a slight pain at her forehead and then remembered the cross which Pierre had thrown into her face. Casting that away he had thrown his faintest chance of victory with it; it would be a slaughter, not a battle, and red-handed McGurk would leave one more foe behind him.

But looking down she found the cross and picked up the shining bit of metal; it seemed as if she held the greater part of Pierre le Rouge in her hands. She raised the cross to her lips.

When she fastened the cross about her throat it was with no exultation, but like one who places over his heart a last memorial of the dead; a consecration, like the red sign or the white which the crusaders wore on the covers of their shields.

Then she took from her breast the spray of autumn leaves. He had not noticed them, yet perhaps they had helped to make him gay when he came into the cabin that night, so she placed the spray on the table. Next she unpinned the great rubies from her throat and let her eye linger over them for a moment. They were chosen stones, each as deeply lighted as an eye, if there ever were eyes of this blood-red, and they looked up at her with a lure and a challenge at once.

The first thought of what she must do came to Jacqueline then, but not in an overwhelming tide—it was rather a small voice that whispered in her heart.

Last, she took from her bosom the glove of the yellow-haired girl. Compared with her stanch riding gloves, how small was this! Yet, when she tried it, it slipped easily on her hand. This she laid in that little pile, for these were the things which Pierre would wish to find if by some miracle he came back from the battle. The spray, perhaps, he would not understand; and yet he might. She pressed both hands to her breast and drew a long breath, for her heart was breaking. Through her misted eyes she could barely see the shimmer of the cross.

That sight made her look up, searching for a superhuman aid in her woe, and for the first time in her life a conception of God dawned on her wild, gay mind. She made a picture of him like a vast cloud looming over the Twin Bear peaks and breathing an infinite calm over the mountains. The cloud took a faintly human shape—a shape somewhat like that of her father when he lived, for he could be both stern and gentle, as she well knew, and such gray Boone had been.

Perhaps it was because of this that another picture came out of her infancy of a soft voice, of a tender-touching hand, of brooding, infinitely loving eyes. She smiled the wan smile again because for the first time it came to her that she, too, even she, the wild, the “tiger-heart,” as Pierre himself had called her, might one day have been the mother of a child, his child.

But the ache within her grew so keen that she dropped, writhing, to her knees, and twisted her hands together in agony. It was prayer. There were no words to it, but it was prayer, a wild appeal for aid.

That aid came in the form of a calm that swept on her like the flood of a clear moonlight over a storm-beaten landscape. The whisper which had come to her before was now a solemn-speaking voice, and she knew what she must do. She could not keep the two men apart, but she might reach McGurk before and strike him down by stealth, by craft, any way to kill that man as terrible as a devil, as invulnerable as a ghost.

This she might do in the heart of the night, and afterward she might have the courage left to tell the girl the truth and then creep off somewhere and let this steady pain burn its way out of her heart.

Once she had reached a decision, it was characteristic that she moved swiftly. Also, there was cause for haste, for by this time Pierre must have discovered that there was no one in the lower reaches of the gorge and would be galloping back with all the speed of the cream-colored mare which even McGurk’s white horse could not match.

She ran from the cabin and into the little lean-to behind it where the horses were tethered. There she swung her saddle with expert hands, whipped up the cinch, and pulled it with the strength of a man, mounted, and was off up the gorge.

For the first few minutes she let the long-limbed black race on at full speed, a breathless course, because the beat of the wind in her face raised her courage, gave her a certain impulse which was almost happiness, just as the martyrs rejoiced and held out their hands to the fire that was to consume them; but after the first burst of headlong galloping, she drew down the speed to a hand-canter, and this in turn to a fast trot, for she dared not risk the far-echoed sound of the clattering hoofs over the rock.

And as she rode she saw at last the winking eye of red which she longed for and dreaded. She pulled her black to an instant halt and swung from the saddle, tossing the reins over the head of the horse to keep him standing there.

Yet, after she had made half a dozen hurried paces something forced her to turn and look again at the handsome head of the horse. He stood quite motionless, with his ears pricking after her, and now as she stopped he whinnied softly, hardly louder than the whisper of a man. So she ran back again and threw the reins over the horn of the saddle; he should be free to wander where he chose through the free mountains, but as for her, she knew very certainly now that she would never mount that saddle again, or control that triumphant steed with the touch of her hands on the reins. She put her arms around his neck and drew his head down close.

There was a dignity in that parting, for it was the burning of her bridges behind her. When “King-Maker” Richard of Warwick, betrayed and beaten on the field, came to his last stand by the forest, he dismounted and stabbed his favorite charger. Very different was this wild mountain girl from the armored earl who put kings up and pulled them down again at pleasure, but her heart swelled as great as the heart of famous Warwick; he gave up a kingdom, and she gave up her love.

When she drew back the horse followed her a pace, but she raised a silent hand in the night and halted him; a moment later she was lost among the boulders.

It was rather slow work to stalk that camp-fire, for the big boulders cut off the sight of the red eye time and again, and she had to make little, cautious detours before she found it again, but she kept steadily at her work. Once she stopped, her blood running cold, for she thought that she heard a faint voice blown up the cañon on the wind: “McGurk!”

For half a minute she stood frozen, listening, but the sound was not repeated, and she went on again with greater haste. So she came at last in view of a hollow in the side of the gorge. Here there were a few trees, growing in the cove, and here, she knew, there was a small spring of clear water. Many a time she had made a cup of her hands and drunk here.

Now she made out the fire clearly, the trees throwing out great spokes of shadow on all sides, spokes of shadows that wavered and shook with the flare of the small fire beyond them. She dropped to her hands and knees and, parting the dense underbrush, began the last stealthy approach.

CHAPTER XXXVI

A VOICE IN THE NIGHT

Up the same course which Jacqueline followed, Mary Brown had fled earlier that night with the triumphant laughter of Jack still ringing in her ears and following her like a remorseless, pointed hand of shame.

There is no power like shame to disarm the spirit. A dog will fight if a man laughs at him; a coward will challenge the devil himself if he is whipped on by scorn; and this proud girl shrank and moaned on the saddle. She had not progressed far enough to hate Pierre. That would come later, but now all her heart had room for was a consuming loathing of herself.