The Max Brand Megapack (87 page)

Out to the broken-backed shack rode Pierre le Rouge, Pierre the Red, as every one in the north country knew him. His second horse, staunch cow-pony that it was, stumbled on with sagging knees and hanging head, but Pierre rode upright, at ease, for his mind was untired.

Broken-backed indeed was the house before which he dismounted. The roof sagged from end to end, and the stove pipe chimney leaned at a drunken angle. Nature itself was withered beside that house; before the door stood a great cottonwood, gashed and scarred by lightning, with the limbs almost entirely stripped away from one side. Under this broken monster Pierre stepped and through the door. Two growls like the snarls of watch-dogs greeted him, and two tall, unshaven men barred his way.

Behind them, from the bed in the corner, a feeble voice called: “Who’s there?”

“In the name of God,” said the boy gravely, for he saw a hollow-eyed specter staring toward him from the bed in the corner, “let me pass! I am his son!”

It was not that which made them give back, but a shrill, faint cry of triumph from the sick man toward which they turned. Pierre slipped past them and stood above Martin Ryder. He was wasted beyond belief—only the monster hand showed what he had been.

“Son?” he queried with yearning and uncertainty.

“Pierre, your son.”

And he slipped to his knees beside the bed. The heavy hand fell upon his hair and stroked it.

“There ain’t no ways of doubting it. It’s red silk, like the hair of Irene. Seein’ you, boy, it ain’t so hard to die. Look up! So! Pierre, my son! Are you scared of me, boy?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Not with them eyes you ain’t. Now that you’re here, pay the coyotes and let ’em go off to gnaw the bones.”

He dragged out a small canvas bag from beneath the blankets and gestured toward the two lurkers in the corner.

“Take it, and be damned to you!”

A dirty, yellow hand seized the bag; there was a chortle of exultation, and the two scurried out of the room.

“Three weeks they’ve watched an’ waited for me to go out, Pierre. Three weeks they’ve waited an’ sneaked up to my bed an’ sneaked away agin, seein’ my eyes open.”

Looking into their fierce fever brightness, Pierre understood why they had quailed. For the man, though wrecked beyond hope of living, was terrible still. The thick, gray stubble on his face could not hide altogether the hard lines of mouth and jaw, and on the wasted arm the hand was grotesquely huge. It was horror that widened the eyes of Pierre as he looked at Martin Ryder; it was a grim happiness that made his lips almost smile.

“You’ve taken holy orders, lad?”

“No.”

“But the black dress?”

“I’m only a novice. I’ve sworn no vows.”

“And you don’t hate me—you hold no grudge against me for the sake of your mother, Pierre?”

He took the heavy hand.

“Are you not my father? And my mother was happy with you. For her sake I love you.”

“The good Father Victor. He sent you to me.”

“I came of my own will. He would not have let me go.”

“He—he would have kept my flesh and blood away from me?”

“Do not reproach him. He would have kept me from a sin.”

“Sin? By God, boy, no matter what I’ve done, is it sin for my son to come to me? What sin?”

“The sin of murder!”

“Ha!”

“I have come to find McGurk.”

CHAPTER IV

THE CORNER PLOT

Like
some old father-bear watching his cub flash teeth against a stalking lynx, half proud and half fearful of such courage, so the dying cattleman looked at his son. Excitement set a high and dangerous color in his cheek. His eyes were too bright.

“Pierre—brave boy! Look at me. I ain’t no imitation-man, even now, but I ain’t a ghost of what I was. There wasn’t no man I wouldn’t of met fair and square with bare hands or with a gun. Maybe my hands was big, but they were fast on the draw. I’ve lived all my life with iron on the hip, and my six-gun has seven notches.

“But McGurk downed me fair and square. There wasn’t no murder. I was out for his hide, and he knew it. I done the provokin’, an’ he jest done the finishin’, that was all. It hurts me a lot to say it, but he’s a better man than I was. A kid like you, why, he’d jest eat you, Pierre.”

Pierre le Rouge smiled again. He felt a stern and aching pride to be the son of this man.

“So that’s settled,” went on Martin Ryder, “an’ a damned good thing it is. Son, you didn’t come none too soon. I’m goin’ out fast. There ain’t enough light left in me so’s I can see my own way. Here’s all I ask: When I die touch my eyelids soft an’ draw ’em shut—I’ve seen the look in a dead man’s eyes. Close ’em, and I know I’ll go to sleep an’ have good dreams. And down in the middle of Morgantown is the buryin’-ground. I’ve ridden past it a thousand times an’ watched a corner plot, where the grass grows quicker than it does anywheres else in the cemetery. Pierre, I’d die plumb easy if I knew I was goin’ to sleep the rest of time in that place.”

“It shall be done.”

“But that corner plot, it would cost a pile, son. And I’ve no money. I gave what I had to them wolf-eyed boys, Bill an’ Bert. Money was what they wanted, an’ after I had Irene’s son with me, money was the cheapest way of gettin’ rid of ’em.”

“I’ll buy the plot.”

“Have you got that much money, lad?”

“Yes,” lied Pierre calmly.

The bright eyes grew dimmer and then fluttered close. Pierre started to his feet, thinking that the end had come. But the voice began again, fainter, slowly:

“No light left inside of me, but dyin’ this way is easy. There ain’t no wind will blow on me after I’m dead, but I’ll be blanketed safe from head to foot in cool, sweet-smellin’ sod—the kind that has tangles of the roots of grass. There ain’t no snow will reach to me where I lie. There ain’t no sun will burn down to me. Dyin’ like that is jest—goin’ to sleep.”

After that he said nothing for a time, and the late afternoon darkened slowly through the room.

As for Pierre, he did not move, and his mind went back. He did not see the bearded wreck who lay dying before him, but a picture of Irene, with the sun lighting her copper hair with places of burning gold, and a handsome young giant beside her. They rode together on some upland trail at sunset rime, sharply framed against the bright sky. Their hands were together; their faces were raised; they laughed, from the midst of their small heaven.

There was a whisper below him: “Irene!”

And Pierre looked down to blankly staring eyes. He groaned, and dropped to his knees.

“I have come for you,” said the whisper, “because the time has come, Irene. We have to ride out together. We have a long ways to go. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” said Pierre.

“Thank God! It’s a wonderful night. The stars are asking us out. Quick! Into your saddle. Now the spurs. So! We are alone and free, with the winds around us, and all that we have been forgotten behind us. Irene, look up with me!”

The eyes opened wide and stared up; without a stir in the great, gaunt body he was dead. Pierre drew the eyes reverently shut. There were no tears in his eyes, but a feeling of hollowness about his heart, and a great pain. He straightened and looked about him and found that the room was quite dark.

So in the dimness Pierre fumbled, by force of habit, at his throat, and found the cross which he wore by a silver chain about his throat. He held it in a great grip and closed his eyes and prayed. When he opened his eyes again it was almost deep night in the room, and Pierre had passed from youth to manhood. Through the gloom nothing stood out distinctly save the white face of the dead man, and from that Pierre looked quickly away.

One by one he numbered his obligations to Martin Ryder, and first and last he remembered the lie which had soothed his father. The money for that corner plot where the grass grew first in the spring of the year—where was he to find it? He fumbled in his pocket and found only a single coin.

He leaned back against the wall and strove to concentrate on the problem, but his thoughts wandered in spite of himself back to the snows of Canada, to the letter, to the ride south, the death of the roan, and so on until he reached his entry to that very room.

Looking backward, he remembered all things much more clearly than when he had actually seen them. For instance, he recalled now that as he walked through the door the two figures which had started up to block his way had left behind them some playing-cards at the corner table. One of these cards had slipped from the edge of the board and flickered slowly to the floor.

With that memory the thoughts of Pierre le Rouge stopped. The picture of the falling card remained; all else went out in his mind like the snuffing of the candle. Then, as if he heard a voice directing him through the utter blackness of the room, he knew what he must do.

All his wealth was the single half-dollar piece in his pocket, and there was only one way in which that coin could be increased to the sum he would need to buy that corner plot, where the soul of old Martin Ryder could sleep long and deep.

From his brothers he would get no help. The least memory of those sallow, hungry faces convinced him of that.

There remained the gaming table. In the north country he had watched men sit in a silent circle, smoking, drinking, with the flare of an oil-lamp against deep, seamed faces, and only the slip and whisper of card against card.

Cold conscience tapped the shoulder of Pierre, remembering the lessons of Father Victor, but a moment later his head went up and his eyes were shining through the dark. After all, the end justified the means. It was typical of him that sorrow sat lightly on him.

A moment later he was laughing softly as a boy in the midst of a prank, and busily throwing off the robe of serge. Fumbling through the night he located the shirt and overalls he had seen hanging from a nail on the wall. Into these he slipped, leaned to kiss the chill, damp forehead of the sleeper, and then went out under the open sky.

The rest had revived the strength of the tough little cow-pony, and he drove on at a gallop toward the twinkling lights of Morgantown. There was a new consciousness about Pierre as if he had changed his whole nature with his clothes. The sober sense of duty which had kept him in awe all his life like a lifted finger, was almost gone, and in its place was a joyous freedom.

For the first time he faintly realized what an existence other than that of a priest might be. Now for a brief moment he could forget the part of the subdued novice and become merely a man with nothing about him to distinguish him from other men, nothing to make heads turn at his approach and raise whispers as he passed.

It was a game, but he rejoiced in it as a girl does in her first masquerade. To-morrow he must be grave and sober-footed and an example to other men; to-night he could frolic as he pleased. The good Father Victor would hear and frown, perhaps, but remembering the purpose for which the thing was done he would forgive.

So Pierre le Rouge tossed back his head and laughed up to the frosty stars. The loose sleeves and the skirts of the robe no longer entangled his limbs. He threw up his arms and shouted. A hillside caught the sound and echoed it back to him with a wonderful clearness, and up and down the long ravine beat the clatter of the flying hoofs. The whole world shouted and laughed and rode with him on Morgantown.

If the people in the houses that he passed had known they would have started up from their chairs and taken rifle and horse and after him on the trail. But how could they tell from the passing of those ringing hoofs that Pierre, the novice, was dead, and Red Pierre was born?

So they drowsed on about their comfortable fires, and Pierre drew rein with a jerk before the largest of Morgantown’s saloons. With a hand on the swinging doors he paused a breathless moment, thinking, doubting, wondering—and a little cold of heart like the boy who stands on the bank of the river to take the first plunge in the spring of the year. He had to set his teeth before he could summon the resolution to throw open the door. It was done; he stepped inside, and stood blinking in the sudden rush of light against his face.

It was all bewildering at first; the radiance, the blue tangle of smoke, the storm of voices. For Muldoon’s was packed from door to door. Coins rang in a steady chorus along the bar, and the crowd waited three and four deep.

Some one was singing a rollicking song of the range at one end of the bar, and a chorus of four bellowed a profane parody at the other end.

The ears of Pierre le Rouge tingled hotly, and he lowered his eyes to the floor. Truly, Father Victor would be very wrath when all this was confessed. Partly to escape this uproar he worked his way to the quieter room at the back of the saloon.

It was almost as crowded as the bar, but here no one spoke except for an occasional growl. Sudden speaking, and a loud voice, indeed, was hardly safe. Some one cursed at his ill-luck as Pierre entered, and a dozen hands reached for six-guns. In such a place one had to be prepared.

Pierre remembered with quick dismay that he was not armed. All his life the straight black gown had been weapon enough to make all men give way before him. Now he carried no borrowed strength upon his shoulders.

Automatically he slipped his fingers under the breast of his shirt until their tips touched the cold metal of the cross. That gave him stronger courage. The joy of the adventure made his blood warm again as he drew out his one coin and looked for a place to start his venture.

“It is God who governs me,” he said, “and why should I doubt Him?”

So he approached the nearest table. On the surface of it were marked six squares with chalk, and each with its appropriate number. The man who ran the game stood behind the table and shook three dice. The numbers which turned up paid the gambler. The numbers which failed to show paid the owner of the game.

His luck had been too strong that night, and now only two men faced him, and both of them lost persistently. They had passed the stage of intelligent gaming; they were “bucking” the dice with savage stubbornness.

Pierre edged closer, shut his eyes, and deposited his coin. When he looked again he saw that he had wagered on the five.