The Max Brand Megapack (98 page)
Read The Max Brand Megapack Online
Authors: Max Brand,Frederick Faust
Tags: #old west, #outlaw, #gunslinger, #Western, #cowboy
“That,” said the taller stranger, “ought to do very nicely for us, eh?”
And the younger replied in a curiously light, pleasant voice: “Just what we want. But how’ll I get away with all that fluffy stuff, eh?”
The elder explained: “We’re going to a bit of a dance and we’ll take those evening clothes.”
The heart of McGuire beat faster and his little eyes took in the strangers again from head to foot.
“They ain’t for sale,” he said. “They’s just samples. But right over here—”
“This isn’t a question of selling,” said the red-headed man. “We’ve come to accept a little donation, McGuire.”
The storekeeper grew purple and white in patches. Still there was no show of violence, no display of guns; he moved his hand toward his own weapon, and still the strangers merely smiled quietly on him. He decided that he had misunderstood, and went on: “Over here I got a line of goods that you’ll like. Just step up and—”
The younger man, frowning now, replied: “We don’t want to see any more of your junk. The clothes on the models suit us all right. Slip ’em off, McGuire.”
“But—” began McGuire and then stopped.
His first suspicion returned with redoubled force; above all, that head of dark red hair made him thoughtful. He finished hoarsely: “What the hell’s this?”
“Why,” smiled the taller man, “you’ve never done much in the interests of charity, and now’s a good time for you to start. Hurry up, McGuire; we’re late already!”
There was a snarl from the storekeeper, and he went for his gun, but something in the peculiarly steady eyes of the two made him stop with his fingers frozen hard around the butt. A mighty sickness overwhelmed McGuire, and before his eyes there swam a dark mist.
He whispered: “You’re Red Pierre?”
“The clothes,” repeated Pierre sternly, “on the jump, McGuire.”
And with a jump McGuire obeyed. His hands trembled so that he could hardly remove the scarf from the shoulders of the model, but afterward fear made his fingers supple. He lifted up the green gown; white, filmy clothes showed underneath.
There came a sharp cry from Jack: “Turn away, Pierre; turn quick and don’t dare to look. I’ll take care of McGuire.”
And Pierre le Rouge turned, grinning. When she told him that he could look again, he found her with a bright spot of color in either cheek, and her eyes avoided his. It thrilled Pierre, and yet it troubled him, for she seemed changed, all at once, less of a comrade, and strangely aloof. McGuire was doing up the clothes in two bundles.
Jacqueline took one of them and Pierre the other under his left arm; with his right hand he drew out some yellow coins.
“I didn’t buy these clothes because I didn’t have the time to dicker with you, McGuire. I’ve heard you talk prices before, you know. But here’s what the clothes are worth to us.”
And into the quaking hands of McGuire he poured a chinking stream of gold pieces.
Relief, amazement, and a very wholesome fear struggled in the face of McGuire as he saw himself threefold overpaid. At that little yellow heap he remained staring, unheeding the sound of the retreating outlaws. At it he still stared with fascinated eyes while the door banged and the clatter of galloping hoofs began.
“It ain’t possible,” he said at last, “thieves have begun to pay.”
His eyes sought the ceiling.
“So that’s Red Pierre?” said McGuire.
As for Pierre and Jacqueline, they were instantly safe in the black heart of the mountains. Many a mile of hard riding lay before them, however, and already the dance must be nearly ready to begin in the Crittenden schoolhouse. There was no road, not even a trail that they could follow. They had never even seen the Crittenden schoolhouse; they knew its location only by vague descriptions.
But they had ridden a thousand times in places far more bewildering and less known to them. Like all true denizens of the mountain-desert, they had a sense of direction as uncanny as that of an Eskimo. Now they struck off confidently through the dark and trailed up and down through the mountains until they reached a hollow in the center of which shone a group of dim lights. It was the schoolhouse near the Barnes place, the scene of the dance.
So they turned back behind the hills and in the covert of a group of cottonwoods they kindled two more little fires, shading them on three sides with rocks and leaving them open for the sake of light on the fourth.
They worked busily for a time, without a word spoken by either of them. The only sound was the rustling of Jacqueline’s stolen silks and the purling of a small stream of water near them, some meager spring.
But presently: “P-P-Pierre, I’m f-freezing.”
He himself was numbed by the chill air and paused in the task of thrusting a leg into the trousers, which persisted in tangling and twisting under his foot.
“So’m I. It’s c-c-cold as the d-d-d-devil.”
“And these—th-things—aren’t any thicker than spider webs.”
“Wait. I’ll build you a great big fire.”
And he scooped up a number of dead twigs.
“P-P-Pierre! D-d-d-don’t you d-d-dare c-come in s-sight of m-me.”
“D-d-damn it! I don’t want to see you.”
“P-Pierre! Aren’t you ash-sh-sh-shamed to talk like that?”
“Jack, this damned collar won’t button.”
“K-k-eep t-t-t-trying.”
“Come help me.”
“Pierre! How can I come dressed like th-th-this?”
“I’m n-n-not going to the dance.”
“P-P-P-Pierre!”
“I’m not.”
“Then I am.”
“W-w-w-without me?”
“Y-y-yes.”
“Jack, you’re a flirt.”
“I hate you, Pierre!”
“Thank G-G-G-God! The collar’s on.”
“I can’t tie this—th-th-thing.”
“I’ll come help you.”
“N-n-n-no!”
“What is it?”
“The thing that g-g-goes around me.”
“C-c-c-corset?”
A silence.
“Pierre!”
“W-well?”
“It’s t-t-tied!”
“But this damned tie isn’t!”
“I’ll do it for you.”
And then: “N-n-no. Go b-b-b-back!”
He fixed the eye-glass on his nose and laughed at the thought of himself.
“Pierre.”
“Well?”
“I’ve got the dress on.”
“Then I can come?”
He was warm enough now, with the suit on and even the tie knotted, after a fashion.
“No. I st-t-till feel just n-n-n-naked, Pierre.”
“Is there something missing?”
“Yes. Around the shoulders.”
“Take the scarf.”
There was an interlude of more rustling, then:
“P-P-Pierre.”
“Well?”
“I wish I had a m-m-m-mirror.”
“Jack, are you vain?”
A cry of delight answered him. He threw caution to the winds and advanced on her. He found her kneeling above a pool of water fed by the soft sliding little stream from the spring. With one hand she held a burning twig by way of a torch, and with the other she patted her hair into shape and finally thrust the comb into the glittering, heavy coils.
She started, as if she felt his presence without looking, and knelt with body erect.
“P-P-Pierre!”
“Yes?”
“C-c-c-close your eyes.”
He obeyed.
“Look!”
She stood with the torch high overhead, and he saw a beauty so glorious that he closed his eyes involuntarily and still he saw the vision in the dull-green gown, with the scarf of old gold about her shoulders and the skin peering out here and there, dazzling white. And there were two lights, the barbaric red of the jewels in her hair, and the black shimmer of her eyes. He drew back a step more. It was a picture to be looked at from a distance.
She ran to him with a cry of dismay:
“Pierre, what’s wrong with me?”
His arms went round her of their own accord. It was the only place they could go. And all this fragrant, marvelous beauty was held in the circle of his will.
“It isn’t that, but you’re so wonderful, Jack, so glorious, that I hardly know you. You’re like a different person.”
He felt the warm body trembling, and the thought that it was not entirely from the cold set his heart beating like a trip-hammer. What he felt was so strange to him that he stepped back in a vague alarm, and then laughed. She stood with a half whimsical half expectant smile.
“Jack, how am I to risk you in the arms of all the strangers in that dance?”
The light of Alexander when he dreamed of new worlds to conquer came into those wide black eyes.
“It’s late. Listen!”
She cupped a hand at her ear and leaned to listen. Up from the hollow below them came a faint strain of music, a very light sound that was drowned a moment later by the solemn rushing of the wind through the great trees above them.
They looked up of one accord.
“Pierre, what was that?”
“Nothing; the wind in the branches, that’s all.”
“It was a hushing sound. It was like—it was like a warning, almost.”
But he was already turning away, and she followed him hastily.
CHAPTER XXI
THE DANCE
Jacqueline could never back a horse in tha
t gown, or even sit sidewise in the saddle without hopelessly crumpling it, so they walked to the schoolhouse. It was a slow progress, for she had to step lightly and carefully for fear of the slippers. He took her bare arm and helped her; he would never have thought of it under ordinary conditions, but since she had put on this gown she was greatly changed to him, no longer the wild, free rider of the mountain-desert, but a defenseless, strangely weak being. Her strength was now something other than the skill to ride hard and shoot straight and quick.
Greatest wonder of all, she accepted the new relation tacitly, and leaned more and more weight on his hand, and even looked up and laughed with pleasure when he almost lifted her over a muddy runlet. It was all new, very strange, and, oddly enough, not unpleasant. Each was viewing the other from such an altered point that neither spoke.
So they came to the schoolhouse in this silence, and reached the long line of buggies, buckboards, and, most of all, saddled horses. They flooded the horse-shed where the school children stabled their mounts in the winter weather. They were tethered to the posts of the fence; they were grouped about the trees.
It was a prodigious gathering, and a great affair for the mountain-desert. They knew this even before they had set foot within the building.
They stopped here and adjusted their masks carefully. They were made from a strip of black lining which Jack had torn from one of the coats in the trunk which lay far back in the hills.
Those masks had to be tied firmly and well, for some jester might try to pull away that of Pierre, and if his face were seen, it would be death—a slaughter without defense, for he had not been able to conceal his big Colt in these tight-fitting clothes. Even as it was, there was peril from the moment that the lights within should shine on that head of dark-red hair.
As for Jack, there was little fear that she would be recognized. She was strange even to Pierre every time he looked down at her, for she had ceased to be Jack and had become very definitely “Jacqueline.” But the masks were on; the scarf adjusted about the throat and bare, shivering shoulders of Jack, and they stood arm in arm before the door out of which streamed the voices and the music.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Pierre—if they should find us out—”
“Never in a thousand years. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
But she was trembling so, either from fear, or excitement, or both, that he had to take a firm hold on her arm and almost carry her up the steps, shove the door open, and force her in.
A hundred eyes were instantly upon them, practised, suspicious eyes, accustomed to search into all things and take nothing for granted; eyes of men who, when a rap came at their door, looked to see whether or not the shadow of the stranger fell full in the center of the crack beneath the door. If it fell to one side the man might be an enemy, and therefore they would stand at one side of the room, their hands upon the butt of the six-gun, and shout: “Come in.” Such was the battery of glances from the men, and the color of Pierre altered, paled.
He knew some of those faces, for those who hunt and are hunted never forget the least gestures of their enemies. There was a mighty temptation to turn back even then, but he set his teeth and forced himself to stand calmly, adjust the absurd eye-glass on his nose, and stare about the room.
The chuckle which replied to this maneuver freed him for the moment. Suspicion was lulled. Moreover, the red-jeweled hair of Jacqueline and her lighted eyes called all attention almost immediately upon her. She shifted the golden scarf—the white arms and breast flashed in the light—a gasp responded. There would be talk to-morrow; there were whispers even now.
It was not the main hall that they stood in, for this school, having been built by an aspiring community, contained two rooms; this smaller room, used by the little ones of the school, was now converted into a hat-and-cloak room, and here also were a dozen baskets and boxes filled with comforters and blankets.
It was because of what lay in those baskets that the men and the women walked and talked softly in this room. They were wary lest they should arouse a sound which not even the loudest music could quite drown—a sound which makes all women sit up straight and sniff like hunted animals at bay, and makes all men frown and glance about for places of refuge.
Now and then some girl came panting and flushed from the dance-hall within and tiptoed to one of these baskets, and raised an edge of a blanket and looked down at the contents with a singular smile. Pierre hung up his hat, removed his gloves slowly, nerving himself to endure the sharp glances, and opened the door for Jacqueline.
If she had held back tremulously before, something she had seen in the eyes of those in the first room, something in the whisper and murmur which rose the moment she started to leave, gave her courage. She stepped into the dance-hall like a queen going forth to address devoted subjects.
The second ordeal was easier than the first. There were many times more people in that crowded room, but each was intent upon his own pleasure. A wave of warmth and light swept upon them, and a blare of music, and a stir and hum of voices, and here and there the sweet sound of a happy girl’s laughter. They raised their heads, these two wild rangers of the mountain-desert, and breathed deep of the fantastic scene.
