CHAPTER 7
All life was tame compared with this sudden awakening of Pierre. He had killed a man. For fear of it he raced the tall roan furiously through the night.
He had killed a man. For the joy of it he shouted a song that went ringing across the blank, white hills. What place was there in Red Pierre for solemn qualms of conscience? Had he not met the first and last test triumphantly? The oldest instinct in creation was satisfied in him. Now he stood ready to say to all the world: Behold, a man!
Let it be remembered that his early years had been passed in a dull, dun silence, and time had slipped by him with softly padding, uneventful hours. Now, with the rope of restraint snapped, he rode at the world with hands, palm upward, asking for life, and that life which lies under the hills of the mountain-desert heard his question and sent a cold, sharp echo back to answer his lusty singing.
The first answer, as he plunged on, not knowing where, and not caring, was when the roan reeled suddenly and flung forward to the ground. Even that violent stop did not unseat Red Pierre. He jerked up on the reins with a curse and drove in the spurs. Valiantly the horse reared his shoulders up, but when he strove to rise the right foreleg dangled helplessly. He had stepped in some hole and the bone was broken cleanly across.
The rider slipped from the saddle and stood facing the roan, which pricked its ears forward and struggled once more to regain its feet. The effort was hopeless, and Pierre took the broken leg and felt the rough edges of the splintered bone through the skin. The animal, as if it sensed that the man was trying to do it some good, nosed his shoulder and whinnied softly.
Pierre stepped back and drew his revolver. The bullet would do quickly what the cold would accomplish after lingering hours of torture, yet, facing those pricking ears and the trust of the eyes, he was blinded by a mist and could not aim. He had to place the muzzle of the gun against the roan's temple and pull the trigger. When he turned his back he was the only living thing within the white arms of the hills.
Yet, when the next hill was behind him, he had already forgotten the second life which he put out that night, for regret is the one sorrow which never dodges the footsteps of the hunted. Like all his brotherhood of Cain, Pierre le Rouge pressed forward across the mountain-desert with his face turned toward the brave tomorrow. In the evening of his life, if he should live to that time, he would walk and talk with God.
Now he had no mind save for the bright day coming.
He had been riding with the wind and had scarcely noticed its violence in his headlong course. Now he felt it whipping sharply at his back and increasing with each step. Overhead the sky was clear. It seemed to give vision for the wind and cold to seek him out, and the moon made his following shadow long and black across the snow.
The wind quickened rapidly to a gale that cut off the surface of the snow and whipped volleys of the small particles level with the surface. It cut the neck of Red Pierre, and the gusts struck his shoulders with staggering force like separate blows, twisting him a little from side to side.
Coming from the direction of Morgantown, it seemed as if the vengeance for Diaz was following the slayer. Once he turned and laughed in the teeth of the wind, and shook his fist back at Morgantown and all the avenging powers of the law.
Yet he was glad to turn away from the face of the storm and stride on down-wind. Even traveling with the gale grew more and more impossible. The snowdrifts which the wind picked up and hurried across the hills pressed against Pierre's back like a great, invisible hand, bowing him as if beneath a burden. In the hollows the labor was not so great, but when he approached a summit the gale screamed in his ear and struck him savagely.
For all his optimism, for all his young, undrained strength, a doubt began to grow in the mind of Pierre le Rouge. At length, remembering how that weight of gold came in his pockets, he slipped his left hand into the bosom of his shirt and touched the icy metal of the cross. Almost at once he heard, or thought he heard, a faint, sweet sound of singing.
The heart of Red Pierre stopped. For he knew the visions which came to men perishing with cold; but he grew calmer again in a moment. This touch of cold was nothing compared with whole months of hard exposure which he had endured in the northland. It had not the edge. If it were not for the wind it was scarcely a threat to life. Moreover, the singing sounded no more. It had been hardly more than a phrase of music, and it must have been a deceptive murmur of the wind.
After all, a gale brought wilder deceptions than that. Some men had actually heard voices declaiming words in such a wind. He himself had heard them tell their stories. So he leaned forward again and gave his stanch heart to the task. Yet once more he stopped, for this time the singing came clearly, sweetly to him.
There was no doubt of it now. Of course it was wildly impossible, absurd; but beyond all question he heard the voice of a girl come whistling down the wind. He could almost catch the words. For a little moment he lingered still. Then he turned and fought his way into the strong arms of the storm.
Every now and then he paused and crouched to the snow. Usually there was only the shriek of the wind in his ears, but a few times the singing came to him and urged him on. If he had allowed the idea of failure to enter his mind, he must have given up the struggle, but failure was a stranger to his thoughts.
He lowered his head against the storm. Sometimes it caught under him and nearly lifted him from his feet. But he clung against the slope of the hill, sometimes gripping hard with his hands. So he worked his way to the right, the sound of the singing coming more and more frequently and louder and louder. When he was almost upon the source of the music it ceased abruptly.
He waited a moment, but no sound came. He struggled forward a few more yards and pitched down exhausted, panting. Still he heard the singing no longer. With a falling heart he rose and resigned himself to wander on his original course with the wind, but as he started he placed his hand once more against the cross, and it was then that he saw her.
For he had simply gone past her, and the yelling of the storm had cut off the sound of her voice. Now he saw her lying, a spot of bright color on the snow. He read the story at a glance. As she passed this steep-sided hill the loosely piled snow had slid down and carried with it the dead trunk of a fallen tree.
Pierre came from behind and stood over her unnoticed. He saw that the oncoming tree, by a strange chance, had knocked down the girl and pinned her legs to the ground. His strength and the strength of a dozen men would not be sufficient to release her. This he saw at the first glance, and saw the bright gold of her hair against the snow. Then he dropped on his knees beside her.
CHAPTER 8
The girl tossed up her arms in a silent greeting, and Pierre caught the small cold hands and saw that she was only a child of twelve or fourteen trapped by the wild storm sweeping over them. He crouched lower still, and when he did so the strength of the wind against his face decreased wonderfully, for the sharp angle of the hill's declivity protected them. Seeing him kneel there, she cried out with a little wail: "Help me—the tree—help me!" And, bursting into a passion of sobbing, she tugged her hands from his and covered her face.
Pierre placed his shoulder under the trunk and lifted till the muscles of his back snapped and cracked. He could not budge the weight; he could not even send a tremor through the mass of wood. He dropped back beside her with a groan. He felt her eyes upon him; she had ceased her sobs, and looked steadily into his face.
It would have been easy for him to meet that look on the morning of this day, but after that night's work in Morgantown he had to brace his nerve to withstand it.
She said: "You can't budge the tree?"
"Yes—in a minute; I will try again."
"You'll only hurt yourself for nothing. I saw how you strained at it."
The greatest miracle he had ever seen was her calm. Her eyes were wide and sorrowful indeed, but she was almost smiling up to him.
After a while he was able to say, in a faint voice: "Are you very cold?"
She answered: "I'm not afraid. But if you stay longer with me, you may freeze. The snow and even the tree help to keep me almost warm; but you will freeze. Go for help; hurry, and if you can, send it back to me."
He thought of the long miles back to Morgantown; no human being could walk that distance against this wind; not even a strong horse could make its way through the storm. If he went on with the wind, how long would it be before he reached a house? Before him, over range after range of hills, he saw no single sign of a building. If he reached some such place it would be the same story as the trip to Morgantown; men simply could not beat a way against that wind.
Then a cold hand touched him, and he looked up to find her eyes grave and wide once more, and her lips half smiling, as if she strove to deceive him.
"There's no chance of bringing help?"
He merely stared hungrily at her, and the loveliest thing he had ever seen was the play of golden hair beside her cheek. Her smile went out. She withdrew her hand, but she repeated: "I'm not afraid. I'll simply grow numb and then fall asleep. But you go on and save yourself."
Seeing him shake his head, she caught his hands again.
"I'll be unhappy. You'll make me so unhappy if you stay. Please go."
He raised the small hand and pressed it to his lips.
She said: "You are crying!"
"No, no!"
"There! I see the tears shining on my hand. What is your name?"
"Pierre."
"Pierre? I like that name. Pierre, to make me happy, will you go? Your face is all white and touched with a shadow of blue. It is the cold. Oh, won't you go?" Then she pleaded, finding him obdurate: "If you won't go for me, then go for your father."
He raised his head with a sudden laughter, and, raising it, the wind beat into his face fiercely and the particles of snow whipped his skin.
"Dear Pierre, then for your mother?"
He bowed his head.
"Not for all the people who love you and wait for you now by some warm fire—some cozy fire, all yellow and bright?"
He took her hands and with them covered his eyes. "Listen: I have no father; I have no mother."
"Pierre! Oh, Pierre, I'm sorry!"
"And for the rest of 'em, I've killed a man. The whole world hates me; the whole world's hunting me."
The small hands tugged away. He dared not raise his bowed head for fear of her eyes. And then the hands came back to him and touched his face.
She was saying tremulously: "Then he deserved to be killed. There must be men like that—almost. And I—like you still, Pierre."
"Really?"
"I almost think I like you more—because you could kill a man—and then stay here for me."
"If you were a grown-up girl, do you know what I'd say?"
"Please tell me."
"That I could love you."
"Pierre—"
"Yes."
"My name is Mary Brown."
He repeated several times: "Mary."
"And if I were a grown-up girl, do you know what I would answer?"
"I don't dare guess it."
"That I could love you, Pierre, if you were a grown-up man."
"But I am."
"Not a really one."
And they both broke into laughter—laughter that died out before a sound of rushing and of thunder, as a mass slid swiftly past them, snow and mud and sand and rubble. The wind fell away from them, and when Pierre looked up he saw that a great mass of tumbled rock and soil loomed above them.
The landslide had not touched them, by some miracle, but in a moment more it might shake loose again, and all that mass of ton upon ton of stone and loam would overwhelm them. The whole mass quaked and trembled, and the very hillside shuddered beneath them.
She looked up and saw the coming ruin; but her cry was for him, not herself.
"Run, Pierre—you can save yourself."
With that terror threatening him from above, he rose and started to run down the hill. A moan of woe followed him, and he stopped and turned back, and fought his way through the wind until he was beside her once more.
She was weeping.
"Pierre—I couldn't help calling out for you; but now I'm strong again, and I won't have you stay. The whole mountain is shaking and falling toward us. Go now, Pierre, and I'll never make a sound to bring you back."
He said: "Hush! I've something here which will keep us both safe.
Look!"
He tore from the chain the little metal cross, and held it high overhead, glimmering in the pallid light. She forgot her fear in wonder.
"I gambled with only one coin to lose, and I came out tonight with hundreds and hundreds of dollars because I had the cross. It is a charm against all danger and against all bad fortune. It has never failed me."
Over them the piled mass slid closer. The forehead of Pierre gleamed with sweat, but a strong purpose made him talk on. At least he could take all the foreboding of death from the child, and when the end came it would be swift and wipe them both out at one stroke. She clung to him, eager to believe.
"I've closed my eyes so that I can believe."
"It has never failed me. It saved me when I fought two men. One of them I crippled and the other died. You see, the power of the cross is as great as that. Do you doubt it now, Mary?"
"Do you believe in it so much—really—Pierre?"
Each time there was a little lowering of her voice, a little pause and caress in the tone as she uttered his name, and nothing in all his life had stirred Red Pierre so deeply with happiness and sorrow.
"Do you believe, Pierre?" she repeated.
He looked up and saw the shuddering mass of the landslide creeping upon them inch by inch. In another moment it would loose itself with a rush and cover them.
"I believe," he said.
"If you should live, and I should die—"
"I would throw the cross away."
"No, you would keep it; and every time you touched it you would think of me, Pierre, would you not?"
"When you reach out to me like that, you take my heart between your hands."
"And I feel grown up and sad and happy both together. After we've been together on such a night, how can we ever be apart again?"
The mass of the landslide toppled right above them. She did not seem to see.
"I'm so happy, Pierre. I was never so happy."
And he said, with his eyes on the approaching ruin: "It was your singing that brought me to you. Will you sing again?"
"I sang because I knew that when I sang the sound would carry farther through the wind than if I called for help. What shall I sing for you now, Pierre?"
"What you sang when I came to you."
And the light, sweet voice rose easily through the sweep of the wind. She smiled as she sang, and the smile and music were all for Pierre, he knew. Through the last stanza of the song the rumble of the approaching death grew louder, and as she ended he threw himself beside her and gathered her into protecting arms.
She cried: "Pierre! What is it?"
"I must keep you warm; the snow will eat away your strength."
"No; it's more than that. Tell me, Pierre! You don't trust the power of the cross?"
"Are you afraid?"
"Oh, no; I'm not afraid, Pierre."
"If one life would be enough, I'd give mine a thousand times. Mary, we are to die."
An arm slipped around his neck—a cold hand pressed against his cheek.
"Pierre."
"Yes."
The thunder broke above them with a mighty roaring.
"You have no fear."
"Mary, if I had died alone I would have dropped down to hell under my sins; but, with your arm around me, you'll take me with you. Hold me close."
"With all my heart, Pierre. See—I'm not afraid. It is like going to sleep. What wonderful dreams we'll have!"
And then the black mass of the landslide swept upon them.
CHAPTER 9
Down all the length of the mountain-desert and across its width of rocks and mountains and valleys and stern plateaus there is a saying: "You can tell a man by the horse he rides." For most other important things are apt to go by opposites, which is the usual way in which a man selects his wife. With dogs, for instance—a quiet man is apt to want an active dog, and a tractable fellow may keep the most vicious of wolf-dogs.
But when it comes to a horse, a man's heart speaks for itself, and if he has sufficient knowledge he will choose a sympathetic mount. A woman loves a neat-stepping saddle-horse; a philosopher likes a nodding, stumble-footed nag which will jog all day long and care not a whit whether it goes up dale or down.
To know the six wild riders who galloped over the white reaches of the mountain-desert this night, certainly their horses should be studied first and the men secondly, for the one explained the other.
They came in a racing triangle. Even the storm at its height could not daunt such furious riders. At the point of the triangle thundered a mighty black stallion, his muzzle and his broad chest flecked with white foam, for he stretched his head out and champed at the bit with ears laid flat back, as though even that furious pace gave him no opportunity to use fully his strength.
He was an ugly headed monster with a savagely hooked Roman nose and small, keen eyes, always red at the corners. A medieval baron in full panoply of plate armor would have chosen such a charger among ten thousand steeds, yet the black stallion needed all his strength to uphold the unarmored giant who bestrode him, a savage figure.
When the broad brim of his hat flapped up against the wind the moonshine caught at shaggy brows, a cruelly arched nose, thin, straight lips, and a forward-thrusting jaw. It seemed as if nature had hewn him roughly and designed him for a primitive age where he could fight his way with hands and teeth.
This was Jim Boone. To his right and a little behind him galloped a riderless horse, a beautiful young animal continually tossing its head and looking as if for guidance at the big stallion.
To the left strode a handsome bay with pricking ears. A mound interfered with his course, and he cleared it in magnificent style that would have brought a cheer from the lips of any English lover of the chase.
Straight in the saddle sat Dick Wilbur, and he raised his face a little to the wind, smiling faintly as if he rejoiced in its fine strength, as handsome as the horse he rode, as cleanly cut, as finely bred. The moon shone a little brighter on him than on any other of the six riders.
Bud Mansie behind, for instance, kept his head slightly to one side and cursed beneath his breath at the storm and set his teeth at the wind. His horse, delicately formed, with long, slender legs, could not have endured that charge against the storm save that it constantly edged behind the leaders and let them break the wind. It carried less weight than any other mount of the six, and its strength was cunningly nursed by the rider so that it kept its place, and at the finish it would be as strong as any and swifter, perhaps, for a sudden, short effort, just as Bud Mansie might be numbed through all his nervous, slender body, but never too numb for swift and deadly action.
On the opposite wing of the flying wedge galloped a dust-colored gray, ragged of mane and tail, and vindictive of eye, like its down-headed rider, who shifted his glance rapidly from side to side and watched the ground closely before his horse as if he were perpetually prepared for danger.
He distrusted the very ground over which his mount strode. For all this he seemed the least formidable of all the riders. To see him pass none could have suspected that this was Black Morgan Gandil.
Last of the crew came two men almost as large as Jim Boone himself, on strong steady-striding horses. They came last in this crew, but among a thousand other long-riders they would have ridden first, either red-faced, good-humored, loud-voiced Garry Patterson, or Phil Branch, stout-handed, blunt of jaw, who handled men as he had once hammered red iron at the forge.
Each of them should have ridden alone in order to be properly appreciated. To see them together was like watching a flock of eagles every one of which should have been a solitary lord of the air. But after scanning that lordly train which followed, the more terrible seemed the rider of the great black horse.
Yet the king was sad, and the reason for his sadness was the riderless horse which galloped so freely beside him. His son had ridden that horse when they set out, and all the way down to the railroad Handsome Hal Boone had kept his mount prancing and curveting and had ridden around and around tall Dick Wilbur, playing pranks, and had teased his father's black until the big stallion lashed out wildly with furious heels.
It was the memory of this that kept the grave shadow of a smile on the father's lips for all the sternness of his eyes. He never turned his head, for, looking straight forward, he could conjure up the laughing vision; but when he glanced to the empty saddle he heard once more the last unlucky shot fired from the train as they raced off with their booty, and saw Hal reel in his saddle and pitch forward; and how he had tried to check his horse and turn back; and how Dick Wilbur, and Patterson, and big Phil Branch had forced him to go on and leave that form lying motionless on the snow.
At that he groaned, and spurred the black, and so the cavalcade rushed faster and faster through the night.
They came over a sharp ridge and veered to the side just in time, for all the further slope was a mass of treacherous sand and rubble and raw rocks and mud, where a landslide had stripped the hill to the stone.
As they veered about the ruin and thundered on down to the foot of the hill, Jim Boone threw up his hand for a signal and brought his stallion to a halt on back-braced, sliding legs.
For a metallic glitter had caught his eye, and then he saw, half covered by the pebbles and dirt, the figure of a man. He must have been struck by the landslide and not overwhelmed by it, but rather carried before it like a stick in a rush of water. At the outermost edge of the wave he lay with the rocks and dirt washed over him. Boone swung from the saddle and lifted Pierre le Rouge.
The gleam of metal was the cross which his fingers still gripped. Boone examined it with a somewhat superstitious caution, took it from the nerveless fingers, and slipped it into a pocket of Pierre's shirt. A small cut on the boy's forehead showed where the stone struck which knocked him senseless, but the cut still bled—a small trickle—Pierre lived. He even stirred and groaned and opened his eyes, large and deeply blue.
It was only an instant before they closed, but Boone had seen. He turned with the figure lifted easily in his arms as if Pierre had been a child fallen asleep by the hearth and now about to be carried off to bed.
And the outlaw said: "I've lost my boy tonight. This here one was given me by the will of—God."
Black Morgan Gandil reined his horse close by, leaned to peer down, and the shadow of his hat fell across the face of Pierre.
"There's no good comes of savin' shipwrecked men. Leave him where you found him, Jim. That's my advice. Sidestep a redheaded man. That's what I say."
The quick-stepping horse of Bud Mansie came near, and the rider wiped his stiff lips, and spoke from the side of his mouth, a prison habit of the line that moves in the lockstep: "Take it from me, Jim, there ain't any place in our crew for a man you've picked up without knowing him beforehand. Let him lay, I say." But big Dick Wilbur was already leading up the horse of Hal Boone, and into the saddle Jim Boone swung the inert body of Pierre. The argument was settled, for every man of them knew that nothing could turn Boone back from a thing once begun. Yet there were muttered comments that drew Black Morgan Gandil and Bud Mansie together.
And Gandil, from the South Seas, growled with averted eyes: "This is the most fool stunt the chief has ever pulled."
"Right, pal," answered Mansie. "You take a snake in out of the cold, and it bites you when it comes to in the warmth; but the chief has started, and there ain't nothing that'll make him stop, except maybe God or McGurk."
And Black Gandil answered with his evil, sudden grin: "Maybe McGurk, but not God."
They started on again with Garry Patterson and Dick Wilbur riding close on either side of Pierre, supporting his limp body. It delayed the whole gang, for they could not go on faster than a jog-trot. The wind, however, was falling off in violence. Its shrill whistling ceased, at length, and they went on, accompanied only by the harsh crunching of the snow underfoot.
CHAPTER 10
Consciousness returned to Pierre slowly. Many a time his eyes opened, and he saw nothing, but when he did see and hear it was by vague glimpses.
He heard the crunch of the snow underfoot; he heard the panting and snorting of the horses; he felt the swing and jolt of the saddle beneath him; he saw the grim faces of the long-riders, and he said: "The law has taken me."
Thereafter he let his will lapse, and surrendered to the sleepy numbness which assailed his brain in waves. He was riding without support by this time, but it was an automatic effort. There was no more real life in him than in a dummy figure. It was not the effect of the blow. It was rather the long exposure and the overexertion of mind and body during the evening and night. He had simply collapsed beneath the strain.
But an old army man has said: "Give me a soldier of eighteen or twenty. In a single day he may not march quite so far as a more mature man or carry quite so much weight. He will go to sleep each night dead to the world. But in the morning he awakens a new man. He is like a slate from which all the writing has been erased. He is ready for a new day and a new world. Thirty days of campaigning leaves him as strong and fresh as ever.
"Thirty days of campaigning leaves the old soldier a wreck. Why? Because as a man grows older he loses the ability to sleep soundly. He carries the nervous strain of one day over to the next. Life is a serious problem to a man over thirty. To a man under thirty it is simply a game. For my part, give me men who can play at war."
So it was with Pierre le Rouge. He woke with a faint heaviness of head, and stretched himself. There were many sore places, but nothing more. He looked up, and the slant winter sun cut across his face and made a patch of bright yellow on the wall beside him.
Next he heard a faint humming, and, turning his head, saw a boy of fourteen or perhaps a little more, busily cleaning a rifle in a way that betokened the most expert knowledge of the weapon. Pierre himself knew rifles as a preacher knows his Bible, and as he lay half awake and half asleep he smiled with enjoyment to see the deft fingers move here and there, wiping away the oil. A green hand will spend half a day cleaning a gun, and then do the work imperfectly; an expert does the job efficiently in ten minutes. This was an expert.
Undoubtedly this was a true son of the mountain-desert. He wore his old slouch hat even in the house, and his skin was that olive brown which comes from many years of exposure to the wind and sun. At the same time there was a peculiar fineness about the boy. His feet were astonishingly small and the hands thin and slender for all their supple strength. And his neck was not bony, as it is in most youths at this gawky age, but smoothly rounded.
Men grow big of bone and sparse of flesh in the mountain-desert. It was the more surprising to Pierre to see this young fellow with the marvelously delicate-cut features. By some freak of nature here was a place where the breed ran to high blood.
The cleaning completed, the boy tossed the butt of the gun to his shoulder and squinted down the barrel. Then he loaded the magazine, weighted the gun deftly at the balance, and dropped the rifle across his knees.
"Morning," said Pierre le Rouge cheerily, and swung off the bunk to the floor. "How old's the gun?"
The boy, without the slightest show of excitement, snapped the butt to his shoulder and drew a bead on Pierre's breast.
"Sit down before you get all heated up," said a musical voice.
"There's nobody waiting for you on horseback."
And Pierre sat down, partly because Western men never argue a point when that little black hole is staring them in the face, partly because he remembered with a rush that the last time he had fully possessed his consciousness he had been lying in the snow with the cross gripped hard and the toppling mass of the landslide above him. All that had happened between was blotted from his memory. He fumbled at his throat. The cross was not there. He touched his pockets. "Ease your hands away from your hip," said the cold voice of the boy, who had dropped his gun to the ready with a significant finger curled around the trigger, "or I'll drill you clean."
Pierre obediently raised his hands to the level of his shoulders. The boy sneered.
"This isn't a hold-up," he explained. "Put 'em down again, but watch yourself."
The sneer varied to a contemptuous smile.
"I guess you're tame, all right."
"Point that gun another way, will you, son?"
The boy flushed.
"Don't call me son."
"Is this a lockup—a jail?"
"This?"
"What is it, then? The last I remember I was lying in the snow with—"
"I wish to God you'd been let there," said the boy bitterly.
But Pierre, overwhelmed with the endeavor to recollect, rushed on with his questions and paid no heed to the tone.
"I had a cross in my hand—"
The scorn of the boy grew to mighty proportions.
"It's there in the breast-pocket of your shirt."
Pierre drew out the little cross, and the touch of it against his palm restored whatever of his strength was lacking. Very carefully he attached it to the chain about his throat. Then he looked up to the contempt of the boy, and as he did so another memory burst on him and brought him to his feet. The gun went to the boy's shoulders at the same time.
"When I was found—was anyone else with me?"
"Nope."
"What happened?"
"Must have been buried in the landslide. Half a hill caved in, and the dirt rolled you down to the bottom. Plain luck, that's all, that kept you from going out."
"Luck?" said Pierre and he laid his hand against his breast where he could feel the outline of the cross. "Yes, I suppose it was luck. And she—"
He sat down slowly and buried his face in his hands. A new tone came in the voice of the boy as he asked: "Was a woman with you?" But Pierre heard only the tone and not the words. His face was gray when he looked up again, and his voice hard.
"Tell me as briefly as you can how I come here, and who picked me up."
"My father and his men. They passed you lying on the snow. They brought you home."
"Who is your father?"
The boy stiffened and his color rose.
"My father is Jim Boone."
Instinctively, while he stared, the right hand of Pierre le Rouge crept toward his hip.
"Keep your hand steady," said the boy. "I got a nervous trigger-finger. Yeh, dad is pretty well known."
"You're his son?"
"I'm Jack Boone."
"But I've heard—tell me, why am I under guard?"
Jack was instantly aflame with the old anger.
"Not because I want you here."
"Who does?"
"Dad."
"Put away your pop-gun and talk sense. I won't try to get away until
Jim Boone comes. I only fight men."
Even the anger and grief of the boy could not keep him from smiling.
"Just the same I'll keep the shooting-iron handy. Sit still. A gun don't keep me from talking sense, does it? You're here to take Hal's place. Hal!" The little wail told a thousand things, and Pierre, shocked out of the thought of his own troubles, waited.
"My brother, Hal; he's dead; he died last night, and on the way back dad found you and brought you to take Hal's place. Hal's place!"
The accent showed how impossible it was that Hal's place could be taken by any mortal man.
"I got orders to keep you here, but if I was to do what I'd like to do, I'd give you the best horse on the place and tell you to clear out. That's me!"
"Then do it."
"And face dad afterward?"
"Tell him I overpowered you. That would be easy; you a slip of a boy, and me a man."
"Stranger, it goes to show you may have heard of Jim Boone, but you don't anyways know him. When he orders a thing done he wants it done, and he don't care how, and he don't ask questions why. He just raises hell."
"He really expects to keep me here?"
"Expects? He will."
"Going to tie me up?" asked Pierre ironically.
"Maybe," answered Jack, overlooking the irony. "Maybe he'll just put you on my shoulders to guard."
He moved the gun significantly.
"And I can do it."
"Of course. But he would have to let me go sometime."
"Not till you'd promised to stick by him. I told him that myself, but he said that you're young and that he'd teach you to like this life whether you wanted to or not. Me speaking personally, I agree with Black Gandil: This is the worst fool thing that dad has ever done. What do we want with you—in Hal's place!"
"But I've got a thing to do right away—today; it can't wait."
"Give dad your word to come back and he'll let you go. He says you're the kind that will keep your word. You see, he found you with a cross in your hand."
And Jack's lips curled again.
It was all absurd, too impossible to be real. The only real things were the body of yellow-haired Mary Brown, under the tumbled rocks and dirt of the landslide, and the body of Martin Ryder waiting to be placed in that corner plot where the grass grew quicker than all other grass in the spring of the year.
However, having fallen among madmen, he must use cunning to get away before the outlaw and his men came back from wherever they had gone. Otherwise there would be more bloodshed, more play of guns and hum of lead.
"Tell me of Hal," he said, and dropped his elbows on his knees as if he accepted his fate.
"Don't know you well enough to talk of Hal."
"I'm sorry."
The boy made a little gesture of apology.
"I guess that was a mean thing to say. Sure I'll tell you about
Hal—if I can."
"Tell me anything you can," said Pierre gently, "because I've got to try to be like him, haven't I?"
"You could try till rattlers got tame, but it'd take ten like you to make one like Hal. He was dad's own son—he was my brother."
The sob came openly now, and the tears were a mist in the boy's eyes.
"What's your name?"
"Pierre."
"Pierre? I suppose I got to learn it."
"I suppose so." And he edged farther forward so that he was sitting only on the edge of the bunk.
"Please do." And he gathered his feet under him, ready for a spring forward and a grip at the boy's threatening rifle.
Jack had canted his head a little to one side. "Did you ever see a horse that was gentle and yet had never been ridden, or his spirit broke, Pierre—"
Here Pierre made his leap swift as some bobcat of the northern woods; his hand whipped out as lightning fast as the striking paw of the lynx, and the gun was jerked from the hands of Jack. Not before the boy clutched at it with a cry of horror, but the force of the pull sent him lurching to the floor and broke his grip.
He was up in an instant, however, and a knife of ugly length glittered in his hand as he sprang at Pierre.
Pierre tossed aside the rifle and met the attack barehanded. He caught the knife-bearing hand at the wrist and under his grip the hand loosened its hold and the steel tinkled on the floor. His other arm caught the body of Jack in a mighty vise.
There was a brief and futile struggle, and a hissing of breath in the silence till the hat tumbled from the head of Jack and down over the shoulders streamed a torrent of silken black hair.
Pierre stepped back. This was the meaning, then, of the strangely small feet and hands and the low music of the voice. It was the body of a girl that he had held.
CHAPTER 11
It was not fear nor shame that made the eyes of Jacqueline so wide as she stared past Pierre toward the door. He glanced across his shoulder, and blocking the entrance to the room, literally filling the doorway, was the bulk of Jim Boone.
"Seems as if I was sort of steppin' in on a little family party," he said. "I'm sure glad you two got acquainted so quick. Jack, how did you and—What the hell's your name, lad?"
"He tricked me, dad, or he would never have got the gun away from me. This—this Pierre—this beast—he got me to talk of Hal. Then he stole—"
"The point," said Jim Boone coldly, "is that he got the gun. Run along, Jack. You ain't so growed up as I was thinkin'. Or hold on—maybe you're more grown up. Which is it? Are you turnin' into a woman, Jack?"
She whirled on Pierre in a white fury.
"You see? You see what you've done? He'll never trust me again—never!
Pierre, I hate you. I'll always hate you. And if Hal were here—"
A storm of sobs and tears cut her short, and she disappeared through the door. Boone and Pierre stood regarding each other critically.
Pierre spoke first: "You're not as big as I expected."
"I'm plenty big; but you're older than I thought."
"Too old for what you want of me. The girl told me what that was."
"Not too old to be made what I want."
And his hands passed through a significant gesture of molding the empty air. The boy met his eye dauntlessly.
"I suppose," he said, "that I've a pretty small chance of getting away."
"Just about none, Pierre. Come here."
Pierre stepped closer and looked down the hall into another room. There, about a table, sat the five grimmest riders of the mountain-desert that he had ever seen. They were such men as one could judge at a glance, and Pierre made that instinctive motion for his six-gun. "The girl," Jim Boone was saying, "kept you pretty busy tryin' to make a break, and if she could do anything maybe you'd have a pile of trouble with one of them guardin' you. But if I'd had a good look at you, lad, I'd never have let Jack take the job of guardin' you."
"Thanks," answered Pierre dryly.
"You got reason; I can see that. Here's the point, Pierre. I know young men because I can remember pretty close what I was at your age. I wasn't any ladies' lap dog, at that, but time and older men molded me the way I'm going to mold you. Understand?"
Pierre was nerved for many things, but the last word made him stir. It roused in him a red-tinged desire to get through the forest of black beard at the throat of Boone and dim the glitter of those keen eyes. It brought him also another thought.
Two great tasks lay before him: the burial of his father and the avenging of him on McGurk. As to the one, he knew it would be childish madness for him to attempt to bury his father in Morgantown with only his single hand to hold back the powers of the law or the friends of the notorious Diaz and crippled Hurley.
And for the other, it was even more vain to imagine that through his own unaided power he could strike down a figure of such almost legendary terror as McGurk. The bondage of the gang might be a terrible thing through the future, but the present need blinded him to what might come.
He said: "Suppose I stop raising questions or making a fight, but give you my hand and call myself a member—"
"Of the family? Exactly. If you did that I'd know it was because you were wantin' something, Pierre, eh?"
"Two things."
"Lad, I like this way of talk. One—two—you hit quick like a two-gun man. Well, I'm used to paying high for what I get. What's up?" "The first—"
"Wait. Can I help you out by myself, or do you need the gang?"
"The gang."
"Then come, and I'll put it up to them. You first."
It was equally courtesy and caution, and Pierre smiled faintly as he went first through the door. He stood in a moment under the eyes of five silent men.
The booming voice of Jim Boone pronounced: "This is Pierre. He'll be one of us if he can get the gang to do two things. I ask you, will you hear him for me, and then pass on whether or not you try his game?"
They nodded. There were no greetings to acknowledge the introduction.
They waited, eyeing the youth with distrust.
Pierre eyed them in turn, and then he spoke directly to big Dick
Wilbur.
"Here's the first: I want to bury a man in Morgantown and I need help to do it."
Black Gandil snarled: "You heard me, boys; blood to start with. Who's the man you want us to put out?"
"He's dead—my father."
They came up straight in their chairs like trained actors rising to a stage crisis. The snarl straightened on the lips of Black Morgan Gandil.
"He's lying in his house a few miles out of Morgantown. As he died he told me that he wanted to be buried in a corner plot in the Morgantown graveyard. He'd seen the place and counted it for his a good many years because he said the grass grew quicker there than any other place, after the snow went."
"A damned good reason," said Garry Patterson. As the idea stuck more deeply into his imagination he smashed his fist down on the table so that the crockery on it danced. "A damned good reason, say I!"
"Who's your father?" asked Dick Wilbur, who eyed Pierre more critically but with less enmity than the rest.
"Martin Ryder."
"A ringer!" cried Bud Mansie, and he leaned forward alertly. "You remember what I said, Jim?"
"Shut up. Pierre, talk soft and talk quick. We all know Mart Ryder had only two sons and you're not either of them."
The Northerner grew stiff and as his face grew pale the red mark where the stone had struck his forehead stood out like a danger signal.
He said slowly: "I'm his son, but not by the mother of those two."
"Was he married twice?"
Pierre was paler still, and there was an uneasy twitching of his right hand which every man understood.
He barely whispered. "No; damn you!"
But Black Gandil loved evil.
He said, with a marvelously unpleasant smile: "Then she was—"
The voice of Dick Wilbur cut in like the snapping of a whip: "Shut up,
Gandil, you devil!"
There were times when not even Boone would cross Wilbur, and this was one of them.
Pierre went on: "The reason I can't go to Morgantown is that I'm not very well liked by some of the men there."
"Why not?"
"When my father died there was no money to pay for his burial. I had only a half-dollar piece. I went to the town and gambled and won a great deal. But before I came out I got mixed up with a man called Hurley, a professional gambler."
"And Diaz?" queried a chorus.
"Yes. Hurley was hurt in the wrist and Diaz died. I think I'm wanted in Morgantown."
Out of a little silence came the voice of Black Gandil: "Dick, I'm thankin' you now for cuttin' me so short a minute ago."
Phil Branch had not spoken, as usual, but now he repeated, with rapt, far-off eyes: "'Hurley was hurt in the wrist and Diaz died?' Hurley and Diaz! I played with Hurley, a couple of times."
"Speakin' personal," said Garry Patterson, his red verging toward purple in excitement, "which I'm ready to go with you down to Morgantown and bury your father."
"And do it shipshape," added Black Gandil.
"With all the trimmings," said Bud Mansie, "with all Morgantown joinin' the mournin' voluntarily under cover of our six-guns."
"Wait," said Boone. "What's the second request?"
"That can wait."
"It's a bigger job than this one?"
"Lots bigger."
"And in the meantime?"
"I'm your man."
They shook hands. Even Black Gandil rose to take his share in the ceremony—all save Bud Mansie, who had glanced out the window a moment before and then silently left the room. A bottle of whisky was produced and glasses filled all round. Jim Boone brought in the seventh chair and placed it at the table. They raised their glasses.
"To the empty chair," said Boone.
They drank, and for the first time in his life, the liquid fire went down the throat of Pierre. He set down his glass, coughing, and the others laughed good-naturedly.
"Started down the wrong way?" asked Wilbur.
"It's beastly stuff; first I ever drank."
A roar of laughter answered him.
"Still I got an idea," broke in Jim Boone, "that he's worthy of takin' the seventh chair. Draw it up lad."
Vaguely it reminded Pierre of a scene in some old play with himself in the role of the hero signing away his soul to the devil, but an interruption kept him from taking the chair. There was a racket at the door—a half-sobbing, half-scolding voice, and the laughter of a man; then Bud Mansie appeared carrying Jack in spite of her struggles. He placed her on the floor and held her hands to protect himself from her fury.
"I glimpsed her through the window," he explained. "She was lining out for the stable and then a minute later I saw her swing a saddle onto—what horse d'you think?"
"Out with it."
"Jim's big Thunder. Yep, she stuck the saddle on big black Thunder and had a rifle in the holster. I saw there was hell brewing somewhere, so I went out and nabbed her."
"Jack!" called Jim Boone. "What were you started for?"
Bud Mansie released her arms and she stood with them stiffening at her sides and her fists clenched.
"Hal—he died, and there was nothing but talk about him—nothing done.
You got a live man in Hal's place."
She pointed an accusing finger at Pierre.
"Maybe he takes his place for you, but he's not my brother—I hate him. I went out to get another man to make up for Pierre."
"Well?"
"A dead man. I shoot straight enough for that."
A very solemn silence spread through the room; for every man was watching in the eyes of the father and daughter the same shining black devil of wrath.
"Jack, get into your room and don't move out of it till I tell you to.
D'you hear?"
She turned on her heel like a soldier and marched from the room.
"Jack."
She stopped in the door but would not turn back. "Jack, don't you love your old dad anymore?" She whirled and ran to him with outstretched arms and clung to him, sobbing. "Oh, dad," she groaned. "You've broken my heart."
CHAPTER 12
The annals of the mountain-desert have never been written and can never be written. They are merely a vast mass of fact and tradition and imagining which floats from tongue to tongue from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevadas. A man may be a fact all his life and die only a local celebrity. Then again, he may strike sparks from that imagination which runs riot by camp-fires and at the bars of the crossroads saloons.
In that case he becomes immortal. It is not that lies are told about him or impossible feats ascribed to him, but every detail about him is seized upon and passed on with a most scrupulous and loving care.
In due time he will become a tradition. That is, he will be known familiarly at widely separated parts of the range, places which he has never visited. It has happened to a few of the famous characters of the mountain-desert that they became traditions before their deaths. It happened to McGurk, of course. It also happened to Red Pierre.
Oddly enough, the tradition of Red Pierre did not begin with his ride from the school of Father Victor to Morgantown, distant many days of difficult and dangerous travel. Neither did tradition seize on the gunfight that crippled Hurley and "put out" wizard Diaz. These things were unquestionably known to many, but they did not strike the popular imagination. What set men first on fire was the way Pierre le Rouge buried his father "at the point of the gun" in Morgantown.
That day Boone's men galloped out of the higher mountains down the trail toward Morgantown. They stole a wagon out of a ranch stable on the way and tied two lariats to the tongue. So they towed it, bounding and rattling, over the rough trail to the house where Martin Ryder lay dead.
His body was placed in state in the body of the wagon, pillowed with everything in the line of cloth which the house could furnish. Thus equipped they went on at a more moderate pace toward Morgantown.
What followed it is useless to repeat here. Tradition rehearsed every detail of that day's work, and the purpose of this narrative is only to give the details of some of the events which tradition does not know, at least in their entirety.
They started at one end of Morgantown's street. Pierre guarded the wagon in the center of the street and kept the people under cover of his rifle. The rest of Boone's men cleaned out the houses as they went and sent the occupants piling out to swell the crowd.
And so they rolled the crowd out of town and to the cemetery, where "volunteers" dug the grave of Martin Ryder wide and deep, and Pierre paid for the corner plot three times over in gold.
Then a coffin—improvised hastily for the occasion out of a packing-box—was lowered reverently, also by "volunteer" mourners, and before the first sod fell on the dead. Pierre raised over his head the crucifix of Father Victor that brought good luck, and intoned a service in the purest Ciceronian Latin, surely, that ever regaled the ears of Morgantown's elect.
The moment he raised that cross the bull throat of Jim Boone bellowed a command, the poised guns of the gang enforced it, and all the crowd dropped to their knees, leaving the six outlaws scattered about the edges of the mob like sheep dogs around a folding flock, while in the center stood Pierre with white, upturned face and the raised cross.
So Martin Ryder was buried with "trimmings," and the gang rode back, laughing and shouting, through the town and up into the safety of the mountains. Election day was fast approaching and therefore the rival candidates for sheriff hastily organized posses and made the usual futile pursuit.
In fact, before the pursuit was well under way, Boone and his men sat at their supper table in the cabin. The seventh chair was filled; all were present except Jack, who sulked in her room. Pierre went to her door and knocked. He carried under his arm a package which he had secured in the General Merchandise Store of Morgantown.
"We're all waiting for you at the table," he explained.
"Just keep on waiting," said the husky voice of Jacqueline.
"I've brought you a present."
"I hate your presents!"
"It's a thing you've wanted for a long time, Jacqueline."
Only a stubborn silence.
"I'm putting your door a little ajar."
"If you dare to come in I'll—"
"And I'm leaving the package right here at the entrance. I'm so sorry,
Jacqueline, that you hate me."
And then he walked off down the hall—cunning Pierre—before she could send her answer like an arrow after him. At the table he arranged an eighth plate and drew up a chair before it. "If that's for Jack," remarked Dick Wilbur, "you're wasting your time. I know her and I know her type. She'll never come out to the table tonight—nor tomorrow, either. I know!"
In fact, he knew a good deal too much about girls and women also, did Wilbur, and that was why he rode the long trails of the mountain-desert with Boone and his men. Far south and east in the Bahamas a great mansion stood vacant because he was gone, and the dust lay thick on the carpets and powdered the curtains and tapestries with a common gray.
He had built it and furnished it for a woman he loved, and afterward for her sake he had killed a man and fled from a posse and escaped in the steerage of a west-bound ship. Still the law followed him, and he kept on west and west until he reached the mountain-desert, which thinks nothing of swallowing men and their reputations.
There he was safe, but someday he would see some woman smile, catch the glimmer of some eye, and throw safety away to ride after her.
It was a weakness, but what made a tragic figure of handsome Dick Wilbur was that he knew his weakness and sat still and let fate walk up and overtake him.
Yet Pierre le Rouge answered this man of sorrowful wisdom: "In my part of the country men say: 'If you would speak of women let money talk for you.'"
And he placed a gold piece on the table.
"She will come out to the supper table."
"She will not," smiled Wilbur, and covered the coin. "Will you take odds?"
"No charity. Who else will bet?"
"I," said Jim Boone instantly. "You figure her for an ordinary sulky kid."
Pierre smiled upon him.
"There's a cut in my shirt where her knife passed through; and that's the reason that I'll bet on her now." The whole table covered his coin, with laughter.
"We've kept one part of your bargain, Pierre. We've seen your father buried in the corner plot. Now, what's the second part?"
"I don't know you well enough to ask you that," said Pierre.
They plied him with suggestions.
"To rob the Berwin Bank?"
"Stick up a train?"
"No. That's nothing."
"Round up the sheriffs from here to the end of the mountains?"
"Too easy."
"Roll all those together," said Pierre, "and you'll begin to get an idea of what I'll ask."
Then a low voice called from the black throat of the hall: "Pierre!"
The others were silent, but Pierre winked at them, and made great flourish with knife and fork against his plate as if to cover the sound of Jacqueline's voice.
"Pierre!" she called again. "I've come to thank you."
He jumped up and turned toward the hall.
"Do you like it?"
"It's a wonder!"
"Then we're friends?"
"If you want to be."
"There's nothing I want more. Then you'll come out and have supper with us, Jack?"
There was a little pause, and then Jim Boone struck his fist on the table and cursed, for she stepped from the darkness into the flaring light of the room.