Riders of the Silences (10 page)

"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?"

"Pierre"

"Yes?"

"I'm ashamed. I've been acting like a silly kid."

"But we're waiting for you."

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.

She wore a cartridge belt slung jauntily across her hips and from it hung a
holster of stiff new leather with the top flap open to show the butt of a
man-sized forty-five caliber six-shooterher first gun. Not a man of the gang
but had loaned her his guns time and again, but they had never dreamed of giving
the child a weapon of her own.

So they stared at her agape, where she stood with her head back, one slender
hand resting on her hip, one hovering about the butt of the gun, as if she
challenged them to question her right to be called "man."

It was as if she abandoned all claims to femininity with that single step;
the gun at her side made her seem inches taller and years older. She was no
longer a child, but a long-rider who could back any horse on the range and shoot
with the best.

One glance she cast about the room to drink in the amazement of the gang, and
then with a profound instinct guiding her, she picked out the best critic in the
room and said to him with a frown: "Well, Dick, how's it hang?"

The big man was as flushed as the girl.

"Hangs like a charm," he said, "a charm that 'll be apt to make men step
about."

And her father broke in rather hoarsely: "Sit down, girl. Sit down and be one
of us. One of us you are by your own choice from this day on. You're neither man
nor woman, but a long-rider with every man's hand against you. You've done with
any hope of a home or of friends. You're one of us. Poor Jackmy girl!"

"Poor?" she returned. "Not while I can make a quick draw and shoot straight."

And then she swept the circle of eyes, daring them to take her boast lightly,
but they knew her too well, and were all solemnly silent. At this she relented
somewhat, and went directly to Pierre, flushing from throat to hair. She held
out her hand.

"Will you shake and call it square?"

"I sure will," nodded Pierre.

"And we're palsyou and me, like the rest of 'em?"

"We are."

"Shake again."

She took the place beside him.

Garry Patterson was telling how he had said farewell to a Swedish sweetheart,
and the roar of laughter took the eyes away from Jacqueline for a moment. So she
leaned to Pierre le Rouge and whispered at his ear: "Pierre you've made me the
happiest fellow on the range."

As the whisky went round after round and the fun waxed higher the two seemed
shut away from the others; they were younger, less touched and marked by life;
they listened while the others talked, and now and then exchanged glances of
interest or aversion.

"Listen," she said after a time, "I've heard this story before."

It was Phil Branch, square-built and square of jaw, who was talking.

"There's only one thing I can handle better than a gun, and that's a
sledge-hammer. A gun is all right in its way, but for work in a crowd, well,
give me a hammer and I'll show you a way out."

Bud Mansie grinned: "Leave me my pair of sixes and you can have all the
hammers between here and Central Park in a crowd. There's nothing makes a crowd
remember its heels like a pair of barking sixes."

"Ah, ah!" growled Branch. "But when they've heard bone crunch under the
hammer there's nothing will hold them."

"I'd have to see that."

"Maybe you will, Bud, maybe you will. It was the hammer that started me for
the long trail west. I had a big Scotchman in the factory who couldn't learn how
to weld. I'd taught him day after day and cursed him and damn near prayed for
him. But he somehow wouldn't learnthe swineah, ah!"

He grew vindictively black at the memory.

"Every night he wiped out what I'd taught him during the day and the eraser
he used was booze. So one fine day I dropped the hammer after watchin' him make
a botch on a big bar, and cussed him up one leg and down the other. The
Scotchman had a hang-over from the night before and he made a pass at me. It was
too much for me just then, for the day was hot and the forge fire had been
spitting cinders in my face all morning. So I took him by the throat."

He reached out and closed his taut fingers slowly.

"I didn't mean nothin' by it, but after a man has been moldin' iron, flesh is
pretty weak stuff. When I let go of Scotchy he dropped on the floor, and while I
stood starin' down at him somebody seen what had happened and spread the word.

"I wasn't none too popular, bein' not much on talk, so the boys got together
and pretty soon they come pilin' through the door at me, packin' everything from
hatchets to crowbars.

"Lads, I was sorry about Scotchy, but after I glimpsed that gang comin' I
wasn't sorry for nothing. I felt like singin', though there wasn't no song that
could say just what I meant. But I grabbed up the big fourteen-pound hammer and
met 'em half-way.

"The first swing of the hammer it met something hard, but not as hard as
iron. The thing crunched with a sound like an egg under a heavy man's heel. And
when that crowd heard it they looked sick. God, how sick they looked! They
didn't wait for no second swing, but they beat it hard and fast through the door
with me after 'em. They scattered, but I kept right on and didn't never really
stop till I reached the mountain-desert and you, Jim."

"Which is a good yarn," said Bud Mansie, "but I can tell you one that 'll cap
it. It was"

He stopped short, staring up at the door. Outside, the wind had kept up a
perpetual roaring, and no one noticed the noise of the opening door. Bud Mansie,
facing that door, however, turned a queer yellow and sat with his lips parted on
the last word. He was not pretty to see. The others turned their heads, and
there followed the strangest panic which Pierre had even seen.

Jim Boone jerked his hand back to his hip, but stayed the motion, half
completed, and swung his hands stiffly above his head. Garry Patterson sat with
his eyes blinked shut, pale, waiting for death to come. Dick Wilbur rose, tall
and stiff, and stood with his hands gripped at his sides, and Black Morgan
Gandil clutched at the table before him and his keen eyes wandered swiftly about
the room, seeking a place for escape.

There was only one sound, and that was a whispering moan of terror from
Jacqueline. Only Pierre made no move, yet he felt as he had when the black mass
of the landslide loomed above him.

What he saw in the door was a man of medium size and almost slender build. In
spite of the patch of gray hair at either temple he was only somewhere between
twenty-five and thirty. But to see him was to forget all details except the
strangest face which Pierre had ever seen or would ever look upon in all his
career.

It was pale, with a pallor strange to the ranges; even the lips seemed
bloodless, and they curved with a suggestion of a smile that was a nervous habit
rather than any sign of mirth. The nerves of the left eye were also affected,
and the lid dropped and fluttered almost shut, so that he had to carry his head
far back in order to see plainly. There was such indomitable pride and scorn in
the man that his name came up to the lips of Pierre: "McGurk."

A surprisingly gentle voice said: "Jim, I'm sorry to drop in on you this way,
but I've had some unpleasant news."

His words dispelled part of the charm. The hands of big Boone lowered; the
others assumed more natural positions, but each, it seemed to Pierre, took
particular and almost ostentatious care that their right hands should be always
far from the holsters of their guns.

The stranger went on: "Martin Ryder is finished, as I suppose you know. He
left a spawn of two mongrels behind him. I haven't bothered with them, but I'm a
little more interested in another son that has cropped up. He's sitting over
there in your family party and his name is Pierre. In his own country they call
him Pierre le Rouge, which means Red Pierre, in our talk.

"You know I don't like to be dictatorial, and I've never crossed you in
anything before, Jim. Have I?"

Boone moistened his white lips and answered: "Never," huskily, as if it were
a great muscular effort for him to speak.

"This time I have to break the custom. Boone, this fellow Pierre has to leave
the country. Will you see that he goes?"

The lips of Boone moved and made no sound.

He said at length: "McGurk, I'd rather cross the devil than cross you.
There's no shame in admitting that. But I've lost my boy, Hal."

"Too bad, Jim. I knew Hal; at a distance, of course."

"And Pierre is filling Hal's place in the family."

"Is that your answer?"

"McGurk, are you going to pin me down in this?"

And here Jack whirled and cried: "Dad, you won't let Pierre go!"

"You see?" pleaded Boone.

It was uncanny and horrible to see the giant so unnerved before this
stranger, but that part of it did not come to Pierre until later. Now he felt a
peculiar emptiness of stomach and a certain jumping chill that traveled up and
down his spine. Moreover, he could not move his eyes from the face of McGurk,
and he knew at length that this was fearthe first real fear that he had ever
known.

Shame made him hot, but fear made him cold again. He knew that if he rose his
knees would buckle under him; that if he drew out his revolver it would slip
from his palsied fingers. For the fear of death is a mighty fear, but it is
nothing compared with the fear of man.

"I've asked you a question," said McGurk. "What's your answer?"

There was a quiver in the black forest of Boone's beard, and if Pierre was
cold before, he was sick at heart to see the big man cringe before McGurk.

He stammered: "Give me time."

"Good," said McGurk. "I'm afraid I know what your answer would be now, but if
you take a couple of days you will think things over and come to a reasonable
conclusion. I will be at Gaffney's place about fifteen miles from here. You know
it? Send your answer there. In the mean time"he stepped forward to the table
and poured a small drink of whiskey into a glass and raised it high"here's to
the long health and happiness of us all. Drink!"

There was a hasty pouring of liquor.

"And you also!"

Pierre jumped as if he had been struck, and obeyed the order hastily.

"So," said the master, pleasant again, and Pierre wiped his forehead
furtively and stared up with fascinated eyes. "An unwilling pledge is better
than none at all. To you, gentleman, much happiness; to you, Pierre le Rouge,
bon voyage
."

They drank; the master placed his glass on the table again, smiled upon them,
and was gone through the door. He turned his back in leaving. There was no
fitter way in which he could have expressed his contempt.

The mirth died and in its place came a long silence. Jim Boone stared upon
Pierre with miserable eyes, and then rose and left the room. The others one by
one followed his example. Dick Wilbur in passing dropped his hand on Pierre's
shoulder. Jacqueline was silent.

As he sat there minute after minute and then hour after hour of the long
night Pierre saw the meaning of it. If they sent word that they would not give
up Pierre it was war, and war with McGurk had only one ending. If they sent word
that Pierre was surrendered the shame would never leave Boone and his men.

Whatever they did there was ruin for them in the end. All this Pierre conned
slowly in his mind, until he was cold. Then he looked up and saw that the lamp
had burned out and that the wood in the fireplace was consumed to a few red
embers.

He replenished the fire, and when the yellow flames began to mount he made
his resolution and walked slowly up and down the floor with it. For he knew that
he must go to meet McGurk.

The very thought of the man sent the old chill through his blood, yet he must
go and face him and end the thing.

It came over him with a pang that he was very young; that life was barely a
taste in his mouth, whether bitter or sweet he could not tell. He picked a
flaming stick from the fire and went before a little round mirror on the wall.

Back at him stared the face of a boy. He had seen so much of the grim six in
the last day that the contrast startled him. They were men, hardened to life and
filled with knowledge of it. They were books written full and ready to be ended.
But he? He was a blank page with a scribbled word here and there. Nevertheless,
he was chosen and he must go.

Having reached that decision he closed his mind on what would happen. There
was a vague fear that when he faced McGurk he would be unmanned again and frozen
with fear; that his spirit would be broken and he would become a thing too
despicable for a man to kill.