Riders of the Silences (13 page)

"Oh!"

And she sat bolt upright with shining eyes. Instantly she remembered to yawn
again, but her glance smiled on them above her hand.

She apologized. "Awfully sleepy, Dick."

But he was not deceived. He said: "There's a dance down near the Barnes
place, and Pierre wants you to go with him."

Back tilted her head, and her throat stirred as if she were singing.

"Pierre! A dance?"

He explained: "Dick's lost his head over a girl with yellow hair, and he
wants me to go down and see her. He thought you might want to go along."

Her face changed like the moon when a cloud blows across it. Before she
answered she slipped down on the bunk again, pillowed her head leisurely on her
arm, and answered with another slow, insolent yawn: "Thanks! I'm staying home
to-night."

Wilbur glared his rage covertly at Pierre, but the latter was blandly
unconscious that he had made any
faux pas
.

He said carelessly: "Too bad. It might be interesting, Jack?"

At his voice she looked upa sharp and graceful toss of the head.

"What?"

"The girl with the yellow hair."

"Then go ahead and see her. I won't keep you. You don't mind if I go on
sleeping? Sit down and be at home."

With this she calmly turned her back again and seemed thoroughly disposed to
carry out her word. Red Pierre flushed a little, watching her, and he spoke his
anger outright: "You're acting like a sulky kid, Jack, not like a man."

It was a habit of his to forget that she was a woman. Without turning her
head she answered: "Do you want to know why?"

"You're like a cat showing your claws. Go on! Tell me what the reason is."

"Because I get tired of you."

In all his life he had never been so scorned. He did not see the covert grin
of Wilbur in the background. He blurted: "Tired?"

"Awfully. You don't mind me being frank, do you, Pierre?"

He could only stammer: "Sometimes I wish to God you were a man, Jack!"

"You don't often remember that I'm a woman."

"What do you mean by that?"

She was silent, but there was a perceptible tremor in the graceful body.

He repeated: "Do you mean that I'm rude or rough with you, Jacqueline?"

Still the silence, but Wilbur was grinning broader than ever. "Answer me!"

She started up and faced him, her face convulsed with rage.

"What do you want me to say? Yes, you are rudeI hate you and your lot. Go
away from me; I don't want you; I hate you all."

And she would have said more, but furious sobs swelled her throat and she
could not speak, but dropped, face down, on the bunk and gripped the blankets in
each hard-set hand. Over her Pierre leaned, utterly bewildered, found nothing
that he could say, and then turned and strode, frowning, from the room. Wilbur
hastened after him and caught him just as the door was closing.

"Come back," he pleaded. "This is the best game I've ever seen. Come back,
Pierre! You've made a wonderful start."

Pierre le Rouge shook off the detaining hand and glared up at Wilbur.

"Don't try irony, Dick. I feel like murder. Think of it! All this time she's
been hating me; and now it's making her weep; think of itJackweeping!"

"Why, you're a child, Pierre. Go back and take her in your arms and tell her
you're going to make her go to the dance."

"Take her in my arms? She'd stab me, there's that much of the devil in her.
Don't grin at me and keep chuckling like an utter ass. What's up, Dick?"

"Don't you see? No, you don't, but it's so plain that a baby of three years
could understand. She's in love with you."

"With me?"

"With Red Pierre."

"You can't make a joke out of Jack with me. You ought to know that."

"Pierre, I'd as soon make a joke out of a wildcat."

"Grinning still? Wilbur, I'm taking more from you than I would from any man
on the ranges."

"I know you are, and that's why I'm stringing this out because I'm going to
have a laughha, ha, ha!the rest of my lifeha, ha, ha, ha!whenever I think of
thisha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"

The burst of merriment left him speechless, and Pierre, glowering, his right
hand twitching dangerously close to that holster at his hip. He sobered, and
said: "Go in and talk to her and prove that I'm right."

"Ask Jack if she loves me? Why, I'd as soon ask any man the same question."

The big long rider was instantly curious.

"Has she never appealed to you as a woman, Pierre?"

"How could she? I've watched her ride; I've watched her use her gun; I've
slept rolled in the same blankets with her, back to back; I've walked and talked
and traveled with her as if she were my kid brother."

Wilbur nodded, as if the miracle were being slowly unfolded before his eyes.

"And you've never noticed anything different about her? Never watched a
little lift and grace in her walk that no man could ever have; never heard her
laugh in a voice that no man could ever imitate; never seen her color change
just because you, Pierre, came near or went far away from her?"

"Because of me?" asked the bewildered Pierre.

"You fool, you! Why, lad, I've been kept amused by you two for a whole
evening, watching her play for your attention, saving her best smiles for you,
keeping her best attitudes for you, and letting all the richness of her voice go
out fora blocka stone. Gad, the thing still doesn't seem possible! Pierre, one
instant of that girl would give romance to a man's whole life."

"This girl? This Jack of ours?"

"He hasn't seen it! Why, if I hadn't seen years ago that she had tied her
hands and turned her heart over to you, I'd have been down on my knees to her a
thousand times, begging her for a smile, a shadow of a hope."

"If I didn't know you, Dick, I'd say that you were partly drunk and partly a
fool."

"Here's a hundreda cold hundred that I'm right. I'll make it a thousand, if
you dare."

"Dare what?"

"Ask her to marry you."

"Marryme?"

"Damn it allwell, thenwhatever you like. But I say that if you go back into
that room and sit still and merely look at her, she'll be in your arms within
five minutes."

"I hate to take charity, but a bet is a bet. That hundred is in my pocket
already. It's a go!"

They shook hands.

"But what will be your proof, Dick, whether I win or lose?"

"Your face, blockhead, when you come out of the room."

Upon this Pierre pondered a moment, and then turned toward the door. He set
his hand on the knob, faltered, and finally set his teeth and entered the room.

She lay as he had left her, except that her face was now pillowed in her
arms, and the long sobs kept her body quivering. Awe and curiosity swept over
Pierre, looking down at her, but chiefly a puzzled grief such as a strong man
feels when a friend is in trouble. He came closer and laid a hand on her
shoulder.

"Jack!"

She turned far enough to strike his hand away and instantly resumed her
former position, though the sobs were softer. This childish anger irritated him.
He was about to storm out of the room when the thought of the hundred dollars
stopped him. It was not that he hoped to win the money, for dollars rolled
easily into his hands and out again, but the bet had been made, and it was his
pride that he would play out his part of it. It seemed unsportsmanlike to leave
without some effort.

The effort which he finally made was that suggested by Wilbur. He folded his
arms and stood silent, waiting, and ready to judge the time as nearly as he
could until the five minutes should have elapsed. He was so busy computing the
minutes that it was with a start that he noticed some time later that the
weeping had ceased. She lay quiet. Her hand was dabbing furtively at her face
for a purpose which Pierre could not surmise.

At last a broken voice murmured: "Pierre!"

He would not speak, but something in the voice made his anger go. After a
little it came, and louder this time: "Pierre?"

He did not stir.

She whirled and sat on the edge of the bunk, crying: "Pierre!" with a note of
fright. Then she flushed richly.

"I thought perhaps you were gone. I thoughtPierreI was afraidI mean I
hoped"

She could not go on.

And still he persisted in that silence, his arms folded, the keen blue eyes
considering her as if from a great distance.

She explained: "I was afraidPierre! Why don't you speak? Tell me, are you
angry?"

And she sprang up and made a pace toward him. She had never seemed so little
manlike, so wholly womanly. For the thick coils of hair were loosed on her head,
and the black hair framed a face stained, flushed, with eyes that were like a
great black, bottomless well of sorrow and wistfulness. And the hand which
stretched toward him, palm up, was a symbol of everything new and strange that
he found in her.

He had seen it balled to a small, angry fist, brown and dangerous; he had
seen it gripping the butt of a revolver, ready for the draw; he had seen it
tugging at the reins and holding a racing horse in check with an ease which a
man would envy; but never before had he seen it turned palm up, to his
knowledge; and now, because he could not speak to her, according to his plan, he
studied her thoroughly for the first time.

Slender and marvelously made was that hand. The whole woman was in it, finely
fashioned, delicate, made for beauty, not for use. It was all he could do to
keep from exclaiming.

She made a quick step toward him, eager, uncertain:

"Pierre, I thought you had left methat you were gone, and angry."

The hearts of men are tinder; something caught on fire in Pierre, but still
he would say nothing. He was beginning to feel a cruel pleasure in his victory,
but it was not without a deep sense of danger.

She had laid aside her six-gun, but she had not abandoned it. She had laid
aside her anger, but she could resume it again as swiftly as she could take up
her revolver.

He exulted in the touch of victory, but it was as a man who rides a horse
that paces docilely beneath him but may plunge into a fury of bucking in a
moment. She was closervery close, and somehow he knew that at his pleasure he
could make her smile or tremble by speaking. Yet he would not speak. The five
minutes were not yet up.

She cried with a little burst of rage: "Pierre, you are making a game of me!"

But seeing that he did not change she altered swiftly and caught his hand in
both of hers. She spoke the name which she always used when she was greatly
moved.

"Ah, Pierre le Rouge, what have I done?"

His silence tempted her on like the smile of the sphinx.

And suddenly she was inside his arms, though how she separated them he could
not tell, and crying: "Pierre, I am unhappy. Help me, Pierre!"

It was true, then, and Wilbur had won his bet. But how could it have
happened? He took the arms that encircled his neck and brought them slowly down,
and watched her curiously. Something was expected of him, but what it was he
could not tell, for women were as strange to him as the wild sea is strange to
the Arab.

He hunted his mind, and then: "One of the boys has angered you, Jack?"

And she said, because she could think of no way to cover the confusion which
came to her after the outbreak: "Yes."

He dropped her arms and strode a pace or two up and down the room.

"Gandil?"

"N-no!"

"You're lying. It was Gandil."

And he made straight for the door.

She ran after him and flung herself between him and the door. Clearly, as if
it were a painted picture, she saw him facing Gandilsaw their hands leap for
the gunssaw Gandil pitch face forward on the floorwrithe all his limbsand
then lie still. "Pierrefor God's sake!"

Her terror convinced him partially, and the furor went back from his eyes as
a light goes back in a long, dark hall.

"On your honor, Jack, it's not Gandil?"

"On my honor."

"But some one has broken you up."

"No, I"

"Don't lie. Why, even while you look at me your color changes. You're pale
one minute and red the next. Some one has crossed you, Jack. And whoever crosses
you crosses me, by God! Out with his name! Is it Branch?"

"No."

"Then it's big Patterson."

"No."

"I have it! Mansie! There's always something of the sneak about him that I
never liked."

"No, no!"

"It is! He came up to you and whispered some dog's remark for you to hear.
Damn himI never trusted Mansie!"

He pushed her away from the door and set his hand on the knob, but he could
not keep her back. She was upon him again and twisted between him and the
entrance to the room.

"Pierre, upon my honor, it was none of these men."

He could not help but believe.

"Only Wilbur is left. Jack, I'd rather raise my hand against myself than to
harm Dick, but if"

"I'll never tell you who it was. Don't you see? It would be like a murder in
cold blood if I were to send you after him."

"But he's herehe's one of us, this man who's bothered you."

She could not help but answer: "Yes."

He scowled down at the floor.

"You would never be able to guess who it is. Give it up. After allI can live
through itI guess."

"It's something that has saddened you. Do you know, we've been so much
together that I can almost read your mind, in a way. Why are you smiling?"

"I wish that you could read itPierreat times."

He took her face between his hands and frowned down into her eyes. At his
touch she grew very pale and trembled as If a wind were striking against her.

"You see, you've been so near to me, and so dear to me all these years, Jack,
that you're like a sister, almost."