Riders of the Silences (16 page)

Here passed a youth wearing a beard made from the stiff, red bristles of the
tail of a sorrel horse. Another wore a bear's head cunningly stuffed, the
grinning teeth flashing over his head and the skin draped over his shoulders. A
third disfigured himself horribly by painting after the fashion of an Indian on
the war-path, with crimson streaks down his forehead and red and black across
his cheeks.

But not more than a third of all the assembly made any effort to masquerade,
beyond the use of the simple black mask across the upper part of the face. The
rest of the men and women contented themselves with wearing the very finest
clothes they could afford to buy, and there was through the air a scent of the
general merchandise store which not even a liberal use of cheap perfume and all
the drifts of pale-blue cigarette smoke could quite overcome.

As for the music, it was furnished by two very old men, relics of the days
when there were contests in fiddling; a stout fellow of middle age, with cheeks
swelled almost to bursting as he thundered out terrific blasts on a slide
trombone; a youth who rattled two sticks on an overturned dish-pan in lieu of a
drum, and a cornetist of real skill.

In an interlude, before very long, he would amuse with a solo, including all
sorts of runs and whistling notes, and be a source of talk for many a month to
come.

There were hard faces in the crowd, most of them, of men who had set their
teeth against hard weather and hard men, and fought their way through, not to
happiness, but to existence, so that fighting had become their pleasure.

Now they relaxed their eternal vigilance, their eternal suspicion. Another
phase of their nature weakened. Some of them were smiling and laughing for the
first time in months, perhaps, of bitter labor and loneliness on the range. With
the gates of good-nature opened, a veritable flood of gaiety burst out. It
glittered in their eyes, it rose to their lips in a wild laughter. They seemed
to be dancing more furiously fast in order to forget the life which they had
left, and to which they must return.

And through all the cheapness there was a great note of poetry as well; but
one caught this only by a sense of intuition, or by remembering that these were
the conquerors of the bitter nature of the mountain-desert. There was beauty
here, the beauty of strength in the men and a brown loveliness in the girls;
just as in the music, the blatancy of the rattling dish-pan and the blaring
trombone were more than balanced by the real skill of the violinists, who kept a
high, sweet, singing tone through all the clamor.

One could close his ears to the rest of the noise, if he strove to do so, and
hear nothing but that harmonious moaning of the strings, steady and clear, like
the aspirations of a man divorced from the facts of his weakness and his
crudeness in practical life.

And Pierre le Rouge and Jacqueline? They stood aghast for a moment when that
crash of noise broke around them; but they came from a life where there was
nothing of beauty except the lonely strength of the mountains and the appalling
silences of the stars that roll above the desert. Almost at once they caught the
overtone of human joyousness, and they turned with strange smiles to each other,
and it was "Pierre?" "Jack?" Then a nod, and she was in his arms, and they
glided into the dance.

When a crowd gathers in the street, there rises a babel of voices, a confused
and pointless clamor, no matter what the purpose of the gathering, until some
man who can think as well as shout begins to speak. Then the crowd murmurs a
moment, and after a few seconds composes itself to listen.

So it was with the noise in the hall when Pierre and Jacqueline began to
dance. First there were smiles of derision and envy around them, but after a
moment a little hush came where they moved, and then men began to note the smile
of the girl and the whiteness of that round throat, and the grace of the bare,
tapering arms.

So a whisper went around the room, and there began a craning of necks and an
exchange of nods. All that crowd became in a moment no more than the chorus
which fills the background of the stage when the principals step out from the
wings.

They could not help but dance well, for they had youth and grace and
strength, and the glances of applause and envy were like wine to quicken their
blood, while above all they caught the overtone of the singing violins, and
danced by that alone. The music ended with a long flourish just as they whirled
to a stop in a corner of the room. At once an eddy of men started toward them.

"Who shall it be?" smiled Pierre. "With whom do you want to dance? It's your
triumph, Jack."

She was alight and alive with the victory, and her eyes roved over the crowd.

"The big man with the tawny hair."

"But he's making right past us."

"No; he'll turn and come back."

"How do you know?"

For answer she glanced up and laughed, and he realized with a singular sense
of loneliness that she knew many things which were beyond his ken. Some one
touched his arm, and a voice, many voices, beset him:

"How's the chances for a dance with the girl, partner?"

"My name's McCormack. Riley? Glad to know you. I've got a flask on the hip,
Riley; what's the chance of making a trade on this next dance?"

"How do we swap partners? Mine is the rangy girl with the red topknot. Not
much on looks, Bill, but a cayuse don't cover ground on his looks. Dance? Say,
Bill, she'll rock you to sleep!"

"This dance is already booked," Pierre answered, and kept his eyes on the
tall man with the scarred face and the resolute jaw. He wondered profoundly why
Jacqueline had chosen such a partner.

At least she had prophesied correctly, for the big man turned toward them
just as he seemed about to head for another part of the hall. The crowd gave way
before him, not that he shouldered them aside, but they seemed to feel the
coming of his shadow before him, and separated as they would have done before
the shadow of a falling tree.

In another moment Pierre found himself looking up to the giant. No mask could
disguise him, neither cover that long, twisting mark of white down his cheek,
nor hide the square set of the jaw, nor dim the keen steady eyes. Upon him there
was written at large: "This is a man."

And there came to Pierre an exceedingly great uneasiness in his right hand,
and a twitching of the fingers low down on his thigh where the familiar holster
should have hung. His left hand rose, following the old instinct, and touched
beneath his throat where the cold cross lay.

He was saying easily: "This is your dance, isn't it?"

"Right, Bud," answered the big man in a mellow voice as great as his size.
"Sorry I can't swap partners with you, but I hunt alone."

An overwhelming desire to get a distance between himself and this huge
unknown came to Pierre.

He said: "There goes the music. You're off."

And the other, moving toward Jack, leaned down a little and murmured at the
ear of the outlaw: "Thanks, Pierre."

Then he was gone, and Jacqueline was laughing over his shoulder back to
Pierre.

Through his daze and through the rising clamor of the music, a voice said
beside him: "You look sort of sick, dude. Who's your friend?"

"Don't you know him?" asked Pierre.

"No more than I do you; but I've ridden the range for ten years around here,
and I know that he's new to these parts. If I'd ever glimpsed him before, I'd
remember him. He'd be a bad man in a mix, eh?"

And Pierre answered with devout earnestness: "He would."

"But where 'd you buy those duds, pal? Hey, look! Here's what I've been
waiting forthe Barneses and the girl that's visitin' 'em from the East."

"What girl?"

"Look!"

The Barnes group was passing through the door, and last came the unmistakable
form of Dick Wilbur, masked, but not masked enough to hide his familiar smile or
cover the well-known sound of his laughter as it drifted to Pierre across the
hall, and on his arm was a girl in an evening dress of blue, with a small, black
mask across her eyes, and deep-golden hair.

Pausing before she swung into the dance with Wilbur, she made a gesture with
the white arm, and looked up laughing to big, handsome Dick. Pierre trembled,
and his heart beat once and stopped.

As he watched, the song which Dick had sung came like a monotonous, religious
chant within him:

They call me poor, yet I am rich
In the touch of her golden hair;
My heart is
filled like a miser's hands
With the red-gold
of her hair.

The only sky I ride beneath
Is
the dear blue of her eyes,
The only heaven I desire
Is the blue of her dear eyes.

But even the memory of the song died in him while he watched her dance, and
saw the lights and shadows flit across the smooth shoulders; and when he saw the
hands of Wilbur about her, a red rage came up in him.

Dick in passing, marked that stare above the heads of the crowd, and frowned
with trouble. The hungry eyes of Pierre followed them as they circled the hall
again; and this time Wilbur, perhaps fearing that something had gone wrong with
Pierre, steered close to the edge of the dancing crowd and looked inquisitively
across.

He leaned and spoke to the girl, and she turned her head, smiling, to Pierre.
Then the smile went out, and even despite the mask, he saw that her eyes had
widened. The heart of Pierre grew thunderous with music. She had stopped and
slipped from the arm of Wilbur, and came step by step slowly toward him like one
walking in her sleep.

There, by the edge of the dancers, with the noise of the music and the
laughter and the shuffling feet to cover them, they met. The hands she held to
him were cold and trembling. He only knew that they were marvelously soft, and
that they faltered and closed strongly about his own.

"Is it you?"

"It is I."

That was all; and then the shadow of Wilbur loomed above them.

"What's this? Do you know each other? It isn't possible! Pierre, are you
playing a game with me?"

But under the glance of Pierre he fell back a step, and reached for the gun
which was not there. They were alone once more.

"MaryMary Brown!"

"Pierre!"

"But you are dead!"

"No, no! But youPierre"

"It was a miraclethe crossthat saved me."

"Where can we go?"

"Outside."

"Pierre."

"Yes."

"Hold my arm closeso I'll know it isn't just dreaming. And go quickly!"

"They are staring at usthe foolsas if they were trying to understand."

"We'll be followed?"

"Never."

"Do you need a wrap?"

"No."

"But it is cold outside, and your shoulders are bare."

"Then take that cloak. But quickly, Pierre, before we're followed."

He drew it about her; he led her through the door; it clicked shut; they were
alone with the sweet, frosty air about them. She tore away the mask, and her
beauty struck him like the moon when it drops suddenly through a mist of clouds.

"And yours, Pierre?"

"Not here."

"Why?"

"Because there are people. Hurry. Now here, with just the trees around us"

And he tore off the mask.

The white, cold moon shone over them, slipping down between the dark tops of
the trees, and the wind stirred slowly through the branches with a faint,
hushing sound, as if once more a warning were coming to Pierre this night. He
looked up, his left hand at the cross.

"Look down. You are afraid of something, Pierre. What is it?"

"With your arms around my neck, there's nothing in the world I fear. Mary, I
loved you all this time."

"Pierreand I"

"But you have grown so tallso strangeI can hardly feel"

"And youso stern and old."

"I never dreamed I could love anything more than the little girl who lay in
the snow, and died there that night."

"And I never dreamed I could smile at any man except the boy who lay by me
that night. And he died."

"What miracle saved you?"

She said: "It was wonderful, and yet very simple. You remember how the tree
crushed me down into the snow? Well, when the landslide moved, it carried the
tree before it; the weight of the trunk was lifted from me. Perhaps it was a
rock that struck me over the head then, for I lost consciousness. The slide
didn't bury me, but the rush carried me before it like a stick before a wave,
you see.

"When I woke I was almost completely covered with a blanket of debris, but I
could move my arms, and managed to prop myself up in a sitting posture. It was
there that my father and his searching party found me; he had been combing that
district all night. They carried me back, terribly bruised, but without even a
bone broken. It was a miracle that I escaped, and the miracle must have been
worked by your cross; do you remember?"

He shuddered and threw a hand up before his eyes.

"Dearest"

"It's nothingbut the crossfor every good fortune it has brought me, it has
brought bad luck to others."

"Hush, Pierre. Put your arms around me. I am all yoursall. You must not
think of the trouble or the cross."

He obeyed and drew her close to him, and the warm slender body gave to him
and lay close against his; and her head went back, and the curve of her soft
lips was close to his. He kissed her, reverently, and then, with passion, the
lips, the eyes, the throat, that quivered as if she were singing.

"Pierre, I have said good night to you every time before I went to sleep all
these years."

"And I've looked for you in the face of every woman."

"And I used to think that a still, small voice answered me out of the night."