Riders of the Silences (18 page)

They took their horses after breakfast and rode out to search the hills, for
it was quite possible that an accident had crippled at least one of the two lost
men, either Patterson or Branch. Not a gully within miles was left unsearched,
but toward evening they rode back, one by one, with no tidings.

One by one they rode up, and whistled to announce their coming, and then rode
on to the stable to unsaddle their horses. About the supper table all gathered
with the exception of Bud Mansie. So they waited the meal and each from time to
time stole a glance at the fifth plate where Bud should sit.

It was Jack who finally stirred herself from her dumb gloom to take up that
fifth and carry it out of the room. It was as if she had announced the death of
Mansie.

After that, they ate what they could and then went back around the fire. The
evening waned, but it brought no sign of any of the missing three. The wood
burned low in the fire. The first to break the long silence was Jim Boone, with
"Who brings in the wood?"

And Black Gandil answered: "We'll match, eh?"

In an outburst of energy the day before he disappeared Garry Patterson had
chopped up some wood and left a pile of it at the corner of the house. It was a
very little thing to bring in an armful of that wood, but long-riders do not
love work, and now they started the matching seriously. The odd man was out, and
Pierre went out on the first toss of the coins.

"You see," said Gandil. "Bad luck to every one but himself."

At the next throw Jacqueline was the lucky one, and her father afterward.
Gandil rose and stretched himself leisurely, yet as he sauntered toward the door
his backward glance at Pierre was black indeed. He glanced curiously toward
Jackwho looked away sharplyand then turned his eyes to her father.

The latter was considering him with a gloomy, foreboding stare and
considering over and over again, as Pierre le Rouge well knew, the prophecy of
Black Morgan Gandil.

He fell in turn into a solemn brooding, and many a picture out of the past
came up beside him and stood near till he could almost feel its presence. He was
roused by the creaking of the floor beneath the ponderous step of Jim Boone, who
flung the door open and shouted: "Oh, Morgan."

In the silence he turned and stared back at Pierre.

"What's up with Gandil?"

"God knows, not I."

Pierre rose and ran from the room and around the side of the building. There
by the woodpile lay the prostrate body. It was a mere limp weight when he turned
and raised it in his arms. So he walked back into the house carrying all that
was left of Black Morgan Gandil, and placed his burden on a bunk at the side of
the room.

There had been no outcry from either Jim Boone or his daughter, but they came
quickly to him, and Jacqueline pressed her ear over the heart of the hurt man.

She said; "He's still alive, but nearly gone. Where's the wound?"

They found it when they drew off his coata small cut high on the right
breast, and another lower and more to the left. Either of them would been fatal,
and about each the flesh was discolored where the hilt of the knife or the fist
of the striker had driven home the blade.

They stood back and made no hopeless effort to save him. It was uncanny that
Black Morgan Gandil, after all of his battles, should die without a struggle in
this way. And it had been no cowardly attack from the rear. Both wounds were in
the front. A hope came to them when his color increased at one time, but it was
for only a moment; it went out again as if some one were erasing paint from his
cheeks.

But just as they were about to turn away his body stirred with a slight
convulsion, the eyes opened wide, and he strove to speak. A red froth came on
his lips. He made another desperate effort, and twisting himself onto one elbow
pointed a rigid arm at Pierre. He gasped: "McGurkGod!" and dropped. He was dead
before his head touched the blanket.

It was Jacqueline who closed the staring eyes, for the two men were frozen
where they stood. They had heard the story of Patterson and Branch and Mansie in
one word from the lips of the dying man.

McGurk was back. McGurk was prowling about the last of the gang of Boone, and
the lone wolf had pulled down four of the band one by one on successive days.
Only two remained, and these two looked at one another with a common thought.

"The lights!" cried Jacqueline, turning from the body of Gandil. "He can
shoot us down through the windows at his leisure."

"But he won't," said her father. "I've lived too long with the name of McGurk
in my ears not to know the man. He'll never kill by stealth, but openly and man
to man. I know him, damn him. He'll wait till he meets us alone, and then we'll
finish as poor Gandil, there, or Patterson and Branch and Bud Mansie, all of
them fallen somewhere in the mountains with the buzzards left to bury 'em.
That's how we'll finish with McGurk on our trail. And youGandil was rightit's
you that's brought him on us. A shipwrecked manby God, Gandil was right!"

His right hand froze on the butt of his gun and his face convulsed with
impotent rage, for he knew, as both the others knew, that long before that gun
was clear of the holster the bullet from Pierre's gun would be on its way. But
Pierre threw his arms wide, and standing so, his shadow made a black cross on
the wall behind him. He even smiled to tempt the big man further.

Jacqueline ran between and caught the hand of her father, crying:

"Are you going to finish the work of McGurk before he has a chance to start
it? He hunted the rest down one by one. Dad, if you put out Pierre what is left?
Can you face that devil alone?"

And the old man groaned: "But it's his luck that's ruined me. It's his damned
luck which has broken up the finest fellowship that ever mocked at law on the
ranges. Oh, Jack, the heart in me's broken. I wish to God that I lay where
Gandil lies. What's the use of fighting any longer? No man can stand up against
McGurk!"

And the cold which had come in the blood of Pierre agreed with him. He was a
slayer of men, but McGurk was a devil incarnate. His father had died at the hand
of this lone rider; it was fitting, it was fate that he himself should die in
the same way. The girl looked from face to face, and sensed their despondency.
It seemed that their fear gave her the greater courage. Her face flushed as she
stood glaring her scorn.

"The yellow streak took a long time in showin', but it's in you, all right,
Pierre le Rouge."

"You've hated me ever since the dance, Jack. Why?"

"Because I knew you were yellowlike this!"

He shrugged his shoulders like one who gives up the fight against a woman,
and seeing it, she changed suddenly and made a gesture with both hands toward
him, a sudden gesture filled with grace and a queer tenderness.

She said: "Pierre, have you forgotten that when you were only a boy you stood
up to McGurk and drew blood from him? Are you afraid of him now?"

"I'll take my chance with any manbut McGurk"

"He has no cross to bring him luck."

"Aye, and he has no friends for that luck to ruin. Look at Gandil, Jack, and
then speak to me of the cross."

"Pierre, that first time you met you almost beat him to the draw. Oh, if I
were a man, I'dPierre, it was to get McGurk that you rode out to the range.
You've been here six years, and McGurk is still alive, and now you're ready to
run from his shadow."

"Run?" he said hotly. "I swear to God that as I stand here I've no fear of
death and no hope for the life ahead."

She sneered: "You're white while you say it. Your will may be brave, but your
blood's a coward, Pierre. It deserts you."

"Jack, you devil"

"Aye, you can threaten me safely. But if McGurk were here"

"Let him come."

"Pierre!"

"I mean it."

"Then give me one promise."

"A thousand of 'em."

"Let me hunt him with you."

He stared at her with a mute wonder. She had never been so beautiful.

"Jack, what a heart you have! If you were a man we could rule the mountains,
you and I."

"Even as I am, what prevents us, Pierre?"

And looking at her he forgot the sorrow which had been his ever since he
looked up to the face framed with red-gold hair and the dark tree behind and the
cold stars steady above it. It would come to him again, but now it was gone, and
he murmured, smiling: "I wonder?"

They made their plans that night, sitting all three together. It was better
to go out and hunt the hunter than to wait there and be tracked down. Jack, for
she insisted on it, would ride out with Pierre the next morning and hunt through
the hills for the hiding-place of McGurk.

Some covert he must have, so as to be near his victims. Nothing else could
explain the ease with which he kept on their track. They would take the trail,
and Jim Boone, no longer agile enough to be effective on the trail, would guard
the house and the body of Gandil in it.

There was little danger that even McGurk would try to rush a hostile house,
but they took no chances. The guns of Jim Boone were given a thorough
overhauling, and he wore as usual at his belt the heavy-handled hunting knife, a
deadly weapon in a hand-to-hand fight. Thus equipped, they left him and took the
trail.

They had not ridden a hundred yards when a whistle followed them, the
familiar whistle of the gang. They reined short and saw big Dick Wilbur riding
his bay after them, but at some distance he halted and shouted: "Pierre!"

"He's come back to us!" cried Jack.

"No. It's only some message."

"Do you know?"

"Yes. Stay here. This is for me alone."

And he rode back to Wilbur, who swung his horse close alongside. However hard
he had followed in the pursuit of happiness and the golden hair of Mary Brown,
his face was drawn with lines of age and his eyes circled with shadows.

He said: "I've kept close on her trail, Pierre, and the nearest she has come
to kindness has been to send me back with a message to you."

He laughed without mirth, and the sound stopped abruptly.

"This is the message in her own words: 'I love him, Dick, and there's nothing
in the world for me without him. Bring him back to me. I don't care how; but
bring him back.' So tell Jack to ride the trail alone to-day and go back with
me. I give her up, not freely, but because I know there's no hope for me."

But Pierre answered: "Wherever I've gone there's been luck for me and hell
for every one around me. I lived with a priest, Dick, and left him when I was
nearly old enough to begin repaying his care. I came South and found a father
and lost him the same day. I gambled for money with which to bury him, and a man
died that night and another was hurt. I escaped from the town by riding a horse
to death. I was nearly killed in a landslide, and now the men who saved me from
that are done for.

"It's all one story, the same over and over. Can I carry a fortune like that
back to her? Dick, it would haunt me by day and by night. She would be the next.
I know it as I know that I'm sitting in the saddle here. That's my answer. Carry
it back to her."

"I won't lie and tell you I'm sorry, because I'm a fool and still have a
ghost of a hope, but this will be hard news to tell her, and I'd rather give
five years of life than face the look that will come in her eyes."

"I know it, Dick."

"But this is final?"

"It is."

"Then good-bye again, andGod bless you, Pierre."

"And you, old fellow."

They swerved their horses in opposite directions and galloped apart.

"It was nothing," said Pierre to Jack, when he came up with her and drew his
horse down to a trot. But he knew that she had read his mind, and for an hour
they could not look each other in the face.

But all day through the mazes of canon and hill and rolling ground they
searched patiently. There was no cranny in the rocks too small for them to
reconnoiter with caution. There was no group of trees they did not examine.

Yet it was not strange that they failed. In the space of every square mile
there were a hundred hiding-places which might have served McGurk. It would have
taken a month to comb the country. They had only a day, and left the result to
chance, but chance failed them. When the shadows commenced to swing across the
gullies they turned back and rode with downward heads, silent.

One hill lay between them and the old ranch-house which had been the
headquarters for their gang so many days, when they saw a faint drift of smoke
across the skynot a thin column of smoke such as rises from a chimney, but a
broad stream of pale mist, as if a dozen chimneys were spouting wood-smoke at
once.

They exchanged glances and spurred their horses up the last slope. As always
in a short spurt, the long-legged black of Jacqueline out-distanced the
cream-colored mare, and it was she who first topped the rise of land. The girl
whirled in her saddle with raised arm, screamed back at Pierre, and rode on at a
still more furious pace.

What he saw when he reached a corresponding position was the ranch-house
wreathed in smoke, and through all the lower windows was the red dance of
flames. Before him fled Jacqueline with all the speed of the black. He loosened
the reins, spoke to the mare, and she responded with a mighty rush. Even that
tearing pace could not quite take him up to the girl, but he flung himself from
the saddle and was at her side when she ran across the smoking veranda and
wrenched at the front door.

The whole frame gave back at her, and as Pierre snatched her to one side the
doorway fell crashing on the porch, while a mighty volume of smoke burst out at
them like a puff from the pit.

They stood sputtering, coughing, and choking, and when they could look again
they saw a solid wall of red flame, thick, impenetrable, shuddering with the
breath of the wind.