Riders of the Silences (19 page)

While they stared a stronger breath of that wind tore the wall of flames
apart, driving it back in a raging tide to either side. The fire had circled the
walls of the entire room, but it had scarcely encroached on the center, and
there, seated at the table, was Boone.

He had scarcely changed from the position in which they last saw him, save
that he was fallen somewhat deeper in the chair, his head resting against the
top of the back. He greeted them, through that infernal furnace, with laughter,
and wide, steady eyes. At least it seemed laughter, for the mouth was agape and
the lips grinned back, but there was no sound from the lips and no light in the
fixed eyes.

Laughter indeed it was, but it was the laughter of death, as if the soul of
the man, in dying, recognized its natural wild element and had burst into
convulsive mirth. So he sat there, untouched as yet by the wide river of fire,
chuckling at his destiny. The wall of fire closed across the doorway again and
the work of red ruin went on with a crashing of timbers from the upper part of
the building.

As that living wall shut solidly, Jacqueline leaped forward, shouting, like a
man, words of hope and rescue; Pierre caught her barely in timea precarious
grasp on the wrist from which she nearly wrenched herself free and gained the
entrance to the fire. But the jerk threw her off balance for the least fraction
of an instant, and the next moment she was safe in his arms.

Safe? He might as well have held a wildcat, or captured with his bare hands a
wild eagle, strong of talon and beak. She tore and raged in a wild fury.

"Pierre, coward, devil!"

"Steady, Jack!"

"Are you going to let him die?"

"Don't you see? He's already dead."

"You lie. You only fear the fire!"

"I tell you, McGurk has been here before us."

Her arm was freed by a twisting effort and she beat him furiously across the
face. One blow cut his lip and a steady trickle of hot blood left a taste of
salt in his mouth.

"You young fiend!" he cried, and grasped both her wrists with a crushing
force.

She leaned and gnashed at his hands, but he whirled her about and held her
from behind, impotent, raging still.

"A hundred McGurks could never have killed him!"

There was a sharp explosion from the midst of the fire.

"See! He's fighting against his death!"

"No! No! It's only the falling of a timber!"

Yet with a panic at his heart he knew that it was the sharp crack of a
firearm.

"Liar again! Pierre, for God's sake, do something for him. Father! He's
fighting for his life!"

Another and another explosion from the midst of the fire. He understood then.

"The flames have reached his guns. That's all, Jack. Don't you see? We'd be
throwing ourselves away to run into those flames."

Realization came to her at last. A heavy weight slumped down suddenly over
his arms. He held her easily, lightly. Her head had tilted back, and the red
flare of the fire beat across her face and throat. The roar of the flames shut
out all other thought of the world and cast a wide inferno of light around them.

Higher and higher rose the fires, and the wind cut off great fragments and
hurried them off into the night, blowing them, it seemed, straight up against
the piled thunder of the clouds. Then the roof sagged, swayed, and fell
crashing, while a vast cloud of sparks and livid fires shot up a hundred feet
into the air. It was as if the soul of old Boone had departed in that final
flare.

It started the girl into sudden life, surprising Pierre, so that she managed
to wrench herself free and ran from him. He sprang after her with a shout,
fearing that in her hysteria she might fling herself into the fire, but that was
not her purpose. Straight to the black horse she ran, swung into the saddle with
the ease of a man, and rode furiously off through the falling of the night.

He watched her with a curious closing of loneliness like a hand about his
heart. He had failed, and because of that failure even Jacqueline was leaving
him. It was strange, for since the loss of the girl of the yellow hair and those
deep blue eyes, he had never dreamed that another thing in life could pain him.

So at length he mounted the mare again and rode slowly down the hill and out
toward the distant ranges, trotting mile after mile with downward head, not
caring even if McGurk should cross him, for surely this was the final end of the
world to Pierre le Rouge.

About midnight he halted at last, for the uneasy sway of the mare showed that
she was nearly dead on her feet with weariness. He found a convenient place for
a camp, built his fire, and wrapped his blanket about him without thinking of
food.

He never knew how long he sat there, for his thoughts circled the world and
back again and found all a prospect of desert before him and behind, until a
sound, a vague sound out of the night startled him into alertness. He slipped
from beside the fire and into the shadow of a steep rock, watching with eyes
that almost pierced the dark on all sides.

And there he saw her creeping up on the outskirts of the firelight, prone on
her hands and knees, dragging herself up like a young wildcat hunting prey; it
was the glimmer of her eyes that he caught first through the gloom. A cold
thought came to him that she had returned with her gun ready.

Inch by inch she came closer, and now he was aware of her restless glances
probing on all sides of the camp-fire. Silenceonly the crackling of a pitchy
stick. And then he heard a muffled sound, soft, soft as the beating of a heart
in the night, and regularly pulsing. It hurt him infinitely, and he called
gently: "Jack, why are you weeping?"

She started up with her fingers twisted at the butt of her gun.

"It's a lie," called a tremulous voice. "Why should I weep?"

And then she ran to him.

"Oh, Pierre, I thought you were gone!"

That silence which came between them was thick with understanding greater
than speech. He said at last:

"I've made my plan. I am going straight for the higher mountains and try to
shake McGurk off my trail. There's one chance in ten I may succeed, and if I do
then I'll wait for my chance and come down on him, for sooner or later we have
to fight this out to the end."

"I know a place he could never find," said Jacqueline. "The old cabin in the
gulley between the Twin Bears. We'll start for it to-night."

"Not we," he answered. "Jack, here's the end of our riding together."

She frowned with puzzled wonder.

He explained: "One man is stronger than a dozen. That's the strength of
McGurkthat he rides alone. He's finished your father's men. There's only Wilbur
left, and Wilbur will go nextthen me!"

She stretched her hands to him. She seemed to be pleading for her very life.

"But if he finds us and has to fight us bothI shoot as straight as a man,
Pierre!"

"Straighter than most. And you're a better pal than any I've ever ridden
with. But I must go alone. It's only a lone wolf that will ever bring down
McGurk. Think how he's rounded us up like a herd of cattle and brought us down
one by one."

"By getting each man alone and killing him from behind."

"From the front, Jack. No, he's fought square with each one. The wounds of
Black Gandil were all in front, and when McGurk and I meet it's going to be face
to face."

Her tone changed, softened: "But what of me, Pierre?"

"You have to leave this life. Go down to the city, Jack. Live like a woman;
marry some lucky fellow; be happy."

"Can you leave me so easily?"

"No, it's hard, devilish hard to part with a pal like you, Jack; but all the
rest of my life I've got hard things to face, partner."

"Partner!" she repeated with an indescribable emphasis. "Pierre, I can't
leave you."

"Why?"

"I'm afraid to go. Let me stay!"

He said gloomily: "No good will come of it."

"I'll never trouble younever!"

"No, the bad luck comes on the people who are with me, but never on me. It's
struck them all down, one by one; your turn is next, Jack. If I could leave the
cross behind"

He covered his face, and groaned: "But I don't dare; I don't dare! I have to
face McGurk. Jack, I hate myself for it, but I can't help it. I'm afraid of
McGurk, afraid of that damned white face, that lowered, fluttering eyelid, that
sneering mouth. Without the cross to bring me luck, how could I meet him? But
while I keep the cross there's ruin and hell without end for every one with me."

She was white and shaking. She said: "I'm not afraid. I've one friend left;
there's nothing else to care for."

"So it's to be this way, Jack?"

"This way, and no other."

"Partner, I'm glad. My God, Jack, what a man you would have made!"

Their hands met and clung together, and her head had drooped, perhaps in
acquiescence.

Dick Wilbur, telling Mary how Pierre had cut himself adrift, did not even
pretend to sorrow, and she listened to him with her eyes fixed steadily on his
own. As a matter of fact, she had shown neither hope nor excitement from the
moment he came back to her and started to tell his message. But if she showed
neither hope nor excitement for herself, surely she gave Dick still fewer
grounds for any optimistic foresights.

So he finished gloomily: "And as far as I can make out, Pierre is right.
There's some rotten bad luck that follows him. It may not be the crossI don't
suppose you believe in superstition like that, Miss Brown?"

She said: "It saved my life."

"The cross?"

"Yes."

"Then Pierreyou meanyou met before the danceyou mean"

He was stammering so that he couldn't finish his thoughts, and she broke in:
"If he will not come to me, then I must go to him."

"Follow Pierre le Rouge?" queried Wilbur. "Miss Brown, you're an optimist.
But that's because you've never seen him ride. I consider it a good day's work
to start out with him and keep within sight till night, but as for following and
overtaking himha, ha, ha, ha!"

He laughed heartily at the thought.

And she smiled a little sadly, answering: "But I have the most boundless
patience in the world. He may gallop all the way, but I will walk, and keep on
walking, and reach him in the end. I am not very strong, but"

Her hands moved out as though testing their power, gripping at the air.

"Where will you go to hunt for him?"

"I don't know. But every evening, when I look out at the sunset hills, with
the purple along the valleys, I think that he must be out there somewhere, going
toward the highest ranges. If I were up in that country I know that I could find
him."

"Never in a thousand years."

"Why?"

"Because he's on the trail"

"On the trail?"

"Of McGurk."

She started.

"What is this man McGurk? I hear of him on all sides. If one of the men rides
a bucking horse successfully, some one is sure to say: 'Who taught you what you
know, BudMcGurk?' And then the rest laugh. The other day a man was pointed out
to me as an expert shot. 'Not as fast as McGurk,' it was said, 'but he shoots
just as straight.' Finally I asked some one about McGurk. The only answer I
received was: 'I hope you never find out what he is.' Tell me, what is McGurk?"

Wilbur considered the question gravely.

He said at last: "McGurk ishell!"

He expanded his statement: "Think of a man who can ride anything that walks
on four feet, who never misses with either a rifle or a revolver, who doesn't
know the meaning of fear, and then imagine that man living by himself and
fighting the rest of the world like a lone wolf. That's McGurk. He's never had a
companion; he's never trusted any man. Perhaps that's why they say about him the
same thing that they say about me."

"What's that?"

"You will smile when you hear. They say that McGurk will lose out in the end
on account of some woman."

"And they say that of you?"

"They say right of me. I know it myself. Look at me now? What right have I
here? If I'm found I'm the meat of the first man who sights me, but here I stay,
and wait and watch for your smileslike a love-sick boy. By Jove, you must
despise me, Mary!"

"I don't try to understand you Westerners," she answered, "and that's why I
have never questioned you before. Tell me, why is it that you come so stealthily
to see me and run away as soon as any one else appears?"

He said with wonder: "Haven't you guessed?"

"I don't dare guess."

"But you have, and your guess was right. There's a price on my head. By
right, I should be out there on the ranges with Pierre le Rouge and McGurk.
There's the only safe place; but I saw you and I came down out of the wilds and
can't go back. I'll stay, I suppose, till I run my head into a halter."

She was too much moved to speak for a moment, and then: "You come to me in
spite of that? Dick, whatever you have done, I know that it's only chance which
made you go wrong, just as it made Pierre. I wish"

The dimness of her eyes encouraged him with a great hope. He stole closer to
her.

He repeated: "You wish"

"That you could be satisfied with a mere friendship. I could give you that,
Dick, with all my heart."

He stepped back and smiled somewhat grimly on her.

She went on: "And this McGurkwhat do you mean when you say that Pierre is on
his trail?"

"Hunting him with a gun."

She grew paler and trembled, but her voice remained steady. It was always
that way; at the very moment when he expected her to quail, some inner strength
bore her up and baffled him.

"But in all those miles of mountains they may never meet?"

"They can't stay apart any more than iron can stay away from a magnet.
Listen: half a dozen years ago McGurk had the reputation of bearing a charmed
life. He had been in a hundred fights and he was never touched with either a
knife or a bullet. Then he crossed Pierre le Rouge when Pierre was only a
youngster just come onto the range. He put two bullets through Pierre, but the
boy shot him from the floor and wounded him for the first time. The charm of
McGurk was broken.