Riders of the Silences (20 page)

"For half a dozen years McGurk was gone; there was never a whisper about him.
Then he came back and went on the trail of Pierre. He has killed the friends of
Pierre one by one; Pierre himself is the next in orderPierre or myself. And
when those two meet there will be the greatest fight that was ever staged in the
mountain-desert."

She stood straight, staring past Wilbur with hungry eyes.

"I knew he needed me. I have to save him, Dick. You see that? I have to bring
him down from the mountains and keep him safe from McGurk. McGurk! somehow the
sound means what 'devil' used to mean to me."

"You've never traveled alone, and yet you'd go up there and brave everything
that comes for the sake of Pierre? What has he done to deserve it, Mary?"

"What have I done, Dick, to deserve the care you have for me?"

He stared gloomily on her.

"When do you start?"

"To-night."

"Your friends won't let you go."

"I'll steal away and leave a note behind me."

"And you'll go alone?"

She caught at a hope.

"Unless you'll go with me, Dick?"

"I? Take youto Pierre?"

She did not speak to urge him, but in the silence her beauty pleaded for her.

He said: "Mary, how lovely you are. If I go I will have you for a few
daysfor a week at most, all to myself."

She shook her head. From the window behind her the sunset light flared in her
hair, flooding it with red-gold against which her skin was marvelously delicate
and white, and the eyes of the deepest blue.

"All the time that we are gone, you will never say things like this, Dick?"

"I suppose not. I should be near you, but terribly far away from your
thoughts all the while. Still, you will be near. You will be very beautiful,
Mary, riding up the trail through the pines, with all the scents of the
evergreens blowing about you, and Iwell, I must go back to a second childhood
and play a game of suppose"

"A game of what?"

"Of supposing that you are really mine, Mary, and riding out into the
wilderness for my sake."

She stepped a little closer, peering into his face.

"No matter what you suppose, I'm sure you'll leave that part of it merely a
game, Dick!"

He laughed suddenly, though the sound broke off as short and sharp as it
began.

"Haven't I played a game all my life with the fair ladies? And have I
anything to show for it except laughter? I'll go with you, Mary, if you'll let
me."

"Dick, you've a heart of gold! What shall I take?"

"I'll make the pack up, and I'll be back here an hour after dark and whistle.
Like this"

And he gave the call of Boone's gang.

"I understand. I'll be ready. Hurry, Dick, for we've very little time."

He hesitated, then: "All the time we're on the trail you must be far from me,
and at the end of it will be Pierre le Rougeand happiness for you. Before we
start, Mary, I'd like to"

It seemed that she read his mind, for she slipped suddenly inside his arms,
kissed him, and was gone from the room. He stood a moment with a hand raised to
his face.

"After all," he muttered, "that's enough to die for, and" He threw up his
long arms in a gesture of infinite resignation.

"The will of God be done!" said Wilbur, and laughed again.

She was ready, crouched close to the window of her room, when the signal
came, but first she was not sure, because the sound was as faint as a memory.
Moreover, it might have been a freakish whistling in the wind, which rose
stronger and stronger. It had piled the thunder-clouds high and higher, and now
and again a heavy drop of rain tapped at her window like a thrown pebble.

So she waited, and at last heard the whistle a second time, unmistakably
clear. In a moment she was hurrying down to the stable, climbed into the saddle,
and rode at a cautious trot out among the sand-hills.

For a time she saw no one, and commenced to fear that the whole thing had
been a gruesomely real, practical jest. So she stopped her horse and imitated
the signal whistle as well as she could. It was repeated immediately behind
heralmost in her ear, and she turned to make out the dark form of a tall
horseman.

"A bad night for the start," called Wilbur. "Do you want to wait till
to-morrow?"

She could not answer for a moment, the wind whipping against her face, while
a big drop stung her lips.

She said at length: "Would a night like this stop Pierreor McGurk?"

For answer she heard his laughter.

"Then I'll start. I must never stop for weather."

He rode up beside her.

"This is the start of the finish."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing. But somewhere on this ride, I've an idea a question will be
answered for me."

"What question?"

Instead of replying he said: "You've got a slicker on?"

"Yes."

"Then follow me. We'll gallop into the wind a while and get the horses warmed
up. Afterward we'll take the valley of the Old Crow and follow it up to the
crest of the range."

His horse lunged out ahead of hers, and she followed, leaning far forward
against a wind that kept her almost breathless. For several minutes they
cantered steadily, and before the end of the gallop she was sitting straight up,
her heart beating fast, a faint smile on her lips, and the blood running hot in
her veins. For the battle was begun, she knew, by that first sharp gallop, and
here at the start she felt confident of her strength. When she met Pierre she
could force him to turn back with her.

Wilbur checked his horse to a trot; they climbed a hill, and just as the rain
broke on them with a rattling gust they swung into the valley of the Old Crow.
Above them in the sky the thunder rode; the rain whipped against the rocks like
the rattle of a thousand flying hoofs; and now and again the lightning flashed
across the sky.

Through that vast accompaniment they moved on in the night straight toward
the heart of the mountains which sprang into sight with every flash of the
lightning and seemed toppling almost above them, yet they were weary miles away,
as she knew.

By those same flashes she caught glimpses of the face of Wilbur. She hardly
knew him. She had seen him always big, gentle, handsome, good-natured; now he
was grown harder, with a stern set of the jaw, and a certain square outline of
face. It had seemed impossible. Now she began to guess how the law could have
placed a price upon his head. For he belonged out here with the night and the
crash of the storm, with free, strong, lawless things about him.

An awe grew up in her, and she was filled half with dread and half with
curiosity at the thought of facing him, as she must many a time, across the
camp-fire. In a way, he was the ladder by which she climbed to an understanding
of Pierre le Rouge, Red Pierre. For that Pierre, she knew, was to big Wilbur
what Dick himself was to the great mass of law-abiding men. Accident had cut
Wilbur adrift, but it was more than accident which started Pierre on the road to
outlawry; it was the sheer love of dangerous chance, the glory in fighting other
men. This was Pierre.

What was the man for whom Pierre hunted? What was McGurk? Not even the
description of Wilbur had proved very enlightening. Her thought of him was
vague, nebulous, and taking many forms. Sometimes he was tall and dark and
stern. Again he was short and heavy and somewhat deformed of body. But always he
was everywhere in the night about her.

She guessed at his voice rumbling through an echo of the thunder; she heard
the sound of his pursuing horse in the rattle of the following rain. Her work
was to keep this relentless lone rider away from Pierre; it was as if she strove
to keep the ocean tide away from the shore. They seemed doomed to meet and
shock.

All this she pondered as they began the ride up the valley, but as the long
journey continued, and the hours and the miles rolled past them, a racking
weariness possessed her and numbed her mind. She began to wish desperately for
morning, but even morning might not bring an end to the ride. That would be at
the will of the outlaw beside her. Finally, only one picture remained to her. It
stabbed across the darkness of her mindthe red hair and the keen eyes of
Pierre.

The storm decreased as they went up the valley. Finally the wind fell off to
a pleasant breeze, and the clouds of the rain broke in the center of the heavens
and toppled west in great tumbling masses. In half an hour's time the sky was
clear, and a cold moon looked down on the blue-black evergreens, shining faintly
with the wet, and on the dead black of the mountains.

For the first time in all that ride her companion spoke: "In an hour the gray
will begin in the east. Suppose we camp here, eat, get a bit of sleep, and then
start again?"

As if she had waited for permission, fighting against her weariness, she now
let down the bars of her will, and a tingling stupor swept over her body and
broke in hot, numbing waves on her brain.

"Whatever you say. I'm afraid I couldn't ride much further to-night."

"Look up at me."

She raised her head.

"No; you're all in. But you've made a game ride. I never dreamed there was so
much iron in you. We'll make our fire just inside the trees and carry water up
from the river, eh?"

A scanty growth of the evergreens walked over the hills and skirted along the
valley, leaving a broad, sandy waste in the center where the river at times
swelled with melted snow or sudden rains and rushed over the lower valley in a
broad, muddy flood.

At the edge of the forest he picketed the horses in a little open space
carpeted with wet, dead grass. It took him some time to find dry wood. So he
wrapped her in blankets and left her sitting on a saddle. As the chill left her
body she began to grow delightfully drowsy, and vaguely she heard the crack of
his hatchet. He had found a rotten stump and was tearing off the wet outer bark
to get at the dry wood within.

After that it was only a moment before a fire sputtered feebly and smoked at
her feet. She watched it, only half conscious, in her utter weariness, and
seeing dimly the hollow-eyed face of the man who stooped above the blaze. Now it
grew quickly, and increased to a sharp-pointed pyramid of red flame. The bright
sparks showered up, crackling and snapping, and when she followed their flight
she saw the darkly nodding tops of the evergreens above her.

With the fire well under way, he took the coffee-pot to get water from the
river, and left her to fry the bacon. The fumes of the frying meat wakened her
at once, and brushed even the thought of her exhaustion from her mind. She was
hungryravenously hungry.

So she tended the bacon slices with care until they grew brown and crisped
and curled at the edges. After that she removed the pan from the fire, and it
was not until then that she began to wonder why Wilbur was so long in returning
with the water. The bacon grew cold; she heated it again and was mightily
tempted to taste one piece of it, but restrained herself to wait for Dick.

Still he did not come. She stood up and called, her high voice rising sharp
and small through the trees. It seemed that some sound answered, so she smiled
and sat down. Ten minutes passed and he was still gone. A cold alarm swept over
her at that. She dropped the pan and ran out from the trees.

Everywhere was the bright moonlightover the wet rocks, and sand, and
glimmering on the slow tide of the river, but nowhere could she see Wilbur, or a
form that looked like a man. Then the moonlight glinted on something at the edge
of the river. She ran to it and found the coffee-can half in the water and
partially filled with sand.

A wild temptation to scream came over her, but the tight muscles of her
throat let out no sound. But if Wilbur were not here, where had he gone? He
could not have vanished into thin air. The ripple of the water washing on the
sand replied. Yes, that Current might have rolled his body away.

To shut out the grim sight of the river she turned. Stretched across the
ground at her feet she saw clearly the impression of a body in the moist sand.

The heels had left two deeply defined gouges in the ground; there was a sharp
hollow where the head had lain, and a broad depression for the shoulders. It was
the impression of the body of a mana large man like Wilbur. Any hope, any doubt
she might have had, slipped from her mind, and despair rolled into it with an
even, sullen current, like the motion of the river.

It is strange what we do with our big moments of fear and sorrow and even of
joy. Now Mary stooped and carefully washed out the coffee-pot, and filled it
again with water higher up the bank; and turned back toward the edge of the
trees.

It was all subconscious, this completing of the task which Wilbur had begun,
and subconscious still was her careful rebuilding of the fire till it flamed
high, as though she were setting a signal to recall the wanderer. But the flame,
throwing warmth and red light across her eyes, recalled her sharply to reality,
and she looked up and saw the dull dawn brightening beyond the dark evergreens.

Guilt, too, swept over her, for she remembered what big, handsome Dick Wilbur
had said: He would meet his end through a woman. Now it had come to him, and
through her.

She cringed at the thought, for what was she that a man should die in her
service? She raised her hands with a moan to the nodding tops of the trees, to
the vast, black sky above them, and the full knowledge of Wilbur's strength came
to her, for had he not ridden calmly, defiantly, into the heart of this
wilderness, confident in his power to care both for himself and for her? But
she! What could she do wandering by herself? The image of Pierre le Rouge grew
dim indeed and sad and distant.