Riders of the Silences (7 page)

"I'm so happy, Pierre. I was never so happy."

And he said, with his eyes on the approaching ruin:

"It was your singing that brought me to you. Will you sing again?"

"I sang because I knew that when I sang the sound would carry farther through
the wind than if I called for help. What shall I sing for you now, Pierre?"

"What you sang when I came to you."

And the light, sweet voice rose easily through the sweep of the wind. She
smiled as she sang, and the smile and music were all for Pierre, he knew, and
all the pathos of the climax was for him; but through the last stanza of the
song the rumble of the approaching death grew louder, and as she ended he threw
himself beside her and gathered her into protecting arms.

She cried: "Pierre! What is it?"

"I must keep you warm; the snow will eat away your strength."

"No; it's more than that. Tell me, Pierre! You don't trust the power of the
cross?"

"Are you afraid?"

"Oh, no; I'm not afraid, Pierre."

"If one life would be enough, I'd give mine a thousand times. Mary, we are to
die."

A small arm slipped around his necka cold hand pressed against his cheek.

"Pierre."

"Yes."

The thunder broke above them with a mighty roaring.

"You have no fear."

"Mary, if I had died alone I would have dropped down to hell under my sins;
but, with your arm around me, you'll take me with you. Hold me close."

"With all my heart, Pierre. SeeI'm not afraid. It is like going to sleep.
What wonderful dreams we'll have!"

And then the black mass of the landslide swept upon them.

Down all the length of the mountain-desert and across its width of rocks and
mountains and valleys and stern plateaus there is a saying: "You can tell a man
by the horse he rides." For most other important things are apt to go by
opposites, which is the usual way in which a man selects his wife. With dogs,
for instancea quiet man is apt to want an active dog, and a tractable fellow
may keep the most vicious of wolf-dogs.

But when it comes to a horse, a man's heart speaks for itself, and if he has
sufficient knowledge of the king of beasts he will choose a sympathetic mount. A
dainty woman loves a neat-stepping saddle-horse; a philosopher likes a nodding,
stumble-footed nag which will jog all day long and care not a whit whether it
goes up dale or down.

To know the six wild riders who galloped over the white reaches of the
mountain-desert this night, certainly their horses should be studied first and
the men secondly, for the one explained the other.

They came in a racing triangle. Even the storm at its height could not daunt
such furious riders. At the point of the triangle thundered a mighty black
stallion, his muzzle and his broad chest flecked with white foam, for he
stretched his head out and champed at the bit with ears laid flat back, as
though even that furious pace gave him no opportunity to use fully his strength.

He was no cleanly cut beauty, but an ugly headed monster with a savagely
hooked Roman nose and small, keen eyes, always red at the corners. A medieval
baron in full panoply of plate armor would have chosen such a charger among ten
thousand steeds, yet the black stallion needed all his strength to uphold the
unarmored giant who bestrode him, a savage figure.

When the broad brim of his hat flapped up against the wind the moonshine
caught at shaggy brows, a cruelly arched nose, thin, straight lips, and a
forward-thrusting jaw. It seemed as if nature had hewn him roughly and designed
him for a primitive age where he could fight his way with hands and teeth.

This was Jim Boone. To his right and a little behind him galloped a riderless
horse, a beautiful young animal continually tossing its head and looking as if
for guidance at the big stallion.

To the left strode a handsome bay with pricking ears. A mound interfered with
his course, and he cleared it in magnificent style that would have brought a
cheer from the lips of any English lover of the chase.

Straight in the saddle sat Dick Wilbur, and he raised his face a little to
the wind, smiling faintly as if he rejoiced in its fine strength, as handsome as
the horse he rode, as cleanly cut, as finely bred. The moon shone a little
brighter on him than on any others of the six stark riders.

Bud Mansie behind, for instance, kept his head slightly to one side and
cursed beneath his breath at the storm and set his teeth at the wind. His horse,
delicately formed, with long, slender legs, could not have endured that charge
against the storm save that it constantly edged behind the leaders and let them
break the wind. It carried less weight than any other mount of the six, and its
strength was cunningly nursed by the rider so that it kept its place, and at the
finish it would be as strong as any and swifter, perhaps, for a sudden, short
effort, just as Bud Mansie might be numbed through all his nervous, slender
body, but never too numb for swift and deadly action.

On the opposite wing of the flying wedge galloped a dust-colored gray, ragged
of mane and tail, and vindictive of eye, like its down-headed rider, who shifted
his glance rapidly from side to side and watched the ground closely before his
horse as if he were perpetually prepared for danger.

He distrusted the very ground over which his mount strode. For all this he
seemed the least formidable of all the riders. To see him pass none could have
suspected that this was Black Morgan Gandil.

Last of the crew came two men almost as large as Jim Boone himself, on strong
steady-striding horses. They came last in this crew, but among a thousand other
long-riders they would have ridden first, either red-faced, good-humored,
loud-voiced Garry Patterson, or Phil Branch, stout-handed, blunt of jaw, who
handled men as he had once hammered red iron at the forge.

Each of them should have ridden alone in order to be properly appreciated. To
see them together was like watching a flock of eagles every one of which should
have been a solitary lord of the air. But after scanning that lordly train which
followed, the more terrible seemed the rider of the great black horse.

Yet the king was sad, and the reason for his sadness was the riderless horse
which galloped so freely beside him. His son had ridden that horse when they set
out, and all the way down to the railroad Handsome Hal Boone had kept his mount
prancing and curveting and had ridden around and around tall Dick Wilbur,
playing pranks, and had teased his father's black until the big stallion lashed
out wildly with furious heels.

It was the memory of this that kept the grave shadow of a smile on the
father's lips for all the sternness of his eyes. He never turned his head, for,
looking straight forward, he could conjure up the laughing vision; but when he
glanced to the empty saddle he heard once more the last unlucky shot fired from
the train as they raced off with their booty, and saw Hal reel in his saddle and
pitch forward; and how he had tried to check his horse and turn back; and how
big Dick Wilbur, and Patterson, and mighty-handed Phil Branch had forced him to
go on and leave that form lying motionless on the snow.

At that he groaned, and spurred the black, and so the cavalcade rushed faster
and faster through the night.

They came over a sharp ridge and veered to the side just in time, for all the
further slope was a mass of treacherous sand and rubble and raw rocks and mud,
where a landslide had stripped the hill to the stone.

As they veered about the ruin and thundered on down to the foot of the hill,
Jim Boone threw up his hand for a signal and brought his stallion to a halt on
back-braced, sliding legs.

For a metallic glitter had caught his eye, and then he saw, half covered by
the pebbles and dirt, the figure of a man. He must have been struck by the
landslide and not overwhelmed by it, but rather carried before it like a stick
in a rush of water. At the outermost edge of the wave he lay with the rocks and
dirt washed over him. Boone swung from the saddle and lifted Pierre le Rouge.

The gleam of metal was the cross which his fingers still gripped. Boone
examined it with a somewhat superstitious caution, took it from the nerveless
fingers, and slipped it into a pocket of Pierre's shirt. A small cut on the
boy's forehead showed where the stone struck which knocked him senseless, but
the cut still bleda small tricklePierre lived. He even stirred and groaned and
opened his eyes, large and deeply blue.

It was only an instant before they closed, but Boone had seen. He turned with
the figure lifted easily in his arms as if Pierre had been a child fallen asleep
by the hearth and now about to be carried off to bed.

And the outlaw said: "I've lost my boy to-night. This here one was given me
by the will ofGod."

Black Morgan Gandil reined his horse close by, leaned to peer down, and the
shadow of his hat fell across the face of Pierre.

"There's no good comes of savin' shipwrecked men. Leave him where you found
him, Jim. That's my advice. Sidestep a red-headed man. That's what I say."

The quick-stepping horse of Bud Mansie came near, and the rider wiped his
blue, stiff lips, and spoke from the side of his mouth, a prison habit of the
line that moves in the lock-step: "Take it from me, Jim, there ain't any place
in our crew for a man you've picked up without knowing him beforehand. Let him
lay, I say."

But big Dick Wilbur was already leading up the horse of Hal Boone, and into
the saddle Jim Boone swung the inert body of Pierre. The argument was settled,
for every man of them knew that nothing could turn Boone back from a thing once
begun. Yet there were muttered comments that drew Black Morgan Gandil and Bud
Mansie together.

And Gandil, from the South Seas, growled with averted eyes:

"This is the most fool stunt the chief has ever pulled."

"Right, pal," answered Mansie. "You take a snake in out of the cold, and it
bites you when it comes to in the warmth; but the chief has started, and there
ain't nothing that'll make him stop, except maybe God or McGurk."

And Black Gandil answered with his evil, sudden grin: "Maybe McGurk, but not
God."

They started on again with Garry Patterson and Dick Wilbur riding close on
either side of Pierre, supporting his limp body. It delayed the whole gang, for
they could not go on faster than a jog-trot. The wind, however, was falling off
in violence. Its shrill whistling ceased, at length, and they went on,
accompanied only by the harsh crunching of the snow underfoot.

Consciousness returned to Pierre like the light of the rising moon which
breaks dimly through the window and makes all the objects in a room grotesquely
large and blackly shadowed. Many a time his eyes opened, and he saw nothing, but
when he did see and hear it was by vague glimpses.

He heard the crying crunch of the snow underfoot; he heard the panting and
snorting of the horses; he felt the swing and jolt of the saddle beneath him; he
saw the grim faces of the long-riders, and he said: "The law has taken me."

Thereafter he let his will lapse, and surrendered to the sleepy numbness
which assailed his brain in waves. He was riding without support by this time,
but it was an automatic effort. There was no more real life in him than in a
dummy figure. It was not the effect of the blow. It was rather the long exposure
and the over-exertion of nerves and mind and body during the evening and night.
He had simply collapsed beneath the strain.

But an old army man has said: "Give me a soldier of eighteen or twenty. In a
single day he may not march quite so far as a more mature man or carry quite so
much weight. He will go to sleep each night dead to the world. But in the
morning he awakens a new man. He is like a slate from which all the writing has
been erased. He is ready for a new day and a new world. Thirty days of
campaigning leaves him as strong and fresh as ever.

"Thirty days of campaigning leaves the old soldier a wreck. Why? Because as a
man grows older he loses the ability to sleep soundly. He carries the nervous
strain of one day over to the next. Life is a serious problem to a man over
thirty. To a man under thirty it is simply a game. For my part, give me men who
can play at war."

So it was with Pierre le Rouge. He woke with a faint heaviness of head, and
stretched himself. There were many sore places, but nothing more. He looked up,
and the slant winter sun cut across his face and made a patch of bright yellow
on the wall beside him.

Next he heard a faint humming, and, turning his head, saw a boy of fourteen
or perhaps a little more, busily cleaning a rifle in a way that betokened the
most expert knowledge of the weapon. Pierre himself knew rifles as a preacher
knows his Bible, and as he lay half awake and half asleep he smiled with
enjoyment to see the deft fingers move here and there, wiping away the oil. A
green hand will spend half a day cleaning a gun, and then do the work
imperfectly; an expert does the job efficiently in ten minutes. This was an
expert.

Undoubtedly this was a true son of the mountain desert. He wore his old
slouch hat even in the house, and his skin was that olive brown which comes from
many years of exposure to the wind and sun. At the same time there was a
peculiar fineness about the boy. His feet were astonishingly small and the hands
thin and slender for all their supple strength. And his neck was not bony, as it
is in most youths at this gawky age, but smoothly rounded.

Men grow big of bone and sparse of flesh in the mountain desert. It was the
more surprising to Pierre to see this young fellow with the marvelously
delicate-cut features. By some freak of nature here was a place where the breed
ran to high blood.