Riders of the Silences (8 page)

The cleaning completed, the boy tossed the butt of the gun to his shoulder
and squinted down the barrel. Then he loaded the magazine, weighted the gun
deftly at the balance, and dropped the rifle across his knees.

"Morning," said Pierre le Rouge cheerily, and swung off the bunk to the
floor. "How old's the gun?"

The boy, without the slightest show of excitement, snapped the butt to his
shoulder and drew a bead on Pierre's breast.

"Sit down before you get all heated up," said a musical voice. "There's
nobody waiting for you on horseback."

And Pierre sat down, partly because Western men never argue a point when that
little black hole is staring them in the face, partly because he remembered with
a rush that the last time he had fully possessed his consciousness he had been
lying in the snow with the cross gripped hard and the toppling mass of the
landslide above him. All that had happened between was blotted from his memory.
He fumbled at his throat. The cross was not there. He touched his pockets.

"Ease your hands away from your hip," said the cold voice of the boy, who had
dropped his gun to the ready with a significant finger curled around the
trigger, "or I'll drill you clean."

Pierre obediently raised his hands to the level of his shoulders. The boy
sneered, and a light of infinite scorn blazed into those great black eyes.

"This isn't a hold-up," he explained. "Put 'em down again, but watch
yourself."

The sneer varied to a contemptuous smile.

"I guess you're tame, all right."

"Point that gun another way, will you, son?"

The boy started and flushed a little.

"Don't call me son."

"Is this a lockupa jail?"

"This?"

"What is it, then? The last I remember I was lying in the snow with"

"I wish to God you'd been let there," said the boy bitterly.

But Pierre, overwhelmed with the endeavor to recollect, rushed on with his
questions and paid no heed to the tone.

"I had a cross in my hand"

The scorn of the boy grew to mighty proportions.

"It's there in the breast-pocket of your shirt."

Pierre drew out the little cross, and the touch of it against his palm
restored whatever of his strength was lacking. Very carefully he attached it to
the chain about his throat. Then he looked up to the contempt of the boy, and as
he did so another memory burst on him and brought him to his feet. The gun went
to the boy's shoulders at the same time.

"When I was foundwas any one else with me?"

"Nope."

"What happened?"

"Must have been buried in the landslide. Half a hill caved in, and the dirt
rolled you down to the bottom. Plain luck, that's all, that kept you from going
out."

"Luck?" said Pierre and he laid his hand against his breast where he could
feel the outline of the cross. "Yes, I suppose it was luck. And she"

He sat down slowly and buried his face in his hands. A new tone came in the
voice of the boy. His tone was thrillingly gentle as he asked: "Was a woman with
you?" But Pierre heard only the tone and not the words. His face was gray when
he looked up again, and his voice hard.

"Tell me as briefly as you can how I come here, and who picked me up."

"My father and his men. They passed you lying on the snow. They brought you
home."

"Who is your father?"

The boy stiffened and his color rose in pride and defiance.

"My father is Jim Boone."

Instinctively, while he stared, the right hand of Pierre le Rouge crept
toward his hip.

"Keep your hand steady," said the boy. "I got a nervous trigger-finger. Yeh,
dad is pretty well known."

"You're his son?"

"I'm Jack Boone."

"But I've heardtell me, do you look like your father?"

Jack Boone smiled, strove to frown, and then burst into surprisingly musical
laughter. It came in bursts and ripples, and seemed that it would never end. His
merriment ended slowly, for he saw the eyes of Pierre stare into blank distance,
and knew that the man with the red hair was thinking of the woman whom the
landslide had buried. Something that was partially sympathy and partially
curiosity altered Jack's expression.

After all, it was very difficult to remain hostile in front of the steady
blue eyes of this stranger.

Pierre said gravely: "Why am I under guard?"

Jack was instantly aflame with the old anger.

"Not because I want you here."

"Who does?"

"Dad."

"Put away your pop-gun and talk sense. I won't try to get away until Jim
Boone comes. I only fight men."

Even the anger and grief of the boy could not keep him from smiling in his
peculiarly winning way.

"Just the same I'll keep the shooting-iron handy. Sit still. A gun don't keep
me from talking sense, does it? You're here to take Hal's place. Hal!"

The little wail told a thousand things, and Pierre, shocked out of the
thought of his own troubles, waited.

"My brother, Hal; he's dead; he died last night, and on the way back dad
found you and brought you to take Hal's place.
Hal's
place!"

The accent showed how impossible it was that Hal's place could be taken by
any mortal man.

"I got orders to keep you here, but if I was to do what I'd like to do, I'd
give you the best horse on the place and tell you to clear out. That's me!"

"Then do it."

"And face dad afterward?"

"Tell him I overpowered you. That would be easy; you a slip of a boy, and me
a man."

"Stranger, it goes to show you may have heard of Jim Boone, but you don't
anyways know him. When he orders a thing done he wants it done, and he don't
care how, and he don't ask questions why. He just raises hell."

"He really expects to keep me here?"

"Expects? He will."

"Going to tie me up?" asked Pierre ironically.

"Maybe," answered Jack, overlooking the irony. "Maybe he'll just put you on
my shoulders to guard."

He moved the gun significantly.

"And I can do it."

"Of course. But he would have to let me go some time."

"Not till you'd promised to stick by him. I told him that myself, but he said
that you're young and that he'd teach you to like this life whether you wanted
to or not. Me speaking personally, I agree with Black Gandil: This is the worst
fool thing that dad has ever done. What do we want with youin Hal's place!"

And a suggestion of a sob came in Jack's voice, though he set his teeth to
keep it back.

"But I've got a thing to do right awayto-day; it can't wait.

"Give dad your word to come back and he'll let you go. He says you're the
kind that will keep your word. You see, he found you with a cross in your hand."

And Jack's lips curled again.

It was all absurd, too impossible to be real. The only real things were the
body of white-handed, yellow-haired Mary Brown under the tumbled rocks and dirt
of the landslide, and the body of Martin Ryder waiting to be placed in that
corner plot where the grass grew quicker than all other grass in the spring of
the year.

However, having fallen among madmen, he must use cunning to get away before
the outlaw and his men came back from wherever they had gone. Otherwise there
would be more bloodshed, more play of guns and hum of lead.

"Tell me of Hal," he said, and dropped his elbows on his knees as if he
accepted his fate.

"Don't know you well enough to talk of Hal."

"I'm sorry."

The boy made a little gesture of apology.

"I guess that was a low-down mean thing to say. Sure I'll tell you about
Halif I can."

For his lips trembled at the thought of the dead.

"Tell me anything you can," said Pierre gently, "because I've got to try to
be like him, haven't I?"

"You could try till rattlers got tame, but it'd take ten like you to make one
like Hal. He was dad's own sonhe was my brother."

The sob came openly now, and the tears were a bright mist in the boy's eyes.

"What's your name?"

"Pierre."

"Pierre? I suppose I got to learn it."

"I suppose so." And he edged farther forward, so that he was sitting only on
the edge of the bunk.

"Please do." And he gathered his feet under him, ready for a spring forward
and a grip at the boy's threatening rifle.

Jack had canted his head a little to one side, smiling faintly for the joy of
the memory.

"Did you ever see a horse that was gentle and yet had never been ridden, or
his spirit broke, Pierre"

Here Pierre made his leap swift as some bobcat of the northern woods; his
hand whipped out as lightning fast as the striking paw of the lynx, and the gun
was jerked from the hands of Jack. Not before the boy clutched at it with a cry
of horror, but the force of the pull sent him lurching to the floor and broke
his grip.

He was up in an instant, however, and a knife of ugly length glittered in his
hand; as he sprang at Pierre his lips were as white as the teeth over which they
snarled.

Pierre tossed aside the rifle and met the attack bare-handed. Deadly swift
was the thrust of the knife, but compared with the motion of Pierre it was as
slow as tame things are when they are likened to the wild.

He caught the knife-bearing hand at the wrist and under his grip the hand
loosened its hold and the steel tinkled on the floor. His other arm caught the
body of Jack in a mighty vise.

There was a brief and futile struggle, and a hissing of breath in the silence
till the hat tumbled from the head of Jack and down over the shoulders streamed
a torrent of silken black hair.

Pierre stepped back. This was the meaning, then, of the strangely small feet
and hands and the low music of the voice. It was the body of a girl that he had
held, and his arm still tingled from the finger-tips to the shoulder.

It was not fear nor shame that made the eyes of Jacqueline so wide as she
stared past Pierre toward the door. He glanced across his shoulder, and blocking
the entrance to the room, literally filling the doorway, was the bulk of Jim
Boone.

"Seems as if I was sort of steppin' in on a little family party," he said.
"I'm sure glad you two got acquainted so quick. Jack, how did you and What the
hell's your name, lad?"

"He tricked me, dad, or he would never have got the gun away from me.
Thisthis Pierrethis beasthe got me to talk of Hal till my eyes filled up and
I couldn't see. Then he stole"

"The point," said Jim Boone coldly, "is that he got the gun. Run along, Jack.
You ain't so growed up as I was thinkin'. Or hold onmaybe you're more grown up.
Which is it? Are you turnin' into a woman, Jack?"

She whirled on Pierre in a white fury.

"You see? You see what you've done? He'll never trust me againnever! Pierre,
I hate you. I'll always hate you. And if Hal were here"

A storm of sobs and tears cut her short, and she disappeared through the
door. Boone and Pierre stood regarding each other critically.

The boy spoke first: "You're not as big as I expected."

"I'm plenty big; but you're older than I thought."

"Too old for what you want of me. The girl told me what that was."

"Not too old to be made what I want."

And his hands passed through a significant gesture of moulding the empty air.
The boy met his eye dauntlessly.

"I suppose," he said, "that I've a pretty small chance of getting away."

"Just about none, Pierre. Come here."

Pierre stepped closer and looked down the hall into another room. There,
about a table, sat the five grimmest riders of the mountain desert that he had
even seen. They were such men as one could judge at a glance, and Pierre made
that instinctive motion for his six-gun.

"The girl," Jim Boone was saying, "kept you pretty busy tryin' to make a
break, and if she could do anything maybe you'd have a pile of trouble with one
of them guardin' you. But if I'd had a good look at you, lad, I'd never have let
Jack take the job of guardin' you."

"Thanks," answered Pierre dryly.

"You got reason; I can see that. Here's the point, Pierre. I know young men
because I can remember pretty close what I was at your age. I wasn't any ladies'
lap dog, at that, but time and older men molded me the way I'm going to mold
you. Understand?"

Pierre was nerved for many things, but the last word made him stir. It roused
in him a red-tinged desire to get through the forest of black beard at the
throat of Boone and dim the glitter of those keen eyes. It brought him also
another thought.

Two great tasks lay before him: the burial of his father and the avenging of
him on McGurk. As to the one, he knew it would be childish madness for him to
attempt to bury his father in Morgantown with only his single hand to hold back
the powers of the law or the friends of the notorious Diaz and crippled Hurley.

And for the other, it was even more vain to imagine that through his own
unaided power he could strike down a figure of such almost legendary terror as
McGurk. The bondage of the gang might be a terrible thing through the future,
but the present need blinded him to what might come.

He said: "Suppose I stop raising questions or making a fight, but give you my
hand and call myself a member"

"Of the family? Exactly. If you did that I'd know it was because you were
wantin' something, Pierre, eh?"

"Two things."

"Lad, I like this way of talk. Onetwoyou hit quick like a two-gun man.
Well, I'm used to paying high for what I get. What's up?"

"The first"

"Wait. Can I help you out by myself, or do you need the gang?"

"The gang."

"Then come, and I'll put it up to them. You first."

It was equally courtesy and caution, and Pierre smiled faintly as he went
first through the door. He stood in a moment under the eyes of five silent men.