Riders of the Silences (9 page)

The booming voice of Jim Boone pronounced:

"This is Pierre. He'll be one of us if he can get the gang to do two things.
I ask you, will you hear him for me, and then pass on whether or not you try his
game?"

They nodded. There were no greetings to acknowledge the introduction. They
waited, eyeing the youth with distrust.

Pierre eyed them in turn, and then he spoke directly to big Dick Wilbur.

"Here's the first: I want to bury a man in Morgantown and I need help to do
it."

Black Gandil snarled: "You heard me, boys; blood to start with. Who's the man
you want us to put out?"

"He's deadmy father."

They came up straight in their chairs like trained actors rising to a stage
crisis. The snarl straightened on the lips of Black Morgan Gandil.

"He's lying in his house a few miles out of Morgantown. As he died he told me
that he wanted to be buried in a corner plot in the Morgantown graveyard. He'd
seen the place and counted it for his a good many years because he said the
grass grew quicker there than any other place, after the snow went."

"A damned good reason," said Garry Patterson. As the idea stuck more deeply
into his imagination he smashed his fist down on the table so that the crockery
on it danced. "A damned good reason, say I!"

"Who's your father?" asked Dick Wilbur, who eyed Pierre more critically but
with less enmity than the rest.

"Martin Ryder."

"A ringer!" cried Bud Mansie, and he leaned forward alertly. "You remember
what I said, Jim?"

"Shut up. Pierre, talk soft and talk quick. We all know Mart Ryder had only
two sons and you're not either of them."

The Northerner grew stiff and as his face grew pale the red mark where the
stone had struck his forehead stood out like a danger signal.

He said slowly: "I'm his son, but not by the mother of those two."

"Was he married twice?"

Pierre was paler still, and there was an uneasy twitching of his right hand
which every man understood.

He barely whispered. "No; damn you!"

But Black Gandil loved evil.

He said, with a marvelously unpleasant smile: "Then she was"

The voice of Dick Wilbur cut in like the snapping of a whip: "Shut up,
Gandil, you devil!"

There were times when not even Boone would cross Wilbur, and this was one of
them.

Pierre went on: "The reason I can't go to Morgantown is that I'm not very
well liked by some of the men there."

"Why not?"

"When my father died there was no money to pay for his burial. I had only a
half-dollar piece. I went to the town and gambled and won a great deal. But
before I came out I got mixed up with a man called Hurley, a professional
gambler."

"And Diaz?" queried a chorus.

"Yes. Hurley was hurt in the wrist and Diaz died. I think I'm wanted in
Morgantown."

Out of a little silence came the voice of Black Gandil: "Dick, I'm thankin'
you now for cuttin' me so short a minute ago."

Phil Branch had not spoken, as usual, but now he repeated, with rapt, far-off
eyes: "'Hurley was hurt in the wrist and Diaz died?' Hurley and Diaz! I played
with Hurley, a couple of times."

"Speakin' personal," said Garry Patterson, his red verging toward purple in
excitement, "which I'm ready to go with you down to Morgantown and bury your
father."

"And do it shipshape," added Black Gandil.

"With all the trimmings," said Bud Mansie, "with all Morgantown joinin' the
mournin' voluntarily under cover of our six-guns."

"Wait," said Boone. "What's the second request?"

"That can wait."

"It's a bigger job than this one?"

"Lots bigger."

"And in the mean time?"

"I'm your man."

They shook hands. Even Black Gandil rose to take his share in the
ceremonyall save Bud Mansie, who had glanced out the window a moment before and
then silently left the room. A bottle of whiskey was produced and glasses filled
all round. Jim Boone brought in the seventh chair and placed it at the table.
They raised their glasses.

"To the empty chair," said Boone.

They drank, and for the first time in his life, the liquid fire went down the
throat of Pierre. He set down his glass, coughing, and the others laughed
good-naturedly.

"Started down the wrong way?" asked Wilbur.

"It's beastly stuff; first I ever drank."

A roar of laughter answered him.

"Still I got an idea," broke in Jim Boone, "that he's worthy of takin' the
seventh chair. Draw it up lad."

Vaguely it reminded Pierre of a scene in some old play with himself in the
role of the hero signing away his soul to the devil, but an interruption kept
him from taking the chair. There was a racket at the doora half-sobbing,
half-scolding voice, and the laughter of a man; then Bud Mansie appeared
carrying Jack in spite of her struggles. He placed her on the floor and held her
hands to protect himself from her fury.

"I glimpsed her through the window," he explained. "She was lining out for
the stable and then a minute later I saw her swing a saddle ontowhat horse
d'you think?"

"Out with it."

"Jim's big Thunder. Yep, she stuck the saddle on big black Thunder and had a
rifle in the holster. I saw there was hell brewing somewhere, so I went out and
nabbed her."

"Jack!" called Jim Boone. "What were you started for?"

Bud Mansie released her arms and she stood with them stiffening at her sides
and her small brown fists clenched.

"Halhe died, and there was nothing but talk about himnothing done. You got
a live man in Hal's place."

She pointed an accusing finger at Pierre.

"Maybe he takes his place for you, but he's not my brotherI hate him. I went
out to get another man to make up for Pierre."

"Well?"

"A dead man. I shoot straight enough for that."

A very solemn silence spread through the room; for every man was watching in
the eyes of the father and daughter the same shining black devil of wrath.

"Jack, get into your room and don't move out of it till I tell you to. D'you
hear?"

She turned on her heel like a soldier and marched from the room.

"Jack."

She stopped in the door but would not turn back, and still the room, watching
that little tragedy, was breathless.

"Jack, don't you love your old dad any more?"

She whirled and ran to him with outstretched arms and clung to him, sobbing.

"Oh, daddear dad," she groaned. "You've broken my heart; you've broken my
heart!"

The others filed softly out of the room and stood bareheaded under the winter
sky.

Bud Mansie, his meager face transformed with wonder, said: "Fellers, what
d'you know about it? Our Jack's grown up."

And Black Gandil answered: "Look at this Pierre frowning at the ground. It
was him that changed her."

The annals of the mountain desert have never been written and can never be
written. They are merely a vast mass of fact and tradition and imagining which
floats from tongue to tongue from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevadas. A man may
be a fact all his life and die only a local celebrity. Then again, he may strike
sparks from that imagination which runs riot by camp-fires and at the bars of
the crossroads saloons.

In that case he becomes immortal. It is not that lies are told about him or
impossible feats ascribed to him, but every detail about him is seized upon and
passed on with a most scrupulous and loving care.

In due time he will become a tradition. That is, he will be known familiarly
at widely separated parts of the range, places which he has never visited. It
has happened to a few of the famous characters of the mountain desert that they
became traditions before their deaths. It happened to McGurk, of course. It also
happened to Red Pierre.

Oddly enough, the tradition of Red Pierre did not begin with his ride from
the school of Father Victor to Morgantown, distant many days of difficult and
dangerous travel. Neither did tradition seize on the gun fight that crippled
Hurley and "put out" wizard Diaz. These things were unquestionably known to
many, but they did not strike the popular imagination. What set men first on
fire was the way Pierre le Rouge buried his father "at the point of the gun" in
Morgantown.

That day Boone's men galloped out of the higher mountains down the trail
toward Morgantown. They stole a wagon out of a ranch stable on the way and tied
two lariats to the tongue. So they towed it, bounding and rattling, over the
rough trail to the house where Martin Ryder lay dead.

His body was placed in state in the body of the wagon, pillowed with
everything in the line of cloth which the house could furnish. Thus equipped
they went on at a more moderate pace toward Morgantown.

What followed it is useless to repeat here. Tradition rehearsed every detail
of that day's work, and the purpose of this narrative is only to give the
details of some of the events which tradition does not know, at least in their
entirety.

They started at one end of Morgantown's street. Pierre guarded the wagon in
the center of the street and kept the people under cover of his rifle. The rest
of Boone's men cleaned out the houses as they went and sent the occupants piling
out to swell the crowd.

And so they rolled the crowd out of town and to the cemetery, where
"volunteers" dug the grave of Martin Ryder wide and deep, and Pierre paid for
the corner plot three times over in gold.

Then a coffinimprovised hastily for the occasion out of a packing-boxwas
lowered reverently, also by "volunteer" mourners, and before the first sod fell
on the dead, Pierre borrowed a long black cloak from one of the women and
wrapped himself in it, in lieu of the robe of the priest, and raised over his
head the crucifix of Father Victor that brought good luck, and intoned a service
in the purest Ciceronian Latin, surely, that ever regaled the ears of
Morgantown's elect.

The moment he raised that cross the bull throat of Jim Boone bellowed a
command, the poised guns of the gang enforced it, and all the crowd dropped to
their knees, leaving the six outlaws scattered about the edges of the mob like
sheep dogs around a folding flock, while in the center stood Pierre with white,
upturned face and the raised cross.

So Martin Ryder was buried with "trimmings," and the gang rode back, laughing
and shouting, through the town and up into the safety of the mountains. Election
day was fast approaching and therefore the rival candidates for sheriff hastily
organized posses and made the usual futile pursuit.

In fact, before the pursuit was well under way, Boone and his men sat at
their supper table in the cabin. The seventh chair was filled; all were present
except Jack, who sulked in her room. Pierre went to her door and knocked. He
carried under his arm a package which he had secured in the General Merchandise
Store of Morgantown.

"We're all waiting for you at the table," he explained.

"Just keep on waiting," said the husky voice of Jacqueline.

"If I leave the table will you come out?"

She stammered: "Yen-no!"

"Yes or no?"

"No, no, no!"

And he heard the stamp of her foot and smiled a little.

"I've brought you a present."

"I hate your presents!"

"It's a thing you've wanted for a long time, Jacqueline."

Only a stubborn silence.

"I'm putting your door a little ajar."

"If you dare to come in I'll"

"And I'm leaving the package right here at the entrance. I'm so sorry,
Jacqueline, that you hate me."

And then he walked off down the hallcunning Pierrebefore she could send her
answer like an arrow after him. At the table he arranged an eighth plate and
drew up a chair before it.

"If that's for Jack," remarked Dick Wilbur, "you're wasting your time. I know
her and I know her type. She'll never come out to the table to-nightnor
to-morrow, either. I know!"

In fact, he knew a good deal too much about girls and women also, did Wilbur,
and that was why he rode the long trails of the mountain-desert with Boone and
his men. Far south and east in the Bahamas a great mansion stood vacant because
he was gone, and the dust lay thick on the carpets and powdered the curtains and
tapestries with a common gray.

He had built it and furnished it for a woman he loved, and afterward for her
sake he had killed a man and fled from a posse and escaped in the steerage of a
west-bound ship. Still the law followed him, and he kept on west and west until
he reached the mountain-desert which thinks nothing of swallowing men and their
reputations.

There he was safe, but some day he would see some woman smile, catch the
glimmer of some eye, and throw safety away to ride after her.

It was a weakness, but what made a tragic figure of handsome Dick Wilbur was
that he knew his weakness and sat still and let fate walk up and overtake him.

Yet Pierre le Rouge answered this man of sorrowful wisdom: "In my part of the
country men say: 'If you would speak of women let money talk for you.'"

And he placed a gold piece on the table.

"She will come out to the supper table."

"She will not," smiled Wilbur, and covered the coin. "Will you take odds?"

"No charity. Who else will bet?"

"I," said Jim Boone instantly. "You figure her for an ordinary sulky kid."

Pierre smiled upon him.

"There's a cut in my shirt where her knife passed through; and that's the
reason that I'll bet on her now."

The whole table covered his coin, with laughter.

"We've kept one part of your bargain, Pierre. We've seen your father buried
in the corner plot. Now, what's the second part?"

"I don't know you well enough to ask you that," said Pierre.

They plied him with suggestions.