Riders of the Silences (27 page)

"You have guarded me like a brother. Be one to me still; I have never needed
one so deeply!"

"A brother? Mary, if your eyes were less blue or your hair less golden I
might be; but you are too beautiful to be only that to me."

"Listen to me"

But she stopped in the midst of her speech, because a white head loomed
beside the dim form. It was the head of a horse, with pricking ears, which now
nosed the shoulder of its master, and she saw the firelight glimmering in the
great eyes.

"Your horse," she said in a trembling voice, "loves you and trusts you."

"It is the only thing which has not feared me. When it was a colt it came out
of the herd and nosed my hand. It is the only thing which has not fought me, as
all men have doneas you are doing now, Mary."

The wind that blew up the gorge came in gusts, not any steady current, but
fitful rushes of air, and on one of these brief blasts it seemed to Mary that
she caught the sound of a voice blown to whistling murmur. It was a vague thing
of which she could not be sure, as faint as a thought. Yet the head of the white
horse disappeared, and the glimmer of the man's face went out.

She called: "Whatever you are, wait! Let me speak!"

But no answer came, and she knew that the form was gone forever.

She cried again: "Who's there?"

"It is I," said a voice at her elbow, and she turned to look into the dark
eyes of Jacqueline.

"So he's gone?" asked Jack bitterly.

She fingered the butt of her gun.

"I thoughtwell, my chance at him is gone."

"But what"

"Bah, if you knew you'd die of fear. Listen to what I have to say. All the
things I told you in the cabin were lies."

"Lies?" said Mary evenly. "No, they proved themselves."

"Be still till I've finished, because if you talk you may make me forget"

The gesture which finished the sentence was so eloquent of hate that Mary
shrank away and put the embers of the fire between them.

"I tell you, it was all a lie, and Pierre le Rouge has never loved anything
but you, you milk-faced, yellow-livered"

She stopped again, fighting against her passion.

The pride of Mary held her stiff and straight, though her voice shook.

"Has he sent you after me with mockery?"

"No, he's given up the hope of you."

"The hope?"

"Don't you see? Are you going to make me crawl to explain? It always seemed
to me that God meant Pierre for me. It always seemed to me that a girl like me
was what he needed. But Pierre had never seen it. Maybe, if my hair was yellow
an' my eyes blue, he might have felt different; but the way it is, he's always
treated me like a kid brother"

"And lived with you?" said the other sternly.

"Like two men! D'you understand how a woman could be the bunky of a man an'
yet be no more to him thanthan a man would be. You don't? Neither do I, but
that's what I've been to Pierre le Rouge. What's that?"

She lifted her head and stood poised as if for flight. Once more the vague
sound blew up to them upon the wind. Mary ran to her and grasped both of her
hands in her own.

"If it's true"

But Jack snatched her hands away and looked on the other with a mighty hatred
and a mightier contempt.

"True? Why, it damn near finishes Pierre with me to think he'd take up witha
thing like you. But it's true. If somebody else had told me I'd of laughed at
'em. But it's true. Tell me: what'll you do with him?"

"Take him backif I can reach himtake him back to the East and to God's
country."

"Yesmaybe he'd be happy there. But when the spring comes to the city, Mary,
wait till the wind blows in the night and the rain comes tappin' on the roof.
Then hold him if you can. D'ye hear? Hold him if you can!"

"If he cares it will not be hard. Tell me again, if"

"Shut up. What's that again?"

The sound was closer now and unmistakably something other than the moan of
the wind. Jacqueline turned in great excitement to Mary:

"Did McGurk hear that sound down the gorge?"

"Yes. I think so. And then he"

"My God!"

"What is it?"

"Pierre, and he's calling ford'you hear?"

Clear and loud, though from a great distance, the wind carried up the sound
and the echo preserved it: "McGurk!"

"McGurk!" repeated Mary.

"Yes! And you brought him up here with you, and brought his death to Pierre.
What'll you do to save him now? Pierre!"

She turned and fled out among the trees, and after her ran Mary, calling,
like the other: "Pierre!"

After that call first reached him, clear to his ears though vague as a murmur
at the ear of Mary, McGurk swung to the saddle of his white horse, and galloped
down the gorge like a veritable angel of death.

The end was very near, he felt, yet the chances were at least ten to one that
he would miss Pierre in the throat of the gorge, for among the great boulders,
tall as houses, which littered it, a thousand men might have passed and repassed
and never seen each other. Only the calling of Pierre could guide him surely.

The calling had ceased for some moments, and he began to fear that he had
overrun his mark and missed Pierre in the heart of the pass, when, as he rounded
a mighty boulder, the shout ran ringing in his very ears: "McGurk!" and a
horseman swung into view.

"Here!" he called in answer, and stood with his right hand lifted, bringing
his horse to a sharp halt, like some ancient cavalier stopping in the middle of
the battle to exchange greetings with a friendly foe.

The other rider whirled alongside, his sombrero's brim flaring back from his
forehead, so that McGurk caught the glare of the eyes beneath the shadow.

"So for the third time, my friend" said McGurk.

"Which is the fatal one," answered Pierre. "How will you die, McGurk? On foot
or on horseback?"

"On the ground, Pierre, for my horse might stir and make my work messy. I
love a neat job, you know."

"Good."

They swung from the saddles and stood facing each other.

"Begin!" commanded McGurk. "I've no time to waste."

"I've very little time to look at the living McGurk. Let me look my fill
before the end."

"Then look, and be done. I've a lady coming to meet me."

The other grew marvelously calm.

"She is with you, McGurk?"

"My dear Pierre, I've been with her ever since she started up the Old Crow."

"It will be easier to forget her. Are you ready?"

"So soon? Come, man, there's much for us to say. Many old times to chat
over."

"I only wonder," said Pierre, "how one death can pay back what you've done.
Think of it! I've actually run away from you and hidden myself away among the
hills. I've feared you, McGurk!"

He said it with a deep astonishment, as a grown man will speak of the way he
feared darkness when he was a child. McGurk moistened his white lips. The white
horse pawed the rocks as though impatient to be gone.

"Listen," said Pierre, "your horse grows restive. Suppose we stand hereit's
a convenient distance apart, you see, and wait with our arms folded for the next
time the white horse paws the rocks, because when I kill you, McGurk, I want you
to die knowing that another man was faster on the draw and straighter with his
bullets than you are. D'you see?"

He could not have spoken with a more formal politeness if he had been asking
the other to pass first through the door of a dining-room. The wonder of McGurk
grew and the sweat on his forehead seemed to be spreading a chill through his
entire body.

He said: "I see. You trust all to the cross, eh, Pierre? The little cross
under your neck?"

"The cross is gone," said Pierre le Rouge. "Why should I use it against a
night rider, McGurk? Are you ready?"

And McGurk, not trusting his voice for some strange reason, nodded. The two
folded their arms.

But the white horse which had been pawing the stones so eagerly a moment
before was now unusually quiet. The very postures of the men seemed to have
frozen him to stone, a beautiful, marble statue, with the moonlight glistening
on the muscles of his perfect shoulders.

At length he stirred. At once a quiver jerked through the tense bodies of the
waiting men, but the white horse had merely stiffened and raised his head high.
Now, with arched neck and flaunting tail he neighed loudly, as if he asked a
question. How could he know, dumb brute, that what he asked only death could
answer?

And as they waited an itching came at the palm of McGurk's hand. It was not
much, just a tingle of the blood. To ease it, he closed his fingers and found
that his hand was moist with cold perspiration.

He began to wonder if his fingers would be slippery on the butt of the gun.
Then he tried covertly to dry them against his shirt. But he ceased this again,
knowing that he must be of hair-trigger alertness to watch for the stamp of the
white horse.

It occurred to him, also, that he was standing on a loose stone which might
wabble when he pulled his gun, and he cursed himself silently for his hasty
folly. Pierre, doubtless, had noticed that stone, and therefore he had made the
suggestion that they stand where they were. Otherwise, how could there be that
singular calm in the steady eyes which looked across at him?

Also, how explain the hunger of that stare? Was not he McGurk, and was not
this a man whom he had already once shot down? God, what a fool he had been not
to linger an instant longer in that saloon in the old days and place the final
shot in the prostrate body! In all his life he had made only one such mistake,
and now that folly was pursuing him. And now

The foot of the white horse liftedstruck the rock. The sound of its fall was
lost in the explosion of two guns, and a ring of metal on metal. The revolver
snapped from the hand of McGurk, whirled in a flashing circle, and clanged on
the rocks at his feet. The bullet of Pierre had struck the barrel and knocked it
cleanly from his hand.

It was luck, only luck, that placed that shot, and his own bullet, which had
started first, had travelled wild for there stood Pierre le Rouge, smiling
faintly, alert, calm. For the first time in his life McGurk had missed. He set
his teeth and waited for death.

But that steady voice of Pierre said: "To shoot you would be a pleasure; it
would even be a luxury, but there wouldn't be any lasting satisfaction in it. So
there lies your gun at your feet. Well, here lies mine."

He dropped his own weapon to a position corresponding with that of McGurk's.

"We were both very wild that time. We must do better now. We'll stoop for our
guns, McGurk. The signal? No, we won't wait for the horse to stamp. The signal
will be when you stoop for your gun. You shall have every advantage, you see?
Start for that gun, McGurk, when you're ready for the end."

The hand of McGurk stretched out and his arm stiffened but it seemed as
though all the muscles of his back had grown stiff. He could not bend. It was
strange. It was both ludicrous and incomprehensible. Perhaps he had grown stiff
with cold in that position.

But he heard the voice of Pierre explaining gently: "You can't move, my
friend. I understand. It's fear that stiffened your back. It's fear that sends
the chill up and down your blood. It's fear that makes you think back to your
murders, one by one. McGurk, you're done for. You're through. You're ready for
the discard. I'm not going to kill you. I've thought of a finer hell than death,
and that is to live as you shall live. I've beaten you, McGurk, beaten you
fairly on the draw, and I've broken your heart by doing it. The next time you
face a man you'll begin to thinkyou'll begin to remember how one other man beat
you at the draw. And that wonder, McGurk, will make your hand freeze to your
side, as you've made the hands of other men before me freeze. D'you understand?"

The lips of McGurk parted. The whisper of his dry panting reached Pierre, and
the devil in him smiled.

"In six weeks, McGurk, you'll take water from a Chinaman. Now get out!"

And pace by pace McGurk drew back, with his face still toward Pierre.

The latter cried: "Wait. Are you going to leave your gun?"

Only the steady retreat continued.

"And go unarmed through the mountains? What will men say when they see McGurk
with an empty holster?"

But the outlaw had passed out of view beyond the corner of one of the monster
boulders. After him went the white horse, slowly, picking his steps, as if he
were treading on dangerous and unknown ground and would not trust his leader.
Pierre was left to the loneliness of the gorge.

The moonlight only served to make more visible its rocky nakedness, and like
that nakedness was the life of Pierre under his hopeless inward eye. Over him
loomed from either side the gleaming pinnacles of the Twin Bears, and he
remembered many a time when he had looked up toward them from the crests of
lesser mountainslooked up toward them as a man looks to a great and
unattainable ideal.

Here he was come to the crest of all the ranges; here he was come to the
height and limit of his life, and what had he attained? Only a cruel, cold
isolation. It had been a steep ascent; the declivity of the farther side led him
down to a steep and certain ruin and the dark night below. But he stiffened
suddenly and threw his head high as if he faced his fate; and behind him the
cream-colored mare raised her head with a toss and whinnied softly.

It seemed to him that he had heard something calling, for the sound was lost
against the sweep of wind coming up the gorge. Something calling there in the
night of the mountains as he himself had called when he rode so wildly in the
quest for McGurk. How long ago had that been?

But it came once more, clear beyond all doubt. He recognized the voice in
spite of the panting which shook it; a wild wail like that of a heart-broken
child, coming closer to him like some one, running: "Pierre! Oh, Pierre!"