Max Brand (18 page)

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 her—almost 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
tomorrow?"

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 Pierre—or 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 strong, lawless things about him. An awe grew 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.

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 mind—the 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 tonight."

"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 coffeepot 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 hungry—ravenously 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 moonlight—over 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 man—a 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 coffeepot,
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.

She looked about her at the pack, which had been distributed expertly,
and disposed on the ground by Wilbur. She could not even lash it in
place behind the saddle. So she drew the blanket once more around her
shoulders and sat down to think.

She might return to the house—doubtless she could find her way back.
And leave Pierre in the heart of the mountains, surely lost to her
forever. She made a determination, sullen, like a child, to ride on
and on into the wilderness, and let fate take care of her. The pack
she could bundle together as best she might; she would live as she
might; and for a guide there would be the hunger for Pierre.

So she ended her thoughts with a hope; her head nodded lower, and she
slept the deep sleep of the exhausted mind and body. She woke hours
later with a start, instantly alert, quivering with fear and life and
energy, for she felt like one who has gone to sleep with voices in
his ear.

While she slept someone had been near her; she could have sworn it
before her startled eyes glanced around.

And though she kept whispering, with white lips, "No, no; it is
impossible!" yet there was evidence which proved it. The fire should
have burned out, but instead it flamed more brightly than ever, and
there was a little heap of fuel laid conveniently close. Moreover,
both horses were saddled, and the pack lashed on the saddle of her
own mount.

Whatever man or demon had done this work evidently intended that she
should ride Wilbur's beautiful bay. Yes, for when she went closer,
drawn by her wonder, she found that the stirrups had been much
shortened.

Nothing was forgotten by this invisible caretaker; he had even left
out the cooking-tins, and she found a little batter of flapjack
flour mixed.

The riddle was too great for solving. Perhaps Wilbur had disappeared
merely to play a practical jest on her; but that supposition was too
childish to be retained an instant. Perhaps—perhaps Pierre himself
had discovered her, but having vowed never to see her again, he cared
for her like the invisible hands in the old Greek fable.

This, again, an instinctive knowledge made her dismiss. If he were so
close, loving her, he could not stay away; she read in her own heart,
and knew. Then it must be something else; evil, because it feared to
be seen; not wholly evil, because it surrounded her with care.

At least this new emotion obscured somewhat the terror and the sorrow
of Wilbur's disappearance. She cooked her breakfast as if obeying the
order of the unseen, climbed into the saddle of Wilbur's horse, and
started off up the valley, leading her own mount.

Every moment or so she turned in the saddle suddenly in the hope of
getting a glimpse of the follower, but even when she surveyed the
entire stretch of country from the crest of a low hill, she saw
nothing—not the least sign of life.

She rode slowly, this day, for she was stiff and sore from the violent
journey of the night before, but though she went slowly, she kept
steadily at the trail. It was a broad and pleasant one, being the
beaten sand of the river-bottom; and the horse she rode was the
finest that ever pranced beneath her.

His trot was as smooth and springy as the gallop of most horses, and
when she let him run over a few level stretches, it was as if she had
suddenly been taken up from the earth on wings. There was something
about the animal, too, which reminded her of its vanished owner; for
it had strength and pride and gentleness at once. Unquestionably
it took kindly to its new rider; for once when she dismounted the big
horse walked up behind and nuzzled her shoulder.

The mountains were much plainer before the end of the day. They rose
sheer up in wave upon frozen wave like water piled ragged by some
terrific gale, with the tops of the waters torn and tossed and then
frozen forever in that position, like a fantastic and gargantuan mask
of dreaming terror. It overawed the heart of Mary Brown to look up to
them, but there was growing in her a new impulse of friendly
understanding with all this scalped, bald region of rocks, as if in
entering the valley she had passed through the gate which closes out
the gentler world, and now she was admitted as a denizen of the
mountain-desert, that scarred and ugly asylum for crime and fear
and grandeur.