Riders of the Silences (25 page)

"I suppose she is."

"H-m! rather poor taste not to be sure of it. Well, let it go. You've always
had rather queer taste in women, Jack; but, of course, being a long-rider, you
haven't seen much of them. At least her name is delightfulMary Brown! You've no
idea how often I've repeated it aloud to myself and relished the soundMary
Brown!"

"I hate her!"

"You two didn't have a very agreeable time of it? By the way, she must have
left in rather a hurry to forget her glove, eh?"

"Yes, she ranlike a coward."

"Ah?"

"Like a trembling coward. How can you care for a white-faced little fool like
that? Is she your match? Is she your mate?"

He considered a moment, as though to make sure that he did not exaggerate.

"I love her, Jack, as men love water when they've ridden all day over hot
sand without a drop on their lipsyou know when the tongue gets thick and the
mouth fills with cottonand then you see clear, bright water, and taste it."

"She is like that to me. She feeds every sense; and when I look in her eyes,
Jack, I feel like the starved man on the desert, as I was saying, drinking that
priceless water. You knew something of the way I feel, Jack. Isn't it a little
odd that you didn't keep her here?"

She had stood literally shuddering during this speech, and now she burst out,
far beyond all control: "Because she loathes you; because she hates herself for
ever having loved you; because she despises herself for having ridden up here
after you. Does that fill your cup of water, Pierre, eh?"

His forehead was shining with sweat, but he set his teeth, and, after a
moment, he was able to say in the same hard, calm voice: "I suppose there was no
real reason for her change. She can be persuaded back to me in a moment. In that
case just tell me where she has gone and I'll ride after her."

He made as if to rise, but she cried in a panic, and yet with a wild
exultation: "No, she's done with you forever, and the more you make love to her
now the more she'll hate you. Because she knows that when you kissed her
beforewhen you kissed heryou were living with a woman."

"Iliving with a woman?"

Her voice had risen out of the whisper for the outbreak. Now it sank back
into it.

"Yeswith me!"

"With you? I see. Naturally it must have gone hard with herMary! And she
wouldn't see reason even when you explained that you and I are like brothers?"

He leaned a little toward her and just a shade of emotion came in his voice.

"When you carefully explained, Jack, with all the eloquence you could
command, that you and I have ridden and fought and camped together like brothers
for six years? And how I gave you your first gun? And how I've stayed between
you and danger a thousand times? And how I've never treated you otherwise than
as a man? And how I've given you the love of a blood-brother to take the place
of the brother who died? And how I've kept you in a clean and pure respect such
as a man can only give once in his lifeand then only to his dearest friend? She
wouldn't listeneven when you talked to her like this?"

"For God's sakePierre!"

"Ah, but you talked well enough to pave the way for me. You talked so
eloquently that with a little more persuasion from me she will know and
understand. Come, I must be gone after her. Which way did she rideup or down
the valley?"

"You could talk to her forever and she'd never listen. Pierre, I told her
that I wasyour womanthat you'd told me of your scenes with herand that we'd
laughed at them together."

She covered her eyes and crouched, waiting for the wrath that would fall on
her, but he only smiled bitterly on the bowed head, saying: "Why have I waited
so long to hear you say what I knew already? I suppose because I wouldn't
believe until I heard the whole abominable truth from your own lips. Jack, why
did you do it?"

"Won't you see? Because I've loved you always, Pierre!"

"Loveyouyour tiger-heart? No, but you were like a cruel, selfish child. You
were jealous because you didn't want the toy taken away. I knew it. I knew that
even if I rode after her it would be hopeless. Oh, God, how terribly you've hurt
me, partner!"

It wrung a little moan from her. He said after a moment: "It's only the ghost
of a chance, but I'll have to take it. Tell me which way she rode? No? Then I'll
try to find her."

She leaped between him and the door, flinging her shoulders against it with a
crash and standing with outspread arms to bar the way.

"You must not go!"

He turned his head somewhat.

"Don't stand in front of me, Jack. You know I'll do what I say, and just now
it's a bit hard for me to face you."

"Pierre, I feel as if there were a hand squeezing my heart small, and small,
and small. Pierre, I'd die for you!"

"I know you would. I know you would, partner. It was only a mistake, and you
acted the way any cold-hearted boy would act ifif some one were to try to steal
his horse, for instance. But just now it's hard for me to look at you and be
calm."

"Don't try to be! Swear at mecurseravebeat me; I'd be glad of the blows,
Pierre. I'd hold out my arms to 'em. But don't go out that door!"

"Why?"

"Becauseif you found hershe's not alone."

"Say that slowly. I don't understand. She's not alone?"

"I'll try to tell you from the first. She started out for you with Dick
Wilbur for a guide."

"Good old Dick, God bless him! I'll fill all his pockets with gold for that;
and he loves her, you know."

"You'll never see Dick Wilbur again. On the first night they camped she
missed him when he went for water. She went down after a while and saw the mark
of his body on the sand. He never appeared again."

"Who was it?"

"Listen. The next morning she woke up and found that some one had taken care
of the fire while she slept, and her pack was lashed on one of the saddles. She
rode on that day and came at night to a camp-fire with a bed of boughs near it
and no one in sight. She took that camp for herself and no one showed up.

"Don't you see? Some one was following her up the valley and taking care of
the poor baby on the way. Some one who was afraid to let himself be seen.
Perhaps it was the man who killed Dick Wilbur without a sound there beside the
river; perhaps as Dick died he told the man who killed him about the lonely girl
and this other man was white enough to help Mary.

"But all Mary ever saw of him was that second night when she thought that she
saw a streak of white, traveling like a galloping horse, that disappeared over a
hill and into the trees"

"A streak of white"

"Yes, yes! The white horseMcGurk!"

"McGurk!" repeated Pierre stupidly; then: "And you knew she would be going
out to him when she left this house?"

"I knewPierredon't look at me like thatI knew that it would be murder to
let you cross with McGurk. You're the last of sevenhe's a devilno man"

"And you let her go out into the nightto him."

She clung to a last thread of hope: "If you met him and killed him with the
luck of the cross it would bring equal bad luck on some one you loveon the
girl, Pierre!"

He was merely repeating stupidly: "You let her go outto himin the night!
She's in his arms nowyou devilyou tiger"

She threw herself down and clung about his knees with hysterical strength.

"Pierre, you shall not go. Pierre, you walk on my heart if you go!"

He tore the little cross from his neck and flung it into her upturned face.

"Don't make me put my hands on you, Jack. Let me go!"

There was no need to tear her grasp away. She crumpled and slipped sidewise
to the floor. He leaned over and shook her violently by the shoulder.

"Which way did she ride? Which way did they ride?"

She whispered: "Down the valley, Pierre; down the valley; I swear they rode
that way."

And as she lay in a half swoon she heard the faint clatter of galloping hoofs
over the rooks and a wild voice yelling, fainter and fainter with distance:

"McGurk!"

It came back to her like a threat; it beat at her ears and roused her, that
continually diminishing cry: "McGurk!" It went down the valley, and Mary Brown,
and McGurk with her, perhaps, had gone up the gorge, but it would be a matter of
a short time before Pierre le Rouge discovered that there was no camp-fire to be
sighted in the lower valley and whirled to storm back up the canon with that
battle-cry: "McGurk!" still on his lips.

And if the two met she knew the result. Seven strong men had ridden together,
fought together, and one by one they had fallen, disappeared like the white
smoke of the camp-fire, jerked off into thin air by the wind, until only one
remained.

How clearly she could see them all! Bud Mansie, meager, lean, with a shifting
eye; Garry Patterson, of the red, good-natured face; Phil Branch, stolid and
short and muscled like a giant; Handsome Dick Wilbur on his racing bay; Black
Gandil, with his villainies from the South Seas like an invisible mantle of awe
about him; and her father, the stalwart, gray Boone.

All these had gone, and there remained only Pierre le Rouge to follow in the
steps of the six who had gone before.

She crawled to the door, feeble in mind and shuddering of body like a runner
who has spent his last energy in a long race, and drew it open. The wind blew up
the valley from the Old Crow, but no sound came back to her, no calling from
Pierre; and over her rose the black pyramid of the western peak of the Twin
Bears like a monstrous nose pointing stiffly toward the stars.

She closed the door, dragged herself back to her feet, and stood with her
shoulders leaning against the wall. Her weakness was not wearinessit was as if
something had been taken from her. She wondered at herself somewhat vaguely.
Surely she had never been like this before, with the singular coldness about her
heart and the feeling of loss, of infinite loss.

What had she lost? She began to search her mind for an answer. Then she
smiled uncertainly, a wan, small smile. It was very clear; what she had lost was
all interest in life and all hope for the brave to-morrow. Nothing remained of
all those lovely dreams which she had built up by day and night about the figure
of Pierre le Rouge. He was gone, and the bright-colored bubble she had blown
vanished at once.

She felt a slight pain at her forehead and then remembered the cross which
Pierre had thrown into her face. Casting that away he had thrown his faintest
chance of victory with it; it would be a slaughter, not a battle, and red-handed
McGurk would leave one more foe behind him.

But looking down she found the cross and picked up the shining bit of metal;
it seemed as if she held the greater part of Pierre le Rouge in her hands. She
raised the cross to her lips.

When she fastened the cross about her throat it was with no exultation, but
like one who places over his heart a last memorial of the dead; a consecration,
like the red sign or the white which the crusaders wore on the covers of their
shields.

Then she took from her breast the spray of autumn leaves. He had not noticed
them, yet perhaps they had helped to make him gay when he came into the cabin
that night, so she placed the spray on the table. Next she unpinned the great
rubies from her throat and let her eye linger over them for a moment. They were
chosen stones, each as deeply lighted as an eye, if there ever were eyes of this
blood-red, and they looked up at her with a lure and a challenge at once.

The first thought of what she must do came to Jacqueline then, but not in an
overwhelming tideit was rather a small voice that whispered in her heart.

Last, she took from her bosom the glove of the yellow-haired girl. Compared
with her stanch riding gloves, how small was this! Yet, when she tried it, it
slipped easily on her hand. This she laid in that little pile, for these were
the things which Pierre would wish to find if by some miracle he came back from
the battle. The spray, perhaps, he would not understand; and yet he might. She
pressed both hands to her breast and drew a long breath, for her heart was
breaking. Through her misted eyes she could barely see the shimmer of the cross.

That sight made her look up, searching for a superhuman aid in her woe, and
for the first time in her life a conception of God dawned on her wild, gay mind.
She made a picture of him like a vast cloud looming over the Twin Bear peaks and
breathing an infinite calm over the mountains. The cloud took a faintly human
shapea shape somewhat like that of her father when he lived, for he could be
both stern and gentle, as she well knew, and such gray Boone had been.

Perhaps it was because of this that another picture came out of her infancy
of a soft voice, of a tender-touching hand, of brooding, infinitely loving eyes.
She smiled the wan smile again because for the first time it came to her that
she, too, even she, the wild, the "tiger-heart," as Pierre himself had called
her, might one day have been the mother of a child, his child.

But the ache within her grew so keen that she dropped, writhing, to her
knees, and twisted her hands together in agony. It was prayer. There were no
words to it, but it was prayer, a wild appeal for aid.

That aid came in the form of a calm that swept on her like the flood of a
clear moonlight over a storm-beaten landscape. The whisper which had come to her
before was now a solemn-speaking voice, and she knew what she must do. She could
not keep the two men apart, but she might reach McGurk before and strike him
down by stealth, by craft, any way to kill that man as terrible as a devil, as
invulnerable as a ghost.

This she might do in the heart of the night, and afterward she might have the
courage left to tell the girl the truth and then creep off somewhere and let
this steady pain burn its way out of her heart.