Riders of the Silences by Max Brand (top 20 books to read .txt) 📕

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 coffin—improvised hastily for the occasion out of a

packing-box—was lowered reverently, also by “volunteer” mourners, and

before the first sod fell on the dead. Pierre 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.

 

“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 hall—cunning Pierre—before 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 tonight—nor tomorrow,

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 someday 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.

 

“To rob the Berwin Bank?”

 

“Stick up a train?”

 

“No. That’s nothing.”

 

“Round up the sheriffs from here to the end of the mountains?”

 

“Too easy.”

 

“Roll all those together,” said Pierre, “and you’ll begin to get an

idea of what I’ll ask.”

 

Then a low voice called from the black throat of the hall: “Pierre!”

 

The others were silent, but Pierre winked at them, and made great

flourish with knife and fork against his plate as if to cover the

sound of Jacqueline’s voice.

 

“Pierre!” she called again. “I’ve come to thank you.”

 

He jumped up and turned toward the hall.

 

“Do you like it?”

 

“It’s a wonder!”

 

“Then we’re friends?”

 

“If you want to be.”

 

“There’s nothing I want more. Then you’ll come out and have supper

with us, Jack?”

 

There was a little pause, and then Jim Boone struck his fist on the

table and cursed, for she stepped from the darkness into the flaring

light of the room.