Riders of the Silences by Max Brand (best summer reads of all time .TXT) 📕

room. Once more McGurk fired, but his wound made his aim wide and the bullet merely tore up a splinter beside Pierre's head. A fusillade from Boone and his men answered, but the outlaw had leaped back through the door.

"He's hurt," thundered Boone. "By God, the charm of McGurk is broken. Dick, Bud, Gandil, take the outside of the place. I'll force the door."

Wilbur and the other two raced through the door and raised a shout at once, and then there was a rattle of shots. Big Patterson leaned over Pierre.

He said in an awe-stricken voice: "Lad, it's a great work that you've done for all of us, if you've drawn the blood from McGurk."

"His left shoulder," said Pierre, and smiled in spite of his pain.
"And you, lad?"

"I'm going to live; I've got to finish the job. Who's that beside you?
There's a mist over my eyes."

"It's Jack. She outrode us all."

Then the mist closed over the eyes of Pierre and his senses went out in the dark.

CHAPTER 15

Those who are curious about the period which followed during which the title "Le Rouge" was forgotten and he became known only as "Red" Pierre through all the mountain-desert, can hear the tales of his doing from the analysts of the ranges. This story has to do only with his struggle with McGurk.

The gap of six years which occurs here is due to the fact that during that period McGurk vanished from the mountain-desert. He died away from the eyes of men and in their minds he became that tradition which lives still so vividly, the tradition of the pale face, the sneering, bloodless lips, and the hand which never failed.

During this lapse of time there were many who claimed that he had ridden off into some lonely haunt and died of the wound which he received from Pierre's bullet. A great majority, however, would never accept such a story, and even when the six years had rolled by they still shook their heads. They awaited his return just as certain stanch old Britons await the second coming of Arthur from the island of Avalon. In the meantime the terror of his name passed on to him who had broken the "charm" of McGurk.

Not all that grim significance passed on to Red Pierre, indeed, because he never impressed the public imagination as did the terrible ruthlessness of McGurk. At that he did enough to keep tongues wagging.

Cattlemen loved to tell those familiar exploits of the "two sheriffs," or that "thousand-mile pursuit of Canby," with its half-tragic, half-humorous conclusion, or the "Sacking of Two Rivers," or the "three-cornered battle" against Rodriguez and Blond.

But men could not forget that in all his work there rode behind Red Pierre six dauntless warriors of the mountain-desert, while McGurk had been always a single hand against the world, a veritable lone wolf.

Whatever kept him away through those six years, the memory of the wound he received at Gaffney's place never left McGurk, and now he was coming back with a single great purpose in his mind, and in his heart a consuming hatred for Pierre and all the other of Boone's men.

Certainly if he had sensed the second coming of McGurk, Pierre would not have ridden so jauntily through the hills this day, or whistled so carelessly, or swept the hills with such a complacent, lordly eye. A man of mark cannot bear himself too modestly, and Pierre, from boots to high-peaked, broad-brimmed sombrero, was the last word in elegance for a rider of the mountain-desert.

Even his mount seemed to sense the pride of his master. It was a cream-colored mustang, not one of the lump-headed, bony-hipped species common to the ranges, but one of those rare reversions to the Spanish thoroughbreds from which the Western cow-pony is descended. The mare was not over-large, but the broad hips and generous expanse of chest were hints, and only hints, of her strength and endurance. There was the speed of the blooded racer in her and the tirelessness of the mustang.

Now, down the rocky, half-broken trail she picked her way as daintily as any debutante tiptoeing down a great stairway to the ballroom. Life had been easy for Mary since that thousand-mile struggle to overtake Canby, and now her sides were sleek from good feeding and some casual twenty miles a day, which was no more to her than a canter through the park is to the city horse.

The eye which had been so red-stained and fierce during the long ride after Canby was now bright and gentle. At every turn she pricked her small sharp ears as if she expected home and friends on the other side of the curve. And now and again she tossed her head and glanced back at the master for a moment and then whinnied across some echoing ravine.

It was Mary's way of showing happiness, and her master's acknowledgment was to run his gloved left hand up through her mane and with his ungloved right, that tanned and agile hand, pat her shoulder lightly.

Passing to the end of the down-grade, they reached a slight upward incline, and the mare, as if she had come to familiar ground, broke into a gallop, a matchless, swinging stride. Swerving to right and to left among the great boulders, like a football player running a broken field, she increased the gallop to a racing pace.

That twisting course would have shaken an ordinary horseman to the toes, but Pierre, swaying easily in the saddle, dropped the reins into the crook of his left arm and rolled a cigarette in spite of the motion and the wind. It was a little feat, but it would have drawn applause from a circus crowd.

He spoke to the mare while he lighted a match and she dropped to an easy canter, the pace which she could maintain from dawn to dark, eating up the gray miles of the mountain and the desert, and it was then that Red Pierre heard a gay voice singing in the distance.

His attitude changed at once. He caught a shorter grip on the reins and swung forward a little in the saddle, while his right hand touched the butt of the revolver in its holster and made sure that it was loose; for to those who hunt and are hunted every human voice in the mountain-desert is an ominous token.

The mare, sensing the change of her master through that weird telegraphy which passed down the taut bridle reins, held her head high and flattened her short ears against her neck.

The song and the singer drew closer, and the vigilance of Pierre ceased as he heard a mellow baritone ring out.

     "They call me poor, yet I am rich
         In the touch of her golden hair,
     My heart is filled like a miser's hands
         With the red-gold of her hair.
     The sky I ride beneath all day
         Is the blue of her dear eyes;
     The only heaven I desire
         Is the blue of her dear eyes."

And here Dick Wilbur rode about the shoulder of a hill, broke off his song at the sight of Pierre le Rouge, and shouted a welcome. They came together and continued their journey side by side. The half-dozen years had hardly altered the blond, handsome face of Wilbur, and now, with the gladness of his singing still flushing his face, he seemed hardly more than a boy—younger, in fact, than Red Pierre, into whose eyes there came now and then a grave sternness.

"After hearing that song," said Pierre smiling, "I feel as if I'd listened to a portrait." "Right!" said Wilbur, with unabated enthusiasm. "It's the bare and unadorned truth, Prince Pierre. My fine Galahad, if you came within eye-shot of her there'd be a small-sized hell raised."

"No. I'm immune there, you know."

"Nonsense. The beauty of a really lovely woman is like a fine perfume. It strikes right to a man's heart; there's no possibility of resistance. I know. You, Pierre, act like a man already in love or a boy who has never known a woman. Which is it, Pierre?"

The other made a familiar gesture with those who knew him, a touching of his left hand against his throat where the cross lay.

He said: "I suppose it seems like that to you."

"Like what? Dodging me, eh? Well, I never press the point, but I'd give the worth of your horse, Pierre, to see you and Mary together."

Red Pierre started, and then frowned.

"Irritates you a little, eh? Well, a woman is like a spur to most men."

He added, with a momentary gloom: "God knows, I bear the marks of 'em."

He raised his head, as if he looked up in response to his thought.

"But there's a difference with this girl. I've named the quality of her before—it disarms a man."

Pierre looked to his friend with some alarm, for there was a saying among the followers of Boone that a woman would be the downfall of big Dick Wilbur again, as a woman had been his downfall before. The difference would be that this fall must be his last.

And Wilbur went on: "She's Eastern, Pierre, and out here visiting the daughter of old Barnes who owns about a thousand miles of range, you know. How long will she be here? That's the question I'm trying to answer for her. I met her riding over the hills—she was galloping along a ridge, and she rode her way right into my heart. Well, I'm a fool, of course, but about this girl I can't be wrong. Tonight I'm taking her to a masquerade."

He pulled his horse to a full stop.

"Pierre, you have to come with me."

CHAPTER 16

Pierre stared at his companion with almost open-mouthed astonishment.

"I? A dance?"

And then his head tilted back and he laughed.

"My good times, Dick, come out of the hills and the skyline, and the gallop of Mary. But as for women, they bore me, Dick."

"Even Jack?"

"She's more man than woman."

It was the turn of Wilbur to laugh, and he responded uproariously until Pierre frowned and flushed a little.

"When I see you out here on your horse with your rifle in the boot and your six-gun swinging low in the scabbard, and riding the fastest bit of horseflesh on the ranges," explained Wilbur, "I get to thinking that you're pretty much king of the mountains; but in certain respects, Pierre, you're a child."

Pierre stirred uneasily in his saddle. A man must be well over thirty before he can withstand ridicule.

He said dryly: "I've an idea that I know Jack's about as well as the next man." "Let it drop," said Wilbur, sober again, for he shared with all of Boone's crew a deep-rooted unwillingness to press Red Pierre beyond a certain point. "The one subject I won't quarrel about is Jack, God bless her."

"She's the best pal," said Pierre soberly, "and the nearest to a man
I've ever met."

"Nearest to a man?" queried Wilbur, and smiled, but so furtively that even the sharp eye of Red Pierre did not perceive the mockery. He went on: "But the dance, what of that? It's a masquerade. There'd be no fear of being recognized."

Pierre was silent a moment more. Then he said: "This girl—what did you call her?"

"Mary."

"And about her hair—I think you said it was black?"

"Golden, Pierre."

"Mary, and golden hair," mused Red Pierre. "I think I'll go to that dance."

"With Jack? She dances wonderfully, you know."

"Well—with Jack."

So they reached a tumbled ranch house squeezed between two hills so that it was sheltered from the storms of the winter but held all the heat of the summer.

Once it had been a goodly building, the home of some cattle king. But bad times had come. A bullet in a saloon brawl put an end to the cattle king, and now his home was a wreck of its former glory. The northern wing shelved down to the ground as if the building were kneeling to the power of the wind, and the southern portion of the house, though still erect, seemed tottering and rotten throughout and holding together until at a final blow the whole structure would crumple at once.

To the stables, hardly less ruinous than the big house, Pierre and Wilbur took their horses, and a series of whinnies greeted them from the stalls. To look down that line of magnificent heads raised above the partitions of the stalls was like glancing into the stud of