CHAPTER VI
PIERRE TAKES STEPS TO PRESERVE HIS PROPERTY
A log fell forward and Joan lifted her head. She had not come to anend of Isabella's tragedy nor of her own memories, but something otherthan the falling log had startled her; a light, crunching step uponthe snow.
She looked toward the window. For an instant the room was almost darkand the white night peered in at her, its gigantic snow-peaks pressingagainst the long, horizontal window panes, and in that instant she sawa face. The fire started up again, the white night dropped away, theface shone close a moment longer, then it too disappeared. Joan cameto her feet with pounding pulses. It had been Pierre's face, but atthe same time, the face of a stranger. He had come back five days toosoon and something terrible had happened. Surely his chancing to seeher with her book would not make him look like that. Besides, she wasnot wasting oil. She had stood up, but at first she was incapable ofmoving forward. For the first time in her life she knew the paralysisof unreasoning fear. Then the door opened and Pierre came in out ofthe crystal night.
"What brought you back so soon?" asked Joan.
"Too soon fer you, eh?" He strode over to the hearth where she hadlain, took up the book, struck it with his hand as though it had beena hated face, and flung it into the fire. "I seen you through thewindow," he said. "So you been happy readin' while I been away?"
"I'll get you supper. I'll light the lamp," Joan stammered.
Pierre's face was pale, his black hair lay in wet streaks on histemples. He must have traveled at furious speed through the bittercold to be in such a sweat. There was a mysterious, controlleddisorder in his look and there arose from him the odor of strongdrink. But he was steady and sure in all his movements and his eyeswere deadly cool and reasonable--only it was the reasonableness ofinsanity, reasonableness based on the wildest premises of unreason.
"I don't want no supper, nor no light," he said. "Firelight's enoughfer you to read parsons' books by, it's enough fer me to do what Ioughter done long afore to-night."
She stood in the middle of the small, log-walled room, arrested in theact of lighting a match, and stared at him with troubled eyes. She wasno longer afraid. After all, strange as he looked, more strangely ashe talked, he was her Pierre, her man. The confidence of her heart hadnot been seriously shaken by his coldness and his moods during thiswinter. There had been times of fierce, possessive tenderness. She washis own woman, his property; at this low counting did she rateherself. A sane man does no injury to his own possessions. And Pierre,of course, was sane. He was tired, angry, he had been drinking--herignorance, her inexperience led her to put little emphasis on theeffects of the poison sold at the town saloon. When he was warm andfed and rested, he would be quite himself again. She went aboutpreparing a meal in spite of his words.
He did not seem to notice this. He had taken his eyes from her at lastand was busy with the fire. She, too, busy and reassured by thefamiliar occupation, ceased to watch him. Her pulses were quiet now.She was even beginning to be glad of his return. Why had she been sofrightened? Of course, after such a terrible journey alone in thebitter cold, he would look strange. Her father, when he came backsmelling of liquor, had always been more than usually morose andunlike his every-day self. He would sit over the stove and tell herthe story of his crime. They were horrible home-comings, horribleevenings, but the next morning they would seem like dreams. To-morrowthis strangeness of Pierre's would be mistlike and unreal.
"I seen your sin-buster in town," said Pierre. He was squatting on hisheels over the fire which he had built up to a great blaze and glowand he spoke in a queer sing-song tone through his teeth. "He askedafter you real kind. He wanted to know how you was gettin' on with theedication he's ben handin' out to you. I tell him that you was rightsatisfied with me an' my ways an' hed quit his books. I didn't know asyou was hevin' such a good time durin' my absence."
Joan was cruelly hurt. His words seemed to fall heavily upon herheart. "I wasn't hevin' a good time. I was missin' you, Pierre," saidshe in a low tremolo of grieving music. "Them books, they seemed likethey was all the company I hed."
"You looked like you was missin' me," he sneered. "The sin-buster an'I had words about you, Joan. Yes'm, he give me quite a line ofpreachin' about you, Joan, as how you hed oughter develop yer own lifein yer own way--along the lines laid out by him. I told him as how Iknowed best what was right an' fittin' fer my own wife; as how, with amother like your'n you needed watchin' more'n learnin'; as how youbelonged to me an' not to him. An', says he, 'She don't belong to anyman, Pierre Landis,' he said, 'neither to you nor to me. She belongsto her own self.' 'I'll see that she belongs to me,' I said. 'I'll fixher so she'll know it an' every other feller will.'"
At that he turned from the fire and straightened to his feet.
Joan moved backward slowly to the door. He had made no threateningsign or movement, but her fear had come overwhelmingly upon her andevery instinct urged her to flight. But before she touched the handleof the door, he flung himself with deadly, swift force and silenceacross the room and took her in his arms. With all her wonderful youngstrength, Joan could not break away from him. He dragged her back tothe hearth, tied her elbows behind her with the scarf from his neck,that very scarf he had worn when the dawn had shed a wistful beautyupon him, waiting for her on a morning not so very long ago. Joan wentweak.
"Pierre," she cried pitifully, "what are you a-goin' to do to me?"
He roped her to the heavy post of a set of shelves built against thewall. Then he stood away, breathing fast.
"Now whose gel are you, Joan Carver?" he asked her.
"You know I'm yours, Pierre," she sobbed. "You got no need to tie meto make me say that."
"I got to tie you to make you do more'n say it. I got to make sure youare it. Hell-fire won't take the sureness out of me after this."
She turned her head, all that she could turn.
He was bending over the fire, and when he straightened she saw that heheld something in his hand ... a long bar of metal, white at theshaped end. At once her memory showed her a broad glow of sunsetfalling over Pierre at work. "There'll be stock all over the countrymarked with them two bars," he had said. "The Two-Bar Brand, don't youfergit it!" She was not likely to forget it now.
She shut her eyes. He stepped close to her and jerked her blouse downfrom her shoulder. She writhed away from him, silent in her rage andfear and fighting dumbly. She made no appeal. At that moment her heartwas so full of hatred that it was hardened to pride. He lifted hisbrand and set it against the bare flesh of her shoulder.
Then terribly she screamed. Again, when he took the metal away, shescreamed. Afterwards there was a dreadful silence.
Joan had not lost consciousness. Her healthy nerves stanchly receivedthe anguish and the shock, nor did she make any further outcry. Shepressed her forehead against the sharp edge of the shelf, she droveher nails into her hands, and at intervals she writhed from head tofoot. Circles of pain spread from the deep burn on her shoulder,spread and shrank, to spread and shrink again. The bones of hershoulder and arm ached terribly; fire still seemed to be eating intoher flesh. The air was full of the smell of scorched skin so that shetasted it herself. And hotter than her hurt her heart burned consumingits own tenderness and love and trust.
When this pain left her, when she was free of her bonds, no force norfear would hold her to Pierre. She would leave him as she had left herfather. She would go away. There was no place for her to go to, butwhat did that matter so long as she might escape from this horribleplace and this infernal tormentor? She did not look about to see theactuality of Pierre's silence. She thought that he had dropped thebrand and was sitting near the table with his face hidden. How longthe stillness of pain and fury and horror lasted there was no one toreckon. It was most startlingly broken by a voice. "Who screamed forhelp?" it said, and at the same instant a draught of icy air smoteJoan. The door had opened with suddenness and violence. Withdifficulty she mastered her pain and turned her head.
Pierre had staggered to his feet. Opposite him, framed against theopen door filled with the wan whiteness of the snow, stood a spare,tall figure. The man wore his fur collar turned up about his chin andears, his fur cap pulled down about his brow, a sharp aquiline nosestood out above frozen mustaches, keen and brilliant eyes searched theroom. He carried his gun across his arm in readiness, and snuffed theair like a suspicious hound. Then he advanced a step toward Pierre.
"What devil's work have you been at?" said he, his voice cutting theear in its sharpness of astonished rage, and his hand slid down alongthe handle of his gun.
Pierre, watching him like a lynx, side-stepped, crouched, whipped outhis gun, and fired. At almost the same second the other's gun wentoff. Pierre dropped.
This time Joan's nerves gave way and the room, with its smell ofscorched flesh, of powder, and of frost, went out from her horrifiedsenses. For a moment the stranger's stern face and brilliant eyes madethe approaching center of a great cloud of darkness, then it too wentout.
The Branding Iron Page 6
