Riders of the Silences

by Brand, Max

  "Who's your father?" asked Dick Wilbur, who eyed Pierre more critically but with less enmity than the rest.

  "Martin Ryder."

  "A ringer!" cried Bud Mansie, and he leaned forward alertly. "You remember what I said, Jim?"

  "Shut up. Pierre, talk soft and talk quick. We all know Mart Ryder had only two sons and you're not either of them."

  The Northerner grew stiff and as his face grew pale the red mark where the stone had struck his forehead stood out like a danger signal.

  He said slowly: "I'm his son, but not by the mother of those two."

  "Was he married twice?"

  Pierre was paler still, and there was an uneasy twitching of his right hand which every man understood.

  He barely whispered. "No; damn you!"

  But Black Gandil loved evil.

  He said, with a marvelously unpleasant smile: "Then she was——"

  The voice of Dick Wilbur cut in like the snapping of a whip: "Shut up, Gandil, you devil!"

  There were times when not even Boone would cross Wilbur, and this was one of them.

  Pierre went on: "The reason I can't go to Morgantown is that I'm not very well liked by some of the men there."

  "Why not?"

  "When my father died there was no money to pay for his burial. I had only a half-dollar piece. I went to the town and gambled and won a great deal. But before I came out I got mixed up with a man called Hurley, a professional gambler."

  "And Diaz?" queried a chorus.

  "Yes. Hurley was hurt in the wrist and Diaz died. I think I'm wanted in Morgantown."

  Out of a little silence came the voice of Black Gandil: "Dick, I'm thankin' you now for cuttin' me so short a minute ago."

  Phil Branch had not spoken, as usual, but now he repeated, with rapt, far-off eyes: "'Hurley was hurt in the wrist and Diaz died?' Hurley and Diaz! I played with Hurley, a couple of times."

  "Speakin' personal," said Garry Patterson, his red verging toward purple in excitement, "which I'm ready to go with you down to Morgantown and bury your father."

  "And do it shipshape," added Black Gandil.

  "With all the trimmings," said Bud Mansie, "with all Morgantown joinin' the mournin' voluntarily under cover of our six-guns."

  "Wait," said Boone. "What's the second request?"

  "That can wait."

  "It's a bigger job than this one?"

  "Lots bigger."

  "And in the mean time?"

  "I'm your man."

  They shook hands. Even Black Gandil rose to take his share in the ceremony—all save Bud Mansie, who had glanced out the window a moment before and then silently left the room. A bottle of whiskey was produced and glasses filled all round. Jim Boone brought in the seventh chair and placed it at the table. They raised their glasses.

  "To the empty chair," said Boone.

  They drank, and for the first time in his life, the liquid fire went down the throat of Pierre. He set down his glass, coughing, and the others laughed good-naturedly.

  "Started down the wrong way?" asked Wilbur.

  "It's beastly stuff; first I ever drank."

  A roar of laughter answered him.

  "Still I got an idea," broke in Jim Boone, "that he's worthy of takin' the seventh chair. Draw it up lad."

  Vaguely it reminded Pierre of a scene in some old play with himself in the role of the hero signing away his soul to the devil, but an interruption kept him from taking the chair. There was a racket at the door—a half-sobbing, half-scolding voice, and the laughter of a man; then Bud Mansie appeared carrying Jack in spite of her struggles. He placed her on the floor and held her hands to protect himself from her fury.

  "I glimpsed her through the window," he explained. "She was lining out for the stable and then a minute later I saw her swing a saddle onto—what horse d'you think?"

  "Out with it."

  "Jim's big Thunder. Yep, she stuck the saddle on big black Thunder and had a rifle in the holster. I saw there was hell brewing somewhere, so I went out and nabbed her."

  "Jack!" called Jim Boone. "What were you started for?"

  Bud Mansie released her arms and she stood with them stiffening at her sides and her small brown fists clenched.

  "Hal—he died, and there was nothing but talk about him—nothing done. You got a live man in Hal's place."

  She pointed an accusing finger at Pierre.

  "Maybe he takes his place for you, but he's not my brother—I hate him. I went out to get another man to make up for Pierre."

  "Well?"

  "A dead man. I shoot straight enough for that."

  A very solemn silence spread through the room; for every man was watching in the eyes of the father and daughter the same shining black devil of wrath.

  "Jack, get into your room and don't move out of it till I tell you to. D'you hear?"

  She turned on her heel like a soldier and marched from the room.

  "Jack."

  She stopped in the door but would not turn back, and still the room, watching that little tragedy, was breathless.

  "Jack, don't you love your old dad any more?"

  She whirled and ran to him with outstretched arms and clung to him, sobbing.

  "Oh, dad—dear dad," she groaned. "You've broken my heart; you've broken my heart!"

  The others filed softly out of the room and stood bareheaded under the winter sky.

  Bud Mansie, his meager face transformed with wonder, said: "Fellers, what d'you know about it? Our Jack's grown up."

  And Black Gandil answered: "Look at this Pierre frowning at the ground. It was him that changed her."

  CHAPTER XII

  THE BURIAL

  The annals of the mountain desert have never been written and can never be written. They are merely a vast mass of fact and tradition and imagining which floats from tongue to tongue from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevadas. A man may be a fact all his life and die only a local celebrity. Then again, he may strike sparks from that imagination which runs riot by camp-fires and at the bars of the crossroads saloons.

  In that case he becomes immortal. It is not that lies are told about him or impossible feats ascribed to him, but every detail about him is seized upon and passed on with a most scrupulous and loving care.

  In due time he will become a tradition. That is, he will be known familiarly at widely separated parts of the range, places which he has never visited. It has happened to a few of the famous characters of the mountain desert that they became traditions before their deaths. It happened to McGurk, of course. It also happened to Red Pierre.

  Oddly enough, the tradition of Red Pierre did not begin with his ride from the school of Father Victor to Morgantown, distant many days of difficult and dangerous travel. Neither did tradition seize on the gun fight that crippled Hurley and "put out" wizard Diaz. These things were unquestionably known to many, but they did not strike the popular imagination. What set men first on fire was the way Pierre le Rouge buried his father "at the point of the gun" in Morgantown.

  That day Boone's men galloped out of the higher mountains down the trail toward Morgantown. They stole a wagon out of a ranch stable on the way and tied two lariats to the tongue. So they towed it, bounding and rattling, over the rough trail 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 borrowed a long black cloak from one of the women and wrapped himself in it, in lieu of the robe of the priest, and 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.

  "If I leave the table will you come out?"

  She stammered: "Ye—n-no!"

  "Yes or no?"

  "No, no, no!"

  And he heard the stamp of her foot and smiled a little.

  "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 to-night—nor to-morrow, 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 some day 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?"

  "Pierre—"

  "Yes?"

  "I'm ashamed. I've been acting like a silly kid."

  "But we're waiting for you."

  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.

  CHAPTER XIII

  A TALE OF THE SLEDGE

  She wore a cartridge belt slung jauntily across her hips and from it hung a holster of stiff new leather with the top flap open to show the butt of a man-sized forty-five caliber six-shooter—her first gun. Not a man of the gang but had loaned her his guns time and again, but they had never dreamed of giving the child a weapon of her own.

  So they stared at her agape, where she stood with her head back, one slender hand resting on her hip, one hovering about the butt of the gun, as if she challenged them to question her right to be called "man."

  It was as if she abandoned all claims to femininity with that single step; the gun at her side made her seem inches taller and years older. She was no longer a child, but a long-rider who could back any horse on the range and shoot with the best.

  One glance she cast about the room to drink in the amazement of the gang, and then with a profound instinct guiding her, she picked out the best critic in the room and said to him with a frown: "Well, Dick, how's it hang?"

  The big man was as flushed as the girl.

  "Hangs like a charm," he said, "a charm that 'll be apt to make men step about."

  And her father broke in rather hoarsely: "Sit down, girl. Sit down and be one of us. One of us you are by your own choice from this day on. You're neither man nor woman, but a long-rider with every man's hand against you. You've done with any hope of a home or of friends. You're one of us. Poor Jack—my girl!"

  "Poor?" she returned. "Not while I can make a quick draw and shoot straight."

  And then she swept the circle of eyes, daring them to take her boast lightly, but they knew her too well, and were all solemnly silent. At this she relented somewhat, and went directly to Pierre, flushing from throat to hair. She held out her hand.

  "Will you shake and call it square?"

  "I sure will," nodded Pierre.

  "And we're pals—you and me, like the rest of 'em?"

  "We are."

  "Shake again."

  She took the place beside him.

  Garry Patterson was telling how he had said farewell to a Swedish sweetheart, and the roar of laughter took the eyes away from Jacqueline for a moment. So she leaned to Pierre le Rouge and whispered at his ear: "Pierre you've made me the happiest fellow on the range."


  As the whisky went round after round and the fun waxed higher the two seemed shut away from the others; they were younger, less touched and marked by life; they listened while the others talked, and now and then exchanged glances of interest or aversion.

  "Listen," she said after a time, "I've heard this story before."

  It was Phil Branch, square-built and square of jaw, who was talking.

  "There's only one thing I can handle better than a gun, and that's a sledge-hammer. A gun is all right in its way, but for work in a crowd, well, give me a hammer and I'll show you a way out."

  Bud Mansie grinned: "Leave me my pair of sixes and you can have all the hammers between here and Central Park in a crowd. There's nothing makes a crowd remember its heels like a pair of barking sixes."

  "Ah, ah!" growled Branch. "But when they've heard bone crunch under the hammer there's nothing will hold them."

  "I'd have to see that."

  "Maybe you will, Bud, maybe you will. It was the hammer that started me for the long trail west. I had a big Scotchman in the factory who couldn't learn how to weld. I'd taught him day after day and cursed him and damn near prayed for him. But he somehow wouldn't learn—the swine—ah, ah!"

  He grew vindictively black at the memory.

  "Every night he wiped out what I'd taught him during the day and the eraser he used was booze. So one fine day I dropped the hammer after watchin' him make a botch on a big bar, and cussed him up one leg and down the other. The Scotchman had a hang-over from the night before and he made a pass at me. It was too much for me just then, for the day was hot and the forge fire had been spitting cinders in my face all morning. So I took him by the throat."

  He reached out and closed his taut fingers slowly.

  "I didn't mean nothin' by it, but after a man has been moldin' iron, flesh is pretty weak stuff. When I let go of Scotchy he dropped on the floor, and while I stood starin' down at him somebody seen what had happened and spread the word.

  "I wasn't none too popular, bein' not much on talk, so the boys got together and pretty soon they come pilin' through the door at me, packin' everything from hatchets to crowbars.

  "Lads, I was sorry about Scotchy, but after I glimpsed that gang comin' I wasn't sorry for nothing. I felt like singin', though there wasn't no song that could say just what I meant. But I grabbed up the big fourteen-pound hammer and met 'em half-way.