by Max Brand
He distrusted the very ground over which his mount strode. For all this he seemed the least formidable of all the riders. To see him pass none could have suspected that this was Black Morgan Gandil.
Last of the crew came two men almost as large as Jim Boone himself, on strong steady-striding horses. They came last in this crew, but among a thousand other long-riders they would have ridden first, either red-faced, good-humored, loud-voiced Garry Patterson, or Phil Branch, stout-handed, blunt of jaw, who handled men as he had once hammered red iron at the forge.
Each of them should have ridden alone in order to be properly appreciated. To see them together was like watching a flock of eagles every one of which should have been a solitary lord of the air. But after scanning that lordly train which followed, the more terrible seemed the rider of the great black horse.
Yet the king was sad, and the reason for his sadness was the riderless horse which galloped so freely beside him. His son had ridden that horse when they set out, and all the way down to the railroad Handsome Hal Boone had kept his mount prancing and curveting and had ridden around and around tall Dick Wilbur, playing pranks, and had teased his father's black until the big stallion lashed out wildly with furious heels.
It was the memory of this that kept the grave shadow of a smile on the father's lips for all the sternness of his eyes. He never turned his head, for, looking straight forward, he could conjure up the laughing vision; but when he glanced to the empty saddle he heard once more the last unlucky shot fired from the train as they raced off with their booty, and saw Hal reel in his saddle and pitch forward; and how he had tried to check his horse and turn back; and how Dick Wilbur, and Patterson, and big Phil Branch had forced him to go on and leave that form lying motionless on the snow.
At that he groaned, and spurred the black, and so the cavalcade rushed faster and faster through the night.
They came over a sharp ridge and veered to the side just in time, for all the further slope was a mass of treacherous sand and rubble and raw rocks and mud, where a landslide had stripped the hill to the stone.
As they veered about the ruin and thundered on down to the foot of the hill, Jim Boone threw up his hand for a signal and brought his stallion to a halt on back-braced, sliding legs.
For a metallic glitter had caught his eye, and then he saw, half covered by the pebbles and dirt, the figure of a man. He must have been struck by the landslide and not overwhelmed by it, but rather carried before it like a stick in a rush of water. At the outermost edge of the wave he lay with the rocks and dirt washed over him. Boone swung from the saddle and lifted Pierre le Rouge.
The gleam of metal was the cross which his fingers still gripped. Boone examined it with a somewhat superstitious caution, took it from the nerveless fingers, and slipped it into a pocket of Pierre's shirt. A small cut on the boy's forehead showed where the stone struck which knocked him senseless, but the cut still bled--a small trickle--Pierre lived. He even stirred and groaned and opened his eyes, large and deeply blue.
It was only an instant before they closed, but Boone had seen. He turned with the figure lifted easily in his arms as if Pierre had been a child fallen asleep by the hearth and now about to be carried off to bed.
And the outlaw said: "I've lost my boy tonight. This here one was given me by the will of--God."
Black Morgan Gandil reined his horse close by, leaned to peer down, and the shadow of his hat fell across the face of Pierre.
"There's no good comes of savin' shipwrecked men. Leave him where you found him, Jim. That's my advice. Sidestep a redheaded man. That's what I say."
The quick-stepping horse of Bud Mansie came near, and the rider wiped his stiff lips, and spoke from the side of his mouth, a prison habit of the line that moves in the lockstep: "Take it from me, Jim, there ain't any place in our crew for a man you've picked up without knowing him beforehand. Let him lay, I say." But big Dick Wilbur was already leading up the horse of Hal Boone, and into the saddle Jim Boone swung the inert body of Pierre. The argument was settled, for every man of them knew that nothing could turn Boone back from a thing once begun. Yet there were muttered comments that drew Black Morgan Gandil and Bud Mansie together.
And Gandil, from the South Seas, growled with averted eyes: "This is the most fool stunt the chief has ever pulled."
"Right, pal," answered Mansie. "You take a snake in out of the cold, and it bites you when it comes to in the warmth; but the chief has started, and there ain't nothing that'll make him stop, except maybe God or McGurk."
And Black Gandil answered with his evil, sudden grin: "Maybe McGurk, but not God."
They started on again with Garry Patterson and Dick Wilbur riding close on either side of Pierre, supporting his limp body. It delayed the whole gang, for they could not go on faster than a jog-trot. The wind, however, was falling off in violence. Its shrill whistling ceased, at length, and they went on, accompanied only by the harsh crunching of the snow underfoot.
Chapter 10
Consciousness returned to Pierre slowly. Many a time his eyes opened, and he saw nothing, but when he did see and hear it was by vague glimpses.
He heard the crunch of the snow underfoot; he heard the panting and snorting of the horses; he felt the swing and jolt of the saddle beneath him; he saw the grim faces of the long-riders, and he said: "The law has taken me."
Thereafter he let his will lapse, and surrendered to the sleepy numbness which assailed his brain in waves. He was riding without support by this time, but it was an automatic effort. There was no more real life in him than in a dummy figure. It was not the effect of the blow. It was rather the long exposure and the overexertion of mind and body during the evening and night. He had simply collapsed beneath the strain.
But an old army man has said: "Give me a soldier of eighteen or twenty. In a single day he may not march quite so far as a more mature man or carry quite so much weight. He will go to sleep each night dead to the world. But in the morning he awakens a new man. He is like a slate from which all the writing has been erased. He is ready for a new day and a new world. Thirty days of campaigning leaves him as strong and fresh as ever.
"Thirty days of campaigning leaves the old soldier a wreck. Why? Because as a man grows older he loses the ability to sleep soundly. He carries the nervous strain of one day over to the next. Life is a serious problem to a man over thirty. To a man under thirty it is simply a game. For my part, give me men who can play at war."
So it was with Pierre le Rouge. He woke with a faint heaviness of head, and stretched himself. There were many sore places, but nothing more. He looked up, and the slant winter sun cut across his face and made a patch of bright yellow on the wall beside him.
Next he heard a faint humming, and, turning his head, saw a boy of fourteen or perhaps a little more, busily cleaning a rifle in a way that betokened the most expert knowledge of the weapon. Pierre himself knew rifles as a preacher knows his Bible, and as he lay half awake and half asleep he smiled with enjoyment to see the deft fingers move here and there, wiping away the oil. A green hand will spend half a day cleaning a gun, and then do the work imperfectly; an expert does the job efficiently in ten minutes. This was an expert.
Undoubtedly this was a true son of the mountain-desert. He wore his old slouch hat even in the house, and his skin was that olive brown which comes from many years of exposure to the wind and sun. At the same time there was a peculiar fineness about the boy. His feet were astonishingly small and the hands thin and slender for all their supple strength. And his neck was not bony, as it is in most youths at this gawky age, but smoothly rounded.
Men grow big of bone and sparse of flesh in the mountain-desert. It was the more surprising to Pierre to see this young fellow with the marvelously delicate-cut features. By some freak of nature here was a place where the breed ran to high blood.
The cleaning completed, the boy tossed the butt of the gun to his shoulder and squinted down the barrel. Then he loaded the magazine, weighted
the gun deftly at the balance, and dropped the rifle across his knees.
"Morning," said Pierre le Rouge cheerily, and swung off the bunk to the floor. "How old's the gun?"
The boy, without the slightest show of excitement, snapped the butt to his shoulder and drew a bead on Pierre's breast.
"Sit down before you get all heated up," said a musical voice. "There's nobody waiting for you on horseback."
And Pierre sat down, partly because Western men never argue a point when that little black hole is staring them in the face, partly because he remembered with a rush that the last time he had fully possessed his consciousness he had been lying in the snow with the cross gripped hard and the toppling mass of the landslide above him. All that had happened between was blotted from his memory. He fumbled at his throat. The cross was not there. He touched his pockets. "Ease your hands away from your hip," said the cold voice of the boy, who had dropped his gun to the ready with a significant finger curled around the trigger, "or I'll drill you clean."
Pierre obediently raised his hands to the level of his shoulders. The boy sneered.
"This isn't a hold-up," he explained. "Put 'em down again, but watch yourself."
The sneer varied to a contemptuous smile.
"I guess you're tame, all right."
"Point that gun another way, will you, son?"
The boy flushed.
"Don't call me son."
"Is this a lockup--a jail?"
"This?"
"What is it, then? The last I remember I was lying in the snow with--"
"I wish to God you'd been let there," said the boy bitterly.
But Pierre, overwhelmed with the endeavor to recollect, rushed on with his questions and paid no heed to the tone.
"I had a cross in my hand--"
The scorn of the boy grew to mighty proportions.
"It's there in the breast-pocket of your shirt."
Pierre drew out the little cross, and the touch of it against his palm restored whatever of his strength was lacking. Very carefully he attached it to the chain about his throat. Then he looked up to the contempt of the boy, and as he did so another memory burst on him and brought him to his feet. The gun went to the boy's shoulders at the same time.
"When I was found--was anyone else with me?"
"Nope."
"What happened?"
"Must have been buried in the landslide. Half a hill caved in, and the dirt rolled you down to the bottom. Plain luck, that's all, that kept you from going out."
"Luck?" said Pierre and he laid his hand against his breast where he could feel the outline of the cross. "Yes, I suppose it was luck. And she--"
He sat down slowly and buried his face in his hands. A new tone came in the voice of the boy as he asked: "Was a woman with you?" But Pierre heard only the tone and not the words. His face was gray when he looked up again, and his voice hard.
"Tell me as briefly as you can how I come here, and who picked me up."
"My father and his men. They passed you lying on the snow. They brought you home."
"Who is your father?"
The boy stiffened and his color rose.
"My father is Jim Boone."
Instinctively, while he stared, the right hand of Pierre le Rouge crept toward his hip.
"Keep your hand steady," said the boy. "I got a nervous trigger-finger. Yeh, dad is pretty well known."
"You're his son?"
"I'm Jack Boone."
"But I've heard--tell me, why am I under guard?"
Jack was instantly aflame with the old anger.
"Not because I want you here."
"Who does?"
"Dad."
"Put away your pop-gun and talk sense. I won't try to get away until Jim Boone comes. I only fight men."
Even the anger and grief of the boy could not keep him from smiling.
"Just the same I'll keep the shooting-iron handy. Sit still. A gun don't keep me from talking sense, does it? You're here to take Hal's place. Hal!" The little wail told a thousand things, and Pierre, shocked out of the thought of his own troubles, waited.
"My brother, Hal; he's dead; he died last night, and on the way back dad found you and brought you to take Hal's place. _Hal's_ place!"
The accent showed how impossible it was that Hal's place could be taken by any mortal man.
"I got orders to keep you here, but if I was to do what I'd like to do, I'd give you the best horse on the place and tell you to clear out. That's me!"
"Then do it."
"And face dad afterward?"
"Tell him I overpowered you. That would be easy; you a slip of a boy, and me a man."
"Stranger, it goes to show you may have heard of Jim Boone, but you don't anyways know him. When he orders a thing done he wants it done, and he don't care how, and he don't ask questions why. He just raises hell."
"He really expects to keep me here?"
"Expects? He will."
"Going to tie me up?" asked Pierre ironically.
"Maybe," answered Jack, overlooking the irony. "Maybe he'll just put you on my shoulders to guard."
He moved the gun significantly.
"And I can do it."
"Of course. But he would have to let me go sometime."
"Not till you'd promised to stick by him. I told him that myself, but he said that you're young and that he'd teach you to like this life whether you wanted to or not. Me speaking personally, I agree with Black Gandil: This is the worst fool thing that dad has ever done. What do we want with you--in Hal's place!"
"But I've got a thing to do right away--today; it can't wait."
"Give dad your word to come back and he'll let you go. He says you're the kind that will keep your word. You see, he found you with a cross in your hand."
And Jack's lips curled again.
It was all absurd, too impossible to be real. The only real things were the body of yellow-haired Mary Brown, under the tumbled rocks and dirt of the landslide, and the body of Martin Ryder waiting to be placed in that corner plot where the grass grew quicker than all other grass in the spring of the year.
However, having fallen among madmen, he must use cunning to get away before the outlaw and his men came back from wherever they had gone. Otherwise there would be more bloodshed, more play of guns and hum of lead.
"Tell me of Hal," he said, and dropped his elbows on his knees as if he accepted his fate.
"Don't know you well enough to talk of Hal."
"I'm sorry."
The boy made a little gesture of apology.
"I guess that was a mean thing to say. Sure I'll tell you about Hal--if I can."
"Tell me anything you can," said Pierre gently, "because I've got to try to be like him, haven't I?"
"You could try till rattlers got tame, but it'd take ten like you to make one like Hal. He was dad's own son--he was my brother."
The sob came openly now, and the tears were a mist in the boy's eyes.
"What's your name?"
"Pierre."
"Pierre? I suppose I got to learn it."
"I suppose so." And he edged farther forward so that he was sitting only on the edge of the bunk.
"Please do." And he gathered his feet under him, ready for a spring forward and a grip at the boy's threatening rifle.
Jack had canted his head a little to one side. "Did you ever see a horse that was gentle and yet had never been ridden, or his spirit broke, Pierre--"
Here Pierre made his leap swift as some bobcat of the northern woods; his hand whipped out as lightning fast as the striking paw of the lynx, and the gun was jerked from the hands of Jack. Not before the boy clutched at it with a cry of horror, but the force of the pull sent him lurching to the floor and broke his grip.
He was up in an instant, however, and a knife of ugly length glittered in his hand as he sprang at Pierre.
Pierre tossed aside the rifle and met the attack barehanded. He caught the knife-bearing hand at the wrist and under his g
rip the hand loosened its hold and the steel tinkled on the floor. His other arm caught the body of Jack in a mighty vise.
There was a brief and futile struggle, and a hissing of breath in the silence till the hat tumbled from the head of Jack and down over the shoulders streamed a torrent of silken black hair.
Pierre stepped back. This was the meaning, then, of the strangely small feet and hands and the low music of the voice. It was the body of a girl that he had held.
Chapter 11
It was not fear nor shame that made the eyes of Jacqueline so wide as she stared past Pierre toward the door. He glanced across his shoulder, and blocking the entrance to the room, literally filling the doorway, was the bulk of Jim Boone.
"Seems as if I was sort of steppin' in on a little family party," he said. "I'm sure glad you two got acquainted so quick. Jack, how did you and--What the hell's your name, lad?"
"He tricked me, dad, or he would never have got the gun away from me. This--this Pierre--this beast--he got me to talk of Hal. Then he stole--"
"The point," said Jim Boone coldly, "is that he _got_ the gun. Run along, Jack. You ain't so growed up as I was thinkin'. Or hold on--maybe you're _more_ grown up. Which is it? Are you turnin' into a woman, Jack?"
She whirled on Pierre in a white fury.
"You see? You see what you've done? He'll never trust me again--never! Pierre, I hate you. I'll always hate you. And if Hal were here--"
A storm of sobs and tears cut her short, and she disappeared through the door. Boone and Pierre stood regarding each other critically.
Pierre spoke first: "You're not as big as I expected."
"I'm plenty big; but you're older than I thought."
"Too old for what you want of me. The girl told me what that was."
"Not too old to be made what I want."
And his hands passed through a significant gesture of molding the empty air. The boy met his eye dauntlessly.
"I suppose," he said, "that I've a pretty small chance of getting away."
