by Max Brand
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 str
ucture 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 some crowned head who made hunting and racing his chief end in life, for these were animals worthy of the sport of kings.
They were chosen each from among literal hundreds, and they were cared for far more tenderly than the masters cared for themselves. There was a reason in it, for upon their speed and endurance depended the life of the outlaw. Moreover, the policy of Jim Boone was one of actual "long riding."
Here he had come to a pause for a few days to recuperate his horses and his men. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would be on the spur again and sweeping off to a distant point in the mountain-desert to strike and be gone again before the rangers knew well that he had been there. Very rarely did one settler have another neighbor at a distance of less than two hundred miles. It meant arduous and continual riding, and a horse with any defect was worse than useless because the speed of the gang had to be the speed of the slowest horse in the lot.
It was some time before the two long riders had completed the grooming of their horses and had gone down the hill and into the house. In the largest habitable room they found a fire fed with rotten timbers from the wrecked portion of the building, and scattered through the room a sullen and dejected group: Mansie, Branch, Jim Boone, and Black Morgan Gandil.
At a glance it was easy to detect their malady; it was the horrible ennui which comes to men who are always surrounded by one set of faces. If a man is happily married he may bear with his wife and his children constantly through long stretches of time, but the glamour of life lies in the varying personalities which a man glimpses in passing, but never knows.
This was a rare crew. Every man of them was marked for courage and stamina and wild daring. Yet even so in their passive moments they hated each other with a hate that passed the understanding of common men.
Through seven years they had held together, through fair weather and foul, and now each knew from the other's expression the words that were about to be spoken, and each knew that the other was reading him, and loathing what he read.
So they were apt to relapse into long silences unless Jack was with them, for being a woman her variety was infinite, or Pierre le Rouge, whom all except Black Gandil loved and petted, and feared.
They were a battered crowd. Wind and hard weather and a thousand suns had marked them, and the hand of man had branded them. Here and there was a touch of gray in their hair, and about the mouth of each were lines which in such silent moments as this one gave an expression of yearning.
"What's up? What's wrong?" asked Wilbur from the door, but since no answer was deigned he said no more.
But Pierre, like a charmed man who dares to walk among lions, strolled easily through the room, and looked into the face of big Boone, who smiled faintly up to him, and Black Gandil, who scowled doubly dark, and Bud Mansie, who shifted uneasily in his chair and then nodded, and finally to Branch. He dropped a hand on the massive shoulder of the blacksmith.
"Well?" he asked.
Branch let himself droop back into his chair. His big, dull, colorless eyes stared up to his friend.
"I dunno, lad. I'm just weary with the sort of tired that you can't help by sleepin'. Understand?"
Pierre nodded, slowly, because he sympathized. "And the trouble?"
Branch stared about as if searching for a reason. "Jack's upstairs sulking; Patterson hasn't come home yet."
And Black Gandil, who heard all things, said without looking up: "A man that saves a shipwrecked fellow, he gets bad luck for thanks."
Pierre turned a considerable eye on him, and Gandil scowled back.
"You've been croaking for six years, Morgan, about the bad luck that would come to Jim from saving me out of the snow. It's never happened, has it?"
Gandil, snarling from one side of his mouth, answered: "Where's Patterson?"
"Am I responsible if the blockhead has got drunk someplace?"
"Patterson doesn't get drunk--not that way. And he knows that we were to start again today."
"There ain't no doubt of that," commented Branch.
"It's the straight dope. Patterson keeps his dates," said Bud Mansie.
The booming bass of Jim Boone broke in: "Shut up, the whole gang of you. We've had luck for the six years Pierre has been with us. Who calls him a Jonah?"
And Black Gandil answered: "I do. I've sailed the seas. I know bad luck when I see it."
"You've been seeing it for six years."
"The worst storms come on a voyage that starts with fair weather. Patterson? He's gone; he ain't just delayed; he's gone."
It was not the first of these gloomy prophecies which Gandil had made, but each time a heavy gloom broke over Red Pierre. For when he summed up the good fortune which the cross of Father Victor had brought him, he found that he had gained a father, and lost him at their first meeting; and he had won money on that night of the gambling, but it had cost the life of another man almost at once. The horse which carried him away from the vengeance in Morgantown had died on the way and he had been saved from the landslide, but the girl had perished.
He had driven McGurk from the ranges, and where would the penalty fall on those who were near and dear to him? In a superstitious horror he had asked himself the question a thousand times, and finally he could hardly bear to look into the ominous, brooding eyes of Black Gandil. It was as if the man had a certain and evil knowledge of the future.
Chapter 17
The knowledge of the torment he was inflicting made the eye of Black Gandil bright with triumph.
He continued, and now every man in the room was sitting up, alert, with gloomy eyes fixed upon Pierre: "Patterson is the first, but he ain't the last. He's just the start. Who's next?" He looked slowly around.
"Is it you, Bud, or you, Phil, or you, Jim, or maybe me?"
And Pierre said: "What makes you think you know that trouble's coming, Morgan?"
"Because my blood runs cold in me when I look at you."
Red Pierre grew rigid and straightened in a way they knew.
"Damn you, Gandil, I've borne with you and your croaking too long, d'ye hear? Too long, and I'll hear no more of it, understand?"
"Why not? You'll hear from me every time I sight you in the offing. You c'n lay to that!"
The others were tense, ready to spring for cover, but Boone reared up his great figure.
"Don't answer him, Pierre. You, Gandil, shut your face or I'll break ye in two."
The fierce eyes of Pierre le Rouge never wavered from his victim, but he answered: "Keep out of this. This is _my_ party. I'll tell you why you'll stop gibbering, Gandil."
He made a pace forward and every man shrank a little away from him.
"Because the cold in your blood is part hate and more fear, Black Gandil."
The eyes of Gandil glared back for an instant. With all his soul he yearned for the courage to pull his gun, but his arm was numb; he could not move it, and his eyes wavered and fell.
The shaggy gray head of Jim Boone fell likewise, and he was murmuring to his savage old heart: "The good days are over. They'll never rest till one of 'em is dead, and then the rest will take sides and we'll have gun-plays at night. Seven years, and then to break up!"
Dick Wilbur, as usual, was the pacifier. He strode across the room, and the sharp sound of his heels on the creaking floor broke the tension. He said softly to Pierre: "You've raised hell enough. Now let's go and get Jack down here to undo what you've just finished. Besides, you've got to ask her for that dance, eh?"
The glance of Pierre still lingered on Gandil as he turned and followed Wilbur up the complaining stairs to the one habitable room in the second story of the house. It was set aside for the use of Jacqueline.
At the door Wilbur said: "Shrug your shoulders back; yo
u look as if you were going to jump at something. And wipe the wolf look off your face. After all, Jack's a girl, not a gunfighter."
Then he knocked and opened the door.
She lay face down on her bunk, her head turned from them toward the wall. Slender and supple and strong, it was still only the size of her boots and her hands that would make one look at her twice and then guess that this was a woman, for she was dressed, from trousers even to the bright bandanna knotted around her throat, like any prosperous range rider.
Now, to be sure, the thick coils of black hair told her sex, but when the broad-brimmed sombrero was pulled well down on her head, when the cartridge-belt and the six-gun were slung about her waist, and most of all when she spurred her mount recklessly across the hills no one could have suspected that this was not some graceful boy born and bred in the mountain-desert, willful as a young mountain lion, and as dangerous.
"Sleepy?" called Wilbur.
She waited a moment and then queried with exaggerated impudence: "Well?"
Ennui unspeakable was in that drawling monotone.
"Brace up; I've got news for you. And I've brought Pierre along to tell you about it."
"Oh!"
And she sat bolt upright with shining eyes. Instantly she remembered to yawn again, but her glance smiled on them above her hand.
She apologized. "Awfully sleepy, Dick."
But he was not deceived. He said: "There's a dance down near the Barnes place, and Pierre wants you to go with him."
"Pierre! A dance?"
He explained: "Dick's lost his head over a girl with yellow hair, and he wants me to go down and see her. He thought you might want to go along." Her face changed like the moon when a cloud blows across it. She answered with another slow, insolent yawn: "Thanks! I'm staying home tonight."
Wilbur glared his rage covertly at Pierre, but the latter was blandly unconscious that he had made any _faux pas_.
He said carelessly: "Too bad. It might be interesting. Jack?"
