by Max Brand
"Why?"
"I'm afraid to go: Let me stay!"
He said gloomily: "No good will come of it."
"I'll never trouble you--never!"
"No, the bad luck comes on the people who are with me, but never on me. It's struck them all down, one by one; your turn is next, Jack. If I could leave the cross behind--"
He covered his face and groaned: "But I don't dare; I don't dare! I have to face McGurk. Jack, I hate myself for it, but I can't help it. I'm afraid of McGurk, afraid of that damned white face, that lowered, fluttering eyelid, that sneering mouth. Without the cross to bring me luck, how could I meet him? But while I keep the cross there's ruin and hell without end for everyone with me."
She was white and shaking. She said: "I'm not afraid. I've one friend left; there's nothing else to care for."
"So it's to be this way, Jack?"
"This way, and no other."
"Partner, I'm glad. My God, Jack, what a man you would have made!"
Their hands met and clung together, and her head had drooped, perhaps in acquiescence.
Chapter 25
Dick Wilbur, telling Mary how Pierre had cut himself adrift, did not even pretend to sorrow, and she listened to him with her eyes fixed steadily on his own. As a matter of fact, she had shown neither hope nor excitement from the moment he came back to her and started to tell his message. But if she showed neither hope nor excitement for herself, surely she gave Dick still fewer grounds for any optimistic foresights.
So he finished gloomily: "And as far as I can make out, Pierre is right. There's some rotten bad luck that follows him. It may not be the cross--I don't suppose you believe in superstition like that, Miss Brown?"
She said: "It saved my life."
"The cross?"
"Yes."
"Then Pierre--you mean--you met before the dance--you mean--"
He was stammering so that he couldn't finish his thoughts, and she broke in: "If he will not come to me, then I must go to him."
"Follow Pierre le Rouge?" queried Wilbur. "You're an optimist. But that's because you've never seen him ride. I consider it a good day's work to start out with him and keep within sight till night, but as for following and over-taking him--"
He laughed heartily at the thought.
And she smiled a little sadly, answering: "But I have the most boundless patience in the world. He may gallop all the way, but I will walk, and keep on walking, and reach him in the end."
Her hands moved out as though testing their power, gripping at the air.
"Where will you go to hunt for him?"
"I don't know. But every evening, when I look out at the sunset hills, with the purple along the valleys, I think that he must be out there somewhere, going toward the highest ranges. If I were up in that country I know that I could find him."
"Never in a thousand years."
"Why?"
"Because he's on the trail--"
"On the trail?"
"Of McGurk."
She started.
"What is this man McGurk? I hear of him on all sides. If one of the men rides a bucking horse successfully, someone is sure to say: 'Who taught you what you know, Bud--McGurk?' And then the rest laugh. The other day a man was pointed out to me as an expert shot. 'Not as fast as McGurk,' it was said, 'but he shoots just as straight.' Finally I asked someone about McGurk. The only answer I received was: 'I hope you never find out what he is.' Tell me, what is McGurk?"
Wilbur considered the question gravely.
He said at last: "McGurk is--hell!"
He expanded his statement: "Think of a man who can ride anything that walks on four feet, who never misses with either a rifle or a revolver, who doesn't know the meaning of fear, and then imagine that man living by himself and fighting the rest of the world like a lone wolf. That's McGurk. He's never had a companion; he's never trusted any man. Perhaps that's why they say about him the same thing that they say about me."
"What's that?"
"You will smile when you hear. They say that McGurk will lose out in the end on account of some woman."
"And they say that of you?"
"They say right of me. I know it myself. Look at me now. What right have I here? If I'm found I'm the meat of the first man who sights me, but here I stay, and wait and watch for your smiles--like a love-sick boy. By God, you must despise me, Mary!"
"I don't try to understand you Westerners," she answered, "and that's why I have never questioned you before. Tell me, why is it that you come so stealthily to see me and run away as soon as anyone else appears?"
He said with wonder: "Haven't you guessed?"
"I don't dare guess."
"But you have, and your guess was right. There's a price on my head. By right, I should be out there on the ranges with Pierre le Rouge and McGurk. There's the only safe place; but I saw you and I came down out of the wilds and can't go back. I'll stay, I suppose, till I run my head into a halter."
She was too much moved to speak for a moment, and then: "You come to me in spite of that? Dick, whatever you have done, I know that it's only chance which made you go wrong, just as it made Pierre. I wish--"
The dimness of her eyes encouraged him with a hope. He moved closer to her.
He repeated: "You wish--"
"That you could be satisfied with a mere friendship. I could give you that, Dick, with all my heart."
He stepped back and smiled somewhat grimly on her.
She went on: "And this McGurk--what do you mean when you say that Pierre is on his trail?"
"Hunting him with a gun."
She grew paler, but her voice remained steady.
"But in all those miles of mountains they may never meet?"
"They can't stay apart any more than iron can stay away from a magnet. Listen: half a dozen years ago McGurk had the reputation of bearing a charmed life. He had been in a hundred fights and he was never touched with either a knife or a bullet. Then he crossed Pierre le Rouge when Pierre was only a youngster just come onto the range. He put two bullets through Pierre, but the boy shot him from the floor and wounded him for the first time. The charm of McGurk was broken.
"For half a dozen years McGurk was gone; there was never a whisper about him. Then he came back and went on the trail of Pierre. He has killed the friends of Pierre one by one; Pierre himself is the next in order--Pierre or myself. And when those two meet there will be the greatest fight that was ever staged in the mountain-desert."
She stood straight, staring past Wilbur with hungry eyes.
"I knew he needed me. I have to save him, Dick. You see that? I have to bring him down from the mountains and keep him safe from McGurk. McGurk! Somehow the sound means what 'devil' used to mean to me."
"You've never traveled alone, and yet you'd go up there and brave everything that comes for the sake of Pierre? What has he done to deserve it, Mary?".
"What have I done, Dick, to deserve the care you have for me?"
He stared gloomily on her.
"When do you start?"
"Tonight."
"Your friends won't let you go."
"I'll steal away and leave a note behind me."
"And you'll go alone?"
She caught at a hope.
"Unless you'll go with me, Dick?"
"I? Take you--to Pierre?"
She did not speak to urge him, but in the silence her beauty pleaded for her.
He said: "Mary, how lovely you are. If I go I will have you for a few days--for a week at most, all to myself."
She shook her head. From the window behind her the sunset light flared in her hair, flooding it with red-gold.
"All the time that we are gone, you will never say things like this, Dick?"
"I suppose not. I should be near you, but terribly far away from your thoughts all the while. Still, you will be near. You will be very beautiful, Mary, riding up the trail through the pines, with all the scents of the evergreens blowing about you, and I--well, I must go b
ack to a second childhood and play a game of suppose--"
"A game of what?"
"Of supposing that you are really mine, Mary, and riding out into the wilderness for my sake."
She stepped a little closer, peering into his face.
"No matter what you suppose, I'm sure you'll leave that part of it merely a game, Dick!"
He laughed suddenly, though the sound broke off as short and sharp as it began.
"Haven't I played a game all my life with the fair ladies? And have I anything to show for it except laughter? I'll go with you, Mary, if you'll let me."
"Dick, you've a heart of gold! What shall I take?"
"I'll make the pack up, and I'll be back here an hour after dark and whistle. Like this--"
And he gave the call of Boone's gang.
"I understand. I'll be ready. Hurry, Dick, for we've very little time."
He hesitated, then: "All the time we're on the trail you must be far from me, and at the end of it will be Pierre le Rouge--and happiness for you. Before we start, Mary, I'd like to--"
It seemed that she read his mind, for she slipped suddenly inside his arms, kissed him, and was gone from the room. He stood a moment with a hand raised to his face.
"After all," he muttered, "that's enough to die for, and--" He threw up his long arms in a gesture of resignation.
"The will of God be done!" said Wilbur, and laughed again.
Chapter 26
She was ready, crouched close to the window of her room, when the signal came, but first she was not sure, because the sound was as faint as a memory. Moreover, it might have been a freakish whistling in the wind, which rose stronger and stronger. It had piled the thunder-clouds higher and higher, and now and again a heavy drop of rain tapped at her window like a thrown pebble.
So she waited, and at last heard the whistle a second time, unmistakably clear. In a moment she was hurrying down to the stable, climbed into the saddle, and rode at a cautious trot out among the sand-hills.
For a time she saw no one, and commenced to fear that the whole thing had been a gruesomely real, practical jest. So she stopped her horse and imitated the signal whistle as well as she could. It was repeated immediately behind her--almost in her ear, and she turned to make out the dark form of a tall horseman.
"A bad night for the start," called Wilbur. "Do you want to wait till tomorrow?"
She could not answer for a moment, the wind whipping against her face, while a big drop stung her lips.
She said at length: "Would a night like this stop Pierre--or McGurk?"
For answer she heard his laughter.
"Then I'll start. I must never stop for weather."
He rode up beside her.
"This is the start of the finish."
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing. But somewhere on this ride, I've an idea a question will be answered for me."
"What question?"
Instead of replying he said: "You've got a slicker on?"
"Yes."
"Then follow me. We'll gallop into the wind a while and get the horses warmed up. Afterward we'll take the valley of the Old Crow and follow it up to the crest of the range."
His horse lunged out ahead of hers, and she followed, leaning far forward against a wind that kept her almost breathless. For several minutes they cantered steadily, and before the end of the gallop she was sitting straight up, her heart beating fast, a faint smile on her lips, and the blood running hot in her veins. For the battle was begun, she knew, by that first sharp gallop, and here at the start she felt confident of her strength. When she met Pierre she could force him to turn back with her.
Wilbur checked his horse to a trot; they climbed a hill, and just as the rain broke on them with a rattling gust they swung into the valley of the Old Crow. Above them in the sky the thunder rode; the rain whipped against the rocks like the rattle of a thousand flying hoofs; and now and again the lightning flashed across the sky.
Through that vast accompaniment they moved on in the night straight toward the heart of the mountains which sprang into sight with every flash of the lightning and seemed toppling almost above them, yet they were weary miles away, as she knew.
By those same flashes she caught glimpses of the face of Wilbur. She hardly knew him. She had seen him always big, gentle, handsome, good-natured; now he was grown harder, with a stern set of the jaw, and a certain square outline of face. It had seemed impossible. Now she began to guess how the law could have placed a price upon his head. For he belonged out here with the night and the crash of the storm, with strong, lawless things about him. An awe grew in her, and she was filled half with dread and half with curiosity at the thought of facing him, as she must many a time, across the camp-fire. In a way, he was the ladder by which she climbed to an understanding of Pierre le Rouge, Red Pierre. For that Pierre, she knew, was to big Wilbur what Dick himself was to the great mass of law-abiding men. Accident had cut Wilbur adrift, but it was more than accident which started Pierre on the road to outlawry; it was the sheer love of dangerous chance, the glory in fighting other men. This was Pierre.
What was the man for whom Pierre hunted? What was McGurk? Not even the description of Wilbur had proved very enlightening. Her thought of him was vague, nebulous, and taking many forms. Sometimes he was tall and dark and stern. Again he was short and heavy and somewhat deformed of body. But always he was everywhere in the night about her.
All this she pondered as they began the ride up the valley, but as the long journey continued, and the hours and the miles rolled past them, a racking weariness possessed her and numbed her mind. She began to wish desperately for morning, but even morning might not bring an end to the ride. That would be at the will of the outlaw beside her. Finally, only one picture remained to her. It stabbed across the darkness of her mind--the red hair and the keen eyes of Pierre.
The storm decreased as they went up the valley. Finally the wind fell off to a pleasant breeze, and the clouds of the rain broke in the center of the heavens and toppled west in great tumbling masses. In half an hour's time the sky was clear, and a cold moon looked down on the blue-black evergreens, shining faintly with the wet, and on the dead black of the mountains.
For the first time in all that ride her companion spoke: "In an hour the gray will begin in the east. Suppose we camp here, eat, get a bit of sleep, and then start again?"
As if she had waited for permission, fighting against her weariness, she now let down the bars of her will, and a tingling stupor swept over her body and broke in hot, numbing waves on her brain.
"Whatever you say. I'm afraid I couldn't ride much further tonight."
"Look up at me."
She raised her head.
"No; you're all in. But you've made a game ride. I never dreamed there was so much iron in you. We'll make our fire just inside the trees and carry water up from the river, eh?"
A scanty growth of the evergreens walked over the hills and skirted along the valley, leaving a broad, sandy waste in the center where the river at times swelled with melted snow or sudden rains and rushed over the lower valley in a broad, muddy flood.
At the edge of the forest he picketed the horses in a little open space carpeted with wet, dead grass. It took him some time to find dry wood. So he wrapped her in blankets and left her sitting on a saddle. As the chill left her body she began to grow delightfully drowsy, and vaguely she heard the crack of his hatchet. He had found a rotten stump and was tearing off the wet outer bark to get at the dry wood within.
After that it was only a moment before a fire sputtered feebly and smoked at her feet. She watched it, only half conscious, in her utter weariness, and seeing dimly the hollow-eyed face of the man who stopped above the blaze. Now it grew quickly, and increased to a sharp-pointed pyramid of red flame. The bright sparks showered up, crackling and snapping, and when she followed their flight she saw the darkly nodding tops of the evergreens above her. With the fire well under way, he took the coffeepot to get
water from the river, and left her to fry the bacon. The fumes of the frying meat wakened her at once, and brushed even the thought of her exhaustion from her mind. She was hungry--ravenously hungry.
So she tended the bacon slices with care until they grew brown and crisped and curled at the edges. After that she removed the pan from the fire, and it was not until then that she began to wonder why Wilbur was so long in returning with the water. The bacon grew cold; she heated it again and was mightily tempted to taste one piece of it, but restrained herself to wait for Dick.
Still he did not come. She stood up and called, her high voice rising sharp and small through the trees. It seemed that some sound answered, so she smiled and sat down. Ten minutes passed and he was still gone. A cold alarm swept over her at that. She dropped the pan and ran out from the trees.
Everywhere was the bright moonlight--over the wet rocks, and sand, and glimmering on the slow tide of the river, but nowhere could she see Wilbur, or a form that looked like a man. Then the moonlight glinted on something at the edge of the river. She ran to it and found the coffee-can half in the water and partially filled with sand.
A wild temptation to scream came over her, but the tight muscles of her throat let out no sound. But if Wilbur were not here, where had he gone? He could not have vanished into thin air. The ripple of the water washing on the sand replied. Yes, that current might have rolled his body away.
To shut out the grim sight of the river she turned. Stretched across the ground at her feet she saw clearly the impression of a body in the moist sand.
Chapter 27
The heels had left two deeply defined gouges in the ground; there was a sharp hollow where the head had lain, and a broad depression for the shoulders. It was the impression of the body of a man--a large man like Wilbur. Any hope, any doubt she might have had, slipped from her mind, and despair rolled into it with an even, sullen current, like the motion of the river.
It is strange what we do with our big moments of fear and sorrow and even of joy. Now Mary stooped and carefully washed out the coffee-pot, and filled it again with water higher up the bank; and turned back toward the edge of the trees.
It was all subconscious, this completing of the task which Wilbur had begun, and subconscious still was her careful rebuilding of the fire till it flamed high, as though she were setting a signal to recall the wanderer. But the flame, throwing warmth and red light across her eyes, recalled her sharply to reality, and she looked up and saw the dull dawn brightening beyond the dark evergreens.
