by Max Brand
The heart of Mary Brown beat faster, though she could not see, but only felt the coming of the stranger.
The only sign she saw was in the horses, which showed an increasing uneasiness. Her own mare now shared the restlessness of the tall bay, and the two were footing it nervously here and there, tugging at the tethers, and tossing up their heads, with many a start, as if they feared and sought to flee from some approaching catastrophe--some vast and preternatural change--some forest fire which came galloping faster than even their fleet limbs could carry them.
Yet all beyond the pale of her camp-fire's light was silence, utter and complete silence. It seemed as if a muscular energy went into the intensity of her listening, but not a sound reached her except a faint whispering of the wind in the dark trees above her.
But at last she knew that the thing was upon her. The horses ceased their prancing and stared in a fixed direction through the thicket of shrubbery; the very wind grew hushed above her; she could feel the new presence as one feels the silence when a door closes and shuts away the sound of the street below.
It came on her with a shock, thrilling, terrible, yet not altogether unpleasant. She rose, her hands clenched at her sides and her eyes abnormally wide as they stared in the same direction as the eyes of the two horses held. Yet for all her preparation she nearly fainted when a voice sounded directly behind her, a pleasantly modulated voice: "Look this way. I am here, in front of the fire."
She turned about and the two horses, quivering, whirled toward that sound.
She stepped back, back until the embers of the fire lay between her and that side of the little clearing. In spite of herself the exclamation escaped her--"McGurk!"
The voice spoke again: "Do not be afraid. You are safe, absolutely."
"What are you?"
"Your friend."
"Is it you who followed me up the valley?"
"Yes."
"Come into the light. I must see you." A faint laughter reached her from the dark.
"I cannot let you do that. If that had been possible I should have come to you before."
"But I feel--I feel almost as if you are a ghost and no man of flesh and blood."
"It is better for you to feel that way about it," said the voice solemnly, "than to know me."
"At least, tell me why you have followed me, why you have cared for me."
"You will hate me if I tell you, and fear me."
"No, whatever you are, trust me. Tell me at least what came to Dick Wilbur?"
"That's easy enough. I met him at the river, a little by surprise, and caught him before he could even shout. Then I took his guns and let him go."
"But he didn't come back to me?"
"No. He knew that I would be there. I might have finished him without giving him a chance to speak, girl, but I'd seen him with you and I was curious. So I found out where you were going and why, and let Wilbur go. I came back and looked at you and found you asleep."
She grew cold at the thought of him leaning over her.
"I watched you a long time, and I suppose I'll remember you always as I saw you then. You were very beautiful with the shadow of your lashes against your cheek--almost as beautiful as you are now as you stand over there, fearing and loathing me. I dared not let you see me, but I decided to take care of you--for a while."
"And now?"
"I have come to say farewell to you."
"Let me see you once before you go."
"No! You see, I fear you even more than you fear me."
"Then I'll follow you."
"It would be useless--utterly useless. There are ways of becoming invisible in the mountains. But before I go, tell me one thing: Have you left the cabin to search for Pierre le Rouge in another place?"
"No. I do not search for him."
There was an instant of pause. Then the voice said sharply: "Did Wilbur lie to me?"
"No. I started up the valley to find him."
"But you've given him up?"
"I hate him--I hate him as much as I loathe myself for ever condescending to follow him."
She heard a quick breath drawn in the dark, and then a murmur: "I am free, then, to hunt him down!"
"Why?"
"Listen: I had given him up for your sake; I gave him up when I stood beside you that first night and watched you trembling with the cold in your sleep. It was a weak thing for me to do, but since I saw you, Mary, I am not as strong as I once was."
"Now you go back on his trail? It is death for Pierre?"
"You say you hate him?"
"Ah, but as deeply as that?" she questioned herself.
"It may not be death for Pierre. I have ridden the ranges many years and met them all in time, but never one like him. Listen: six years ago I met him first and then he wounded me--the first time any man has touched me. And afterward I was afraid, Mary, for the first time in my life, for the charm was broken. For six years I could not return, but now I am at his heels. Six are gone; he will be the last to go."
"What are you?" she cried. "Some bloodhound reincarnated?"
He said: "That is the mildest name I have ever been called."
Chapter 36
"Give up the trail of Pierre."
And there, brought face to face with the mortal question, even her fear burned low in her, and once more she remembered the youth who would not leave her in the snow, but held her in his arms with the strange cross above them.
She said simply: "I still love him."
A faint glimmer came to her through the dark and she could see deeper into the shrubbery, for now the moon stood up on the top of the great peak above them and flung a faint light into the hollow. That glimmer she saw, but no face of a man.
And then the silence held; every second of it was more than a hundred spoken words.
Then the calm voice said: "I cannot give him up."
"For the sake of God!"
"God and I have been strangers for a good many years."
"For my sake."
"But you see, I have been lying to myself. I told myself that I was coming merely to see you once--for the last time. But after I saw you I had to speak, and now that I have spoken it is hard to leave you, and now that I am with you I cannot give you up to Pierre le Rouge."
She cried: "What will you have of me?"
He answered with a ring of melancholy: "Friendship? No, I can't take those white hands--mine are so red. All I can do is to lurk about you like a shadow--a shadow with a sting that strikes down all other men who come near you."
She said: "For all men have told me about you, I know you could not do that."
"Mary, I tell you there are things about me, and possibilities, about which I don't dare to question myself."
"You have guarded me like a brother. Be one to me still; I have never needed one so deeply!"
"A brother? Mary, if your eyes were less blue or your hair less golden I might be; but you are too beautiful to be only that to me."
"Listen to me--"
But she stopped in the midst of her speech, because a white head loomed beside the dim form. It was the head of a horse, with pricking ears, which now nosed the shoulder of its master, and she saw the firelight glimmering in the great eyes.
"Your horse," she said in a trembling voice, "loves you and trusts you."
"It is the only thing which has not feared me. When it was a colt it came out of the herd and nosed my hand. It is the only thing which has not fought me, as all men have done--as you are doing now, Mary."
The wind that blew up the gorge came in gusts, not any steady current, but fitful rushes of air, and on one of these brief blasts it seemed to Mary that she caught the sound of a voice blown to whistling murmur. It was a vague thing of which she could not be sure, as faint as a thought. Yet the head of the white horse disappeared, and the glimmer of the man's face went out.
She called: "Whatever you are, wait! Let me speak!"
But no answer came, and she knew that the form was gone f
orever.
She cried again: "Who's there?"
"It is I," said a voice at her elbow, and she turned to look into the dark eyes of Jacqueline. "So he's gone?" asked Jack bitterly.
She fingered the butt of her gun.
"I thought--well, my chance at him is gone."
"But what--"
"Bah, if you knew you'd die of fear. Listen to what I have to say. All the things I told you in the cabin were lies."
"Lies?" said Mary evenly. "No, they proved themselves."
"Be still till I've finished, because if you talk you may make me forget--"
The gesture which finished the sentence was so eloquent of hate that Mary shrank away and put the embers of the fire between them.
"I tell you, it was all a lie, and Pierre le Rouge has never loved anything but you, you milk-faced--"
She stopped again, fighting against her passion. The pride of Mary held her stiff and straight, though her voice shook.
"Has he sent you after me with mockery?"
"No, he's given up the hope of you."
"The hope?"
"Don't you see? Are you going to make me crawl to explain? It always seemed to me that God meant Pierre for me. It always seemed to me that a girl like me was what he needed. But Pierre had never seen it. Maybe, if my hair was yellow an' my eyes blue, he might have felt different; but the way it is, he's always treated me like a kid brother--"
"And lived with you?" said the other sternly.
"Like two men! D'you understand how a woman could be the bunky of a man an' yet be no more to him than--than a man would be. You don't? Neither do I, but that's what I've been to Pierre le Rouge. What's that?"
She lifted her head and stood poised as if for flight. Once more the vague sound blew up to them upon the wind. Mary ran to her and grasped both of her hands in her own. "If it's true--"
But Jack snatched her hands away and looked on the other with a mighty hatred and a mightier contempt.
"True? Why, it damn near finished Pierre with me to think he'd take up with--a thing like you. But it's true. If somebody else had told me I'd of laughed at 'em. But it's true. Tell me: what'll you do with him?"
"Take him back--if I can reach him--take him back to the East."
"Yes--maybe he'd be happy there. But when the spring comes to the city, Mary, wait till the wind blows in the night and the rain comes tappin' on the roof. Then hold him if you can. D'ye hear? Hold him if you can!"
"If he cares it will not be hard. Tell me again, if--"
"Shut up. What's that again?"
The sound was closer now and unmistakably something other than the moan of the wind.
Jacqueline turned in great excitement to Mary:
"Did McGurk hear that sound down the gorge?"
"Yes. I think so. And then he--"
"My God!"
"What is it?"
"Pierre, and he's calling for--d'you hear?"
Clear and loud, though from a great distance, the wind carried up the sound and the echo preserved it: "McGurk!"
"McGurk!" repeated Mary.
"Yes! And you brought him up here with you, and brought his death to Pierre. What'll you do to save him now? Pierre!"
She turned and fled out among the trees, and after her ran Mary, calling, like the other: "Pierre!"
Chapter 37
After that call first reached him, clear to his ears though vague as a murmur at the ear of Mary, McGurk swung to the saddle of his white horse, and galloped down the gorge like a veritable angel of death.
The end was very near, he felt, yet the chances were at least ten to one that he would miss Pierre in the throat of the gorge, for among the great boulders, tall as houses, which littered it, a thousand men might have passed and repassed and never seen each other. Only the calling of Pierre could guide him surely.
The calling had ceased for some moments, and he began to fear that he had overrun his mark and missed Pierre in the heart of the pass, when, as he rounded a mighty boulder, the shout ran ringing in his very ears: "McGurk!" and a horseman swung into view.
"Here!" he called in answer, and stood with his right hand lifted, bringing his horse to a sharp halt, like some ancient cavalier stopping in the middle of the battle to exchange greetings with a friendly foe.
The other rider whirled alongside, his sombrero's brim flaring back from his forehead, so that McGurk caught the glare of the eyes beneath the shadow.
"So for the third time, my friend--" said McGurk.
"Which is the fatal one," answered Pierre. "How will you die, McGurk? On foot or on horseback?"
"On the ground, Pierre, for my horse might stir and make my work messy. I love a neat job, you know."
"Good."
They swung from the saddles and stood facing each other.
"Begin!" commanded McGurk. "I've no time to waste."
"I've very little time to look at the living McGurk. Let me look my fill before the end."
"Then look, and be done. I've a lady coming to meet me."
The other grew marvelously calm.
"She is with you, McGurk?"
"My dear Pierre, I've been with her ever since she started up the Old Crow."
"It will be easier to forget her. Are you ready?"
"So soon? Come, man, there's much for us to say. Many old times to chat over."
"I only wonder," said Pierre, "how one death can pay back what you've done. Think of it! I've actually run away from you and hidden myself among the hills. I've feared you, McGurk!"
He said it with a deep astonishment, as a grown man will speak of the way he feared darkness when he was a child. McGurk moistened his white lips. The white horse pawed the rocks as though impatient to be gone.
"Listen," said Pierre, "your horse grows restive. Suppose we stand here--it's a convenient distance apart--and wait with our arms folded for the next time the white horse paws the rocks, because when I kill you, McGurk, I want you to die knowing that another man was faster on the draw and straighter with his bullets than you are. D'you see?"
He could not have spoken with a more formal politeness if he had been asking the other to pass first through the door of a dining-room. The wonder of McGurk grew and the sweat on his forehead seemed to be spreading a chill through his entire body. He said: "I see. You trust all to the cross, eh, Pierre? The little cross under your neck?"
"It's gone," said Pierre le Rouge. "Why should I use it against a night rider, McGurk? Are you ready?"
And McGurk, not trusting his voice for some strange reason, nodded. The two folded their arms.
But the white horse which had been pawing the stones only a moment before was now unusually quiet. The very postures of the men seemed to turn him to stone, a beautiful, marble statue with the moonlight glistening on the muscles of his perfect shoulders.
At length he stirred. At once a quiver jerked through the tense bodies of the waiting men, but the white horse had merely stiffened and raised his head high. Now, with arched neck and flaunting tail he neighed loudly, as if he asked a question. How could he know, dumb brute, that what he asked only death could answer?
And as they waited an itching came at the palm of McGurk's hand. It was not much, just a tingle of the blood. To ease it, he closed his fingers and found that his hand was moist with cold perspiration.
He began to wonder if his fingers would be slippery on the butt of the gun. Then he tried covertly to dry them against his shirt. But he ceased this again, knowing that he must be of hair-trigger alertness to watch for the stamp of the white horse.
It occurred to him, also, that he was standing on a loose stone which might wobble when he pulled his gun, and he cursed himself silently for his hasty folly. Pierre, doubtless, had noticed that stone, and therefore he had made the suggestion that they stand where they were. Otherwise, how could there be that singular calm in the steady eyes which looked across at him?
Also, how explain the hunger of that stare? Was not he McGurk, and was not this man wh
om he had already once shot down? God, what a fool he had been not to linger an instant longer in that saloon in the old days and place the final shot in the prostrate body! In all his life he had made only one such mistake, and now that folly was pursuing him. And now--
The foot of the white horse lifted--struck the rock. The sound of its fall was lost in the explosion of two guns, and a ring of metal on metal. The revolver snapped from the hand of McGurk, whirled in a flashing circle, and clanged on the rocks at his feet. The bullet of Pierre had struck the barrel and knocked it cleanly from his hand.
It was luck, only luck, that placed that shot, and his own bullet, which had started first, had traveled wild, for there stood Pierre le Rouge, smiling faintly, alert, calm. For the first time in his life McGurk had missed. He set his teeth and waited for death.
But that steady voice of Pierre said: "To shoot you would be a pleasure, but there wouldn't be any lasting satisfaction in it. So there lies your gun at your feet. Well, here lies mine."
He dropped his own weapon to a position corresponding with that of McGurk's.
"We were both very wild that time. We must do better now. We'll stoop for our guns, McGurk. The signal? No, we won't wait for the horse to stamp. The signal will be when you stoop for your gun. You shall have every advantage, you see? Start for that gun, McGurk, when you're ready for the end."
The hand of McGurk stretched out and his arm stiffened but it seemed as though all the muscles of his back had grown stiff. He could not bend. It was strange. It was both ludicrous and incomprehensible. Perhaps he had grown stiff with cold in that position.
But he heard the voice of Pierre explaining gently: "You can't move, my friend. I understand. It's fear that stiffened your back. It's fear that sends the chill up and down your blood. It's fear that makes you think back to your murders, one by one. McGurk, you're done for. You're through. You're ready for the discard. I'm not going to kill you. I've thought of a finer hell than death, and that is to live as you shall live. I've beaten you, McGurk, beaten you fairly on the draw, and I've broken your heart by doing it. The next time you face a man you'll begin to think--you'll begin to remember how one other man beat you at the draw. And that wonder, McGurk, will make your hand freeze to your side, as you've made the hands of other men before me freeze. D'you understand?"
