by Max Brand
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 over-exertion of nerves and 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, and a light of infinite scorn blazed into those great black eyes.
“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 started and flushed a little.
“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 any one 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. His tone was thrillingly gentle 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 in pride and defiance.
“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, do you look like your father?”
Jack Boone smiled, strove to frown, and then burst into surprisingly musical laughter. It came in bursts and ripples, and seemed that it would never end. His merriment ended slowly, for he saw the eyes of Pierre stare into blank distance, and knew that the man with the red hair was thinking of the woman whom the landslide had buried. Something that was partially sympathy and partially curiosity altered Jack’s expression.
After all, it was very difficult to remain hostile in front of the steady blue eyes of this stranger.
Pierre said gravely: “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 in his peculiarly winning way.
“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 some time.”
“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!”
And a suggestion of a sob came in Jack’s voice, though he set his teeth to keep it back.
“But I’ve got a thing to do right away—to-day; 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 white-handed, 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 low-down mean thing to say. Sure I’ll tell you about Hal—if I can.”
For his lips trembled at the thought of the dead.
“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 bright 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, smiling faintly for the joy of the memory.
“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 his lips were as white as the teeth over which they snarled.
Pierre tossed aside the rifle and met the attack bare-handed. Deadly swift was the thrust of the knife, but compared with the motion of Pierre it was as slow as tame things are when they are likened to the wild.
He caught the knife-bearing hand at the wrist and under his grip 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, and his arm still tingled from the finger-tips to the shoulder.
CHAPTER XI
JACK GROWS UP
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 till my eyes filled up and I couldn’t see. 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.
The boy 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 moulding the empty air. The boy met his eye dauntlessly.
“I suppose,” he said, “that I’ve a pretty small chance of getting away.”
“Just about none, Pierre. Come here.”
Pierre stepped closer and looked down the hall into another room. There, about a table, sat the five grimmest riders of the mountain desert that he had even seen. They were such men as one could judge at a glance, and Pierre made that instinctive motion for his six-gun.
“The girl,” Jim Boone was saying, “kept you pretty busy tryin’ to make a break, and if she could do anything maybe you’d have a pile of trouble with one of them guardin’ you. But if I’d had a good look at you, lad, I’d never have let Jack take the job of guardin’ you.”
“Thanks,” answered Pierre dryly.
“You got reason; I can see that. Here’s the point, Pierre. I know young men because I can remember pretty close what I was at your age. I wasn’t any ladies’ lap dog, at that, but time and older men molded me the way I’m going to mold you. Understand?”
Pierre was nerved for many things, but the last word made him stir. It roused in him a red-tinged desire to get through the forest of black beard at the throat of Boone and dim the glitter of those keen eyes. It brought him also another thought.
Two great tasks lay before him: the burial of his father and the avenging of him on McGurk. As to the one, he knew it would be childish madness for him to attempt to bury his father in Morgantown with only his single hand to hold back the powers of the law or the friends of the notorious Diaz and crippled Hurley.
And for the other, it was even more vain to imagine that through his own unaided power he could strike down a figure of such almost legendary terror as McGurk.
The bondage of the gang might be a terrible thing through the future, but the present need blinded him to what might come.
He said: “Suppose I stop raising questions or making a fight, but give you my hand and call myself a member——”
“Of the family? Exactly. If you did that I’d know it was because you were wantin’ something, Pierre, eh?”
“Two things.”
“Lad, I like this way of talk. One—two—you hit quick like a two-gun man. Well, I’m used to paying high for what I get. What’s up?”
“The first——”
“Wait. Can I help you out by myself, or do you need the gang?”
“The gang.”
“Then come, and I’ll put it up to them. You first.”
It was equally courtesy and caution, and Pierre smiled faintly as he went first through the door. He stood in a moment under the eyes of five silent men.
The booming voice of Jim Boone pronounced:
“This is Pierre. He’ll be one of us if he can get the gang to do two things. I ask you, will you hear him for me, and then pass on whether or not you try his game?”
They nodded. There were no greetings to acknowledge the introduction. They waited, eyeing the youth with distrust.
Pierre eyed them in turn, and then he spoke directly to big Dick Wilbur.
“Here’s the first: I want to bury a man in Morgantown and I need help to do it.”
Black Gandil snarled: “You heard me, boys; blood to start with. Who’s the man you want us to put out?”
“He’s dead—my father.”
They came up straight in their chairs like trained actors rising to a stage crisis. The snarl straightened on the lips of Black Morgan Gandil.
“He’s lying in his house a few miles out of Morgantown. As he died he told me that he wanted to be buried in a corner plot in the Morgantown graveyard. He’d seen the place and counted it for his a good many years because he said the grass grew quicker there than any other place, after the snow went.”
“A damned good reason,” said Garry Patterson. As the idea stuck more deeply into his imagination he smashed his fist down on the table so that the crockery on it danced. “A damned good reason, say I!”
“Who’s your father?” asked Dick Wilbur, who eyed Pierre more critically but with less enmity than the rest.
