by Max Brand
This she might do in the heart of the night, and afterward she might have the courage left to tell the girl the truth and then creep off somewhere and let this steady pain burn its way out of her heart.
Once she had reached a decision, it was characteristic that she moved swiftly. Also, there was cause for haste, for by this time Pierre must have discovered that there was no one in the lower reaches of the gorge and would be galloping back with all the speed of the cream-colored mare which even McGurk’s white horse could not match.
She ran from the cabin and into the little lean-to behind it where the horses were tethered. There she swung her saddle with expert hands, whipped up the cinch, and pulled it with the strength of a man, mounted, and was off up the gorge.
For the first few minutes she let the long-limbed black race on at full speed, a breathless course, because the beat of the wind in her face raised her courage, gave her a certain impulse which was almost happiness, just as the martyrs rejoiced and held out their hands to the fire that was to consume them; but after the first burst of headlong galloping, she drew down the speed to a hand-canter, and this in turn to a fast trot, for she dared not risk the far-echoed sound of the clattering hoofs over the rock.
And as she rode she saw at last the winking eye of red which she longed for and dreaded. She pulled her black to an instant halt and swung from the saddle, tossing the reins over the head of the horse to keep him standing there.
Yet, after she had made half a dozen hurried paces something forced her to turn and look again at the handsome head of the horse. He stood quite motionless, with his ears pricking after her, and now as she stopped he whinnied softly, hardly louder than the whisper of a man. So she ran back again and threw the reins over the horn of the saddle; he should be free to wander where he chose through the free mountains, but as for her, she knew very certainly now that she would never mount that saddle again, or control that triumphant steed with the touch of her hands on the reins. She put her arms around his neck and drew his head down close.
There was a dignity in that parting, for it was the burning of her bridges behind her. When “King-Maker” Richard of Warwick, betrayed and beaten on the field, came to his last stand by the forest, he dismounted and stabbed his favorite charger. Very different was this wild mountain girl from the armored earl who put kings up and pulled them down again at pleasure, but her heart swelled as great as the heart of famous Warwick; he gave up a kingdom, and she gave up her love.
When she drew back the horse followed her a pace, but she raised a silent hand in the night and halted him; a moment later she was lost among the boulders.
It was rather slow work to stalk that camp-fire, for the big boulders cut off the sight of the red eye time and again, and she had to make little, cautious detours before she found it again, but she kept steadily at her work. Once she stopped, her blood running cold, for she thought that she heard a faint voice blown up the cañon on the wind: “McGurk!”
For half a minute she stood frozen, listening, but the sound was not repeated, and she went on again with greater haste. So she came at last in view of a hollow in the side of the gorge. Here there were a few trees, growing in the cove, and here, she knew, there was a small spring of clear water. Many a time she had made a cup of her hands and drunk here.
Now she made out the fire clearly, the trees throwing out great spokes of shadow on all sides, spokes of shadows that wavered and shook with the flare of the small fire beyond them. She dropped to her hands and knees and, parting the dense underbrush, began the last stealthy approach.
CHAPTER XXXVI
A VOICE IN THE NIGHT
Up the same course which Jacqueline followed, Mary Brown had fled earlier that night with the triumphant laughter of Jack still ringing in her ears and following her like a remorseless, pointed hand of shame.
There is no power like shame to disarm the spirit. A dog will fight if a man laughs at him; a coward will challenge the devil himself if he is whipped on by scorn; and this proud girl shrank and moaned on the saddle. She had not progressed far enough to hate Pierre. That would come later, but now all her heart had room for was a consuming loathing of herself.
Some of that torture went into the spurs with which she punished the side of the bay, and the tall horse responded with a high-tossed head and a burst of whirlwind speed. The result was finally a stumble over a loose rock that almost flung Mary over the pommel of the saddle and forced her to draw rein.
Having slowed the pace she became aware that she was very tired from the trip of the day, and utterly exhausted by the wild scene with Jacqueline, so that she began to look about for a place where she could stop for even an hour or so and rest her aching body.
Thought of McGurk sent her hand trembling to her holster. Still she knew she must have little to fear from him. He had been kind to her. Why had this scourge of the mountain-desert spared her? Was it to track down Pierre?
It was at this time that she heard the purl and whisper of running water, a sound dear to the hearts of all travelers. She veered to the left and found the little grove of trees with a thick shrubbery growing between, fed by the water of that diminutive brook. She dismounted and tethered the horses.
By this time she had seen enough of camping out to know how to make herself fairly comfortable, and she set about it methodically, eagerly. It was something to occupy her mind and keep out a little of that burning sense of shame. One picture it could not obliterate, and that was the scene of Jacqueline and Pierre le Rouge laughing together over the love affair with the silly girl of the yellow hair.
That was the meaning, then, of those silences that had come between them? He had been thinking, remembering, careful lest he should forget a single scruple of the whole ludicrous affair. She shuddered, remembering how she had fairly flung herself into his arms.
On that she brooded, after starting the little fire. It was not that she was cold, but the fire, at least, in the heart of the black night, was a friend incapable of human treachery. She had not been there long when the tall bay, Wilbur’s horse, stiffened, raised his head, arched his tail, and then whinnied.
She started to her feet, stirred by a thousand fears, and heard, far away, an answering neigh. At once all thought of shame and of Pierre le Rouge vanished from her mind, for she remembered the man who had followed her up the valley of the Old Crow. Perhaps he was coming now out of the night; perhaps she would even see him.
And the excitement grew in her pulse by pulse, as the excitement grows in a man waiting for a friend at a station; he sees first the faint smoke like a cloud on the skyline, and then a black speck beneath the smoke, and next the engine draws up on him with a humming of the rails which grows at length to a thunder.
All the while his heart beats faster and faster and rocks with the sway of the approaching engine; so the heart of Mary Brown beat, 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 campfire’s light was silence, utter and complete silence. It seemed as if a veritable 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. S
he rose, her hands clenched at her sides and the great blue 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 and a blackness came across her mind 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 the 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 XXXVII
A MAN’S DEATH
“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 radiance 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 forever.
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 nev
er loved anything but you, you milk-faced, yellow-livered—”
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 finishes 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 and to God’s country.”
“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—”
