by Max Brand
CHAPTER XVI
ENNUI
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 sky-line, and thegallop 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 untilPierre frowned and flushed a little.
"When I see you out here on your horse with your rifle in the boot andyour six-gun swinging low in the scabbard, and riding the fastest bitof horse-flesh on the ranges," explained Wilbur, "I get to thinkingthat you're pretty much king of the mountains; but in certain respects,Pierre, you're a child. Ha, ha, ha! a regular infant."
Pierre stirred uneasily in his saddle. A man must be well over thirtybefore he can withstand ridicule.
He said dryly: "I've an idea that I know Jack about as well as the nextman."
"Let it drop," said Wilbur, sober again, for he shared with all ofBoone's crew a deep-rooted unwillingness to press Red Pierre beyond acertain point. "The one subject I won't quarrel about is Jack, Godbless her."
"She's the best pal," said Pierre soberly, "and the nearest to a manI've ever met."
"Nearest to a man?" queried Wilbur, and smiled, but so furtively thateven the sharp eye of Red Pierre did not perceive the mockery. He wenton:
"But the dance, what of that? It's a masquerade. There'd be no fearof 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 thatdance."
"With Jack? She dances wonderfully, you know."
"Well--with Jack."
So they reached a tumbled ranch-house squeezed between two hills sothat it was sheltered from the storms of the winter but held all theheat of the summer.
Once it had been a goodly building, the home of some cattle-king. Butbad times had come.
A bullet in a saloon brawl put an end to the cattle king, and now hishome was a wreck of its former glory. The northern wing shelved downto the ground as if the building were kneeling to the power of thewind, and the southern portion of the house, though still erect, seemedtottering and rotten throughout and holding together until at a finalblow the whole structure would crumple at once.
To the stables, hardly less ruinous than the big house, Pierre andWilbur took their horses, and a series of whinnies greeted them fromthe stalls. To look down that line of magnificent heads raised abovethe partitions of the stalls was like glancing into the stud of somecrowned head who made hunting and racing his chief end in life, forthese were animals worthy of the sport of kings.
They were chosen each from among literal hundreds and thousands, andthey were cared for far more tenderly than the masters cared forthemselves. There was a reason in it, for upon their speed andendurance depended the life of the outlaw. Moreover, the policy of JimBoone was one of actual "long riding."
Here he had come to a pause for a few days to recuperate his horses andhis men. To-morrow, perhaps, he would be on the spur again andsweeping off to a distant point in the mountain desert to strike and begone again before the rangers knew well that he had been there. Veryrarely did one settler have another neighbor at a distance of less thantwo hundred miles. It meant arduous and continual riding, and a horsewith any defect was worse than useless because the speed of the ganghad to be the speed of the slowest horse in the lot.
It was some time before the two long riders had completed the groomingof their horses and had gone down the hill and into the house. In thelargest habitable room they found a fire fed with rotten timbers fromthe wrecked portion of the building, and scattered through the room asullen and dejected group: Mansie, Branch, Jim Boone, and Black MorganGandil.
At a glance it was easy to detect their malady; it was the horribleennui 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 childrenconstantly through long stretches of time, but the glamour of life liesin the varying personalities which a man glimpses in passing, but neverknows.
This was a rare crew. Every man of them was marked for courage andstamina and wild daring. Yet even so in their passive moments theyhated each other with a hate that passed the understanding of commonmen.
Through seven years they had held together, through fair weather andfoul, and now each knew from the other's expression the words that wereabout to be spoken, and each knew that the other was reading him, andloathing what he read.
So they were apt to relapse into long silences unless Jack was withthem, 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 sunshad marked them, and the hand of man had branded them. Here and therewas a touch of gray in their hair, and about the mouth of each werelines which in such silent moments as this one gave an expression ofinfinite and wistful yearning.
"What's up? What's wrong?" asked Wilbur from the door, but since noanswer was deigned he said no more.
But Pierre, like a charmed man who dares to walk among lions, strolledeasily through the room, and looked into the face of big Boone, whosmiled faintly up to him, and Black Gandil, who scowled doubly dark,and Bud Mansie, who shifted uneasily in his chair and then nodded, andfinally to Branch. He dropped a hand on the massive shoulder of theblacksmith.
"Well?" he asked.
Branch let himself droop back into his chair. His big, dull, colorlesseyes stared up to his friend.
"I dunno, lad. I'm just weary with the sort of tired that you can'thelp by sleepin'. Understand?"
Pierre nodded, slowly, because he sympathized. "And the trouble?"
Branch stared about as if searching for a reason.
"Jack's up-stairs sulking; Patterson hasn't come home yet."
And Black Gandil, who heard all things, said without looking up: "A manthat saves a ship-wrecked fellow, he gets bad luck for thanks."
Pierre turned a considering eye on him, and Gandil scowled back.
"You've been croaking for six years, Morgan, about the bad luck thatwould 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'sPatterson?"
"Am I responsible if the blockhead has got drunk some place?"
"Patterson doesn't get drunk--not that way. And he knows that we wereto start again to-day."
"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 ofyou. We've had luck for the six years Pierre has been with us. Whocalls him a Jonah?"
And Black Gandil answered: "I do. I've sailed the seas. I know badluck 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 summedup 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 firstmeeting; and he had won money on that night of the gambling, but it hadcost the life of another man almost at once. The horse which carriedhim away from the vengeance in Morgantown had died on the way and hehad been saved from the landslide, but the girl had perished.
He had driven McGurk from the ranges, and where would the penalty fallon those who were near and d
ear to him? In a superstitious horror hehad asked himself the question a thousand times, and finally he couldhardly 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.
