Riders of the Silences, Max Brand [best books for 8th graders txt] 📗

CHAPTER 15

Those who are curious about the period which followed during which the

title “Le Rouge” was forgotten and he became known only as “Red”

Pierre through all the mountain-desert, can hear the tales of his

doing from the analysts of the ranges. This story has to do only with

his struggle with McGurk.

 

The gap of six years which occurs here is due to the fact that during

that period McGurk vanished from the mountain-desert. He died away

from the eyes of men and in their minds he became that tradition which

lives still so vividly, the tradition of the pale face, the sneering,

bloodless lips, and the hand which never failed.

 

During this lapse of time there were many who claimed that he had

ridden off into some lonely haunt and died of the wound which he

received from Pierre’s bullet. A great majority, however, would never

accept such a story, and even when the six years had rolled by they

still shook their heads. They awaited his return just as certain

stanch old Britons await the second coming of Arthur from the island

of Avalon. In the meantime the terror of his name passed on to him who

had broken the “charm” of McGurk.

 

Not all that grim significance passed on to Red Pierre, indeed,

because he never impressed the public imagination as did the terrible

ruthlessness of McGurk. At that he did enough to keep tongues wagging.

 

Cattlemen loved to tell those familiar exploits of the “two sheriffs,”

or that “thousand-mile pursuit of Canby,” with its half-tragic,

half-humorous conclusion, or the “Sacking of Two Rivers,” or the

“three-cornered battle” against Rodriguez and Blond.

 

But men could not forget that in all his work there rode behind Red

Pierre six dauntless warriors of the mountain-desert, while McGurk had

been always a single hand against the world, a veritable lone wolf.

 

Whatever kept him away through those six years, the memory of the

wound he received at Gaffney’s place never left McGurk, and now he was

coming back with a single great purpose in his mind, and in his heart

a consuming hatred for Pierre and all the other of Boone’s men.

 

Certainly if he had sensed the second coming of McGurk, Pierre would

not have ridden so jauntily through the hills this day, or whistled so

carelessly, or swept the hills with such a complacent, lordly eye. A

man of mark cannot bear himself too modestly, and Pierre, from boots

to high-peaked, broad-brimmed sombrero, was the last word in elegance

for a rider of the mountain-desert.

 

Even his mount seemed to sense the pride of his master. It was a

cream-colored mustang, not one of the lump-headed, bony-hipped species

common to the ranges, but one of those rare reversions to the Spanish

thoroughbreds from which the Western cow-pony is descended. The mare

was not over-large, but the broad hips and generous expanse of chest

were hints, and only hints, of her strength and endurance. There was

the speed of the blooded racer in her and the tirelessness of

the mustang.

 

Now, down the rocky, half-broken trail she picked her way as daintily

as any debutante tiptoeing down a great stairway to the ballroom. Life

had been easy for Mary since that thousand-mile struggle to overtake

Canby, and now her sides were sleek from good feeding and some casual

twenty miles a day, which was no more to her than a canter through the

park is to the city horse.

 

The eye which had been so red-stained and fierce during the long ride

after Canby was now bright and gentle. At every turn she pricked her

small sharp ears as if she expected home and friends on the other side

of the curve. And now and again she tossed her head and glanced back

at the master for a moment and then whinnied across some

echoing ravine.

 

It was Mary’s way of showing happiness, and her master’s

acknowledgment was to run his gloved left hand up through her mane and

with his ungloved right, that tanned and agile hand, pat her

shoulder lightly.

 

Passing to the end of the down-grade, they reached a slight upward

incline, and the mare, as if she had come to familiar ground, broke

into a gallop, a matchless, swinging stride. Swerving to right and to

left among the great boulders, like a football player running a broken

field, she increased the gallop to a racing pace.

 

That twisting course would have shaken an ordinary horseman to the

toes, but Pierre, swaying easily in the saddle, dropped the reins into

the crook of his left arm and rolled a cigarette in spite of the

motion and the wind. It was a little feat, but it would have drawn

applause from a circus crowd.

 

He spoke to the mare while he lighted a match and she dropped to an

easy canter, the pace which she could maintain from dawn to dark,

eating up the gray miles of the mountain and the desert, and it was

then that Red Pierre heard a gay voice singing in the distance.

 

His attitude changed at once. He caught a shorter grip on the reins

and swung forward a little in the saddle, while his right hand touched

the butt of the revolver in its holster and made sure that it was

loose; for to those who hunt and are hunted every human voice in the

mountain-desert is an ominous token.

 

The mare, sensing the change of her master through that weird

telegraphy which passed down the taut bridle reins, held her head high

and flattened her short ears against her neck.

 

The song and the singer drew closer, and the vigilance of Pierre

ceased as he heard a mellow baritone ring out.

 

“They call me poor, yet I am rich

In the touch of her golden hair,

My heart is filled like a miser’s hands

With the red-gold of her hair.

The sky I ride beneath all day

Is the blue of her dear eyes;

The only heaven I desire

Is the blue of her dear eyes.”

 

And here Dick Wilbur rode about the shoulder of a hill, broke off his

song at the sight of Pierre le Rouge, and shouted a welcome. They came

together and continued their journey side by side. The half-dozen

years had hardly altered the blond, handsome face of Wilbur, and now,

with the gladness of his singing still flushing his face, he seemed

hardly more than a boy—younger, in fact, than Red Pierre, into whose

eyes there came now and then a grave sternness.

 

“After hearing that song,” said Pierre smiling, “I feel as if I’d

listened to a portrait.” “Right!” said Wilbur, with unabated

enthusiasm. “It’s the bare and unadorned truth, Prince Pierre. My fine

Galahad, if you came within eye-shot of her there’d be a small-sized

hell raised.”

 

“No. I’m immune there, you know.”

 

“Nonsense. The beauty of a really lovely woman is like a fine perfume.

It strikes right to a man’s heart; there’s no possibility of

resistance. I know. You, Pierre, act like a man already in love or a

boy who has never known a woman. Which is it, Pierre?”

 

The other made a familiar gesture with those who knew him, a touching

of his left hand against his throat where the cross lay.

 

He said: “I suppose it seems like that to you.”

 

“Like what? Dodging me, eh? Well, I never press the point, but I’d

give the worth of your horse, Pierre, to see you and Mary together.”

 

Red Pierre started, and then frowned.

 

“Irritates you a little, eh? Well, a woman is like a spur to most

men.”

 

He added, with a momentary gloom: “God knows, I bear the marks of

‘em.”

 

He raised his head, as if he looked up in response to his thought.

 

“But there’s a difference with this girl. I’ve named the quality of

her before—it disarms a man.”

 

Pierre looked