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

this up against me?”

 

“I, lad? No, no! But it’s queer. Patterson’s done for; there’s no

doubt of that. Good-natured Garry Patterson. God, boy, how we’ll miss

him! And Branch seems to have gone the same way. If neither of them

show up before morning we can cross ‘em off the list. Now Wilbur has

gone and Jack has ridden home looking like a small-sized thunderstorm,

and now you come with a white face and a blank eye. What hell is

trailin’ us, Pierre, what hell is in store for us. You’ve seen

something, and we want to know what it is.”

 

“A ghost, Jim, that’s all.”

 

Bud Mansie said softly: “There’s only one ghost that could make you

look like this. Was it McGurk, Pierre?”

 

Boone commanded: “No more of that, Bud. Boys, we’re going to turn in,

and tomorrow we’ll climb the hills looking for the two we’ve lost. But

there’s something or someone after us. Lads, I’m thinking our good

days are over. The seven of us have been too many for a small posse

and too fast for a big one, but the seven are down to four. The good

days are over.”

 

And the three answered in a solemn chorus: “The good days are over.”

 

All eyes fixed on Pierre, and his glance was settled on the floor.

 

The morning brought them no better cheer, for Jack, whose singing

generally wakened them, was not to be coaxed into speech, and when

Pierre entered the room she rose and left the breakfast table. The sad

eyes of Jim Boone followed her and then turned to Pierre. No

explanation was forthcoming, and he asked for none. The old fatalist

had accepted the worst, and now he waited for doom to descend.

 

They took their horses after breakfast and rode out to search the

hills, for it was quite possible that an accident had crippled at

least one of the two lost men, either Patterson or Branch. Not a gully

within miles was left unsearched, but toward evening they rode back,

one by one, with no tidings.

 

One by one they rode up, and whistled to announce their coming, and

then rode on to the stable to unsaddle their horses. About the supper

table all gathered with the exception of Bud Mansie. So they waited

the meal and each from time to time stole a glance at the fifth plate

where Bud should sit.

 

It was Jack who finally stirred herself from her dumb gloom to take up

that fifth and carry it out of the room. It was as if she had

announced the death of Mansie.

 

After that, they ate what they could and then went back around the

fire. The evening waned, but it brought no sign of any of the missing

three. The wood burned low in the fire. The first to break the long

silence was Jim Boone, with “Who brings in the wood?”

 

And Black Gandil answered: “We’ll match, eh?”

 

In an outburst of energy the day before he disappeared Garry Patterson

had chopped up some wood and left a pile of it at the corner of the

house. It was a very little thing to bring in an armful of that wood,

but long-riders do not love work, and now they started the matching

seriously. The odd man was out, and Pierre went out on the first toss

of the coins.

 

“You see,” said Gandil. “Bad luck to everyone but himself.”

 

At the next throw Jacqueline was the lucky one, and her father

afterward. Gandil rose and stretched himself leisurely, yet as he

sauntered toward the door his backward glance at Pierre was black

indeed. He glanced curiously toward Jack—who looked away sharply—and

then turned his eyes to her father.

 

The latter was considering him with a gloomy, foreboding stare and

considering over and over again, as Pierre le Rouge well knew, the

prophecy of Black Morgan Gandil.

 

He fell in turn into a solemn brooding, and many a picture out of the

past came up beside him and stood near till he could almost feel its

presence. He was roused by the creaking of the floor beneath the

ponderous step of Jim Boone, who flung the door open and shouted:

“Oh, Morgan.”

 

In the silence he turned and stared back at Pierre.

 

“What’s up with Gandil?”

 

“God knows, not I.”

 

Pierre rose and ran from the room and around the side of the building.

There by the woodpile lay the prostrate body. It was a mere limp

weight when he turned and raised it in his arms. So he walked back

into the house carrying all that was left of Black Morgan Gandil, and

placed his burden on a bunk at the side of the room.

 

There had been no outcry from either Jim Boone or his daughter, but

they came quickly to him, and Jacqueline pressed her ear over the

heart of the hurt man.

 

She said: “He’s still alive, but nearly gone. Where’s the wound?”

 

They found it when they drew off his coat—a small cut high on the

right breast, and another lower and more to the left. Either of them

would have been fatal, and about each the flesh was discolored where

the hilt of the knife or the fist of the striker had driven home

the blade.

 

They stood back and made no hopeless effort to save him. It was

uncanny that Black Morgan Gandil, after all of his battles, should die

without a struggle in this way. And it had been no cowardly attack

from the rear. Both wounds were in the front. A hope came to them when

his color increased at one time, but it was for only a moment; it went

out again as if someone were erasing paint from his cheeks.

 

But just as they were about to turn away his body stirred with a

slight convulsion, the eyes opened wide, and he strove to speak. A red

froth came on his lips. He made another desperate effort, and twisting

himself onto one elbow pointed a rigid arm at Pierre. He gasped:

“McGurk—God!” and dropped. He was dead before his head touched

the blanket.

 

It was Jacqueline who closed the staring eyes, for the two men were

frozen where they stood. They had heard the story of Patterson and

Branch and Mansie in one word from the lips of the dying man.

 

McGurk was back. McGurk was prowling about the last of the gang of

Boone, and the lone wolf had pulled down four of the band one by one

on successive days. Only two remained, and these two looked at one

another with a common thought.

 

“The lights!” cried Jacqueline, turning from the body of Gandil. “He

can shoot us down through the windows at his leisure.”

 

“But he won’t,” said her father. “I’ve lived too long with the name of

McGurk in my ears not to know the man. He’ll never kill by stealth,

but openly and man to man. I know him, damn him. He’ll wait till he

meets us alone, and then we’ll finish as poor Gandil, there, or

Patterson and Branch and Bud Mansie, all of them fallen somewhere in

the mountains with the buzzards left to bury ‘em. That’s how we’ll

finish with McGurk on our trail. And you—Gandil was right—it’s you

that’s brought him on us. A shipwrecked man—by God, Gandil

was right!”

 

His right hand froze on the butt of his gun and his face convulsed

with impotent rage, for he knew, as both the others knew, that long

before that gun was clear of the holster the bullet from Pierre’s gun

would be on its way. But Pierre threw his arms wide, and standing so,

his shadow made a black cross on the wall behind him. He even smiled

to tempt the big man further.