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

he kept on their track. They would

take the trail, and Jim Boone, no longer agile enough to be effective

on the trail, would guard the house and the body of Gandil in it.

 

There was little danger that even McGurk would try to rush a hostile

house, but they took no chances. The guns of Jim Boone were given a

thorough overhauling, and he wore as usual at his belt the

heavy-handled hunting knife, a deadly weapon in a hand-to-hand fight.

Thus equipped, they left him and took the trail.

 

They had not ridden a hundred yards when a whistle followed them, the

familiar whistle of the gang. They reined short and saw big Dick

Wilbur riding his bay after them, but at some distance he halted and

shouted: “Pierre!”

 

“He’s come back to us!” cried Jack.

 

“No. It’s only some message.”

 

“Do you know?”

 

“Yes. Stay here. This is for me alone.”

 

And he rode back to Wilbur, who swung his horse close alongside.

However hard he had followed in the pursuit of happiness, his face was

drawn with lines of age and his eyes circled with shadows.

 

He said: “I’ve kept close on her trail, Pierre, and the nearest she

has come to kindness has been to send me back with a message to you.”

 

He laughed without mirth, and the sound stopped abruptly.

 

“This is the message in her own words: ‘I love him, Dick, and there’s

nothing in the world for me without him. Bring him back to me. I don’t

care how; but bring him back.’ So tell Jack to ride the trail alone

today and go back with me. I give her up, not freely, but because I

know there’s no hope for me.”

 

But Pierre answered: “Wherever I’ve gone there’s been luck for me and

hell for everyone around me. I lived with a priest, Dick, and left him

when I was nearly old enough to begin repaying his care. I came South

and found a father and lost him the same day. I gambled for money with

which to bury him, and a man died that night and another was hurt. I

escaped from the town by riding a horse to death. I was nearly killed

in a landslide, and now the men who saved me from that are done for.

 

“It’s all one story, the same over and over. Can I carry a fortune

like that back to her? Dick, it would haunt me by day and by night.

She would be the next. I know it as I know that I’m sitting in the

saddle here. That’s my answer. Carry it back to her.”

 

“I won’t lie and tell you I’m sorry, because I’m a fool and still have

a ghost of a hope, but this will be hard news to tell her, and I’d

rather give five years of life than face the look that will come in

her eyes.”

 

“I know it, Dick.”

 

“But this is final?”

 

“It is.”

 

“Then good-bye again, and—God bless you, Pierre.”

 

“And you, old fellow.”

 

They swerved their horses in opposite directions and galloped apart.

 

“It was nothing,” said Pierre to Jack, when he came up with her and

drew his horse down to a trot. But he knew that she had read his mind.

 

But all day through the mazes of canyon and hill and rolling ground

they searched patiently. There was no cranny in the rocks too small

for them to reconnoiter with caution. There was no group of trees they

did not examine.

 

Yet it was not strange that they failed. In the space of every square

mile there were a hundred hiding-places which might have served

McGurk. It would have taken a month to comb the country. They had only

a day, and left the result to chance, but chance failed them. When the

shadows commenced to swing across the gullies they turned back and

rode with downward heads, silent.

 

One hill lay between them and the old ranch house which had been the

headquarters for their gang so many days, when they saw a faint drift

of smoke across the sky—not a thin column of smoke such as rises from

a chimney, but a broad stream of pale mist, as if a dozen chimneys

were spouting wood smoke at once.

 

They exchanged glances and spurred their horses up the last slope. As

always in a short spurt, the long-legged black of Jacqueline

out-distanced the cream-colored mare, and it was she who first topped

the rise of land. The girl whirled in her saddle with raised arm,

screamed back at Pierre, and rode on at a still more furious pace.

 

What he saw when he reached a corresponding position was the ranch

house wreathed in smoke, and through all the lower windows was the red

dance of flames. Before him fled Jacqueline with all the speed of the

black. He loosened the reins, spoke to the mare, and she responded

with a mighty rush. Even that tearing pace could not quite take him up

to the girl, but he flung himself from the saddle and was at her side

when she ran across the smoking veranda and wrenched at the

front door.

 

The whole frame gave back at her, and as Pierre snatched her to one

side the doorway fell crashing on the porch, while a mighty volume of

smoke burst out at them like a puff from the pit.

 

They stood sputtering, coughing, and choking, and when they could look

again they saw a solid wall of red flame, thick, impenetrable,

shuddering with the breath of the wind.

 

While they stared a stronger breath of that wind tore the wall of

flames apart, driving it back in a raging tide to either side. The

fire had circled the walls of the entire room, but it had scarcely

encroached on the center, and there, seated at the table, was Boone.

 

He had scarcely changed from the position in which they last saw him,

save that he was fallen somewhat deeper in the chair, his head resting

against the top of the back. He greeted them, through that infernal

furnace, with laughter, and wide, steady eyes. At least it seemed

laughter, for the mouth was agape and the lips grinned back, but there

was no sound from the lips and no light in the fixed eyes. Laughter

indeed it was, but it was the laughter of death, as if the soul of the

man, in dying, recognized its natural wild element and had burst into

convulsive mirth. So he sat there, untouched as yet by the wide river

of fire, chuckling at his destiny. The wall of fire closed across the

doorway again and the work of red ruin went on with a crashing of

timbers from the upper part of the building.

 

As that living wall shut solidly, Jacqueline leaped forward, shouting,

like a man, words of hope and rescue; Pierre caught her barely in

time—a precarious grasp on the wrist from which she nearly wrenched

herself free and gained the entrance to the fire. But the jerk threw

her off balance for the least fraction of an instant, and the next

moment she was safe in his arms.

 

Safe? He might as well have held a wildcat, or captured with his bare

hands a wild eagle, strong of talon and beak. She tore and raged in a

wild fury.

 

“Pierre, coward, devil!”

 

“Steady, Jack!”

 

“Are you going to let him die?”

 

“Don’t you see? He’s already dead.”

 

“You lie. You only fear the fire!”

 

“I tell you, McGurk has been here before us.”

 

Her arm was freed by a twisting effort and she beat him furiously

across the face. One blow cut his lip and a steady trickle of hot

blood left a taste of salt in his mouth.

 

“You young fiend!” he cried, and grasped both her wrists with a

crushing force.

 

She leaned and gnashed at his hands, but he whirled her about and held

her from behind, impotent, raging still.

 

“A hundred McGurks could never have killed him!”

 

There was a sharp explosion from the midst of the fire.

 

“See! He’s fighting against his death!”

 

“No! No! It’s only the falling of a timber!”

 

Yet with a panic at his heart he knew that it was the sharp crack of a

firearm. “Liar again! Pierre, for God’s sake, do something for him.

Father! He’s fighting for his life!”

 

Another and another explosion from the midst of the fire. He

understood then.

 

“The flames have reached his guns. That’s all, Jack. Don’t you see?

We’d be throwing ourselves away to run into those flames.”

 

Realization came to her at last. A heavy weight slumped down suddenly

over his arms. He held her easily, lightly. Her head had tilted back,

and the red flare of the fire beat across her face and throat. The

roar of the flames shut out all other thought of the world and cast a

wide inferno of light around them.

 

Higher and higher rose the fires, and the wind cut off great fragments

and hurried them off into the night, blowing them, it seemed, straight

up against the piled thunder of the clouds. Then the roof sagged,

swayed, and fell crashing, while a vast cloud of sparks and livid

fires shot up a hundred feet into the air. It was as if the soul of

old Boone had departed in that final flare.

 

It started the girl into sudden life, surprising Pierre, so that she

managed to wrench herself free and ran from him. He sprang after her

with a shout, fearing that in her hysteria she might fling herself

into the fire, but that was not her purpose. Straight to the black

horse she ran, swung into the saddle with the ease of a man, and rode

furiously off through the falling of the night.

 

He watched her with a curious closing of loneliness like a hand about

his heart. He had failed, and because of that failure even Jacqueline

was leaving him. It was strange, for since the loss of the girl of the

yellow hair and those deep blue eyes, he had never dreamed that

another thing in life could pain him.

 

So at length he mounted the mare again and rode slowly down the hill

and out toward the distant ranges, trotting mile after mile with

downward head, not caring even if McGurk should cross him, for

surely this was the final end of the world to Pierre le Rouge.

 

About midnight he halted at last, for the uneasy sway of the mare

showed that she was nearly dead on her feet with weariness. He found a

convenient place for a camp, built his fire, and wrapped his blanket

about him without thinking of food.

 

He never knew how long he sat there, for his thoughts circled the

world and back again and found all a prospect of desert before him and

behind, until a sound, a vague sound out of the night, startled him

into alertness. He slipped from beside the fire and into the shadow of

a steep rock, watching with eyes that almost pierced the dark on

all sides.

 

And there he saw her creeping up on the outskirts of the firelight,

prone on her hands and knees, dragging herself up like a young wildcat

hunting prey; it was the glimmer of her eyes that he caught first

through the gloom. A cold thought came to him that she had returned

with her gun ready.

 

Inch by inch she came closer, and now he was aware of her