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

Wilbur had

begun, and subconscious still was her careful rebuilding of the fire

till it flamed high, as though she were setting a signal to recall the

wanderer. But the flame, throwing warmth and red light across her

eyes, recalled her sharply to reality, and she looked up and saw the

dull dawn brightening beyond the dark evergreens.

 

Guilt, too, swept over her, for she remembered what big, handsome Dick

Wilbur had said: He would meet his end through a woman. Now it had

come to him, and through her.

 

She cringed at the thought, for what was she that a man should die in

her service? She raised her hands with a moan to the nodding tops of

the trees, to the vast, black sky above them, and the full knowledge

of Wilbur’s strength came to her, for had he not ridden calmly,

defiantly, into the heart of this wilderness, confident in his power

to care both for himself and for her? But she! What could she do

wandering by herself? The image of Pierre le Rouge grew dim indeed and

sad and distant.

 

She looked about her at the pack, which had been distributed expertly,

and disposed on the ground by Wilbur. She could not even lash it in

place behind the saddle. So she drew the blanket once more around her

shoulders and sat down to think.

 

She might return to the house—doubtless she could find her way back.

And leave Pierre in the heart of the mountains, surely lost to her

forever. She made a determination, sullen, like a child, to ride on

and on into the wilderness, and let fate take care of her. The pack

she could bundle together as best she might; she would live as she

might; and for a guide there would be the hunger for Pierre.

 

So she ended her thoughts with a hope; her head nodded lower, and she

slept the deep sleep of the exhausted mind and body. She woke hours

later with a start, instantly alert, quivering with fear and life and

energy, for she felt like one who has gone to sleep with voices in

his ear.

 

While she slept someone had been near her; she could have sworn it

before her startled eyes glanced around.

 

And though she kept whispering, with white lips, “No, no; it is

impossible!” yet there was evidence which proved it. The fire should

have burned out, but instead it flamed more brightly than ever, and

there was a little heap of fuel laid conveniently close. Moreover,

both horses were saddled, and the pack lashed on the saddle of her

own mount.

 

Whatever man or demon had done this work evidently intended that she

should ride Wilbur’s beautiful bay. Yes, for when she went closer,

drawn by her wonder, she found that the stirrups had been much

shortened.

 

Nothing was forgotten by this invisible caretaker; he had even left

out the cooking-tins, and she found a little batter of flapjack

flour mixed.

 

The riddle was too great for solving. Perhaps Wilbur had disappeared

merely to play a practical jest on her; but that supposition was too

childish to be retained an instant. Perhaps—perhaps Pierre himself

had discovered her, but having vowed never to see her again, he cared

for her like the invisible hands in the old Greek fable.

 

This, again, an instinctive knowledge made her dismiss. If he were so

close, loving her, he could not stay away; she read in her own heart,

and knew. Then it must be something else; evil, because it feared to

be seen; not wholly evil, because it surrounded her with care.

 

At least this new emotion obscured somewhat the terror and the sorrow

of Wilbur’s disappearance. She cooked her breakfast as if obeying the

order of the unseen, climbed into the saddle of Wilbur’s horse, and

started off up the valley, leading her own mount.

 

Every moment or so she turned in the saddle suddenly in the hope of

getting a glimpse of the follower, but even when she surveyed the

entire stretch of country from the crest of a low hill, she saw

nothing—not the least sign of life.

 

She rode slowly, this day, for she was stiff and sore from the violent

journey of the night before, but though she went slowly, she kept

steadily at the trail. It was a broad and pleasant one, being the

beaten sand of the river-bottom; and the horse she rode was the

finest that ever pranced beneath her.

 

His trot was as smooth and springy as the gallop of most horses, and

when she let him run over a few level stretches, it was as if she had

suddenly been taken up from the earth on wings. There was something

about the animal, too, which reminded her of its vanished owner; for

it had strength and pride and gentleness at once. Unquestionably

it took kindly to its new rider; for once when she dismounted the big

horse walked up behind and nuzzled her shoulder.

 

The mountains were much plainer before the end of the day. They rose

sheer up in wave upon frozen wave like water piled ragged by some

terrific gale, with the tops of the waters torn and tossed and then

frozen forever in that position, like a fantastic and gargantuan mask

of dreaming terror. It overawed the heart of Mary Brown to look up to

them, but there was growing in her a new impulse of friendly

understanding with all this scalped, bald region of rocks, as if in

entering the valley she had passed through the gate which closes out

the gentler world, and now she was admitted as a denizen of the

mountain-desert, that scarred and ugly asylum for crime and fear

and grandeur.

 

Feeling this new emotion, the old horizons of her mind gave way and

widened; her gentle nature, which had known nothing but smiles,

admitted the meaning of a frown. Did she not ride under the very

shadow of that frown with her two horses? Was she not armed? She

touched the holster at her hip, and smiled. To be sure, she could

never hit a mark with that ponderous weapon, but at least the pistol

gave the feeling of a dangerous lone rider, familiar with the wilds.

 

It was about dark, and she was on the verge of looking about for a

suitable camping-place, when the bay halted sharply, tossed up his

head, and whinnied. From the far distance she thought she heard the

beginning of a whinny in reply. She could not be sure, but the

possibility made her pulse quicken. In this region, she knew, no

stranger could be a friend.

 

So she started the bay at a gallop and put a couple of swift miles

between her and the point at which she had heard the sound; no living

creature, she was sure, could have followed the pace the bay held

during that distance. So, secure in her loneliness, she trotted the

horse around a bend of the rocks and came on the sudden light of

a campfire.

 

It was too late to wheel and gallop away; so she remained with her

hand fumbling at the butt of the revolver, and her eyes fixed on the

flicker of the fire. Not a voice accosted her. As far as she could

peer among the lithe trunks of the saplings, not a sign of a living

thing was near.

 

Yet whoever built that fire must be near, for it was obviously newly

laid. Perhaps some fleeing outlaw had pitched his camp here and had

been startled by her coming. In that case he lurked somewhere in the

woods at that moment, his keen eyes fixed on her, and his gun gripped

hard in his hand. Perhaps—and the thought thrilled her—this little

camp had been prepared by the same power, human or unearthly, which

had watched over her early that morning.

 

All reason and sane caution warned her to ride on and leave that camp

unmolested, but an overwhelming, tingling curiosity besieged her. The

thin column of smoke rose past the dark trees like a ghost, and

reaching the unsheltered space above the trees, was smitten by a light

wind and jerked away at a sharp angle.

 

She looked closer and saw a bed made of a great heap of the tips of

limbs of spruce, a bed softer than down and more fragrant than any

manufactured perfume, however costly.

 

Possibly it was the sight of this bed which tempted her down from the

saddle, at last. With the reins over her arm, she stood close to the

fire and warmed her hands, peering all the while on every side, like

some wild and beautiful creature tempted by the bait of the trap, but

shrinking from the scent of man.

 

As she stood there a broad, yellow moon edged its way above the hills

and rolled up through the black trees and then floated through the

sky. Beneath such a moon no harm could come to her. It was while she

stared at it, letting her tensed alertness relax little by little,

that she saw, or thought she saw, a hint of moving white pass over the

top of the rise of ground and disappear among the trees.

 

She could not be sure, but her first impulse was to gather the reins

with a jerk and place her foot in the stirrup; but then she looked

back and saw the fire, burning low now and asking like a human voice

to be replenished from the heap of small, broken fuel nearby; and she

saw also the softly piled bed of evergreens.

 

She removed her foot from the stirrup. What mattered that imaginary

figure of moving white? She felt a strong power of protection lying

all about her, breathing out to her with the keen scent of the pines,

fanning her face with the chill of the night breeze. She was alone,

but she was secure in the wilderness.