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

the dark-red hair.

 

“God pardon the sins you shall commit.”

 

Pierre crushed the hand of Jean Paul Victor against his lips and

rushed from the room, while the tall priest, staring down at the

fingers which had been kissed, pronounced: “I have forged a

thunderbolt, Father Gabrielle. It is too great for my hand. Listen!”

And they heard clearly the sharp clang of a horse’s hoofs on the

hard-packed snow, loud at first, but fading rapidly away. The wind,

increasing suddenly, shook the house furiously about them.

 

It was a north wind, and traveled south before the rider of the strong

roan. Over a thousand miles of plain and hills it passed, and down

into the cattle country of the mountain-desert which the Rockies hem

on one side and the tall Sierras on the other.

 

It was a trail to try even the endurance of Pierre and the strong

roan, but the boy clung to it doggedly. On a trail that led down from

the edges of the northern mountain the roan crashed to the ground in a

plunging fall, hitting heavily on his knees. He was dead before the

boy had freed his feet from the stirrups.

 

Pierre threw the saddle over his shoulder and walked eight miles to

the nearest ranch house, where he spent practically the last cent of

his money on another horse, and drove on south once more.

 

There was little hope in him as day after day slipped past. Only the

ghost of a chance remained that Martin Ryder could fight away death

for another fortnight; yet Pierre had seen many a man from the

mountain-desert stave off the end through weeks and weeks of the

bitterest suffering. His father must be a man of the same hard durable

metal, and upon that Pierre staked all his hopes.

 

And always he carried the picture of the dying man alone with his two

wolf-eyed sons who waited for his eyes to weaken. Whenever he thought

of that he touched his horse with the spurs and rode fiercely for a

time. They were his flesh and blood, the man, and even the two

wolf-eyed sons.

 

So he came at last to a gap in the hills and looked down on Morgantown

in the hollow, twoscore unpainted houses sprawling along a single

street. The snow was everywhere white and pure, and the town was

like a stain on the landscape with wisps of smoke rising and trailing

across the hilltops.

 

Down to the edge of the town he rode, left his cow-pony standing with

hanging head outside a saloon, strode through the swinging doors, and

asked of the bartender the way to the house of Martin Ryder.

 

The bartender stopped in his labor of rubbing down the surface of his

bar and stared at the black-serge robe of the stranger, with curiosity

rather than criticism, for women, madmen, and clergymen have the

right-of-way in the mountain-desert.

 

He said: “Well, I’ll be damned!—askin’ your pardon. So old Mart Ryder

has come down to this, eh? Partner, you’re sure going to have a rough

ride getting Mart to heaven. Better send a posse along with him,

because some first-class angels are going to get considerable riled

when they sight him coming. Ha, ha, ha! Sure I’ll show you the way.

Take the northwest road out of town and go five miles till you see a

broken-backed shack lyin’ over to the right. That’s Mart

Ryder’s place.”

 

Out to the broken-backed shack rode Pierre le Rouge, Pierre the Red,

as everyone in the north country knew him. His second horse, staunch

cow-pony that it was, stumbled on with sagging knees and hanging head,

but Pierre rode upright, at ease, for his mind was untired.

 

Broken-backed indeed was the house before which he dismounted. The

roof sagged from end to end, and the stove pipe chimney leaned at a

drunken angle. Nature itself was withered beside that house; before

the door stood a great cottonwood, gashed and scarred by lightning,

with the limbs almost entirely stripped away from one side. Under this

broken monster Pierre stepped and through the door. Two growls like

the snarls of watch-dogs greeted him, and two tall, unshaven men

barred his way. Behind them, from the bed in the corner, a feeble

voice called: “Who’s there?”

 

“In the name of God,” said the boy gravely, for he saw a hollow-eyed

specter staring toward him from the bed in the corner, “let me pass! I

am his son!”

 

It was not that which made them give back, but a shrill, faint cry of

triumph from the sick man toward which they turned. Pierre slipped

past them and stood above Martin Ryder. He was wasted beyond

belief—only the monster hand showed what he had been.

 

“Son?” he queried with yearning and uncertainty.

 

“Pierre, your son.”

 

And he slipped to his knees beside the bed. The heavy hand fell upon

his hair and stroked it.

 

“There ain’t no ways of doubting it. It’s red silk, like the hair of

Irene. Seein’ you, boy, it ain’t so hard to die. Look up! So! Pierre,

my son! Are you scared of me, boy?”

 

“I’m not afraid.”

 

“Not with them eyes you ain’t. Now that you’re here, pay the coyotes

and let ‘em go off to gnaw the bones.”

 

He dragged out a small canvas bag from beneath the blankets and

gestured toward the two lurkers in the corner.

 

“Take it, and be damned to you!”

 

A dirty, yellow hand seized the bag; there was a chortle of

exultation, and the two scurried out of the room.

 

“Three weeks they’ve watched an’ waited for me to go out, Pierre.

Three weeks they’ve waited an’ sneaked up to my bed an’ sneaked away

agin, seein’ my eyes open.”

 

Looking into their fierce fever brightness, Pierre understood why they

had quailed. For the man, though wrecked beyond hope of living, was

terrible still. The thick, gray stubble on his face could not hide

altogether the hard lines of mouth and jaw, and on the wasted arm the

hand was grotesquely huge. It was horror that widened the eyes of

Pierre as he looked at Martin Ryder; it was a grim happiness that made

his lips almost smile.

 

“You’ve taken holy orders, lad?”

 

“No.”

 

“But the black dress?”

 

“I’m only a novice. I’ve sworn no vows.”

 

“And you don’t hate me—you hold no grudge against me for the sake of

your mother?”

 

Pierre took the heavy hand.

 

“Are you not my father? And my mother was happy with you. For her sake

I love you.”

 

“The good Father Victor. He sent you to me.”

 

“I came of my own will. He would not have let me go.”

 

“He—he would have kept my flesh and blood away from me?”

 

“Do not reproach him. He would have kept me from a sin.”

 

“Sin? By God, boy, no matter what I’ve done, is it sin for my son to

come to me? What sin?”

 

“The sin of murder!”

 

“Ha!”

 

“I have come to find McGurk.”