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

CHAPTER 37

After that call first reached him, clear to his ears though vague as a

murmur at the ear of Mary, McGurk swung to the saddle of his white

horse, and galloped down the gorge like a veritable angel of death.

 

The end was very near, he felt, yet the chances were at least ten to

one that he would miss Pierre in the throat of the gorge, for among

the great boulders, tall as houses, which littered it, a thousand men

might have passed and repassed and never seen each other. Only the

calling of Pierre could guide him surely.

 

The calling had ceased for some moments, and he began to fear that he

had overrun his mark and missed Pierre in the heart of the pass, when,

as he rounded a mighty boulder, the shout ran ringing in his very

ears: “McGurk!” and a horseman swung into view.

 

“Here!” he called in answer, and stood with his right hand lifted,

bringing his horse to a sharp halt, like some ancient cavalier

stopping in the middle of the battle to exchange greetings with a

friendly foe.

 

The other rider whirled alongside, his sombrero’s brim flaring back

from his forehead, so that McGurk caught the glare of the eyes beneath

the shadow.

 

“So for the third time, my friend—” said McGurk.

 

“Which is the fatal one,” answered Pierre. “How will you die, McGurk?

On foot or on horseback?”

 

“On the ground, Pierre, for my horse might stir and make my work

messy. I love a neat job, you know.” “Good.”

 

They swung from the saddles and stood facing each other.

 

“Begin!” commanded McGurk. “I’ve no time to waste.”

 

“I’ve very little time to look at the living McGurk. Let me look my

fill before the end.”

 

“Then look, and be done. I’ve a lady coming to meet me.”

 

The other grew marvelously calm.

 

“She is with you, McGurk?”

 

“My dear Pierre, I’ve been with her ever since she started up the Old

Crow.”

 

“It will be easier to forget her. Are you ready?”

 

“So soon? Come, man, there’s much for us to say. Many old times to

chat over.”

 

“I only wonder,” said Pierre, “how one death can pay back what you’ve

done. Think of it! I’ve actually run away from you and hidden myself

among the hills. I’ve feared you, McGurk!”

 

He said it with a deep astonishment, as a grown man will speak of the

way he feared darkness when he was a child. McGurk moistened his white

lips. The white horse pawed the rocks as though impatient to be gone.

 

“Listen,” said Pierre, “your horse grows restive. Suppose we stand

here—it’s a convenient distance apart—and wait with our arms folded

for the next time the white horse paws the rocks, because when I kill

you, McGurk, I want you to die knowing that another man was faster on

the draw and straighter with his bullets than you are. D’you see?”

 

He could not have spoken with a more formal politeness if he had been

asking the other to pass first through the door of a dining-room. The

wonder of McGurk grew and the sweat on his forehead seemed to be

spreading a chill through his entire body. He said: “I see. You

trust all to the cross, eh, Pierre? The little cross under your neck?”

 

“It’s gone,” said Pierre le Rouge. “Why should I use it against a

night rider, McGurk? Are you ready?”

 

And McGurk, not trusting his voice for some strange reason, nodded.

The two folded their arms.

 

But the white horse which had been pawing the stones only a moment

before was now unusually quiet. The very postures of the men seemed to

turn him to stone, a beautiful, marble statue with the moonlight

glistening on the muscles of his perfect shoulders.

 

At length he stirred. At once a quiver jerked through the tense bodies

of the waiting men, but the white horse had merely stiffened and

raised his head high. Now, with arched neck and flaunting tail he

neighed loudly, as if he asked a question. How could he know, dumb

brute, that what he asked only death could answer?

 

And as they waited an itching came at the palm of McGurk’s hand. It

was not much, just a tingle of the blood. To ease it, he closed his

fingers and found that his hand was moist with cold perspiration.

 

He began to wonder if his fingers would be slippery on the butt of the

gun. Then he tried covertly to dry them against his shirt. But he

ceased this again, knowing that he must be of hair-trigger alertness

to watch for the stamp of the white horse.

 

It occurred to him, also, that he was standing on a loose stone which

might wobble when he pulled his gun, and he cursed himself silently

for his hasty folly. Pierre, doubtless, had noticed that stone, and

therefore he had made the suggestion that they stand where they were.

Otherwise, how could there be that singular calm in the steady eyes

which looked across at him?

 

Also, how explain the hunger of that stare? Was not he McGurk, and was

not this man whom he had already once shot down? God, what a fool he

had been not to linger an instant longer in that saloon in the old

days and place the final shot in the prostrate body! In all his life

he had made only one such mistake, and now that folly was pursuing

him. And now—

 

The foot of the white horse lifted—struck the rock. The sound of its

fall was lost in the explosion of two guns, and a ring of metal on

metal. The revolver snapped from the hand of McGurk, whirled in a

flashing circle, and clanged on the rocks at his feet. The bullet of

Pierre had struck the barrel and knocked it cleanly from his hand.

 

It was luck, only luck, that placed that shot, and his own bullet,

which had started first, had traveled wild, for there stood Pierre le

Rouge, smiling faintly, alert, calm. For the first time in his life

McGurk had missed. He set his teeth and waited for death.

 

But that steady voice of Pierre said: “To shoot you would be a

pleasure, but there wouldn’t be any lasting satisfaction in it. So

there lies your gun at your feet. Well, here lies mine.”

 

He dropped his own weapon to a position corresponding with that of

McGurk’s.

 

“We were both very wild that time. We must do better now. We’ll stoop

for our guns, McGurk. The signal? No, we won’t wait for the horse to

stamp. The signal will be when you stoop for your gun. You shall have

every advantage, you see? Start for that gun, McGurk, when you’re

ready for the end.”

 

The hand of McGurk stretched out and his arm stiffened but it seemed

as though all the muscles of his back had grown stiff. He could not

bend. It was strange. It was both ludicrous and incomprehensible.

Perhaps he had grown stiff with cold in that position.

 

But he heard the voice of Pierre explaining gently: “You can’t move,

my friend. I understand. It’s fear that stiffened your back.

It’s fear that sends the chill up and down your blood. It’s fear that

makes you think back to your murders, one by one. McGurk, you’re done

for. You’re through. You’re ready for the discard. I’m not going to

kill you. I’ve thought of a finer hell than death, and that is to live

as you shall live. I’ve beaten you, McGurk, beaten you fairly on the

draw, and I’ve broken your heart by doing it. The next time you face a

man you’ll begin to think—you’ll begin to remember how one other man

beat you at the draw. And that wonder, McGurk, will make your hand

freeze to your side, as you’ve made the hands of other men before me

freeze. D’you understand?”

 

The lips of McGurk parted. The whisper of his dry panting reached

Pierre, and the devil in him smiled.

 

“In six weeks, McGurk, you’ll be finished. Now get out!”

 

And pace by pace McGurk drew back, with his face still toward Pierre.

 

The latter cried: “Wait. Are you going to leave your gun?”

 

Only the steady retreat continued.

 

“And go unarmed through the mountains? What will men say when they see

McGurk with an empty holster?”

 

But the outlaw had passed out of view beyond the corner of one of the

monster boulders. After him went the white horse, slowly, picking his

steps, as if he were treading on dangerous and unknown ground and

would not trust his leader. Pierre was left to the loneliness of

the gorge.

 

The moonlight only served to make more visible its rocky nakedness,

and like that nakedness was the life of Pierre under his hopeless

inward eye. Over him loomed from either side the gleaming pinnacles of

the Twin Bears, and he remembered many a time when he had looked up

toward them from the crests of lesser mountains—looked up toward them

as a man looks to a great and unattainable ideal. Here he was come

to the crest of all the ranges; here he was come to the height and

limit of his life, and what had he attained? Only a cruel, cold

isolation. It had been a steep ascent; the declivity of the farther

side led him down to a steep and certain ruin and the dark night

below. But he stiffened suddenly and threw his head high as if he

faced his fate;