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

or down.

 

To know the six wild riders who galloped over the white reaches of the

mountain-desert this night, certainly their horses should be studied

first and the men secondly, for the one explained the other.

 

They came in a racing triangle. Even the storm at its height could not

daunt such furious riders. At the point of the triangle thundered a

mighty black stallion, his muzzle and his broad chest flecked with

white foam, for he stretched his head out and champed at the bit with

ears laid flat back, as though even that furious pace gave him no

opportunity to use fully his strength.

 

He was an ugly headed monster with a savagely hooked Roman nose and

small, keen eyes, always red at the corners. A medieval baron in full

panoply of plate armor would have chosen such a charger among ten

thousand steeds, yet the black stallion needed all his strength to

uphold the unarmored giant who bestrode him, a savage figure.

 

When the broad brim of his hat flapped up against the wind the

moonshine caught at shaggy brows, a cruelly arched nose, thin,

straight lips, and a forward-thrusting jaw. It seemed as if nature had

hewn him roughly and designed him for a primitive age where he could

fight his way with hands and teeth.

 

This was Jim Boone. To his right and a little behind him galloped a

riderless horse, a beautiful young animal continually tossing its

head and looking as if for guidance at the big stallion.

 

To the left strode a handsome bay with pricking ears. A mound

interfered with his course, and he cleared it in magnificent style

that would have brought a cheer from the lips of any English lover of

the chase.

 

Straight in the saddle sat Dick Wilbur, and he raised his face a

little to the wind, smiling faintly as if he rejoiced in its fine

strength, as handsome as the horse he rode, as cleanly cut, as finely

bred. The moon shone a little brighter on him than on any other of the

six riders.

 

Bud Mansie behind, for instance, kept his head slightly to one side

and cursed beneath his breath at the storm and set his teeth at the

wind. His horse, delicately formed, with long, slender legs, could not

have endured that charge against the storm save that it constantly

edged behind the leaders and let them break the wind. It carried less

weight than any other mount of the six, and its strength was cunningly

nursed by the rider so that it kept its place, and at the finish it

would be as strong as any and swifter, perhaps, for a sudden, short

effort, just as Bud Mansie might be numbed through all his nervous,

slender body, but never too numb for swift and deadly action.

 

On the opposite wing of the flying wedge galloped a dust-colored gray,

ragged of mane and tail, and vindictive of eye, like its down-headed

rider, who shifted his glance rapidly from side to side and watched

the ground closely before his horse as if he were perpetually prepared

for danger.

 

He distrusted the very ground over which his mount strode. For all

this he seemed the least formidable of all the riders. To see him pass

none could have suspected that this was Black Morgan Gandil.

 

Last of the crew came two men almost as large as Jim Boone himself, on

strong steady-striding horses. They came last in this crew, but among

a thousand other long-riders they would have ridden first, either

red-faced, good-humored, loud-voiced Garry Patterson, or Phil Branch,

stout-handed, blunt of jaw, who handled men as he had once hammered

red iron at the forge.

 

Each of them should have ridden alone in order to be properly

appreciated. To see them together was like watching a flock of eagles

every one of which should have been a solitary lord of the air. But

after scanning that lordly train which followed, the more terrible

seemed the rider of the great black horse.

 

Yet the king was sad, and the reason for his sadness was the riderless

horse which galloped so freely beside him. His son had ridden that

horse when they set out, and all the way down to the railroad Handsome

Hal Boone had kept his mount prancing and curveting and had ridden

around and around tall Dick Wilbur, playing pranks, and had teased his

father’s black until the big stallion lashed out wildly with

furious heels.

 

It was the memory of this that kept the grave shadow of a smile on the

father’s lips for all the sternness of his eyes. He never turned his

head, for, looking straight forward, he could conjure up the laughing

vision; but when he glanced to the empty saddle he heard once more the

last unlucky shot fired from the train as they raced off with their

booty, and saw Hal reel in his saddle and pitch forward; and how he

had tried to check his horse and turn back; and how Dick Wilbur, and

Patterson, and big Phil Branch had forced him to go on and leave that

form lying motionless on the snow.

 

At that he groaned, and spurred the black, and so the cavalcade rushed

faster and faster through the night.

 

They came over a sharp ridge and veered to the side just in time, for

all the further slope was a mass of treacherous sand and rubble and

raw rocks and mud, where a landslide had stripped the hill to

the stone.

 

As they veered about the ruin and thundered on down to the foot of

the hill, Jim Boone threw up his hand for a signal and brought his

stallion to a halt on back-braced, sliding legs.

 

For a metallic glitter had caught his eye, and then he saw, half

covered by the pebbles and dirt, the figure of a man. He must have

been struck by the landslide and not overwhelmed by it, but rather

carried before it like a stick in a rush of water. At the outermost

edge of the wave he lay with the rocks and dirt washed over him. Boone

swung from the saddle and lifted Pierre le Rouge.

 

The gleam of metal was the cross which his fingers still gripped.

Boone examined it with a somewhat superstitious caution, took it from

the nerveless fingers, and slipped it into a pocket of Pierre’s shirt.

A small cut on the boy’s forehead showed where the stone struck which

knocked him senseless, but the cut still bled—a small trickle—Pierre

lived. He even stirred and groaned and opened his eyes, large and

deeply blue.

 

It was only an instant before they closed, but Boone had seen. He

turned with the figure lifted easily in his arms as if Pierre had been

a child fallen asleep by the hearth and now about to be carried off

to bed.

 

And the outlaw said: “I’ve lost my boy tonight. This here one was

given me by the will of—God.”

 

Black Morgan Gandil reined his horse close by, leaned to peer down,

and the shadow of his hat fell across the face of Pierre.

 

“There’s no good comes of savin’ shipwrecked men. Leave him where you

found him, Jim. That’s my advice. Sidestep a redheaded man. That’s

what I say.”

 

The quick-stepping horse of Bud Mansie came near, and the rider wiped

his stiff lips, and spoke from the side of his mouth, a prison habit

of the line that moves in the lockstep: “Take it from me, Jim, there

ain’t any place in our crew for a man you’ve picked up without knowing

him beforehand. Let him lay, I say.” But big Dick Wilbur was already

leading up the horse of Hal Boone, and into the saddle Jim Boone swung

the inert body of Pierre. The argument was settled, for every man of

them knew that nothing could turn Boone back from a thing once begun.

Yet there were muttered comments that drew Black Morgan Gandil and Bud

Mansie together.

 

And Gandil, from the South Seas, growled with averted eyes: “This is

the most fool stunt the chief has ever pulled.”

 

“Right, pal,” answered Mansie. “You take a snake in out of the cold,

and it bites you when it comes to in the warmth; but the chief has

started, and there ain’t nothing that’ll make him stop, except maybe

God or McGurk.”

 

And Black Gandil answered with his evil, sudden grin: “Maybe McGurk,

but not God.”

 

They started on again with Garry Patterson and Dick Wilbur riding

close on either side of Pierre, supporting his limp body. It delayed

the whole gang, for they could not go on faster than a jog-trot. The

wind, however, was falling off in violence. Its shrill whistling

ceased, at length, and they went on, accompanied only by the harsh

crunching of the snow underfoot.