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

his

old slouch hat even in the house, and his skin was that olive brown

which comes from many years of exposure to the wind and sun. At the

same time there was a peculiar fineness about the boy. His feet were

astonishingly small and the hands thin and slender for all their

supple strength. And his neck was not bony, as it is in most youths at

this gawky age, but smoothly rounded.

 

Men grow big of bone and sparse of flesh in the mountain-desert. It

was the more surprising to Pierre to see this young fellow with the

marvelously delicate-cut features. By some freak of nature here was a

place where the breed ran to high blood.

 

The cleaning completed, the boy tossed the butt of the gun to his

shoulder and squinted down the barrel. Then he loaded the magazine,

weighted the gun deftly at the balance, and dropped the rifle across

his knees.

 

“Morning,” said Pierre le Rouge cheerily, and swung off the bunk to

the floor. “How old’s the gun?”

 

The boy, without the slightest show of excitement, snapped the butt to

his shoulder and drew a bead on Pierre’s breast.

 

“Sit down before you get all heated up,” said a musical voice.

“There’s nobody waiting for you on horseback.”

 

And Pierre sat down, partly because Western men never argue a point

when that little black hole is staring them in the face, partly

because he remembered with a rush that the last time he had fully

possessed his consciousness he had been lying in the snow with the

cross gripped hard and the toppling mass of the landslide above him.

All that had happened between was blotted from his memory. He fumbled

at his throat. The cross was not there. He touched his pockets.

“Ease your hands away from your hip,” said the cold voice of the boy,

who had dropped his gun to the ready with a significant finger curled

around the trigger, “or I’ll drill you clean.”

 

Pierre obediently raised his hands to the level of his shoulders. The

boy sneered.

 

“This isn’t a hold-up,” he explained. “Put ‘em down again, but watch

yourself.”

 

The sneer varied to a contemptuous smile.

 

“I guess you’re tame, all right.”

 

“Point that gun another way, will you, son?”

 

The boy flushed.

 

“Don’t call me son.”

 

“Is this a lockup—a jail?”

 

“This?”

 

“What is it, then? The last I remember I was lying in the snow with—”

 

“I wish to God you’d been let there,” said the boy bitterly.

 

But Pierre, overwhelmed with the endeavor to recollect, rushed on with

his questions and paid no heed to the tone.

 

“I had a cross in my hand—”

 

The scorn of the boy grew to mighty proportions.

 

“It’s there in the breast-pocket of your shirt.”

 

Pierre drew out the little cross, and the touch of it against his palm

restored whatever of his strength was lacking. Very carefully he

attached it to the chain about his throat. Then he looked up to the

contempt of the boy, and as he did so another memory burst on him and

brought him to his feet. The gun went to the boy’s shoulders at the

same time.

 

“When I was found—was anyone else with me?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“Must have been buried in the landslide. Half a hill caved in, and

the dirt rolled you down to the bottom. Plain luck, that’s all, that

kept you from going out.”

 

“Luck?” said Pierre and he laid his hand against his breast where he

could feel the outline of the cross. “Yes, I suppose it was luck.

And she—”

 

He sat down slowly and buried his face in his hands. A new tone came

in the voice of the boy as he asked: “Was a woman with you?” But

Pierre heard only the tone and not the words. His face was gray when

he looked up again, and his voice hard.

 

“Tell me as briefly as you can how I come here, and who picked me up.”

 

“My father and his men. They passed you lying on the snow. They

brought you home.”

 

“Who is your father?”

 

The boy stiffened and his color rose.

 

“My father is Jim Boone.”

 

Instinctively, while he stared, the right hand of Pierre le Rouge

crept toward his hip.

 

“Keep your hand steady,” said the boy. “I got a nervous

trigger-finger. Yeh, dad is pretty well known.”

 

“You’re his son?”

 

“I’m Jack Boone.”

 

“But I’ve heard—tell me, why am I under guard?”

 

Jack was instantly aflame with the old anger.

 

“Not because I want you here.”

 

“Who does?”

 

“Dad.”

 

“Put away your pop-gun and talk sense. I won’t try to get away until

Jim Boone comes. I only fight men.”

 

Even the anger and grief of the boy could not keep him from smiling.

 

“Just the same I’ll keep the shooting-iron handy. Sit still. A gun

don’t keep me from talking sense, does it? You’re here to take Hal’s

place. Hal!” The little wail told a thousand things, and Pierre,

shocked out of the thought of his own troubles, waited.

 

“My brother, Hal; he’s dead; he died last night, and on the way back

dad found you and brought you to take Hal’s place. Hal’s place!”

 

The accent showed how impossible it was that Hal’s place could be

taken by any mortal man.

 

“I got orders to keep you here, but if I was to do what I’d like to

do, I’d give you the best horse on the place and tell you to clear

out. That’s me!”

 

“Then do it.”

 

“And face dad afterward?”

 

“Tell him I overpowered you. That would be easy; you a slip of a boy,

and me a man.”

 

“Stranger, it goes to show you may have heard of Jim Boone, but you

don’t anyways know him. When he orders a thing done he wants it done,

and he don’t care how, and he don’t ask questions why. He just

raises hell.”

 

“He really expects to keep me here?”

 

“Expects? He will.”

 

“Going to tie me up?” asked Pierre ironically.

 

“Maybe,” answered Jack, overlooking the irony. “Maybe he’ll just put

you on my shoulders to guard.”

 

He moved the gun significantly.

 

“And I can do it.”

 

“Of course. But he would have to let me go sometime.”

 

“Not till you’d promised to stick by him. I told him that myself, but

he said that you’re young and that he’d teach you to like this life

whether you wanted to or not. Me speaking personally, I agree with

Black Gandil: This is the worst fool thing that dad has ever done.

What do we want with you—in Hal’s place!”

 

“But I’ve got a thing to do right away—today; it can’t wait.”

 

“Give dad your word to come back and he’ll let you go. He says you’re

the kind that will keep your word. You see, he found you with a

cross in your hand.”

 

And Jack’s lips curled again.

 

It was all absurd, too impossible to be real. The only real things

were the body of yellow-haired Mary Brown, under the tumbled rocks and

dirt of the landslide, and the body of Martin Ryder waiting to be

placed in that corner plot where the grass grew quicker than all other

grass in the spring of the year.

 

However, having fallen among madmen, he must use cunning to get away

before the outlaw and his men came back from wherever they had gone.

Otherwise there would be more bloodshed, more play of guns and hum

of lead.

 

“Tell me of Hal,” he said, and dropped his elbows on his knees as if

he accepted his fate.

 

“Don’t know you well enough to talk of Hal.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

The boy made a little gesture of apology.

 

“I guess that was a mean thing to say. Sure I’ll tell you about

Hal—if I can.”

 

“Tell me anything you can,” said Pierre gently, “because I’ve got to

try to be like him, haven’t I?”

 

“You could try till rattlers got tame, but it’d take ten like you to

make one like Hal. He was dad’s own son—he was my brother.”

 

The sob came openly now, and the tears were a mist in the boy’s eyes.

 

“What’s your name?”

 

“Pierre.”

 

“Pierre? I suppose I got to learn it.”

 

“I suppose so.” And he edged farther forward so that he was sitting

only on the edge of the bunk.

 

“Please do.” And he gathered his feet under him, ready for a spring

forward and a grip at the boy’s threatening rifle.

 

Jack had canted his head a little to one side. “Did you ever see a

horse that was gentle and yet had never been ridden, or his spirit

broke, Pierre—”

 

Here Pierre made his leap swift as some bobcat of the northern woods;

his hand whipped out as lightning fast as the striking paw of the

lynx, and the gun was jerked from the hands of Jack. Not before the

boy clutched at it with a cry of horror, but the force of the pull

sent him lurching to the floor and broke his grip.

 

He was up in an instant, however, and a knife of ugly length glittered

in his hand as he sprang at Pierre.

 

Pierre tossed aside the rifle and met the attack barehanded. He caught

the knife-bearing hand at the wrist and under his grip the hand

loosened its hold and the steel tinkled on the floor. His other arm

caught the body of Jack in a mighty vise.

 

There was a brief and futile struggle, and a hissing of breath in the

silence till the hat tumbled from the head of Jack and down over the

shoulders streamed a torrent of silken black hair.

 

Pierre stepped back. This was the meaning, then, of the strangely

small feet and hands and the low music of the voice. It was the body

of a girl that he had held.