by Max Brand
He looked up with a short laugh.
“I’m dry. Who’ll stake me to a drink?”
Pierre scooped up a dozen pieces of the gold.
“Here.”
The other drew back. “You’re very welcome to it. Here’s more, if you’ll have it.”
“The coin I’ve lost to you? Take back a gamblin’ debt?”
“Easy there,” said one of the men. “Don’t you see the kid’s green?
Here’s a five-spot.”
The loser accepted the coin as carelessly as if he were conferring a favor by taking it, cast another scowl in the direction of Pierre, and went out toward the bar. Pierre, very hot in the face, pocketed his winnings and belted on the gun. It hung low on his thigh, just in easy gripping distance of his hand, and he fingered the butt with a smile.
“The kid’s feelin’ most a man,” remarked a sarcastic voice. “Say, kid, why don’t you try your luck with Mac Hurley? He’s almost through with poor old Cochrane.”
Following the direction of the pointing finger, Pierre saw one of those mute tragedies of the gambling hall. Cochrane, an old cattleman whose carefully trimmed, pointed white beard and slender, tapering fingers set him apart from the others in the room, was rather far gone with liquor. He was still stiffly erect in his chair, and would be till the very moment consciousness left him, but his eyes were misty, and when he spoke his lips moved slowly, as though numbed by cold.
Beside him stood a tall, black bottle with a little whisky glass to flank it. He made his bets with apparent carelessness, but with a real and deepening gloom. Once or twice he glanced up sharply as though reckoning his losses, though it seemed to Pierre le Rouge almost like an appeal.
And what appeal could affect Mac Hurley? There was no color in the man, either body or soul. No emotion could show in those pale, small eyes or change the color of the flabby cheeks. If his hands had been cut off, he might have seemed some sodden victim of a drug habit, but the hands saved him.
They seemed to belong to another body — beautiful, swift, and strong, and grafted by some foul mischance onto this rotten hulk. Very white they were, and long, with a nervous uneasiness in every motion, continually hovering around the cards with little touches which were almost caresses.
“It ain’t a game,” said the man who had first pointed out the group to Pierre, “it’s just a slaughter. Cochrane’s too far gone to see straight. Look at that deal now! A kid could see that he’s crooking the cards!”
It was blackjack, and Hurley, as usual, was dealing. He dealt with one hand, flipping the cards out with a snap of the wrist, the fingers working rapidly over the pack. Now and then he glanced over to the crowd, as if to enjoy their admiration of his skill. He was showing it now, not so much by the deftness of his cheating as by the openness with which he exposed his tricks.
As the stranger remarked to Pierre, a child could have discovered that the cards were being dealt at will from the top and the bottom of the pack, but the gambler was enjoying himself by keeping his game just open enough to be apparent to every other man in the room — just covert enough to deceive the drink-misted brain of Cochrane. And the pale, swinish eyes twinkled as they stared across the dull sorrow of the old man. There was an ominous sound from Pierre: “Do you let a thing like that happen in this country?” he asked fiercely.
The other turned to him with a sneer.
“Let it happen? Who’ll stop him? Say, partner, you ain’t meanin’ to say that you don’t know who Hurley is?”
“I don’t need telling. I can see.”
“What you can’t see means a lot more than what you can. I’ve been in the same room when Hurley worked his gun once. It wasn’t any killin’, but it was the prettiest bit of cheatin’ I ever seen. But even if Hurley wasn’t enough, what about Carl Diaz?”
He glared his triumph at Pierre, but the latter was too puzzled to quail, and too stirred by the pale, gloomy face of Cochrane to turn toward the other.
“What of Diaz?”
“Look here, boy. You’re a kid, all right, but you ain’t that young.
D’you mean to say that you ain’t heard of Carlos Diaz?”
It came back to Pierre then, for even into the snowbound seclusion of the north country the shadow of the name of Diaz had gone. He could not remember just what they were, but he seemed to recollect grim tales through which that name figured.
The other went on: “But if you ain’t ever seen him before, look him over now. They’s some says he’s faster on the draw than Bob McGurk, but, of course, that’s stretchin’ him out a size too much. What’s the matter, kid; you’ve met McGurk?”
“No, but I’m going to.”
“Might even be carried to him, eh — feet first?”
Pierre turned and laid a hand on the shoulder of the other.
“Don’t talk like that,” he said gently. “I don’t like it.”
The other reached up to snatch the hand from his shoulder, but he stayed his arm.
He said after an uncomfortable moment of that silent staring: “Well, partner, there ain’t a hell of a lot to get sore over, is there? You don’t figure you’re a mate for McGurk, do you?”
He seemed oddly relieved when the eyes of Pierre moved away from him and returned to the figure of Carlos Diaz. The Mexican was a perfect model for a painting of a melodramatic villain. He had waxed and twirled the end of his black mustache so that it thrust out a little spur on either side of his long face. His habitual expression was a scowl; his habitual position was with a cigarette in the fingers of his left hand, and his right hand resting on his hip. He sat in a chair directly behind that of Hurley, and Pierre’s new-found acquaintance explained: “He’s the bodyguard for Hurley. Maybe there’s some who could down Hurley in a straight gunfight; maybe there’s one or two like McGurk that could down Diaz — damn his yellow hide — but there ain’t no one can buck the two of ’em. It ain’t in reason. So they play the game together. Hurley works the cards and Diaz covers up the retreat. Can’t beat that, can you?”
Pierre le Rouge slipped his left hand once more inside his shirt until the fingers touched the cross.
“Nevertheless, that game has to stop.”
“Who’ll — say, kid, are you stringin’ me, or are you drunk? Look me in the eye!”
CHAPTER 6
PIERRE TURNED AND looked calmly upon the other.
And the man whispered in a sort of awe: “Well, I’ll be damned!”
“Stand aside!”
The other fell back a pace, and Pierre went straight to the table and said to Cochrane: “Sir, I have come to take you home.”
The old man looked up and rubbed his eyes as though waking from a sleep.
“Stand back from the table!” warned Hurley.
“By the Lord, have they been missing me?” queried old Cochrane. “You are waited for,” answered Pierre le Rouge, “and I’ve been sent to take you home.”
“If that’s the case—”
“It ain’t the case. The kid’s lying.”
“Lying?” repeated Cochrane, as if he had never heard the word before, and he peered with clearing eyes toward Pierre. “No, I think this boy has never lied.”
Silence had spread through the place like a vapor. Even the slight sounds in the gaming-room were done now, and one pair after another of eyes swung toward the table of Cochrane and Hurley. The wave of the silence reached to the barroom. No one could have carried the tidings so soon, but the air was surcharged with the consciousness of an impending crisis.
Half a dozen men started to make their way on tiptoe toward the back room. One stood with his whisky glass suspended in midair, and tilted back his head to listen. In the gaming-room Hurley pushed back his chair and leaned to the left, giving him a free sweep for his right hand. The Mexican smiled with a slow and deep content.
“Thank you,” answered Pierre, “but I am waiting still, sir.”
The left hand of Hurley played impatiently on the table.
He said: “Of course, if you have enough—”
“I — enough?” flared the old aristocrat.
Pierre le Rouge turned fairly upon Hurley.
“In the name of God,” he said calmly, “make an end of your game. You’re playing for money, but I think this man is playing for his eternal soul.”
The solemn, bookish phraseology came smoothly from his tongue. He knew no other. It drew a murmur of amusement from the room and a snarl from Hurley.
“Put on skirts, kid, and join the Salvation Army, but don’t get yourself messed all up in here. This is my party, and I’m damned particular who I invite! Now, run along!” The head of Pierre tilted back, and he burst into laughter which troubled even Hurley.
The gambler blurted: “What’s happening to you, kid?”
“I’ve been making a lot of good resolutions, Mr. Hurley, about keeping out of trouble; but here I am in it up to the neck.”
“No trouble as long as you keep your hand out of another man’s game, kid.”
“That’s it. I can’t see you rob Mr. Cochrane like this. You aren’t gambling — you’re digging gold. The game stops now.”
It was a moment before the crowd realized what was about to happen; they saw it reflected first in the face of Hurley, which suddenly went taut and pale, and then, even as they looked with a smile of curiosity and derision toward Pierre le Rouge, they saw and understood.
For the moment Pierre said, “The game stops now,” the calm which had been with him was gone. It was like the scent of blood to the starved wolf. The last word was scarcely off his tongue when he was crouched with a devil of green fury in his eyes — the light struck his hair into a wave of flame — his face altered by a dozen ugly years.
“D’you mean?” whispered Hurley, as if he feared to break the silence with his full voice.
“Get out of the room.”
And the impulse of Hurley, plainly enough, was to obey the order, and go anywhere to escape from that relentless stare. His glance wavered and flashed around the circle and then back to Red Pierre, for the expectancy of the crowd forced him back.
When the leader of the pack springs and fails to kill, the rest of the pack tear him to pieces. Remembering this, Mac Hurley forced his glance back to Pierre. Moreover, there was a soft voice from behind, and he remembered Diaz.
All this had taken place in the length of time that it takes a heavy body to totter on the brink of a precipice or a cat to regain its feet after a fall. After the voice of Diaz there was a sway through the room, a pulse of silence, and then three hands shot for their hips — Pierre, Diaz, and Hurley.
No stop-watch could have caught the differing lengths of time which each required for the draw. The muzzle of Hurley’s revolver was not clear of the holster — the gun of Diaz was nearly at the level when Pierre’s weapon exploded at his hip. The bullet cut through the wrist of Hurley. Never again would that slender, supple hand fly over the cards, doing things other than they seemed. He made no effort to escape from the next bullet, but stood looking down at his broken wrist; horror for the moment gave him a dignity oddly out of place with his usual appearance. He alone in all the room was moveless.
The crowd, undecided for an instant, broke for the doors at the first shot; Pierre le Rouge pitched to the floor as Diaz leaped forward, the revolver in either hand spitting lead and fire.
It was no bullet that downed Pierre but his own cunning. He broke his fall with an outstretched left hand, while the bullets of Diaz pumped into the void space which his body had filled a moment before.
Lying there at ease, he leveled the revolver, grinning with the mirthless lust of battle, and fired over the top of the table. The guns dropped from the hands of huge Diaz. He caught at his throat and staggered back the full length of the room, crashing against the wall. When he pitched forward on his face he was dead before he struck the floor.
Pierre, now Red Pierre, indeed, rose and ran to the fallen man, and, looking at the bulk of the giant, he wondered with a cold heart. He knew before he slipped his hand over the breast of Diaz that this was death. Then he rose again and watched the still fingers which seemed to be gripping at the boards. These he saw, and nothing else, and all he heard was the rattling of the wind of winter, wrenching at some loose shingle on the roof, and he knew that he was alone in the world, for he had put out a life.
He found a strange weight pulling down his right hand, and started when he saw the revolver. He replaced it in the holster automatically, and in so doing touched the barrel and found it warm.
Then fear came to Pierre, the first real fear of his life. He jerked his head high and looked about him. The room was utterly empty. He tiptoed to the door and found even the long bar deserted, littered with tall bottles and overturned glasses. The cold in his heart increased. A moment before he had been hand in hand with all the mirth in that place.
Now the men whose laughter he had repeated with smiles, the men against whose sleeves his elbow had touched, were further away from him than they had been when all the snow-covered miles from Morgantown to the school of Father Victor had laid between them. They were men who might lose themselves in any crowd, but he was set apart with a brand, even as Hurley and Diaz had been set apart that eventful evening.
He had killed a man. That fact blotted out the world. He drew his gun again and stole down the length of the bar. Once he stopped and poised the weapon before he realized that the white, fierce face that squinted at him was his own reflection in a mirror.
Outside the door the free wind caught at his face, and he blessed it in his heart, as if it had been the touch of the hand of a friend. Beyond the long, dark, silent street the moor rose and passed up through the safe, dark spaces of the sky.
He must move quickly now. The pursuit was not yet organized, but it would begin in a space of minutes. From the group of half a dozen horses which stood before the saloon he selected the best — a tall, raw-boned nag with an ugly head. Into the saddle he swung, wondering faintly that the theft of a horse mattered so little to him. His was the greatest sin. All other things mattered nothing.
Down the long street he galloped. The sharp echoes flew out at him from every unlighted house, but not a human being was in sight. So he swung out onto the long road which wound up through the hills, and beside him rode a grim brotherhood, the invisible fellowship of Cain.
The moon rose higher, brighter, and a grotesque black shadow galloped over the snow beside him. He turned his head sharply to the other side and watched the sweep of white hills which reached back in range after range until they blended with the shadows of night.
The road faded to a bridle path, and this in turn he lost among the windings of the valley. He was lost from even the traces of men, and yet the fear of men pursued him. Fear, and yet with it there was a thrill of happiness, for every swinging stride of the tall, wild roan carried him deeper into freedom, the unutterable fierce freedom of the hunted.
CHAPTER 7
ALL LIFE WAS tame compared with this sudden awakening of Pierre. He had killed a man. For fear of it he raced the tall roan furiously through the night.
He had killed a man. For the joy of it he shouted a song that went ringing across the blank, white hills. What place was there in Red Pierre for solemn qualms of conscience? Had he not met the first and last test triumphantly? The oldest instinct in creation was satisfied in him. Now he stood ready to say to all the world: Behold, a man!
Let it be remembered that his early years had been passed in a dull, dun silence, and time had slipped by him with softly padding, uneventful hours. Now, with the rope of restraint snapped, he rode at the world with hands, palm upward, asking for life, and that life which lies under the hills of the mountain-desert heard his question and sent a cold, sharp echo back to answer his lusty singing.
The first answer, as he plunged on, not knowing where, and not caring, was when the roan reeled suddenly and flung forward to the ground. Even that violent stop did not unseat Red Pierre. He je
rked up on the reins with a curse and drove in the spurs. Valiantly the horse reared his shoulders up, but when he strove to rise the right foreleg dangled helplessly. He had stepped in some hole and the bone was broken cleanly across.
The rider slipped from the saddle and stood facing the roan, which pricked its ears forward and struggled once more to regain its feet. The effort was hopeless, and Pierre took the broken leg and felt the rough edges of the splintered bone through the skin. The animal, as if it sensed that the man was trying to do it some good, nosed his shoulder and whinnied softly.
Pierre stepped back and drew his revolver. The bullet would do quickly what the cold would accomplish after lingering hours of torture, yet, facing those pricking ears and the trust of the eyes, he was blinded by a mist and could not aim. He had to place the muzzle of the gun against the roan’s temple and pull the trigger. When he turned his back he was the only living thing within the white arms of the hills.
Yet, when the next hill was behind him, he had already forgotten the second life which he put out that night, for regret is the one sorrow which never dodges the footsteps of the hunted. Like all his brotherhood of Cain, Pierre le Rouge pressed forward across the mountain-desert with his face turned toward the brave tomorrow. In the evening of his life, if he should live to that time, he would walk and talk with God.
Now he had no mind save for the bright day coming.
He had been riding with the wind and had scarcely noticed its violence in his headlong course. Now he felt it whipping sharply at his back and increasing with each step. Overhead the sky was clear. It seemed to give vision for the wind and cold to seek him out, and the moon made his following shadow long and black across the snow.
The wind quickened rapidly to a gale that cut off the surface of the snow and whipped volleys of the small particles level with the surface. It cut the neck of Red Pierre, and the gusts struck his shoulders with staggering force like separate blows, twisting him a little from side to side.