by Max Brand
Back tilted her head, and her throat stirred as if she were singing.
“Pierre! A dance?”
He explained: “Dick’s lost his head over a girl with yellow hair, and he wants me to go down and see her. He thought you might want to go along.”
Her face changed like the moon when a cloud blows across it. Before she answered she slipped down on the bunk again, pillowed her head leisurely on her arm, and answered with another slow, insolent yawn: “Thanks! I’m staying home to-night.”
Wilbur glared his rage covertly at Pierre, but the latter was blandly unconscious that he had made any faux pas.
He said carelessly: “Too bad. It might be interesting, Jack?”
At his voice she looked up—a sharp and graceful toss of the head.
“What?”
“The girl with the yellow hair.”
“Then go ahead and see her. I won’t keep you. You don’t mind if I go on sleeping? Sit down and be at home.”
With this she calmly turned her back again and seemed thoroughly disposed to carry out her word. Red Pierre flushed a little, watching her, and he spoke his anger outright: “You’re acting like a sulky kid, Jack, not like a man.”
It was a habit of his to forget that she was a woman. Without turning her head she answered: “Do you want to know why?”
“You’re like a cat showing your claws. Go on! Tell me what the reason is.”
“Because I get tired of you.”
In all his life he had never been so scorned. He did not see the covert grin of Wilbur in the background. He blurted: “Tired?”
“Awfully. You don’t mind me being frank, do you, Pierre?”
He could only stammer: “Sometimes I wish to God you were a man, Jack!”
“You don’t often remember that I’m a woman.”
“What do you mean by that?”
She was silent, but there was a perceptible tremor in the graceful body.
He repeated: “Do you mean that I’m rude or rough with you, Jacqueline?”
Still the silence, but Wilbur was grinning broader than ever. “Answer me!”
She started up and faced him, her face convulsed with rage.
“What do you want me to say? Yes, you are rude—I hate you and your lot. Go away from me; I don’t want you; I hate you all.”
And she would have said more, but furious sobs swelled her throat and she could not speak, but dropped, face down, on the bunk and gripped the blankets in each hard-set hand. Over her Pierre leaned, utterly bewildered, found nothing that he could say, and then turned and strode, frowning, from the room. Wilbur hastened after him and caught him just as the door was closing.
“Come back,” he pleaded. “This is the best game I’ve ever seen. Come back, Pierre! You’ve made a wonderful start.”
Pierre le Rouge shook off the detaining hand and glared up at Wilbur.
“Don’t try irony, Dick. I feel like murder. Think of it! All this time she’s been hating me; and now it’s making her weep; think of it—Jack—weeping!”
“Why, you’re a child, Pierre. Go back and take her in your arms and tell her you’re going to make her go to the dance.”
“Take her in my arms? She’d stab me, there’s that much of the devil in her. Don’t grin at me and keep chuckling like an utter ass. What’s up, Dick?”
“Don’t you see? No, you don’t, but it’s so plain that a baby of three years could understand. She’s in love with you.”
“With me?”
“With Red Pierre.”
“You can’t make a joke out of Jack with me. You ought to know that.”
“Pierre, I’d as soon make a joke out of a wildcat.”
“Grinning still? Wilbur, I’m taking more from you than I would from any man on the ranges.”
“I know you are, and that’s why I’m stringing this out because I’m going to have a laugh—ha, ha, ha!—the rest of my life—ha, ha, ha, ha!—whenever I think of this—ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”
The burst of merriment left him speechless, and Pierre, glowering, his right hand twitching dangerously close to that holster at his hip. He sobered, and said: “Go in and talk to her and prove that I’m right.”
“Ask Jack if she loves me? Why, I’d as soon ask any man the same question.”
The big long rider was instantly curious.
“Has she never appealed to you as a woman, Pierre?”
“How could she? I’ve watched her ride; I’ve watched her use her gun; I’ve slept rolled in the same blankets with her, back to back; I’ve walked and talked and traveled with her as if she were my kid brother.”
Wilbur nodded, as if the miracle were being slowly unfolded before his eyes.
“And you’ve never noticed anything different about her? Never watched a little lift and grace in her walk that no man could ever have; never heard her laugh in a voice that no man could ever imitate; never seen her color change just because you, Pierre, came near or went far away from her?”
“Because of me?” asked the bewildered Pierre.
“You fool, you! Why, lad, I’ve been kept amused by you two for a whole evening, watching her play for your attention, saving her best smiles for you, keeping her best attitudes for you, and letting all the richness of her voice go out for—a block—a stone. Gad, the thing still doesn’t seem possible! Pierre, one instant of that girl would give romance to a man’s whole life.”
“This girl? This Jack of ours?”
“He hasn’t seen it! Why, if I hadn’t seen years ago that she had tied her hands and turned her heart over to you, I’d have been down on my knees to her a thousand times, begging her for a smile, a shadow of a hope.”
“If I didn’t know you, Dick, I’d say that you were partly drunk and partly a fool.”
“Here’s a hundred—a cold hundred that I’m right. I’ll make it a thousand, if you dare.”
“Dare what?”
“Ask her to marry you.”
“Marry—me?”
“Damn it all—well, then—whatever you like. But I say that if you go back into that room and sit still and merely look at her, she’ll be in your arms within five minutes.”
“I hate to take charity, but a bet is a bet. That hundred is in my pocket already. It’s a go!”
They shook hands.
“But what will be your proof, Dick, whether I win or lose?”
“Your face, blockhead, when you come out of the room.”
Upon this Pierre pondered a moment, and then turned toward the door. He set his hand on the knob, faltered, and finally set his teeth and entered the room.
CHAPTER XVIII
FIVE MINUTES’ SILENCE
She lay as he had left her, except that her face was now pillowed in her arms, and the long sobs kept her body quivering. Awe and curiosity swept over Pierre, looking down at her, but chiefly a puzzled grief such as a strong man feels when a friend is in trouble. He came closer and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Jack!”
She turned far enough to strike his hand away and instantly resumed her former position, though the sobs were softer. This childish anger irritated him. He was about to storm out of the room when the thought of the hundred dollars stopped him. It was not that he hoped to win the money, for dollars rolled easily into his hands and out again, but the bet had been made, and it was his pride that he would play out his part of it. It seemed unsportsmanlike to leave without some effort.
The effort which he finally made was that suggested by Wilbur. He folded his arms and stood silent, waiting, and ready to judge the time as nearly as he could until the five minutes should have elapsed. He was so busy computing the minutes that it was with a start that he noticed some time later that the weeping had ceased. She lay quiet. Her hand was dabbing furtively at her face for a purpose which Pierre could not surmise.
At last a broken voice murmured: “Pierre!”
He would not speak, but something in the voice made his anger go. After a little it came,
and louder this time: “Pierre?”
He did not stir.
She whirled and sat on the edge of the bunk, crying: “Pierre!” with a note of fright. Then she flushed richly.
“I thought perhaps you were gone. I thought—Pierre—I was afraid—I mean I hoped—”
She could not go on.
And still he persisted in that silence, his arms folded, the keen blue eyes considering her as if from a great distance.
She explained: “I was afraid—Pierre! Why don’t you speak? Tell me, are you angry?”
And she sprang up and made a pace toward him. She had never seemed so little manlike, so wholly womanly. For the thick coils of hair were loosed on her head, and the black hair framed a face stained, flushed, with eyes that were like a great black, bottomless well of sorrow and wistfulness. And the hand which stretched toward him, palm up, was a symbol of everything new and strange that he found in her.
He had seen it balled to a small, angry fist, brown and dangerous; he had seen it gripping the butt of a revolver, ready for the draw; he had seen it tugging at the reins and holding a racing horse in check with an ease which a man would envy; but never before had he seen it turned palm up, to his knowledge; and now, because he could not speak to her, according to his plan, he studied her thoroughly for the first time.
Slender and marvelously made was that hand. The whole woman was in it, finely fashioned, delicate, made for beauty, not for use. It was all he could do to keep from exclaiming.
She made a quick step toward him, eager, uncertain:
“Pierre, I thought you had left me—that you were gone, and angry.”
The hearts of men are tinder; something caught on fire in Pierre, but still he would say nothing. He was beginning to feel a cruel pleasure in his victory, but it was not without a deep sense of danger.
She had laid aside her six-gun, but she had not abandoned it. She had laid aside her anger, but she could resume it again as swiftly as she could take up her revolver.
He exulted in the touch of victory, but it was as a man who rides a horse that paces docilely beneath him but may plunge into a fury of bucking in a moment. She was closer—very close, and somehow he knew that at his pleasure he could make her smile or tremble by speaking. Yet he would not speak. The five minutes were not yet up.
She cried with a little burst of rage: “Pierre, you are making a game of me!”
But seeing that he did not change she altered swiftly and caught his hand in both of hers. She spoke the name which she always used when she was greatly moved.
“Ah, Pierre le Rouge, what have I done?”
His silence tempted her on like the smile of the sphinx.
And suddenly she was inside his arms, though how she separated them he could not tell, and crying: “Pierre, I am unhappy. Help me, Pierre!”
It was true, then, and Wilbur had won his bet. But how could it have happened? He took the arms that encircled his neck and brought them slowly down, and watched her curiously. Something was expected of him, but what it was he could not tell, for women were as strange to him as the wild sea is strange to the Arab.
He hunted his mind, and then: “One of the boys has angered you, Jack?”
And she said, because she could think of no way to cover the confusion which came to her after the outbreak: “Yes.”
He dropped her arms and strode a pace or two up and down the room.
“Gandil?”
“N-no!”
“You’re lying. It was Gandil.”
And he made straight for the door.
She ran after him and flung herself between him and the door. Clearly, as if it were a painted picture, she saw him facing Gandil—saw their hands leap for the guns—saw Gandil pitch face forward on the floor—writhe all his limbs—and then lie still. “Pierre—for God’s sake!”
Her terror convinced him partially, and the furor went back from his eyes as a light goes back in a long, dark hall.
“On your honor, Jack, it’s not Gandil?”
“On my honor.”
“But some one has broken you up.”
“No, I—”
“Don’t lie. Why, even while you look at me your color changes. You’re pale one minute and red the next. Some one has crossed you, Jack. And whoever crosses you crosses me, by God! Out with his name! Is it Branch?”
“No.”
“Then it’s big Patterson.”
“No.”
“I have it! Mansie! There’s always something of the sneak about him that I never liked.”
“No, no!”
“It is! He came up to you and whispered some dog’s remark for you to hear. Damn him—I never trusted Mansie!”
He pushed her away from the door and set his hand on the knob, but he could not keep her back. She was upon him again and twisted between him and the entrance to the room.
“Pierre, upon my honor, it was none of these men.”
He could not help but believe.
“Only Wilbur is left. Jack, I’d rather raise my hand against myself than to harm Dick, but if—”
“I’ll never tell you who it was. Don’t you see? It would be like a murder in cold blood if I were to send you after him.”
“But he’s here—he’s one of us, this man who’s bothered you.”
She could not help but answer: “Yes.”
He scowled down at the floor.
“You would never be able to guess who it is. Give it up. After all—I can live through it—I guess.”
“It’s something that has saddened you. Do you know, we’ve been so much together that I can almost read your mind, in a way. Why are you smiling?”
“I wish that you could read it—Pierre—at times.”
He took her face between his hands and frowned down into her eyes. At his touch she grew very pale and trembled as If a wind were striking against her.
“You see, you’ve been so near to me, and so dear to me all these years, Jack, that you’re like a sister, almost.”
“And you to me, Pierre.”
“But different—nearer even than a sister.”
“So much nearer!”
“It’s queer, isn’t it? But you can’t forget this trouble you’ve had. The tears come up in your eyes again. Tell me his name, Jack, and the dog—”
She said: “Only let me go. Take your hands away, Pierre.”
He obeyed her, deeply worried, and she stood for a moment with a hand pressed over her eyes, swaying. He had never seen her like this; he was like a pilot striving to steer his ship through an unfathomable fog. Following what had become an instinct with him, he raised his left hand and touched the cross beneath his throat. And inspiration came to him.
CHAPTER XIX
PARTNERS
“Whether you want to or not, Jack, we’ll go to this dance to-night.”
Jacqueline’s hand fell away from her eyes. She seemed suddenly glad again.
“Do you want to take me, Pierre?”
He explained: “Of course. Besides, we have to keep an eye on Wilbur. This girl with the yellow hair—”
She had altered swiftly again. There was no understanding her or following her moods this day. He decided to disregard them, as he had often done before.
“Black Gandil swears that I’m bringing bad luck to the boys at last. Patterson has disappeared; Wilbur has lost his head about a girl. We’ve got to save Dick.”
He knew that she was fond of Wilbur, but she showed no enthusiasm now.
“Let him go his own way. He’s big enough to take care of himself.”
“But it’s common talk, Jack, that the end of Wilbur will come through a woman. It was that that sent him on the long trail, you know. And this girl with the yellow hair—”
“Why do you harp on her?”
“Harp on her?”
“Every other word—nothing but yellow hair. I’m sick of it. I know the kind—faded corn color—dyed, probably. Pierre, you are all blind, and you most of all.”
“And for clothes, Jack?”
They were both dumb. It had been years since she had worn the clothes of a woman. She had danced with the men of her father’s gang many a time while some one whistled or played on a mouth-organ, and there was the time they rode into Beulah Ferry and held up the dance-hall, and Jim Boone and Mansie lined up the crowd with their hands held high above their heads while the sweating musicians played fast and furious and Jack and Pierre danced down the center of the hall.
She had danced many a time, but never in the clothes of a woman; so they stared, mutely puzzled.
A thought came first to Jacqueline. It obliterated even the memory of the yellow-haired girl and set her eyes dancing. She stepped close and murmured her suggestion in the ear of Pierre. Whatever it was, it made his jaw set hard and brought grave lines into his face.
She stepped back, asking: “Well?”
“We’ll do it. What a little demon you are, Jack!”
“Then we’ll have to start now. There’s barely time.”
They ran from the room together, and as they passed through the room below Wilbur called after them: “The dance?”
“Yes.”
“Wait and go with me.”
“We ride in a roundabout way.”
They were through the door as Pierre called back, and a moment later the hoofs of their horses scattered the gravel down the hillside. Jacqueline rode a black stallion sired by her father’s mighty Thunder, who had grown old but still could do the work of three ordinary horses in carrying the great bulk of his master. The son of Thunder was little like his sire, but a slender-limbed racer, graceful, nervous, eager. A clumsy rider would have ruined the horse in a single day’s hard work among the trails of the mountain-desert, but Jacqueline, fairly reading the mind of the black, nursed his strength when it was needed and let him run free and swift when the ground before him was level.
Now she picked her course dexterously down the hillside with the cream-colored mare of Pierre following half a length behind.
After the first down-pitch of ground was covered they passed into difficult terrain, and for half an hour went at a jog trot, winding in and out among the rocks, climbing steadily up and up through the hills.
Here the ground opened up again, and they roved on at a free gallop, the black always half a length in front. In all the length of the mountain-desert there was no other picture which could compare with these two in their youth and their pride and their fearlessness.