by Max Brand
Greatest wonder of all, she accepted the new relation tacitly, and leaned more and more weight on his hand, and even looked up and laughed with pleasure when he almost lifted her over a muddy runlet. It was all new, very strange, and, oddly enough, not unpleasant. Each was viewing the other from such an altered point that neither spoke.
So they came to the schoolhouse in this silence, and reached the long line of buggies, buckboards, and, most of all, saddled horses. They flooded the horse-shed where the school children stabled their mounts in the winter weather. They were tethered to the posts of the fence; they were grouped about the trees.
It was a prodigious gathering, and a great affair for the mountain-desert. They knew this even before they had set foot within the building.
They stopped here and adjusted their masks carefully. They were made from a strip of black lining which Jack had torn from one of the coats in the trunk which lay far back in the hills.
Those masks had to be tied firmly and well, for some jester might try to pull away that of Pierre, and if his face were seen, it would be death—a slaughter without defense, for he had not been able to conceal his big Colt in these tight-fitting clothes. Even as it was, there was peril from the moment that the lights within should shine on that head of dark-red hair.
As for Jack, there was little fear that she would be recognized. She was strange even to Pierre every time he looked down at her, for she had ceased to be Jack and had become very definitely “Jacqueline.” But the masks were on; the scarf adjusted about the throat and bare, shivering shoulders of Jack, and they stood arm in arm before the door out of which streamed the voices and the music.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Pierre—if they should find us out—”
“Never in a thousand years. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
But she was trembling so, either from fear, or excitement, or both, that he had to take a firm hold on her arm and almost carry her up the steps, shove the door open, and force her in.
A hundred eyes were instantly upon them, practised, suspicious eyes, accustomed to search into all things and take nothing for granted; eyes of men who, when a rap came at their door, looked to see whether or not the shadow of the stranger fell full in the center of the crack beneath the door. If it fell to one side the man might be an enemy, and therefore they would stand at one side of the room, their hands upon the butt of the six-gun, and shout: “Come in.” Such was the battery of glances from the men, and the color of Pierre altered, paled.
He knew some of those faces, for those who hunt and are hunted never forget the least gestures of their enemies. There was a mighty temptation to turn back even then, but he set his teeth and forced himself to stand calmly, adjust the absurd eye-glass on his nose, and stare about the room.
The chuckle which replied to this maneuver freed him for the moment. Suspicion was lulled. Moreover, the red-jeweled hair of Jacqueline and her lighted eyes called all attention almost immediately upon her. She shifted the golden scarf—the white arms and breast flashed in the light—a gasp responded. There would be talk to-morrow; there were whispers even now.
It was not the main hall that they stood in, for this school, having been built by an aspiring community, contained two rooms; this smaller room, used by the little ones of the school, was now converted into a hat-and-cloak room, and here also were a dozen baskets and boxes filled with comforters and blankets.
It was because of what lay in those baskets that the men and the women walked and talked softly in this room. They were wary lest they should arouse a sound which not even the loudest music could quite drown—a sound which makes all women sit up straight and sniff like hunted animals at bay, and makes all men frown and glance about for places of refuge.
Now and then some girl came panting and flushed from the dance-hall within and tiptoed to one of these baskets, and raised an edge of a blanket and looked down at the contents with a singular smile. Pierre hung up his hat, removed his gloves slowly, nerving himself to endure the sharp glances, and opened the door for Jacqueline.
If she had held back tremulously before, something she had seen in the eyes of those in the first room, something in the whisper and murmur which rose the moment she started to leave, gave her courage. She stepped into the dance-hall like a queen going forth to address devoted subjects.
The second ordeal was easier than the first. There were many times more people in that crowded room, but each was intent upon his own pleasure. A wave of warmth and light swept upon them, and a blare of music, and a stir and hum of voices, and here and there the sweet sound of a happy girl’s laughter. They raised their heads, these two wild rangers of the mountain-desert, and breathed deep of the fantastic scene.
It was marvelous, indeed, that so much gay life could exist within the arms of those gaunt, naked hills beyond the windows. There was no attempt at beauty in the costumes of the masqueraders. Here and there some girl achieved a novel and pleasing effect; but on the whole they strove for cheaper and more stirring things in the line of the grotesque.
Here passed a youth wearing a beard made from the stiff, red bristles of the tail of a sorrel horse. Another wore a bear’s head cunningly stuffed, the grinning teeth flashing over his head and the skin draped over his shoulders. A third disfigured himself horribly by painting after the fashion of an Indian on the war-path, with crimson streaks down his forehead and red and black across his cheeks.
But not more than a third of all the assembly made any effort to masquerade, beyond the use of the simple black mask across the upper part of the face. The rest of the men and women contented themselves with wearing the very finest clothes they could afford to buy, and there was through the air a scent of the general merchandise store which not even a liberal use of cheap perfume and all the drifts of pale-blue cigarette smoke could quite overcome.
As for the music, it was furnished by two very old men, relics of the days when there were contests in fiddling; a stout fellow of middle age, with cheeks swelled almost to bursting as he thundered out terrific blasts on a slide trombone; a youth who rattled two sticks on an overturned dish-pan in lieu of a drum, and a cornetist of real skill.
In an interlude, before very long, he would amuse with a solo, including all sorts of runs and whistling notes, and be a source of talk for many a month to come.
There were hard faces in the crowd, most of them, of men who had set their teeth against hard weather and hard men, and fought their way through, not to happiness, but to existence, so that fighting had become their pleasure.
Now they relaxed their eternal vigilance, their eternal suspicion. Another phase of their nature weakened. Some of them were smiling and laughing for the first time in months, perhaps, of bitter labor and loneliness on the range. With the gates of good-nature opened, a veritable flood of gaiety burst out. It glittered in their eyes, it rose to their lips in a wild laughter. They seemed to be dancing more furiously fast in order to forget the life which they had left, and to which they must return.
And through all the cheapness there was a great note of poetry as well; but one caught this only by a sense of intuition, or by remembering that these were the conquerors of the bitter nature of the mountain-desert. There was beauty here, the beauty of strength in the men and a brown loveliness in the girls; just as in the music, the blatancy of the rattling dish-pan and the blaring trombone were more than balanced by the real skill of the violinists, who kept a high, sweet, singing tone through all the clamor.
One could close his ears to the rest of the noise, if he strove to do so, and hear nothing but that harmonious moaning of the strings, steady and clear, like the aspirations of a man divorced from the facts of his weakness and his crudeness in practical life.
And Pierre le Rouge and Jacqueline? They stood aghast for a moment when that crash of noise broke around them; but they came from a life where there was nothing of beauty except the lonely strength of the mountains and the
appalling silences of the stars that roll above the desert. Almost at once they caught the overtone of human joyousness, and they turned with strange smiles to each other, and it was “Pierre?” “Jack?” Then a nod, and she was in his arms, and they glided into the dance.
CHAPTER XXII
THE OVERTONE
When a crowd gathers in the street, there rises a babel of voices, a confused and pointless clamor, no matter what the purpose of the gathering, until some man who can think as well as shout begins to speak. Then the crowd murmurs a moment, and after a few seconds composes itself to listen.
So it was with the noise in the hall when Pierre and Jacqueline began to dance. First there were smiles of derision and envy around them, but after a moment a little hush came where they moved, and then men began to note the smile of the girl and the whiteness of that round throat, and the grace of the bare, tapering arms.
So a whisper went around the room, and there began a craning of necks and an exchange of nods. All that crowd became in a moment no more than the chorus which fills the background of the stage when the principals step out from the wings.
They could not help but dance well, for they had youth and grace and strength, and the glances of applause and envy were like wine to quicken their blood, while above all they caught the overtone of the singing violins, and danced by that alone. The music ended with a long flourish just as they whirled to a stop in a corner of the room. At once an eddy of men started toward them.
“Who shall it be?” smiled Pierre. “With whom do you want to dance? It’s your triumph, Jack.”
She was alight and alive with the victory, and her eyes roved over the crowd.
“The big man with the tawny hair.”
“But he’s making right past us.”
“No; he’ll turn and come back.”
“How do you know?”
For answer she glanced up and laughed, and he realized with a singular sense of loneliness that she knew many things which were beyond his ken. Some one touched his arm, and a voice, many voices, beset him:
“How’s the chances for a dance with the girl, partner?”
“My name’s McCormack. Riley? Glad to know you. I’ve got a flask on the hip, Riley; what’s the chance of making a trade on this next dance?”
“How do we swap partners? Mine is the rangy girl with the red topknot. Not much on looks, Bill, but a cayuse don’t cover ground on his looks. Dance? Say, Bill, she’ll rock you to sleep!”
“This dance is already booked,” Pierre answered, and kept his eyes on the tall man with the scarred face and the resolute jaw. He wondered profoundly why Jacqueline had chosen such a partner.
At least she had prophesied correctly, for the big man turned toward them just as he seemed about to head for another part of the hall. The crowd gave way before him, not that he shouldered them aside, but they seemed to feel the coming of his shadow before him, and separated as they would have done before the shadow of a falling tree.
In another moment Pierre found himself looking up to the giant. No mask could disguise him, neither cover that long, twisting mark of white down his cheek, nor hide the square set of the jaw, nor dim the keen steady eyes. Upon him there was written at large: “This is a man.”
And there came to Pierre an exceedingly great uneasiness in his right hand, and a twitching of the fingers low down on his thigh where the familiar holster should have hung. His left hand rose, following the old instinct, and touched beneath his throat where the cold cross lay.
He was saying easily: “This is your dance, isn’t it?”
“Right, Bud,” answered the big man in a mellow voice as great as his size. “Sorry I can’t swap partners with you, but I hunt alone.”
An overwhelming desire to get a distance between himself and this huge unknown came to Pierre.
He said: “There goes the music. You’re off.”
And the other, moving toward Jack, leaned down a little and murmured at the ear of the outlaw: “Thanks, Pierre.”
Then he was gone, and Jacqueline was laughing over his shoulder back to Pierre.
Through his daze and through the rising clamor of the music, a voice said beside him: “You look sort of sick, dude. Who’s your friend?”
“Don’t you know him?” asked Pierre.
“No more than I do you; but I’ve ridden the range for ten years around here, and I know that he’s new to these parts. If I’d ever glimpsed him before, I’d remember him. He’d be a bad man in a mix, eh?”
And Pierre answered with devout earnestness: “He would.”
“But where’d you buy those duds, pal? Hey, look! Here’s what I’ve been waiting for—the Barneses and the girl that’s visitin’ ’em from the East.”
“What girl?”
“Look!”
The Barnes group was passing through the door, and last came the unmistakable form of Dick Wilbur, masked, but not masked enough to hide his familiar smile or cover the well-known sound of his laughter as it drifted to Pierre across the hall, and on his arm was a girl in an evening dress of blue, with a small, black mask across her eyes, and deep-golden hair.
Pausing before she swung into the dance with Wilbur, she made a gesture with the white arm, and looked up laughing to big, handsome Dick. Pierre trembled, and his heart beat once and stopped.
As he watched, the song which Dick had sung came like a monotonous, religious chant within him:
They call me poor, yet I am rich
In the touch of her golden hair;
My heart is filled like a miser’s hands
With the red-gold of her hair.
The only sky I ride beneath
Is the dear blue of her eyes,
The only heaven I desire
Is the blue of her dear eyes.
But even the memory of the song died in him while he watched her dance, and saw the lights and shadows flit across the smooth shoulders; and when he saw the hands of Wilbur about her, a red rage came up in him.
Dick in passing, marked that stare above the heads of the crowd, and frowned with trouble. The hungry eyes of Pierre followed them as they circled the hall again; and this time Wilbur, perhaps fearing that something had gone wrong with Pierre, steered close to the edge of the dancing crowd and looked inquisitively across.
He leaned and spoke to the girl, and she turned her head, smiling, to Pierre. Then the smile went out, and even despite the mask, he saw that her eyes had widened. The heart of Pierre grew thunderous with music. She had stopped and slipped from the arm of Wilbur, and came step by step slowly toward him like one walking in her sleep.
There, by the edge of the dancers, with the noise of the music and the laughter and the shuffling feet to cover them, they met. The hands she held to him were cold and trembling. He only knew that they were marvelously soft, and that they faltered and closed strongly about his own.
“Is it you?”
“It is I.”
That was all; and then the shadow of Wilbur loomed above them.
“What’s this? Do you know each other? It isn’t possible! Pierre, are you playing a game with me?”
But under the glance of Pierre he fell back a step, and reached for the gun which was not there. They were alone once more.
“Mary—Mary Brown!”
“Pierre!”
“But you are dead!”
“No, no! But you—Pierre——”
“It was a miracle—the cross—that saved me.”
“Where can we go?”
“Outside.”
“Pierre.”
“Yes.”
“Hold my arm close—so I’ll know it isn’t just dreaming. And go quickly!”
“They are staring at us—the fools—as if they were trying to understand.”
“We’ll be followed?”
“Never.”
“Do you need a wrap?”
“No.”
“But it is cold outside, and your shoulders are bare.”
“Then
take that cloak. But quickly, Pierre, before we’re followed.”
He drew it about her; he led her through the door; it clicked shut; they were alone with the sweet, frosty air about them. She tore away the mask, and her beauty struck him like the moon when it drops suddenly through a mist of clouds.
“And yours, Pierre?”
“Not here.”
“Why?”
“Because there are people. Hurry. Now here, with just the trees around us——”
And he tore off the mask.
The white, cold moon shone over them, slipping down between the dark tops of the trees, and the wind stirred slowly through the branches with a faint, hushing sound, as if once more a warning were coming to Pierre this night. He looked up, his left hand at the cross.
“Look down. You are afraid of something, Pierre. What is it?”
“With your arms around my neck, there’s nothing in the world I fear. Mary, I loved you all this time.”
“Pierre—and I——”
“But you have grown so tall—so strange—I can hardly feel——”
“And you—so stern and old.”
“I never dreamed I could love anything more than the little girl who lay in the snow, and died there that night.”
“And I never dreamed I could smile at any man except the boy who lay by me that night. And he died.”
“What miracle saved you?”
She said: “It was wonderful, and yet very simple. You remember how the tree crushed me down into the snow? Well, when the landslide moved, it carried the tree before it; the weight of the trunk was lifted from me. Perhaps it was a rock that struck me over the head then, for I lost consciousness. The slide didn’t bury me, but the rush carried me before it like a stick before a wave, you see.
“When I woke I was almost completely covered with a blanket of debris, but I could move my arms, and managed to prop myself up in a sitting posture. It was there that my father and his searching party found me; he had been combing that district all night. They carried me back, terribly bruised, but without even a bone broken. It was a miracle that I escaped, and the miracle must have been worked by your cross; do you remember?”