Riders of the Silences

by Max Brand

  CHAPTER XIII

  A TALE OF THE SLEDGE

  She wore a cartridge belt slung jauntily across her hips and from ithung a holster of stiff new leather with the top flap open to show thebutt of a man-sized forty-five caliber six-shooter--her first gun. Nota man of the gang but had loaned her his guns time and again, but theyhad never dreamed of giving the child a weapon of her own.

  So they stared at her agape, where she stood with her head back, oneslender hand resting on her hip, one hovering about the butt of thegun, as if she challenged them to question her right to be called "man."

  It was as if she abandoned all claims to femininity with that singlestep; the gun at her side made her seem inches taller and years older.She was no longer a child, but a long-rider who could back any horse onthe range and shoot with the best.

  One glance she cast about the room to drink in the amazement of thegang, and then with a profound instinct guiding her, she picked out thebest critic in the room and said to him with a frown: "Well, Dick,how's it hang?"

  The big man was as flushed as the girl.

  "Hangs like a charm," he said, "a charm that 'll be apt to make menstep about."

  And her father broke in rather hoarsely: "Sit down, girl. Sit down andbe one of us. One of us you are by your own choice from this day on.You're neither man nor woman, but a long-rider with every man's handagainst you. You've done with any hope of a home or of friends.You're one of us. Poor Jack--my girl!"

  "Poor?" she returned. "Not while I can make a quick draw and shootstraight."

  And then she swept the circle of eyes, daring them to take her boastlightly, but they knew her too well, and were all solemnly silent. Atthis she relented somewhat, and went directly to Pierre, flushing fromthroat to hair. She held out her hand.

  "Will you shake and call it square?"

  "I sure will," nodded Pierre.

  "And we're pals--you and me, like the rest of 'em?"

  "We are."

  "Shake again."

  She took the place beside him.

  Garry Patterson was telling how he had said farewell to a Swedishsweetheart, and the roar of laughter took the eyes away from Jacquelinefor a moment. So she leaned to Pierre le Rouge and whispered at hisear: "Pierre you've made me the happiest fellow on the range."

  As the whisky went round after round and the fun waxed higher the twoseemed shut away from the others; they were younger, less touched andmarked by life; they listened while the others talked, and now and thenexchanged glances of interest or aversion.

  "Listen," she said after a time, "I've heard this story before."

  It was Phil Branch, square-built and square of jaw, who was talking.

  "There's only one thing I can handle better than a gun, and that's asledge-hammer. A gun is all right in its way, but for work in a crowd,well, give me a hammer and I'll show you a way out."

  Bud Mansie grinned: "Leave me my pair of sixes and you can have all thehammers between here and Central Park in a crowd. There's nothingmakes a crowd remember its heels like a pair of barking sixes."

  "Ah, ah!" growled Branch. "But when they've heard bone crunch underthe hammer there's nothing will hold them."

  "I'd have to see that."

  "Maybe you will, Bud, maybe you will. It was the hammer that startedme for the long trail west. I had a big Scotchman in the factory whocouldn't learn how to weld. I'd taught him day after day and cursedhim and damn near prayed for him. But he somehow wouldn't learn--theswine--ah, ah!"

  He grew vindictively black at the memory.

  "Every night he wiped out what I'd taught him during the day and theeraser he used was booze. So one fine day I dropped the hammer afterwatchin' him make a botch on a big bar, and cussed him up one leg anddown the other. The Scotchman had a hang-over from the night beforeand he made a pass at me. It was too much for me just then, for theday was hot and the forge fire had been spitting cinders in my face allmorning. So I took him by the throat."

  He reached out and closed his taut fingers slowly.

  "I didn't mean nothin' by it, but after a man has been moldin' iron,flesh is pretty weak stuff. When I let go of Scotchy he dropped on thefloor, and while I stood starin' down at him somebody seen what hadhappened and spread the word.

  "I wasn't none too popular, bein' not much on talk, so the boys gottogether and pretty soon they come pilin' through the door at me,packin' everything from hatchets to crowbars.

  "Lads, I was sorry about Scotchy, but after I glimpsed that gang comin'I wasn't sorry for nothing. I felt like singin', though there wasn'tno song that could say just what I meant. But I grabbed up the bigfourteen-pound hammer and met 'em half-way.

  "The first swing of the hammer it met something hard, but not as hardas iron. The thing crunched with a sound like an egg under a heavyman's heel. And when that crowd heard it they looked sick. God, howsick they looked! They didn't wait for no second swing, but they beatit hard and fast through the door with me after 'em. They scattered,but I kept right on and didn't never really stop till I reached themountain-desert and you, Jim."

  "Which is a good yarn," said Bud Mansie, "but I can tell you one that'll cap it. It was----"

  He stopped short, staring up at the door. Outside, the wind had keptup a perpetual roaring, and no one noticed the noise of the openingdoor. Bud Mansie, facing that door, however, turned a queer yellow andsat with his lips parted on the last word. He was not pretty to see.The others turned their heads, and there followed the strangest panicwhich Pierre had even seen.

  Jim Boone jerked his hand back to his hip, but stayed the motion, halfcompleted, and swung his hands stiffly above his head. Garry Pattersonsat with his eyes blinked shut, pale, waiting for death to come. DickWilbur rose, tall and stiff, and stood with his hands gripped at hissides, and Black Morgan Gandil clutched at the table before him and hiskeen eyes wandered swiftly about the room, seeking a place for escape.

  There was only one sound, and that was a whispering moan of terror fromJacqueline. Only Pierre made no move, yet he felt as he had when theblack mass of the landslide loomed above him.

  What he saw in the door was a man of medium size and almost slenderbuild. In spite of the patch of gray hair at either temple he was onlysomewhere between twenty-five and thirty. But to see him was to forgetall details except the strangest face which Pierre had ever seen orwould ever look upon in all his career.

  It was pale, with a pallor strange to the ranges; even the lips seemedbloodless, and they curved with a suggestion of a smile that was anervous habit rather than any sign of mirth. The nerves of the lefteye were also affected, and the lid dropped and fluttered almost shut,so that he had to carry his head far back in order to see plainly.There was such indomitable pride and scorn in the man that his namecame up to the lips of Pierre: "McGurk."

  A surprisingly gentle voice said: "Jim, I'm sorry to drop in on youthis way, but I've had some unpleasant news."

  His words dispelled part of the charm. The hands of big Boone lowered;the others assumed more natural positions, but each, it seemed toPierre, took particular and almost ostentatious care that their righthands should be always far from the holsters of their guns.

  The stranger went on: "Martin Ryder is finished, as I suppose you know.He left a spawn of two mongrels behind him. I haven't bothered withthem, but I'm a little more interested in another son that has croppedup. He's sitting over there in your family party and his name isPierre. In his own country they call him Pierre le Rouge, which meansRed Pierre, in our talk.

  "You know I don't like to be dictatorial, and I've never crossed you inanything before, Jim. Have I?"

  Boone moistened his white lips and answered: "Never," huskily, as if itwere a great muscular effort for him to speak.

  "This time I have to break the custom. Boone, this fellow Pierre hasto leave the country. Will you see that he goes?"

  The lips of Boone moved and made no sound.

  He said at length: "McGurk, I'd ra
ther cross the devil than cross you.There's no shame in admitting that. But I've lost my boy, Hal."

  "Too bad, Jim. I knew Hal; at a distance, of course."

  "And Pierre is filling Hal's place in the family."

  "Is that your answer?"

  "McGurk, are you going to pin me down in this?"

  And here Jack whirled and cried: "Dad, you won't let Pierre go!"

  "You see?" pleaded Boone.

  It was uncanny and horrible to see the giant so unnerved before thisstranger, but that part of it did not come to Pierre until later. Nowhe felt a peculiar emptiness of stomach and a certain jumping chillthat traveled up and down his spine. Moreover, he could not move hiseyes from the face of McGurk, and he knew at length that this wasfear--the first real fear that he had ever known.

  Shame made him hot, but fear made him cold again. He knew that if herose his knees would buckle under him; that if he drew out his revolverit would slip from his palsied fingers. For the fear of death is amighty fear, but it is nothing compared with the fear of man.

  "I've asked you a question," said McGurk. "What's your answer?"

  There was a quiver in the black forest of Boone's beard, and if Pierrewas cold before, he was sick at heart to see the big man cringe beforeMcGurk.

  He stammered: "Give me time."

  "Good," said McGurk. "I'm afraid I know what your answer would be now,but if you take a couple of days you will think things over and come toa reasonable conclusion. I will be at Gaffney's place about fifteenmiles from here. You know it? Send your answer there. In the meantime"--he stepped forward to the table and poured a small drink ofwhiskey into a glass and raised it high--"here's to the long health andhappiness of us all. Drink!"

  There was a hasty pouring of liquor.

  "And you also!"

  Pierre jumped as if he had been struck, and obeyed the order hastily.

  "So," said the master, pleasant again, and Pierre wiped his foreheadfurtively and stared up with fascinated eyes. "An unwilling pledge isbetter than none at all. To you, gentleman, much happiness; to you,Pierre le Rouge, _bon voyage_."

  They drank; the master placed his glass on the table again, smiled uponthem, and was gone through the door. He turned his back in leaving.There was no fitter way in which he could have expressed his contempt.