Riders of the Silences

by Max Brand

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  A VOICE IN THE NIGHT

  Up the same course which Jacqueline followed, Mary Brown had fledearlier that night with the triumphant laughter of Jack still ringingin her ears and following her like a remorseless, pointed hand of shame.

  There is no power like shame to disarm the spirit. A dog will fight ifa man laughs at him; a coward will challenge the devil himself if he iswhipped on by scorn; and this proud girl shrank and moaned on thesaddle. She had not progressed far enough to hate Pierre. That wouldcome later, but now all her heart had room for was a consuming loathingof herself.

  Some of that torture went into the spurs with which she punished theside of the bay, and the tall horse responded with a high-tossed headand a burst of whirlwind speed. The result was finally a stumble overa loose rock that almost flung Mary over the pommel of the saddle andforced her to draw rein.

  Having slowed the pace she became aware that she was very tired fromthe trip of the day, and utterly exhausted by the wild scene withJacqueline, so that she began to look about for a place where she couldstop for even an hour or so and rest her aching body.

  Thought of McGurk sent her hand trembling to her holster. Still sheknew she must have little to fear from him. He had been kind to her.Why had this scourge of the mountain-desert spared her? Was it totrack down Pierre?

  It was at this time that she heard the purl and whisper of runningwater, a sound dear to the hearts of all travelers. She veered to theleft and found the little grove of trees with a thick shrubbery growingbetween, fed by the water of that diminutive brook. She dismounted andtethered the horses.

  By this time she had seen enough of camping out to know how to makeherself fairly comfortable, and she set about it methodically, eagerly.It was something to occupy her mind and keep out a little of thatburning sense of shame. One picture it could not obliterate, and thatwas the scene of Jacqueline and Pierre le Rouge laughing together overthe love affair with the silly girl of the yellow hair.

  That was the meaning, then, of those silences that had come betweenthem? He had been thinking, remembering, careful lest he should forgeta single scruple of the whole ludicrous affair. She shuddered,remembering how she had fairly flung herself into his arms.

  On that she brooded, after starting the little fire. It was not thatshe was cold, but the fire, at least, in the heart of the black night,was a friend incapable of human treachery. She had not been there longwhen the tall bay, Wilbur's horse, stiffened, raised his head, archedhis tail, and then whinnied.

  She started to her feet, stirred by a thousand fears, and heard, faraway, an answering neigh. At once all thought of shame and of Pierrele Rouge vanished from her mind, for she remembered the man who hadfollowed her up the valley of the Old Crow. Perhaps he was coming nowout of the night; perhaps she would even see him.

  And the excitement grew in her pulse by pulse, as the excitement growsin a man waiting for a friend at a station; he sees first the faintsmoke like a cloud on the skyline, and then a black speck beneath thesmoke, and next the engine draws up on him with a humming of the railswhich grows at length to a thunder.

  All the while his heart beats faster and faster and rocks with the swayof the approaching engine; so the heart of Mary Brown beat, though shecould not see, but only felt the coming of the stranger.

  The only sign she saw was in the horses, which showed an increasinguneasiness. Her own mare now shared the restlessness of the tall bay,and the two were footing it nervously here and there, tugging at thetethers, and tossing up their heads, with many a start, as if theyfeared and sought to flee from some approaching catastrophe--some vastand preternatural change--some forest fire which came galloping fasterthan even their fleet limbs could carry them.

  Yet all beyond the pale of her campfire's light was silence, utter andcomplete silence. It seemed as if a veritable muscular energy wentinto the intensity of her listening, but not a sound reached her excepta faint whispering of the wind in the dark trees above her.

  But at last she knew that the thing was upon her. The horses ceasedtheir prancing and stared in a fixed direction through the thicket ofshrubbery; the very wind grew hushed above her; she could feel the newpresence as one feels the silence when a door closes and shuts away thesound of the street below.

  It came on her with a shock, thrilling, terrible, yet not altogetherunpleasant. She rose, her hands clenched at her sides and the greatblue eyes abnormally wide as they stared in the same direction as theeyes of the two horses held. Yet for all her preparation she nearlyfainted and a blackness came across her mind when a voice soundeddirectly behind her, a pleasantly modulated voice: "Look this way. Iam here, in front of the fire."

  She turned about and the two horses, quivering, whirled toward thatsound.

  She stepped back, back until the embers of the fire lay between her andthat side of the little clearing. In spite of herself the exclamationescaped her.--"McGurk!"

  The voice spoke again: "Do not be afraid. You are safe, absolutely."

  "What are you?"

  "Your friend."

  "Is it you who followed me up the valley?"

  "Yes."

  "Come into the light. I must see you." A faint laughter reached herfrom the dark.

  "I cannot let you do that. If that had been possible I should havecome to you before."

  "But I feel--I feel almost, as if you are a ghost and no man of fleshand blood."

  "It is better for you to feel that way about it," said the voicesolemnly, "than to know me."

  "At least, tell me why you have followed me, why you have cared for me."

  "You will hate me if I tell you, and fear me."

  "No, whatever you are, trust me. Tell me at least what came to DickWilbur?"

  "That's easy enough. I met him at the river, a little by surprise, andcaught him before he could even shout. Then I took his guns and lethim go."

  "But he didn't come back to me?"

  "No. He knew that I would be there. I might have finished him withoutgiving him a chance to speak, girl, but I'd seen him with you and I wascurious. So I found out where you were going and why, and let Wilburgo. I came back and looked at you and found you asleep."

  She grew cold at the thought of him leaning over her.

  "I watched you a long time, and I suppose I'll remember you always as Isaw you then. You were very beautiful with the shadow of the lashesagainst your cheek--almost as beautiful as you are now as you standover there, fearing and loathing me. I dared not let you see me, but Idecided to take care of you--for a while."

  "And now?"

  "I have come to say farewell to you."

  "Let me see you once before you go."

  "No! You see, I fear you even more than you fear me."

  "Then I'll follow you."

  "It would be useless--utterly useless. There are ways of becominginvisible in the mountains. But before I go, tell me one thing: Haveyou left the cabin to search for Pierre le Rouge in another place?"

  "No. I do not search for him."

  There was an instant of pause. Then the voice said sharply: "DidWilbur lie to me?"

  "No. I started up the valley to find him."

  "But you've given him up?"

  "I hate him--I hate him as much as I loathe myself for evercondescending to follow him."

  She heard a quick breath drawn in the dark, and then a murmur; "I amfree, then, to hunt him down!"

  "Why?"

  "Listen: I had given him up for your sake; I gave him up when I stoodbeside you that first night and watched you trembling with the cold inyour sleep. It was a weak thing for me to do, but since I saw you,Mary, I am not as strong as I once was."

  "Now you go back on his trail? It is death for Pierre?"

  "You say you hate him?"

  "Ah, but as deeply as that?" she questioned herself.

  "It may not be death for Pierre. I have ridden the ranges many yearsand met them all in time, but never one like
him. Listen: six yearsago I met him first and then he wounded me--the first time any man hastouched me. And afterward I was afraid, Mary, for the first time in mylife, for the charm was broken. For six years I could not return, butnow I am at his heels. Six are gone; he will be the last to go."

  "What are you?" she cried. "Some bloodhound reincarnated?"

  He said: "That is the mildest name I have ever been called."