She wore a cartridge belt slung jauntily across her hips and from it hung a holster of stiff new leather with the top flap open to show the butt of a man-sized forty-five caliber six-shooter—her first gun. Not a man of the gang but had loaned her his guns time and again, but they had never dreamed of giving the child a weapon of her own.
So they stared at her agape, where she stood with her head back, one slender hand resting on her hip, one hovering about the butt of the gun, 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 single step; 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 on the range and shoot with the best.
One glance she cast about the room to drink in the amazement of the gang, and then with a profound instinct guiding her, she picked out the best 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 men step about."
And her father broke in rather hoarsely: "Sit down, girl. Sit down and be 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 hand against 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 shoot straight."
And then she swept the circle of eyes, daring them to take her boast lightly, but they knew her too well, and were all solemnly silent. At this she relented somewhat, and went directly to Pierre, flushing from throat 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 Swedish sweetheart, and the roar of laughter took the eyes away from Jacqueline for a moment. So she leaned to Pierre le Rouge and whispered at his ear: "Pierre you've made me the happiest fellow on the range."
As the whisky went round after round and the fun waxed higher the two seemed shut away from the others; they were younger, less touched and marked by life; they listened while the others talked, and now and then exchanged 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 a sledge-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 the hammers between here and Central Park in a crowd. There's nothing makes a crowd remember its heels like a pair of barking sixes."
"Ah, ah!" growled Branch. "But when they've heard bone crunch under the 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 started me for the long trail west. I had a big Scotchman in the factory who couldn't learn how to weld. I'd taught him day after day and cursed him and damn near prayed for him. But he somehow wouldn't learn—the swine—ah, ah!"
He grew vindictively black at the memory.
"Every night he wiped out what I'd taught him during the day and the eraser he used was booze. So one fine day I dropped the hammer after watchin' him make a botch on a big bar, and cussed him up one leg and down the other. The Scotchman had a hang-over from the night before and he made a pass at me. It was too much for me just then, for the day was hot and the forge fire had been spitting cinders in my face all morning. 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 the floor, and while I stood starin' down at him somebody seen what had happened and spread the word.
"I wasn't none too popular, bein' not much on talk, so the boys got together 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't no song that could say just what I meant. But I grabbed up the big fourteen-pound hammer and met 'em half-way.
"The first swing of the hammer it met something hard, but not as hard as iron. The thing crunched with a sound like an egg under a heavy man's heel. And when that crowd heard it they looked sick. God, how sick they looked! They didn't wait for no second swing, but they beat it 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 the mountain-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 kept up a perpetual roaring, and no one noticed the noise of the opening door. Bud Mansie, facing that door, however, turned a queer yellow and sat with his lips parted on the last word. He was not pretty to see. The others turned their heads, and there followed the strangest panic which Pierre had even seen.
Jim Boone jerked his hand back to his hip, but stayed the motion, half completed, and swung his hands stiffly above his head. Garry Patterson sat with his eyes blinked shut, pale, waiting for death to come. Dick Wilbur rose, tall and stiff, and stood with his hands gripped at his sides, and Black Morgan Gandil clutched at the table before him and his keen eyes wandered swiftly about the room, seeking a place for escape.
There was only one sound, and that was a whispering moan of terror from Jacqueline. Only Pierre made no move, yet he felt as he had when the black mass of the landslide loomed above him.
What he saw in the door was a man of medium size and almost slender build. In spite of the patch of gray hair at either temple he was only somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. But to see him was to forget all details except the strangest face which Pierre had ever seen or would ever look upon in all his career.
It was pale, with a pallor strange to the ranges; even the lips seemed bloodless, and they curved with a suggestion of a smile that was a nervous habit rather than any sign of mirth. The nerves of the left eye 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 name came up to the lips of Pierre: "McGurk."
A surprisingly gentle voice said: "Jim, I'm sorry to drop in on you this 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 to Pierre, took particular and almost ostentatious care that their right hands 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 with them, but I'm a little more interested in another son that has cropped up. He's sitting over there in your family party and his name is Pierre. In his own country they call him Pierre le Rouge, which means Red Pierre, in our talk.
"You know I don't like to be dictatorial, and I've never crossed you in anything before, Jim. Have I?"
Boone moistened his white lips and answered: "Never," huskily, as if it were a great muscular effort for him to speak.
"This time I have to break the custom. Boone, this fellow Pierre has to 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 rather 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 this stranger, but that part of it did not come to Pierre until later. Now he felt a peculiar emptiness of stomach and a certain jumping chill that traveled up and down his spine. Moreover, he could not move his eyes from the face of McGurk, and he knew at length that this was fear—the first real fear that he had ever known.
Shame made him hot, but fear made him cold again. He knew that if he rose his knees would buckle under him; that if he drew out his revolver it would slip from his palsied fingers. For the fear of death is a mighty 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 Pierre was cold before, he was sick at heart to see the big man cringe before McGurk.
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 to a reasonable conclusion. I will be at Gaffney's place about fifteen miles from here. You know it? Send your answer there. In the mean time"—he stepped forward to the table and poured a small drink of whiskey into a glass and raised it high—"here's to the long health and happiness 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 forehead furtively and stared up with fascinated eyes. "An unwilling pledge is better 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 upon them, 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.
The mirth died and in its place came a long silence. Jim Boone stared upon Pierre with miserable eyes, and then rose and left the room. The others one by one followed his example. Dick Wilbur in passing dropped his hand on Pierre's shoulder. Jacqueline was silent.
As he sat there minute after minute and then hour after hour of the long night Pierre saw the meaning of it. If they sent word that they would not give up Pierre it was war, and war with McGurk had only one ending. If they sent word that Pierre was surrendered the shame would never leave Boone and his men.
Whatever they did there was ruin for them in the end. All this Pierre conned slowly in his mind, until he was cold. Then he looked up and saw that the lamp had burned out and that the wood in the fireplace was consumed to a few red embers.
He replenished the fire, and when the yellow flames began to mount he made his resolution and walked slowly up and down the floor with it. For he knew that he must go to meet McGurk.
The very thought of the man sent the old chill through his blood, yet he must go and face him and end the thing.
It came over him with a pang that he was very young; that life was barely a taste in his mouth, whether bitter or sweet he could not tell. He picked a flaming stick from the fire and went before a little round mirror on the wall.
Back at him stared the face of a boy. He had seen so much of the grim six in the last day that the contrast startled him. They were men, hardened to life and filled with knowledge of it. They were books written full and ready to be ended. But he? He was a blank page with a scribbled word here and there. Nevertheless, he was chosen and he must go.
Having reached that decision he closed his mind on what would happen. There was a vague fear that when he faced McGurk he would be unmanned again and frozen with fear; that his spirit would be broken and he would become a thing too despicable for a man to kill.
One thing was certain: if he was to act a man's part and die a man's death he must not stand long before McGurk. It seemed to him then that he would die happy if he had the strength to fire one shot before the end.
Then he tiptoed from the house and went over the snow to the barn and saddled the horse of Hal Boone. It was already morning, and as he led the horse to the door of the barn a shadow, a faint shadow in that early light, fell across the snow before him.
He looked up and saw Jacqueline. She stepped close, and the horse nosed her shoulder affectionately.
She said: "Isn't there anything that will keep you from going?"
"It's just a little ride before breakfast. I'll be back in an hour."
It was foolish to try to blind her, as he saw by her wan, unchildish smile.
"Is there no other way, Pierre?"
"I don't know of any, do you?"
"You have to leave us, and never come back?"
"Is he as sure as that, Jack?"
"Sure? Who?"
She had not known, after all; she thought that he was merely riding away from the region where McGurk was king. Now she caught his wrists and shook them.
"Pierre, you are not going to face McGurk? Pierre!"
It was sweet and bitter-sweet that the child should wish him to stay, and it made the heart of Pierre old and stern to look down on her.
"If you were a man, you would understand."
"I know; because of your father. I do understand, but oh, Pierre, it makes me so unhappy—so terribly sad, Pierre."
Inspiration made her catch her breath.
"Listen! I can shoot as straight as almost any man. We will ride down together. We will go through the doors together—me first to take his fire, and you behind to shoot him down."
"I guess no man can be as brave as a woman, Jack. No; I have to see McGurk alone. He faced my father alone and shot him down. I'll face McGurk alone and live long enough to put my mark on him."
"But you don't know him. He can't be hurt. Do you think my father and—and Dick Wilbur would fear any man who could be hurt? No, but McGurk has been in a hundred fights and never been touched. There's a charm over him, don't you see?"
"I'll break the charm, that's all."
"You're only a boy, Pierre."
"I, also, carry a charm with me. Good-by."
He was up in the saddle.
"Then I'll call dad—I'll call them all—if you die they shall all follow you. I swear they shall, Pierre!"
He merely leaned forward and touched the horse with his spurs, but after he had raced the first hundred yards he glanced back. She was running hard for the house, and calling as she went. Pierre cursed and spurred the horse again.
Yet even if Jim Boone and his men started out after him they could never overtake him. Before they were in their saddles and up with him, he'd be a full three miles out in the hills. Not even black Thunder could make up as much ground as that.
So all the fifteen miles to Gaffney's place he urged his horse. The excitement of the race kept the thought of McGurk back in his mind. Only once he lost time when he had to pull up beside a buckboard and inquire the way. After that he flew on again. Yet as he clattered up to the door of Gaffney's crossroads saloon and swung to the ground he looked back and saw a cluster of horsemen swing around the shoulder of a hill and come tearing after him. Surely his time was short.
He thrust open the door of the place and called for a drink. The bartender spun the glass down the bar to him.
"Where's McGurk?"
The other stopped in the very act of taking out the bottle from the shelf, and his curious glance went over the face of Pierre le Rouge. He decided, apparently, that it was foolish to hold suspicions against so young a man.
"In that room," and he jerked his hand toward a door. "What do you want with him?"
"Got a message for him."
"Tell it to me, and I'll pass it along."
Pierre met the eye of the other and smiled faintly.
"Notthismessage."
"Oh," said the other, and then shouted: "McGurk!"
Far away came the rush of hoofs over a hard trail. Only a minute more and they would be here; only a minute more and the room would be full of fighting men ready to die with him and for him. Yet Pierre was glad; glad that he could meet the danger alone; ten minutes from now, if he lived, he could answer certainly one way or the other the greatest of all questions: "Am I a man?"
Out of the inner room the pleasant voice which he dreaded answered: "What's up?"
The barkeeper glanced Pierre le Rouge over again and then answered: "A friend with a message."
The door opened and framed McGurk. He did not start, seeing Pierre.
He said: "None of the rest of them had the guts even to bring me the message, eh?"
Pierre shrugged his shoulders. It was a mighty effort, but he was able to look his man fairly in the eyes.
"All right, lad. How long is it going to take you to clear out of the country?"
"That's not the message," answered a voice which Pierre did not recognize as his own.
"Out with it, then."
"It's in the leather on my hip."
And he went for his gun. Even as he started his hand he knew that he was too slow for McGurk, yet the finest split-second watch in the world could not have caught the differing time they needed to get their guns out of the holsters.
Just a breath before Pierre fired there was a stunning blow on his right shoulder and another on his hip. He lurched to the floor, his revolver clattering against the wood as he fell, but falling, he scooped up the gun with his left and twisted.
That movement made the third shot of McGurk fly wide and Pierre fired from the floor and saw a spasm of pain contract the face of the outlaw.
Instantly the door behind him flew open and Boone's men stormed into the room. Once more McGurk fired, but his wound made his aim wide and the bullet merely tore up a splinter beside Pierre's head. A fusillade from Boone and his men answered, but the outlaw had leaped back through the door.
"He's hurt," thundered Boone. "By God, the charm of McGurk is broken. Dick, Bud, Gandil, take the outside of the place. I'll force the door."
Wilbur and the other two raced through the door and raised a shout at once, and then there was a rattle of shots. Big Patterson leaned over Pierre.
He said in an awe-stricken voice: "Lad, it's a great work that you've done for all of us, if you've drawn the blood from McGurk."
"His left shoulder," said Pierre, and smiled in spite of his pain.
"And you, lad?"
"I'm going to live; I've got to finish the job. Who's that beside you? There's a mist over my eyes."
"It's Jack. She outrode us all."
Then the mist closed over the eyes of Pierre and his senses went out in the dark.
Those who are curious about the period which followed during which the title "Le Rouge" was forgotten and he became known only as "Red" Pierre through all the mountain-desert, can hear the tales of his doing from the analists of the ranges. This story has to do only with his struggle with McGurk, and must end where that struggle ended.
The gap of six years which occurs here is due to the fact that during that period McGurk vanished from the mountain-desert. He died away from the eyes of men and in their minds he became that tradition which lives still so vividly, the tradition of the pale face, the sneering, bloodless lips, and the hand which never failed.
During this lapse of time there were many who claimed that he had ridden off into some lonely haunt and died of the wound which he received from Pierre's bullet. A great majority, however, would never accept such a story, and even when the six years had rolled by they still shook their heads and "had their doubt on the matter" likeWouter Van Twillerof immortal memory.
They awaited his return just as certain stanch old Britons await the second coming of Arthur from the island of Avalon. In the mean time the terror of his name passed on to him who had broken the "charm" of McGurk.
Not all that grim significance passed on to "Red" Pierre, indeed, because he never impressed the public imagination as did the terrible ruthlessness of McGurk. At that he did enough to keep tongues wagging.
Cattlemen loved to tell those familiar exploits of the "two sheriffs," or that "thousand-mile pursuit of Canby," with its half-tragic, half-humorous conclusion, or the "Sacking of Two Rivers," or the "three-cornered battle" against Rodriguez and Blond.
But men could not forget that in all his work there rode behind Red Pierre six dauntless warriors of the mountain-desert, while McGurk had been always a single hand against the world, a veritable lone wolf.
Whatever kept him away through those six years, the memory of the wound he received at Gaffney's place never left McGurk, and now he was coming back with a single great purpose in his mind, and in his heart a consuming hatred for Pierre and all the other of Boone's men.
Certainly if he had sensed the second coming of McGurk, Pierre would not have ridden so jauntily through the hills this day, or whistled so carelessly, or swept the hills with such a complacent, lordly eye. A man of mark cannot bear himself too modestly, and Pierre, from boots to high-peaked, broad-brimmed sombrero, was the last word in elegance for a rider of the mountain-desert.
Even his mount seemed to sense the pride of his master. It was a cream-colored mustang, not one of the lump-headed, bony-hipped species common to the ranges, but one of those rare reversions to the Spanish thoroughbreds from which the Western cow-pony is descended. The mare was not over-large, but the broad hips and generous expanse of chest were hints, and only hints, of her strength and endurance. There was the speed of the blooded racer in her and the tirelessness of the mustang.
Now, down the rocky, half broken trail she picked her way as daintily as any debutante tiptoeing down a great stairway to the ballroom. Life had been easy for Mary since that thousand-mile struggle to overtake Canby, and now her sides were sleek from good feeding and some casual twenty miles a day, which was no more to her than a canter through the park is to the city horse.
The eye which had been so red-stained and fierce during the long ride after Canby was now bright and gentle. At every turn she pricked her small sharp ears as if she expected home and friends on the other side of the curve. And now and again she tossed her head and glanced back at the master for a moment and then whinnied across some echoing ravine.
It was Mary's way of showing happiness, and her master's acknowledgment was to run his gloved left hand up through her mane and with his ungloved right, that tanned and agile hand, pat her shoulder lightly.
Passing to the end of the down-grade, they reached a slight upward incline, and the mare, as if she had come to familiar ground, broke into a gallop, a matchless, swinging stride. Swerving to right and to left among the great boulders, like a football player running a broken field, she increased the gallop to a racing pace.
That twisting course would have shaken an ordinary horseman to the toes, but Pierre, swaying easily in the saddle, dropped the reins into the crook of his left arm and rolled a cigarette in spite of the motion and the wind. It was a little feat, but it would have drawn applause from a circus crowd.
He spoke to the mare while he lighted a match and she dropped to an easy canter, the pace which she could maintain from dawn to dark, eating up the gray miles of the mountain and the desert, and it was then that Red Pierre heard a gay voice singing in the distance.
His attitude changed at once. He caught a shorter grip on the reins and swung forward a little in the saddle, while his right hand touched the butt of the revolver in its holster and made sure that it was loose; for to those who hunt and are hunted every human voice in the mountain-desert is an ominous token.
The mare, sensing the change of her master through that weird telegraphy which passed down the taut bridle reins, held her head high and flattened her short ears against her neck.
The song and the singer drew closer, and the vigilence of Pierre ceased as he heard a mellow barytone ring out:
"They call me poor, yet I am richIn the touch of her golden hair,My heart is filled like a miser's handsWith the red-gold of her hair.The sky I ride beneath all dayIs the blue of her dear eyes;The only heaven I desireIs the blue of her dear eyes."
And here Dick Wilbur rode about the shoulder of a hill, broke off his song at the sight of Pierre le Rouge, and shouted a welcome. They came together and continued their journey side by side. The half-dozen years had hardly altered the blond, handsome face of Wilbur, and now, with the gladness of his singing still flushing his face, he seemed hardly more than a boy—younger, in fact, than Red Pierre, into whose eyes there came now and then a grave sternness.
"After hearing that song," said Pierre smiling, "I feel as if I'd listened to a portrait."
"Right!" said Wilbur, with unabated enthusiasm. "It's the bare and unadorned truth, Prince Pierre. My fineGalahad, if you came within eye-shot of her there'd be a small-sized hell raised."
"No. I'm immune there, you know."
"Nonsense. The beauty of a really lovely woman is like a fine perfume. It strikes right to a man's heart; there's no possibility of resistance. I know. You, Pierre, act like a man already in love or a boy who has never known a woman. Which is it, Pierre?"
The other made a familiar gesture with those who knew him, a touching of his left hand against his throat where the cross lay.
He said: "I suppose it seems like that to you."
"Like what? Dodging me, eh? Well, I never press the point, but I'd give the worth of your horse, Pierre, to see you and Mary together."
Red Pierre started, and then frowned.
"Irritates you a little, eh? Well, a woman is like a spur to most men."
He added, with a momentary gloom: "God knows, I bear the marks of 'em."
He raised his head, as if he looked up in response to his thought.
"But there's a difference with this girl. I've named the quality of her before—a fragrance, you know, that disarms a man, and like a fragrance there's just a touch of melancholy about her and an appeal that follows after you when she's gone."
Pierre looked to his friend with some alarm, for there was a saying among the followers of Boone that a woman would be the downfall of big Dick Wilbur again, as a woman had been his downfall before. The difference would be that this fall must be his last.
And Wilbur went on: "She's Eastern, Pierre, and out here visiting the daughter of old Barnes who owns about a thousand miles of range, you know. How long will she be here? That's the question I'm trying to answer for her. I met her riding over the hills—she was galloping along a ridge, and she rode her way right into my heart. Well, I'm a fool, of course, but about this girl I can't be wrong. To-night I'm taking her to a masquerade."
He pulled his horse to a full stop.
"Pierre, you have to come with me."
Pierre stared at his companion with almost open-mouthed astonishment.
"I? A dance?"
And then his head tilted back and he laughed.
"My good times, Dick, come out of the hills and the sky-line, and the gallop of Mary. But as for women, they bore me, Dick."
"Even Jack?"
"She's more man than woman."
It was the turn of Wilbur to laugh, and he responded uproariously until Pierre frowned and flushed a little.
"When I see you out here on your horse with your rifle in the boot and your six-gun swinging low in the scabbard, and riding the fastest bit of horse-flesh on the ranges," explained Wilbur, "I get to thinking that you're pretty much king of the mountains; but in certain respects, Pierre, you're a child. Ha, ha, ha! a regular infant."
Pierre stirred uneasily in his saddle. A man must be well over thirty before he can withstand ridicule.
He said dryly: "I've an idea that I know Jack about as well as the next man."
"Let it drop," said Wilbur, sober again, for he shared with all of Boone's crew a deep-rooted unwillingness to press Red Pierre beyond a certain point. "The one subject I won't quarrel about is Jack, God bless her."
"She's the best pal," said Pierre soberly, "and the nearest to a man I've ever met."
"Nearest to a man?" queried Wilbur, and smiled, but so furtively that even the sharp eye of Red Pierre did not perceive the mockery. He went on:
"But the dance, what of that? It's a masquerade. There'd be no fear of being recognized."
Pierre was silent a moment more. Then he said:
"This girl—what did you call her?"
"Mary."
"And about her hair—I think you said it was black?"
"Golden, Pierre."
"Mary, and golden hair," mused Red Pierre. "I think I'll go to that dance."
"With Jack? She dances wonderfully, you know."
"Well—with Jack."
So they reached a tumbled ranch-house squeezed between two hills so that it was sheltered from the storms of the winter but held all the heat of the summer.
Once it had been a goodly building, the home of some cattle-king. But bad times had come.
A bullet in a saloon brawl put an end to the cattle king, and now his home was a wreck of its former glory. The northern wing shelved down to the ground as if the building were kneeling to the power of the wind, and the southern portion of the house, though still erect, seemed tottering and rotten throughout and holding together until at a final blow the whole structure would crumple at once.
To the stables, hardly less ruinous than the big house, Pierre and Wilbur took their horses, and a series of whinnies greeted them from the stalls. To look down that line of magnificent heads raised above the partitions of the stalls was like glancing into the stud of some crowned head who made hunting and racing his chief end in life, for these were animals worthy of the sport of kings.
They were chosen each from among literal hundreds and thousands, and they were cared for far more tenderly than the masters cared for themselves. There was a reason in it, for upon their speed and endurance depended the life of the outlaw. Moreover, the policy of Jim Boone was one of actual "long riding."
Here he had come to a pause for a few days to recuperate his horses and his men. To-morrow, perhaps, he would be on the spur again and sweeping off to a distant point in the mountain desert to strike and be gone again before the rangers knew well that he had been there. Very rarely did one settler have another neighbor at a distance of less than two hundred miles. It meant arduous and continual riding, and a horse with any defect was worse than useless because the speed of the gang had to be the speed of the slowest horse in the lot.
It was some time before the two long riders had completed the grooming of their horses and had gone down the hill and into the house. In the largest habitable room they found a fire fed with rotten timbers from the wrecked portion of the building, and scattered through the room a sullen and dejected group: Mansie, Branch, Jim Boone, and Black Morgan Gandil.
At a glance it was easy to detect their malady; it was the horrible ennui which comes to men who are always surrounded by one set of faces. If a man is happily married he may bear with his wife and his children constantly through long stretches of time, but the glamour of life lies in the varying personalities which a man glimpses in passing, but never knows.
This was a rare crew. Every man of them was marked for courage and stamina and wild daring. Yet even so in their passive moments they hated each other with a hate that passed the understanding of common men.
Through seven years they had held together, through fair weather and foul, and now each knew from the other's expression the words that were about to be spoken, and each knew that the other was reading him, and loathing what he read.
So they were apt to relapse into long silences unless Jack was with them, for being a woman her variety was infinite, or Pierre le Rouge, whom all except Black Gandil loved and petted, and feared.
They were a battered crowd. Wind and hard weather and a thousand suns had marked them, and the hand of man had branded them. Here and there was a touch of gray in their hair, and about the mouth of each were lines which in such silent moments as this one gave an expression of infinite and wistful yearning.
"What's up? What's wrong?" asked Wilbur from the door, but since no answer was deigned he said no more.
But Pierre, like a charmed man who dares to walk among lions, strolled easily through the room, and looked into the face of big Boone, who smiled faintly up to him, and Black Gandil, who scowled doubly dark, and Bud Mansie, who shifted uneasily in his chair and then nodded, and finally to Branch. He dropped a hand on the massive shoulder of the blacksmith.
"Well?" he asked.
Branch let himself droop back into his chair. His big, dull, colorless eyes stared up to his friend.
"I dunno, lad. I'm just weary with the sort of tired that you can't help by sleepin'. Understand?"
Pierre nodded, slowly, because he sympathized. "And the trouble?"
Branch stared about as if searching for a reason.
"Jack's up-stairs sulking; Patterson hasn't come home yet."
And Black Gandil, who heard all things, said without looking up: "A man that saves a ship-wrecked fellow, he gets bad luck for thanks."
Pierre turned a considering eye on him, and Gandil scowled back.
"You've been croaking for six years, Morgan, about the bad luck that would come to Jim from saving me out of the snow. It's never happened, has it?"
Gandil, snarling from one side of his mouth, answered: "Where's Patterson?"
"Am I responsible if the blockhead has got drunk some place?"
"Patterson doesn't get drunk—not that way. And he knows that we were to start again to-day."
"There ain't no doubt of that," commented Branch.
"It's the straight dope. Patterson keeps his dates," said Bud Mansie.
The booming bass of Jim Boone broke in: "Shut up, the whole gang of you. We've had luck for the six years Pierre has been with us. Who calls him a Jonah?"
And Black Gandil answered: "I do. I've sailed the seas. I know bad luck when I see it."
"You've been seeing it for six years."
"The worst storms come on a voyage that starts with fair weather. Patterson? He's gone; he ain't just delayed; he's gone."
It was not the first of these gloomy prophecies which Gandil had made, but each time a heavy gloom broke over Red Pierre. For when he summed up the good fortune which the cross of Father Victor had brought him, he found that he had gained a father, and lost him at their first meeting; and he had won money on that night of the gambling, but it had cost the life of another man almost at once. The horse which carried him away from the vengeance in Morgantown had died on the way and he had been saved from the landslide, but the girl had perished.
He had driven McGurk from the ranges, and where would the penalty fall on those who were near and dear to him? In a superstitious horror he had asked himself the question a thousand times, and finally he could hardly bear to look into the ominous, brooding eyes of Black Gandil. It was as if the man had a certain and evil knowledge of the future.
The knowledge of the torment he was inflicting made the eye of Black Gandil bright with triumph.
He continued, and now every man in the room was sitting up, alert, with gloomy eyes fixed upon Pierre: "Patterson is the first, but he ain't the last. He's just the start. Who's next?" He looked slowly around.
"Is it you, Bud, or you, Phil, or you, Jim, or maybe me?"
And Pierre said: "What makes you think you know that trouble's coming, Morgan?"
"Because my blood runs cold in me when I look at you."
Red Pierre grew rigid and straightened in a way they knew.
"Damn you, Gandil, I've borne with you and your croaking too long, d'ye hear? Too long, and I'll hear no more of it, understand?"
"Why not? You'll hear from me every time I sight you in the offing. You c'n lay to that!"
The others were tense, ready to spring for cover, but Boone reared up his great figure.
"Don't answer him, Pierre. You, Gandil, shut your face or I'll break ye in two."
The fierce eyes of Pierre le Rouge never wavered from his victim, but he answered: "Keep out of this. This is my party. I'll tell you why you'll stop gibbering, Gandil."
He made a pace forward and every man shrank a little away from him.
"Because the cold in your blood is part hate and more fear, Black Gandil."
The eyes of Gandil glared back for an instant. With all his soul he yearned for the courage to pull his gun, but his arm was numb; he could not move it, and his eyes wavered and fell.
The shaggy gray head of Jim Boone fell likewise, and he was murmuring to his savage old heart:
"The good days are over. They'll never rest till one of 'em is dead, and then the rest will take sides and we'll have gun-plays at night. Seven years, and then to break up!"
Dick Wilbur, as usual, was the pacifier. He strode across the room, and the sharp sound of his heels on the creaking floor broke the tension. He said softly to Pierre: "You've raised hell enough. Now let's go up and get Jack down here to undo what you've just finished. Besides, you've got to ask her for that dance, eh?"
The glance of Pierre still lingered on Gandil as he turned and followed Wilbur up the complaining stairs to the one habitable room in the second story of the house. It was set aside for the use of Jacqueline.
At the door Wilbur said: "Shrug your shoulders back; you look as if you were going to jump at something. And wipe the wolf-look off your face. After all, Jack's a girl, not a gun-fighter."
Then he knocked and opened the door.
She lay face down on her bunk, her head turned from them and toward the wall. Slender and supple and strong, it was still only the size of her boots and her hands that would make one look at her twice and then guess that this was a woman, for she was dressed, from trousers even to the bright bandanna knotted around her throat, like any prosperous range rider.
Now, to be sure, the thick coils of black hair told her sex, but when the broad-brimmed sombrero was pulled well down on her head, when the cartridge-belt and the six-gun were slung about her waist, and most of all when she spurred her mount recklessly across the hills, no one could have suspected that this was not some graceful boy born and bred in the mountain-desert, wilful as a young mountain-lion, and as dangerous.
"Sleepy?" called Wilbur.
She waited a moment and then queried with exaggerated impudence: "Well?"
Ennui unspeakable was in that drawling monotone.
"Brace up; I've got news for you."
Her hand moved and all the graceful body, but it was only with a yawn. What need was there to speak? She wished to be alone.
"And I've brought Pierre along to tell you about it.
"Oh!"
And she sat bolt upright with shining eyes. Instantly she remembered to yawn again, but her glance smiled on them above her hand.
She apologized. "Awfully sleepy, Dick."
But he was not deceived. He said: "There's a dance down near the Barnes place, and Pierre wants you to go with him."
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 anyfaux 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.