Riders of the Silences - Max Brand (best ereader for manga TXT) 📗
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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 ever 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 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 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’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
meantime”—he stepped forward to the table and poured a small drink
of whisky 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, gentlemen, 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. 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 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!”
“If you were a man, you would understand.”
“I know; because of your father. I do understand, but oh, Pierre,
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.”
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.
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