Riders of the Silences - Max Brand (best ereader for manga TXT) 📗
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with a toss and whinnied softly.
It seemed to him that he had heard something calling, for the sound
was lost against the sweep of wind coming up the gorge. Something
calling there in the night of the mountains as he himself had called
when he rode so wildly in the quest for McGurk. How long ago had
that been?
But it came once more, clear beyond all doubt. He recognized the voice
in spite of the panting which shook it; a wild wail like that of a
heartbroken child, coming closer to him like someone running: “Pierre!
Oh, Pierre!”
And all at once he knew that the moon was broad and bright and fair,
and the heavens clear and shining with gold points of light. Once more
the cry. He raised his arms and waited.
So Mary, running through the wilderness of boulders, was guided
straight and found Pierre, and before the morning came, they were
journeying east side by side, east and down to the cities and a new
life; but Jacqueline, a thousand times quicker of foot and surer
of eye and ear, missed her goal, went past it, and still on and on,
running finally at a steady trot.
Until at last she knew that she had far overstepped her mark and sank
down against one of the rocks to rest and think out what next she must
do. There seemed nothing left. Even the sound of a gun fired she might
not hear, for that sharp call would not travel far against the wind.
It was while she sat there, burying Pierre in her thoughts, a white
shape came glimmering down to her through the moonlight. She was on
her feet at once, alert and gun in hand. It could only be one horse,
only one rider, McGurk coming down from his last killing with the
sneer on his pale lips. Well, he would complete his work this night
and kill her fighting face to face.
A man’s death; that was all she craved. She rose; she stepped boldly
out into the center of the trail between the rocks.
There she saw the greatest wonder she had ever looked on. It was
McGurk walking with bare, bowed head, and after him, like a dog after
the master, followed the white horse. She shoved the revolver back
into the holster. This should be a fair fight.
“McGurk!”
Very slowly the head went up and back, and there he stood, not ten
paces from her, with the white moon full on his face. The sneer was
still there; the eyelid fluttered in scornful derision. And the heart
of Jacqueline came thundering in her throat.
But she cried in a strong voice: “McGurk, d’you know me?”
He did not answer.
“You murderer, you night rider! Look again: it’s the last of the
Boones!”
The sneer, it seemed to her, grew bitterer, but still the man did
not speak. Then the thought of Pierre, lying dead somewhere among the
rocks, burned across her mind. Her hand leaped for the revolver, and
whipped it out in a blinding flash to cover him, but with her finger
curling on the trigger she checked herself in the nick of time. McGurk
had made no move to protect himself.
A strange feeling came to her that perhaps the man would not war
against women; the case of Mary was almost proof enough of that. But
as she stepped forward, wondering, she looked at the holster at his
side and saw that it was empty. Then she understood.
Understood in a daze that Pierre had met the man and conquered him and
sent him out through the mountains disarmed. The white horse raised
his head and whinnied, and the sound gave a thought to her. She could
not kill this man, unarmed as he was; she could do a more
shameful thing.
“The bluff you ran was a strong one, McGurk,” she said bitterly, “and
you had these parts pretty well at a standstill; but Pierre was a bit
too much for you, eh?”
The white face had not altered, and still it did not change, but the
sneer was turned steadily on her.
She cried: “Go on! Go on down the gorge!”
Like an automaton the man stepped forward, and after him paced the
white horse. She stepped between, caught the reins, and swung up to
the saddle, and sat there, controlling between her stirrups the
best-known mount in all the mountain-desert. A thrill of wild
exultation came to her. She cried: “Look back, McGurk! Your gun is
gone, your horse is gone; you’re weaker than a woman in the
mountains!”
Yet he went on without turning, not with the hurried step of a coward,
but still as one stunned. Then, sitting quietly in the saddle, she
forgot McGurk and remembered Pierre. He was happy by this time with
the girl of the yellow hair; there was nothing remaining to her from
him except the ominous cross which touched cold against her breast.
That he had abandoned as he had abandoned her.
What, then, was left for her? The horse of an outlaw for her to ride;
the heart of an outlaw in her breast.
She touched the white horse with the spurs and went at a reckless
gallop, weaving back and forth among the boulders down the forge. For
she was riding away from the past.
The dawn came as she trotted out into a widening valley of the Old
Crow. To maintain even that pace she had to use the spurs continually,
for the white horse was deadly weary, and his head fell more and more.
She decided to make a brief halt, at last, and in order to make a fire
that would take the chill of the cold morning from her, she swung up
to the edge of the woods. There, before she could dismount, she saw a
man turn the shoulder of the slope. She drew the horse back deeper
among the trees and waited.
He came with a halting step, reeling now and again, a big man,
hatless, coatless, apparently at the last verge of exhaustion. Now his
foot apparently struck a small rock, and he pitched to his face. It
required a long struggle before he could regain his feet; and now he
continued his journey at the same gait, only more uncertainly than
ever, close and closer. There was something familiar now about the
fellow’s size, and something in the turn of his head. Suddenly she
rode out, crying: “Wilbur!”
He swerved, saw the white horse, threw up his hands high above his
head, and went backward, reeling, with a hoarse scream which
Jacqueline would never forget. She galloped to him and swung to
the ground.
“It’s me—Jack. D’you hear?”
He would not lower those arms, and his eyes stared wildly at her. On
his forehead the blood had caked over a cut; his shirt was torn to
rags, and the hair matted over his eyes. She caught his hands and
pulled them down.
“It’s not McGurk! Don’t you hear me? It’s Jack!”
He reached out, like a blind man who has to see by the sense of touch,
and stroked her face.
“Jack!” he whispered at last. “Thank God!”
“What’s happened?”
“McGurk—”
A violent palsy shook him, and he could not go on.
“I know—I understand. He took your guns and left you to wander in
this hell! Damn him! I wish—”
She stopped.
“How long since you’ve eaten?”
“Years!”
“We’ll eat—McGurk’s food!”
But she had to assist him up the slope to the trees, and there she
left him propped against a trunk, his arms fallen weakly at his sides,
while she built the fire and cooked the food. Afterward she could
hardly eat, watching him devour what she placed before him; and it
thrilled all the woman in her to a strange warmth to take care of the
long-rider. Then, except for the disfigured face and the bloodshot
eyes, he was himself.
“Up there? What happened?”
He pointed up the valley.
“The girl and Pierre. They’re together.”
“She found him?”
“Yes.”
He bowed his head and sighed.
“And the horse, Jack?” He said it with awe.
“I took the horse from McGurk.”
“You!”
She nodded. After all, it was not a lie. “You killed McGurk?”
She said coolly: “I let him go the way he let you, Dick. He’s on foot
in the mountains without a horse or a gun.”
“It isn’t possible!”
“There’s the horse for proof.”
He looked at her as if she were something more than human.
“Our Jack—did this?”
“We’ve got to start on. Can you walk, Dick?”
“A thousand miles now.”
Yet he staggered when he tried to rise, and she made him climb up to
the saddle. The white horse walked on, and she kept her place close at
the stirrup of the rider. He would have stopped and dismounted for her
a hundred times, but she made him keep his place.
“What’s ahead of us, Jack? We’re the last of the gang?”
“The last of Boone’s gang. We are.”
“The old life over again?”
“What else?”
“Yes; what else?”
“Are you afraid, Dick?”
“Not with you for a pal. Seven was too many; with two we can rule the
range.”
“Partners, Dick?”
How could he tell that her voice was gone so gentle because she was
seeing in her mind’s eye another face than his? He leaned toward her.
“Why not something more than partners, after a while, Jack?”
She smiled strangely up to him.
“Because of this, Dick.”
And fumbling at her throat, she showed him the glittering metal of the
cross.
“The cross goes on, but what of you, Jack?” A long silence fell
between them. Words died in the making.
The great weight pressing down on that slender throat was like the
iron hand of a giant, but slowly, one by one, the sounds marshalled
themselves:
“…God knows…” It was the passing of Judgment. “God knows…not I.”
But what of the legendary gunfighter, McGurk? How could the spirit of
any man survive that terrible defeat at the hands of Red Pierre?
After that night, when he had walked from the dark heart of the
mountain without horse or gun, head bowed, eyes glazed, it seemed that
the life of Bob McGurk had burned down to black ash.
Indeed, no one heard of him for five long years. Then, phoenix-like,
he was reborn in fire, emerging in the raw border country of Texas.
His rebirth was spectacular. No longer the lone phantom fighter of
past days, he led a gang of coldhearted thieves and killers that
became the scourge of the Rio Grande.
But McGurk never returned to the mountain-desert country of his shame
and defeat. And only he knew that the face of Red Pierre never left
him; it blazed in his mind by day and haunted his nights.
Then, as suddenly as he had reappeared, after proving his skill and
courage afresh in a score of wild, bullet-filled encounters, the great
gunfighter vanished from the world of civilized men. His gang
dispersed and the border country saw no more of him.
McGurk was finally gone.
Only the legend remained.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Riders of the Silences, by Max Brand
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