Max Brand (10 page)

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.

"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.

"Not
this
message."

"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 splitsecond 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 analysts of the ranges. This story has to do only with
his struggle with McGurk.

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. They awaited his return just as certain
stanch old Britons await the second coming of Arthur from the island
of Avalon. In the meantime 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 vigilance of Pierre
ceased as he heard a mellow baritone ring out.

"They call me poor, yet I am rich
In the touch of her golden hair,
My heart is filled like a miser's hands
With the red-gold of her hair.
The sky I ride beneath all day
Is the blue of her dear eyes;
The only heaven I desire
Is 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 fine
Galahad, 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.