Max Brand (16 page)

They stood back and made no hopeless effort to save him. It was
uncanny that Black Morgan Gandil, after all of his battles, should die
without a struggle in this way. And it had been no cowardly attack
from the rear. Both wounds were in the front. A hope came to them when
his color increased at one time, but it was for only a moment; it went
out again as if someone were erasing paint from his cheeks.

But just as they were about to turn away his body stirred with a
slight convulsion, the eyes opened wide, and he strove to speak. A red
froth came on his lips. He made another desperate effort, and twisting
himself onto one elbow pointed a rigid arm at Pierre. He gasped:
"McGurk—God!" and dropped. He was dead before his head touched
the blanket.

It was Jacqueline who closed the staring eyes, for the two men were
frozen where they stood. They had heard the story of Patterson and
Branch and Mansie in one word from the lips of the dying man.

McGurk was back. McGurk was prowling about the last of the gang of
Boone, and the lone wolf had pulled down four of the band one by one
on successive days. Only two remained, and these two looked at one
another with a common thought.

"The lights!" cried Jacqueline, turning from the body of Gandil. "He
can shoot us down through the windows at his leisure."

"But he won't," said her father. "I've lived too long with the name of
McGurk in my ears not to know the man. He'll never kill by stealth,
but openly and man to man. I know him, damn him. He'll wait till he
meets us alone, and then we'll finish as poor Gandil, there, or
Patterson and Branch and Bud Mansie, all of them fallen somewhere in
the mountains with the buzzards left to bury 'em. That's how we'll
finish with McGurk on our trail. And you—Gandil was right—it's you
that's brought him on us. A shipwrecked man—by God, Gandil
was right!"

His right hand froze on the butt of his gun and his face convulsed
with impotent rage, for he knew, as both the others knew, that long
before that gun was clear of the holster the bullet from Pierre's gun
would be on its way. But Pierre threw his arms wide, and standing so,
his shadow made a black cross on the wall behind him. He even smiled
to tempt the big man further.

Jacqueline ran between and caught the hand of her father, crying:

"Are you going to finish the work of McGurk before he has a chance to
start it? He hunted the rest down one by one. Dad, if you put out
Pierre what is left? Can you face that devil alone?"

And the old man groaned: "But it's his luck that's ruined me. It's his
damned luck which has broken up the finest fellowship that ever mocked
at law on the ranges. Oh, Jack, the heart in me's broken. I wish to
God that I lay where Gandil lies. What's the use of fighting any
longer? No man can stand up against McGurk!"

And the cold which had come in the blood of Pierre agreed with him. He
was a slayer of men, but McGurk was a devil incarnate. His father had
died at the hand of this lone rider; it was fitting, it was fate that
he himself should die in the same way. The girl looked from face to
face, and sensed their despondency. It seemed that their fear gave her
the greater courage. Her face flushed as she stood glaring her scorn.

"The yellow streak took a long time in showin', but it's in you, all
right, Pierre le Rouge."

"You've hated me ever since the dance, Jack. Why?"

"Because I knew you were yellow—like this!"

He shrugged his shoulders like one who gives up the fight against a
woman, and seeing it, she changed suddenly and made a gesture with
both hands toward him, a sudden gesture filled with grace and a queer
tenderness.

She said: "Pierre, have you forgotten that when you were only a boy
you stood up to McGurk and drew blood from him? Are you afraid of
him now?"

"I'll take my chance with any man—but McGurk—"

"He has no cross to bring him luck."

"Aye, and he has no friends for that luck to ruin. Look at Gandil,
Jack, and then speak to me of the cross."

"Pierre, that first time you met you almost beat him to the draw. Oh,
if I were a man, I'd—Pierre, it was to get McGurk that you rode out
to the range. You've been here six years, and McGurk is still alive,
and now you're ready to run from his shadow."

"Run?" he said hotly. "I swear to God that as I stand here I've no
fear of death and no hope for the life ahead."

She sneered: "You're white while you say it. Your will may be brave,
but your blood's a coward, Pierre. It deserts you."

"Jack, you devil—"

"Aye, you can threaten me safely. But if McGurk were here—"

"Let him come."

"Then give me one promise."

"A thousand of 'em."

"Let me hunt him with you."

He stared at her with wonder.

"Jack, what a heart you have! If you were a man we could rule the
mountains, you and I."

"Even as I am, what prevents us, Pierre?"

And looking at her he forgot the sorrow which had been his ever since
he looked up to the face framed with red-gold hair and the dark tree
behind and the cold stars steady above it. It would come to him again,
but now it was gone, and he murmured, smiling: "I wonder?"

They made their plans that night, sitting all three together. It was
better to go out and hunt the hunter than to wait there and be tracked
down. Jack, for she insisted on it, would ride out with Pierre the
next morning and hunt through the hills for the hiding-place
of McGurk.

Some covert he must have, so as to be near his victims. Nothing else
could explain the ease with which he kept on their track. They would
take the trail, and Jim Boone, no longer agile enough to be effective
on the trail, would guard the house and the body of Gandil in it.

There was little danger that even McGurk would try to rush a hostile
house, but they took no chances. The guns of Jim Boone were given a
thorough overhauling, and he wore as usual at his belt the
heavy-handled hunting knife, a deadly weapon in a hand-to-hand fight.
Thus equipped, they left him and took the trail.

They had not ridden a hundred yards when a whistle followed them, the
familiar whistle of the gang. They reined short and saw big Dick
Wilbur riding his bay after them, but at some distance he halted and
shouted: "Pierre!"

"He's come back to us!" cried Jack.

"No. It's only some message."

"Do you know?"

"Yes. Stay here. This is for me alone."

And he rode back to Wilbur, who swung his horse close alongside.
However hard he had followed in the pursuit of happiness, his face was
drawn with lines of age and his eyes circled with shadows.

He said: "I've kept close on her trail, Pierre, and the nearest she
has come to kindness has been to send me back with a message to you."

He laughed without mirth, and the sound stopped abruptly.

"This is the message in her own words: 'I love him, Dick, and there's
nothing in the world for me without him. Bring him back to me. I don't
care how; but bring him back.' So tell Jack to ride the trail alone
today and go back with me. I give her up, not freely, but because I
know there's no hope for me."

But Pierre answered: "Wherever I've gone there's been luck for me and
hell for everyone around me. I lived with a priest, Dick, and left him
when I was nearly old enough to begin repaying his care. I came South
and found a father and lost him the same day. I gambled for money with
which to bury him, and a man died that night and another was hurt. I
escaped from the town by riding a horse to death. I was nearly killed
in a landslide, and now the men who saved me from that are done for.

"It's all one story, the same over and over. Can I carry a fortune
like that back to her? Dick, it would haunt me by day and by night.
She would be the next. I know it as I know that I'm sitting in the
saddle here. That's my answer. Carry it back to her."

"I won't lie and tell you I'm sorry, because I'm a fool and still have
a ghost of a hope, but this will be hard news to tell her, and I'd
rather give five years of life than face the look that will come in
her eyes."

"I know it, Dick."

"But this is final?"

"It is."

"Then good-bye again, and—God bless you, Pierre."

"And you, old fellow."

They swerved their horses in opposite directions and galloped apart.

"It was nothing," said Pierre to Jack, when he came up with her and
drew his horse down to a trot. But he knew that she had read his mind.

But all day through the mazes of canyon and hill and rolling ground
they searched patiently. There was no cranny in the rocks too small
for them to reconnoiter with caution. There was no group of trees they
did not examine.

Yet it was not strange that they failed. In the space of every square
mile there were a hundred hiding-places which might have served
McGurk. It would have taken a month to comb the country. They had only
a day, and left the result to chance, but chance failed them. When the
shadows commenced to swing across the gullies they turned back and
rode with downward heads, silent.

One hill lay between them and the old ranch house which had been the
headquarters for their gang so many days, when they saw a faint drift
of smoke across the sky—not a thin column of smoke such as rises from
a chimney, but a broad stream of pale mist, as if a dozen chimneys
were spouting wood smoke at once.

They exchanged glances and spurred their horses up the last slope. As
always in a short spurt, the long-legged black of Jacqueline
out-distanced the cream-colored mare, and it was she who first topped
the rise of land. The girl whirled in her saddle with raised arm,
screamed back at Pierre, and rode on at a still more furious pace.

What he saw when he reached a corresponding position was the ranch
house wreathed in smoke, and through all the lower windows was the red
dance of flames. Before him fled Jacqueline with all the speed of the
black. He loosened the reins, spoke to the mare, and she responded
with a mighty rush. Even that tearing pace could not quite take him up
to the girl, but he flung himself from the saddle and was at her side
when she ran across the smoking veranda and wrenched at the
front door.

The whole frame gave back at her, and as Pierre snatched her to one
side the doorway fell crashing on the porch, while a mighty volume of
smoke burst out at them like a puff from the pit.

They stood sputtering, coughing, and choking, and when they could look
again they saw a solid wall of red flame, thick, impenetrable,
shuddering with the breath of the wind.

While they stared a stronger breath of that wind tore the wall of
flames apart, driving it back in a raging tide to either side. The
fire had circled the walls of the entire room, but it had scarcely
encroached on the center, and there, seated at the table, was Boone.

He had scarcely changed from the position in which they last saw him,
save that he was fallen somewhat deeper in the chair, his head resting
against the top of the back. He greeted them, through that infernal
furnace, with laughter, and wide, steady eyes. At least it seemed
laughter, for the mouth was agape and the lips grinned back, but there
was no sound from the lips and no light in the fixed eyes. Laughter
indeed it was, but it was the laughter of death, as if the soul of the
man, in dying, recognized its natural wild element and had burst into
convulsive mirth. So he sat there, untouched as yet by the wide river
of fire, chuckling at his destiny. The wall of fire closed across the
doorway again and the work of red ruin went on with a crashing of
timbers from the upper part of the building.

As that living wall shut solidly, Jacqueline leaped forward, shouting,
like a man, words of hope and rescue; Pierre caught her barely in
time—a precarious grasp on the wrist from which she nearly wrenched
herself free and gained the entrance to the fire. But the jerk threw
her off balance for the least fraction of an instant, and the next
moment she was safe in his arms.

Safe? He might as well have held a wildcat, or captured with his bare
hands a wild eagle, strong of talon and beak. She tore and raged in a
wild fury.

"Pierre, coward, devil!"

"Steady, Jack!"

"Are you going to let him die?"

"Don't you see? He's already dead."

"You lie. You only fear the fire!"

"I tell you, McGurk has been here before us."

Her arm was freed by a twisting effort and she beat him furiously
across the face. One blow cut his lip and a steady trickle of hot
blood left a taste of salt in his mouth.

"You young fiend!" he cried, and grasped both her wrists with a
crushing force.

She leaned and gnashed at his hands, but he whirled her about and held
her from behind, impotent, raging still.

"A hundred McGurks could never have killed him!"

There was a sharp explosion from the midst of the fire.

"See! He's fighting against his death!"

"No! No! It's only the falling of a timber!"

Yet with a panic at his heart he knew that it was the sharp crack of a
firearm. "Liar again! Pierre, for God's sake, do something for him.
Father! He's fighting for his life!"

Another and another explosion from the midst of the fire. He
understood then.

"The flames have reached his guns. That's all, Jack. Don't you see?
We'd be throwing ourselves away to run into those flames."

Realization came to her at last. A heavy weight slumped down suddenly
over his arms. He held her easily, lightly. Her head had tilted back,
and the red flare of the fire beat across her face and throat. The
roar of the flames shut out all other thought of the world and cast a
wide inferno of light around them.

Higher and higher rose the fires, and the wind cut off great fragments
and hurried them off into the night, blowing them, it seemed, straight
up against the piled thunder of the clouds. Then the roof sagged,
swayed, and fell crashing, while a vast cloud of sparks and livid
fires shot up a hundred feet into the air. It was as if the soul of
old Boone had departed in that final flare.