Max Brand (17 page)

It started the girl into sudden life, surprising Pierre, so that she
managed to wrench herself free and ran from him. He sprang after her
with a shout, fearing that in her hysteria she might fling herself
into the fire, but that was not her purpose. Straight to the black
horse she ran, swung into the saddle with the ease of a man, and rode
furiously off through the falling of the night.

He watched her with a curious closing of loneliness like a hand about
his heart. He had failed, and because of that failure even Jacqueline
was leaving him. It was strange, for since the loss of the girl of the
yellow hair and those deep blue eyes, he had never dreamed that
another thing in life could pain him.

So at length he mounted the mare again and rode slowly down the hill
and out toward the distant ranges, trotting mile after mile with
downward head, not caring even if McGurk should cross him, for
surely this was the final end of the world to Pierre le Rouge.

About midnight he halted at last, for the uneasy sway of the mare
showed that she was nearly dead on her feet with weariness. He found a
convenient place for a camp, built his fire, and wrapped his blanket
about him without thinking of food.

He never knew how long he sat there, for his thoughts circled the
world and back again and found all a prospect of desert before him and
behind, until a sound, a vague sound out of the night, startled him
into alertness. He slipped from beside the fire and into the shadow of
a steep rock, watching with eyes that almost pierced the dark on
all sides.

And there he saw her creeping up on the outskirts of the firelight,
prone on her hands and knees, dragging herself up like a young wildcat
hunting prey; it was the glimmer of her eyes that he caught first
through the gloom. A cold thought came to him that she had returned
with her gun ready.

Inch by inch she came closer, and now he was aware of her restless
glances probing on all sides of the camp-fire. Silence—only the
crackling of a pitchy stick. And then he heard a muffled sound, soft,
soft as the beating of a heart in the night, and regularly pulsing. It
hurt him infinitely, and he called gently: "Jack, why are
you weeping?"

She started up with her fingers twisted at the butt of her gun.

"It's a lie," called a tremulous voice. "Why should I weep?"

And then she ran to him.

"Oh, Pierre, I thought you were gone!"

That silence which came between them was thick with understanding
greater than speech. He said at last: "I've made my plan. I am going
straight for the higher mountains and try to shake McGurk off my
trail. There's one chance in ten I may succeed, and if I do then I'll
wait for my chance and come down on him, for sooner or later we have
to fight this out to the end."

"I know a place he could never find," said Jacqueline. "The old cabin
in the gulley between the Twin Bears. We'll start for it tonight."

"Not we," he answered. "Jack, here's the end of our riding together."

She frowned with puzzled wonder.

He explained: "One man is stronger than a dozen. That's the strength
of McGurk—that he rides alone. He's finished your father's men.
There's only Wilbur left, and Wilbur will go next—then me!"

She stretched her hands to him. She seemed to be pleading for her very
life.

"But if he finds us and has to fight us both—I shoot as straight as a
man, Pierre!"

"Straighter than most. And you're a better pal than any I've ever
ridden with. But I must go alone. It's only a lone wolf that will ever
bring down McGurk. Think how he's rounded us up like a herd of cattle
and brought us down one by one."

"By getting each man alone and killing him from behind."

"From the front, Jack. No, he's fought square with each one. The
wounds of Black Gandil were all in front, and when McGurk and I meet
it's going to be face to face."

Her tone changed, softened: "But what of me, Pierre?"

"You have to leave this life. Go down to the city, Jack. Live like a
woman; marry some lucky fellow; be happy."

"Can you leave me so easily?"

"No, it's hard, devilish hard to part with a pal like you, Jack; but
all the rest of my life I've got hard things to face, partner."

"Partner!" she repeated with an indescribable emphasis. "Pierre, I
can't leave you."

"Why?"

"I'm afraid to go: Let me stay!"

He said gloomily: "No good will come of it."

"I'll never trouble you—never!"

"No, the bad luck comes on the people who are with me, but never on
me. It's struck them all down, one by one; your turn is next, Jack. If
I could leave the cross behind—"

He covered his face and groaned: "But I don't dare; I don't dare! I
have to face McGurk. Jack, I hate myself for it, but I can't help it.
I'm afraid of McGurk, afraid of that damned white face, that lowered,
fluttering eyelid, that sneering mouth. Without the cross to bring me
luck, how could I meet him? But while I keep the cross there's ruin
and hell without end for everyone with me."

She was white and shaking. She said: "I'm not afraid. I've one friend
left; there's nothing else to care for."

"So it's to be this way, Jack?"

"This way, and no other."

"Partner, I'm glad. My God, Jack, what a man you would have made!"

Their hands met and clung together, and her head had drooped, perhaps
in acquiescence.

Dick Wilbur, telling Mary how Pierre had cut himself adrift, did not
even pretend to sorrow, and she listened to him with her eyes fixed
steadily on his own. As a matter of fact, she had shown neither hope
nor excitement from the moment he came back to her and started to tell
his message. But if she showed neither hope nor excitement for
herself, surely she gave Dick still fewer grounds for any optimistic
foresights.

So he finished gloomily: "And as far as I can make out, Pierre is
right. There's some rotten bad luck that follows him. It may not be
the cross—I don't suppose you believe in superstition like that,
Miss Brown?"

She said: "It saved my life."

"The cross?"

"Yes."

"Then Pierre—you mean—you met before the dance—you mean—"

He was stammering so that he couldn't finish his thoughts, and she
broke in: "If he will not come to me, then I must go to him."

"Follow Pierre le Rouge?" queried Wilbur. "You're an optimist. But
that's because you've never seen him ride. I consider it a good day's
work to start out with him and keep within sight till night, but as
for following and over-taking him—"

He laughed heartily at the thought.

And she smiled a little sadly, answering: "But I have the most
boundless patience in the world. He may gallop all the way, but I will
walk, and keep on walking, and reach him in the end."

Her hands moved out as though testing their power, gripping at the
air.

"Where will you go to hunt for him?"

"I don't know. But every evening, when I look out at the sunset hills,
with the purple along the valleys, I think that he must be out there
somewhere, going toward the highest ranges. If I were up in that
country I know that I could find him." "Never in a thousand years."

"Why?"

"Because he's on the trail—"

"On the trail?"

"Of McGurk."

She started.

"What is this man McGurk? I hear of him on all sides. If one of the
men rides a bucking horse successfully, someone is sure to say: 'Who
taught you what you know, Bud—McGurk?' And then the rest laugh. The
other day a man was pointed out to me as an expert shot. 'Not as fast
as McGurk,' it was said, 'but he shoots just as straight.' Finally I
asked someone about McGurk. The only answer I received was: 'I hope
you never find out what he is.' Tell me, what is McGurk?"

Wilbur considered the question gravely.

He said at last: "McGurk is—hell!"

He expanded his statement: "Think of a man who can ride anything that
walks on four feet, who never misses with either a rifle or a
revolver, who doesn't know the meaning of fear, and then imagine that
man living by himself and fighting the rest of the world like a lone
wolf. That's McGurk. He's never had a companion; he's never trusted
any man. Perhaps that's why they say about him the same thing that
they say about me."

"What's that?"

"You will smile when you hear. They say that McGurk will lose out in
the end on account of some woman."

"And they say that of you?"

"They say right of me. I know it myself. Look at me now. What right
have I here? If I'm found I'm the meat of the first man who sights me,
but here I stay, and wait and watch for your smiles—like a love-sick
boy. By God, you must despise me, Mary!"

"I don't try to understand you Westerners," she answered, "and that's
why I have never questioned you before. Tell me, why is it that
you come so stealthily to see me and run away as soon as anyone
else appears?"

He said with wonder: "Haven't you guessed?"

"I don't dare guess."

"But you have, and your guess was right. There's a price on my head.
By right, I should be out there on the ranges with Pierre le Rouge and
McGurk. There's the only safe place; but I saw you and I came down out
of the wilds and can't go back. I'll stay, I suppose, till I run my
head into a halter."

She was too much moved to speak for a moment, and then: "You come to
me in spite of that? Dick, whatever you have done, I know that it's
only chance which made you go wrong, just as it made Pierre. I wish—"

The dimness of her eyes encouraged him with a hope. He moved closer to
her.

He repeated: "You wish—"

"That you could be satisfied with a mere friendship. I could give you
that, Dick, with all my heart."

He stepped back and smiled somewhat grimly on her.

She went on: "And this McGurk—what do you mean when you say that
Pierre is on his trail?"

"Hunting him with a gun."

She grew paler, but her voice remained steady.

"But in all those miles of mountains they may never meet?"

"They can't stay apart any more than iron can stay away from a magnet.
Listen: half a dozen years ago McGurk had the reputation of bearing a
charmed life. He had been in a hundred fights and he was never touched
with either a knife or a bullet. Then he crossed Pierre le Rouge when
Pierre was only a youngster just come onto the range. He put two
bullets through Pierre, but the boy shot him from the floor and
wounded him for the first time. The charm of McGurk was broken.

"For half a dozen years McGurk was gone; there was never a whisper
about him. Then he came back and went on the trail of Pierre. He has
killed the friends of Pierre one by one; Pierre himself is the next in
order—Pierre or myself. And when those two meet there will be the
greatest fight that was ever staged in the mountain-desert."

She stood straight, staring past Wilbur with hungry eyes.

"I knew he needed me. I have to save him, Dick. You see that? I have
to bring him down from the mountains and keep him safe from McGurk.
McGurk! Somehow the sound means what 'devil' used to mean to me."

"You've never traveled alone, and yet you'd go up there and brave
everything that comes for the sake of Pierre? What has he done to
deserve it, Mary?".

"What have I done, Dick, to deserve the care you have for me?"

He stared gloomily on her.

"When do you start?"

"Tonight."

"Your friends won't let you go."

"I'll steal away and leave a note behind me."

"And you'll go alone?"

She caught at a hope.

"Unless you'll go with me, Dick?"

"I? Take you—to Pierre?"

She did not speak to urge him, but in the silence her beauty pleaded
for her.

He said: "Mary, how lovely you are. If I go I will have you for a few
days—for a week at most, all to myself."

She shook her head. From the window behind her the sunset light flared
in her hair, flooding it with red-gold.

"All the time that we are gone, you will never say things like this,
Dick?"

"I suppose not. I should be near you, but terribly far away from your
thoughts all the while. Still, you will be near. You will be very
beautiful, Mary, riding up the trail through the pines, with all the
scents of the evergreens blowing about you, and I—well, I must go
back to a second childhood and play a game of suppose—"

"A game of what?"

"Of supposing that you are really mine, Mary, and riding out into the
wilderness for my sake."

She stepped a little closer, peering into his face.

"No matter what you suppose, I'm sure you'll leave that part of it
merely a game, Dick!"

He laughed suddenly, though the sound broke off as short and sharp as
it began.

"Haven't I played a game all my life with the fair ladies? And have I
anything to show for it except laughter? I'll go with you, Mary, if
you'll let me."

"Dick, you've a heart of gold! What shall I take?"

"I'll make the pack up, and I'll be back here an hour after dark and
whistle. Like this—"

And he gave the call of Boone's gang.

"I understand. I'll be ready. Hurry, Dick, for we've very little
time."

He hesitated, then: "All the time we're on the trail you must be far
from me, and at the end of it will be Pierre le Rouge—and happiness
for you. Before we start, Mary, I'd like to—"

It seemed that she read his mind, for she slipped suddenly inside
his arms, kissed him, and was gone from the room. He stood a moment
with a hand raised to his face.

"After all," he muttered, "that's enough to die for, and—" He threw
up his long arms in a gesture of resignation.

"The will of God be done!" said Wilbur, and laughed again.

She was ready, crouched close to the window of her room, when the
signal came, but first she was not sure, because the sound was as
faint as a memory. Moreover, it might have been a freakish whistling
in the wind, which rose stronger and stronger. It had piled the
thunder-clouds higher and higher, and now and again a heavy drop of
rain tapped at her window like a thrown pebble.