Max Brand (6 page)

"Really?"

"I almost think I like you more—because you could kill a man—and
then stay here for me."

"If you were a grown-up girl, do you know what I'd say?"

"Please tell me."

"That I could love you."

"Pierre—"

"Yes."

"My name is Mary Brown."

He repeated several times: "Mary."

"And if I were a grown-up girl, do you know what I would answer?"

"I don't dare guess it."

"That I could love you, Pierre, if you were a grown-up man."

"But I am."

"Not a really one."

And they both broke into laughter—laughter that died out before a
sound of rushing and of thunder, as a mass slid swiftly past them,
snow and mud and sand and rubble. The wind fell away from them, and
when Pierre looked up he saw that a great mass of tumbled rock and
soil loomed above them.

The landslide had not touched them, by some miracle, but in a moment
more it might shake loose again, and all that mass of ton upon ton of
stone and loam would overwhelm them. The whole mass quaked and
trembled, and the very hillside shuddered beneath them.

She looked up and saw the coming ruin; but her cry was for him, not
herself.

"Run, Pierre—you can save yourself."

With that terror threatening him from above, he rose and started to
run down the hill. A moan of woe followed him, and he stopped and
turned back, and fought his way through the wind until he was beside
her once more.

She was weeping.

"Pierre—I couldn't help calling out for you; but now I'm strong
again, and I won't have you stay. The whole mountain is shaking and
falling toward us. Go now, Pierre, and I'll never make a sound to
bring you back."

He said: "Hush! I've something here which will keep us both safe.
Look!"

He tore from the chain the little metal cross, and held it high
overhead, glimmering in the pallid light. She forgot her fear
in wonder.

"I gambled with only one coin to lose, and I came out tonight with
hundreds and hundreds of dollars because I had the cross. It is a
charm against all danger and against all bad fortune. It has never
failed me."

Over them the piled mass slid closer. The forehead of Pierre gleamed
with sweat, but a strong purpose made him talk on. At least he could
take all the foreboding of death from the child, and when the end came
it would be swift and wipe them both out at one stroke. She clung to
him, eager to believe.

"I've closed my eyes so that I can believe."

"It has never failed me. It saved me when I fought two men. One of
them I crippled and the other died. You see, the power of the cross is
as great as that. Do you doubt it now, Mary?"

"Do you believe in it so much—really—Pierre?"

Each time there was a little lowering of her voice, a little pause and
caress in the tone as she uttered his name, and nothing in all his
life had stirred Red Pierre so deeply with happiness and sorrow.

"Do you believe, Pierre?" she repeated.

He looked up and saw the shuddering mass of the landslide creeping
upon them inch by inch. In another moment it would loose itself with a
rush and cover them.

"I believe," he said.

"If you should live, and I should die—"

"I would throw the cross away."

"No, you would keep it; and every time you touched it you would think
of me, Pierre, would you not?"

"When you reach out to me like that, you take my heart between your
hands."

"And I feel grown up and sad and happy both together. After we've been
together on such a night, how can we ever be apart again?"

The mass of the landslide toppled right above them. She did not seem
to see.

"I'm so happy, Pierre. I was never so happy."

And he said, with his eyes on the approaching ruin: "It was your
singing that brought me to you. Will you sing again?"

"I sang because I knew that when I sang the sound would carry farther
through the wind than if I called for help. What shall I sing for you
now, Pierre?"

"What you sang when I came to you."

And the light, sweet voice rose easily through the sweep of the wind.
She smiled as she sang, and the smile and music were all for Pierre,
he knew. Through the last stanza of the song the rumble of the
approaching death grew louder, and as she ended he threw himself
beside her and gathered her into protecting arms.

She cried: "Pierre! What is it?"

"I must keep you warm; the snow will eat away your strength."

"No; it's more than that. Tell me, Pierre! You don't trust the power
of the cross?"

"Are you afraid?"

"Oh, no; I'm not afraid, Pierre."

"If one life would be enough, I'd give mine a thousand times. Mary, we
are to die."

An arm slipped around his neck—a cold hand pressed against his cheek.

"Pierre."

"Yes."

The thunder broke above them with a mighty roaring.

"
You
have no fear."

"Mary, if I had died alone I would have dropped down to hell under my
sins; but, with your arm around me, you'll take me with you. Hold
me close."

"With all my heart, Pierre. See—I'm not afraid. It is like going to
sleep. What wonderful dreams we'll have!"

And then the black mass of the landslide swept upon them.

Down all the length of the mountain-desert and across its width of
rocks and mountains and valleys and stern plateaus there is a saying:
"You can tell a man by the horse he rides." For most other important
things are apt to go by opposites, which is the usual way in which a
man selects his wife. With dogs, for instance—a quiet man is apt to
want an active dog, and a tractable fellow may keep the most vicious
of wolf-dogs.

But when it comes to a horse, a man's heart speaks for itself, and if
he has sufficient knowledge he will choose a sympathetic mount. A
woman loves a neat-stepping saddle-horse; a philosopher likes a
nodding, stumble-footed nag which will jog all day long and care not a
whit whether it goes up dale or down.

To know the six wild riders who galloped over the white reaches of the
mountain-desert this night, certainly their horses should be studied
first and the men secondly, for the one explained the other.

They came in a racing triangle. Even the storm at its height could not
daunt such furious riders. At the point of the triangle thundered a
mighty black stallion, his muzzle and his broad chest flecked with
white foam, for he stretched his head out and champed at the bit with
ears laid flat back, as though even that furious pace gave him no
opportunity to use fully his strength.

He was an ugly headed monster with a savagely hooked Roman nose and
small, keen eyes, always red at the corners. A medieval baron in full
panoply of plate armor would have chosen such a charger among ten
thousand steeds, yet the black stallion needed all his strength to
uphold the unarmored giant who bestrode him, a savage figure.

When the broad brim of his hat flapped up against the wind the
moonshine caught at shaggy brows, a cruelly arched nose, thin,
straight lips, and a forward-thrusting jaw. It seemed as if nature had
hewn him roughly and designed him for a primitive age where he could
fight his way with hands and teeth.

This was Jim Boone. To his right and a little behind him galloped a
riderless horse, a beautiful young animal continually tossing its
head and looking as if for guidance at the big stallion.

To the left strode a handsome bay with pricking ears. A mound
interfered with his course, and he cleared it in magnificent style
that would have brought a cheer from the lips of any English lover of
the chase.

Straight in the saddle sat Dick Wilbur, and he raised his face a
little to the wind, smiling faintly as if he rejoiced in its fine
strength, as handsome as the horse he rode, as cleanly cut, as finely
bred. The moon shone a little brighter on him than on any other of the
six riders.

Bud Mansie behind, for instance, kept his head slightly to one side
and cursed beneath his breath at the storm and set his teeth at the
wind. His horse, delicately formed, with long, slender legs, could not
have endured that charge against the storm save that it constantly
edged behind the leaders and let them break the wind. It carried less
weight than any other mount of the six, and its strength was cunningly
nursed by the rider so that it kept its place, and at the finish it
would be as strong as any and swifter, perhaps, for a sudden, short
effort, just as Bud Mansie might be numbed through all his nervous,
slender body, but never too numb for swift and deadly action.

On the opposite wing of the flying wedge galloped a dust-colored gray,
ragged of mane and tail, and vindictive of eye, like its down-headed
rider, who shifted his glance rapidly from side to side and watched
the ground closely before his horse as if he were perpetually prepared
for danger.

He distrusted the very ground over which his mount strode. For all
this he seemed the least formidable of all the riders. To see him pass
none could have suspected that this was Black Morgan Gandil.

Last of the crew came two men almost as large as Jim Boone himself, on
strong steady-striding horses. They came last in this crew, but among
a thousand other long-riders they would have ridden first, either
red-faced, good-humored, loud-voiced Garry Patterson, or Phil Branch,
stout-handed, blunt of jaw, who handled men as he had once hammered
red iron at the forge.

Each of them should have ridden alone in order to be properly
appreciated. To see them together was like watching a flock of eagles
every one of which should have been a solitary lord of the air. But
after scanning that lordly train which followed, the more terrible
seemed the rider of the great black horse.

Yet the king was sad, and the reason for his sadness was the riderless
horse which galloped so freely beside him. His son had ridden that
horse when they set out, and all the way down to the railroad Handsome
Hal Boone had kept his mount prancing and curveting and had ridden
around and around tall Dick Wilbur, playing pranks, and had teased his
father's black until the big stallion lashed out wildly with
furious heels.

It was the memory of this that kept the grave shadow of a smile on the
father's lips for all the sternness of his eyes. He never turned his
head, for, looking straight forward, he could conjure up the laughing
vision; but when he glanced to the empty saddle he heard once more the
last unlucky shot fired from the train as they raced off with their
booty, and saw Hal reel in his saddle and pitch forward; and how he
had tried to check his horse and turn back; and how Dick Wilbur, and
Patterson, and big Phil Branch had forced him to go on and leave that
form lying motionless on the snow.

At that he groaned, and spurred the black, and so the cavalcade rushed
faster and faster through the night.

They came over a sharp ridge and veered to the side just in time, for
all the further slope was a mass of treacherous sand and rubble and
raw rocks and mud, where a landslide had stripped the hill to
the stone.

As they veered about the ruin and thundered on down to the foot of
the hill, Jim Boone threw up his hand for a signal and brought his
stallion to a halt on back-braced, sliding legs.

For a metallic glitter had caught his eye, and then he saw, half
covered by the pebbles and dirt, the figure of a man. He must have
been struck by the landslide and not overwhelmed by it, but rather
carried before it like a stick in a rush of water. At the outermost
edge of the wave he lay with the rocks and dirt washed over him. Boone
swung from the saddle and lifted Pierre le Rouge.

The gleam of metal was the cross which his fingers still gripped.
Boone examined it with a somewhat superstitious caution, took it from
the nerveless fingers, and slipped it into a pocket of Pierre's shirt.
A small cut on the boy's forehead showed where the stone struck which
knocked him senseless, but the cut still bled—a small trickle—Pierre
lived. He even stirred and groaned and opened his eyes, large and
deeply blue.

It was only an instant before they closed, but Boone had seen. He
turned with the figure lifted easily in his arms as if Pierre had been
a child fallen asleep by the hearth and now about to be carried off
to bed.

And the outlaw said: "I've lost my boy tonight. This here one was
given me by the will of—God."

Black Morgan Gandil reined his horse close by, leaned to peer down,
and the shadow of his hat fell across the face of Pierre.

"There's no good comes of savin' shipwrecked men. Leave him where you
found him, Jim. That's my advice. Sidestep a redheaded man. That's
what I say."

The quick-stepping horse of Bud Mansie came near, and the rider wiped
his stiff lips, and spoke from the side of his mouth, a prison habit
of the line that moves in the lockstep: "Take it from me, Jim, there
ain't any place in our crew for a man you've picked up without knowing
him beforehand. Let him lay, I say." But big Dick Wilbur was already
leading up the horse of Hal Boone, and into the saddle Jim Boone swung
the inert body of Pierre. The argument was settled, for every man of
them knew that nothing could turn Boone back from a thing once begun.
Yet there were muttered comments that drew Black Morgan Gandil and Bud
Mansie together.

And Gandil, from the South Seas, growled with averted eyes: "This is
the most fool stunt the chief has ever pulled."

"Right, pal," answered Mansie. "You take a snake in out of the cold,
and it bites you when it comes to in the warmth; but the chief has
started, and there ain't nothing that'll make him stop, except maybe
God or McGurk."

And Black Gandil answered with his evil, sudden grin: "Maybe McGurk,
but not God."