Max Brand (7 page)

They started on again with Garry Patterson and Dick Wilbur riding
close on either side of Pierre, supporting his limp body. It delayed
the whole gang, for they could not go on faster than a jog-trot. The
wind, however, was falling off in violence. Its shrill whistling
ceased, at length, and they went on, accompanied only by the harsh
crunching of the snow underfoot.

Consciousness returned to Pierre slowly. Many a time his eyes opened,
and he saw nothing, but when he did see and hear it was by
vague glimpses.

He heard the crunch of the snow underfoot; he heard the panting and
snorting of the horses; he felt the swing and jolt of the saddle
beneath him; he saw the grim faces of the long-riders, and he said:
"The law has taken me."

Thereafter he let his will lapse, and surrendered to the sleepy
numbness which assailed his brain in waves. He was riding without
support by this time, but it was an automatic effort. There was no
more real life in him than in a dummy figure. It was not the effect of
the blow. It was rather the long exposure and the overexertion of mind
and body during the evening and night. He had simply collapsed beneath
the strain.

But an old army man has said: "Give me a soldier of eighteen or
twenty. In a single day he may not march quite so far as a more mature
man or carry quite so much weight. He will go to sleep each night dead
to the world. But in the morning he awakens a new man. He is like a
slate from which all the writing has been erased. He is ready for a
new day and a new world. Thirty days of campaigning leaves him as
strong and fresh as ever.

"Thirty days of campaigning leaves the old soldier a wreck. Why?
Because as a man grows older he loses the ability to sleep soundly. He
carries the nervous strain of one day over to the next. Life is a
serious problem to a man over thirty. To a man under thirty it is
simply a game. For my part, give me men who can play at war."

So it was with Pierre le Rouge. He woke with a faint heaviness of
head, and stretched himself. There were many sore places, but nothing
more. He looked up, and the slant winter sun cut across his face and
made a patch of bright yellow on the wall beside him.

Next he heard a faint humming, and, turning his head, saw a boy of
fourteen or perhaps a little more, busily cleaning a rifle in a way
that betokened the most expert knowledge of the weapon. Pierre himself
knew rifles as a preacher knows his Bible, and as he lay half awake
and half asleep he smiled with enjoyment to see the deft fingers move
here and there, wiping away the oil. A green hand will spend half a
day cleaning a gun, and then do the work imperfectly; an expert does
the job efficiently in ten minutes. This was an expert.

Undoubtedly this was a true son of the mountain-desert. He wore his
old slouch hat even in the house, and his skin was that olive brown
which comes from many years of exposure to the wind and sun. At the
same time there was a peculiar fineness about the boy. His feet were
astonishingly small and the hands thin and slender for all their
supple strength. And his neck was not bony, as it is in most youths at
this gawky age, but smoothly rounded.

Men grow big of bone and sparse of flesh in the mountain-desert. It
was the more surprising to Pierre to see this young fellow with the
marvelously delicate-cut features. By some freak of nature here was a
place where the breed ran to high blood.

The cleaning completed, the boy tossed the butt of the gun to his
shoulder and squinted down the barrel. Then he loaded the magazine,
weighted the gun deftly at the balance, and dropped the rifle across
his knees.

"Morning," said Pierre le Rouge cheerily, and swung off the bunk to
the floor. "How old's the gun?"

The boy, without the slightest show of excitement, snapped the butt to
his shoulder and drew a bead on Pierre's breast.

"Sit down before you get all heated up," said a musical voice.
"There's nobody waiting for you on horseback."

And Pierre sat down, partly because Western men never argue a point
when that little black hole is staring them in the face, partly
because he remembered with a rush that the last time he had fully
possessed his consciousness he had been lying in the snow with the
cross gripped hard and the toppling mass of the landslide above him.
All that had happened between was blotted from his memory. He fumbled
at his throat. The cross was not there. He touched his pockets.
"Ease your hands away from your hip," said the cold voice of the boy,
who had dropped his gun to the ready with a significant finger curled
around the trigger, "or I'll drill you clean."

Pierre obediently raised his hands to the level of his shoulders. The
boy sneered.

"This isn't a hold-up," he explained. "Put 'em down again, but watch
yourself."

The sneer varied to a contemptuous smile.

"I guess you're tame, all right."

"Point that gun another way, will you, son?"

The boy flushed.

"Don't call me son."

"Is this a lockup—a jail?"

"This?"

"What is it, then? The last I remember I was lying in the snow with—"

"I wish to God you'd been let there," said the boy bitterly.

But Pierre, overwhelmed with the endeavor to recollect, rushed on with
his questions and paid no heed to the tone.

"I had a cross in my hand—"

The scorn of the boy grew to mighty proportions.

"It's there in the breast-pocket of your shirt."

Pierre drew out the little cross, and the touch of it against his palm
restored whatever of his strength was lacking. Very carefully he
attached it to the chain about his throat. Then he looked up to the
contempt of the boy, and as he did so another memory burst on him and
brought him to his feet. The gun went to the boy's shoulders at the
same time.

"When I was found—was anyone else with me?"

"Nope."

"What happened?"

"Must have been buried in the landslide. Half a hill caved in, and
the dirt rolled you down to the bottom. Plain luck, that's all, that
kept you from going out."

"Luck?" said Pierre and he laid his hand against his breast where he
could feel the outline of the cross. "Yes, I suppose it was luck.
And she—"

He sat down slowly and buried his face in his hands. A new tone came
in the voice of the boy as he asked: "Was a woman with you?" But
Pierre heard only the tone and not the words. His face was gray when
he looked up again, and his voice hard.

"Tell me as briefly as you can how I come here, and who picked me up."

"My father and his men. They passed you lying on the snow. They
brought you home."

"Who is your father?"

The boy stiffened and his color rose.

"My father is Jim Boone."

Instinctively, while he stared, the right hand of Pierre le Rouge
crept toward his hip.

"Keep your hand steady," said the boy. "I got a nervous
trigger-finger. Yeh, dad is pretty well known."

"You're his son?"

"I'm Jack Boone."

"But I've heard—tell me, why am I under guard?"

Jack was instantly aflame with the old anger.

"Not because I want you here."

"Who does?"

"Dad."

"Put away your pop-gun and talk sense. I won't try to get away until
Jim Boone comes. I only fight men."

Even the anger and grief of the boy could not keep him from smiling.

"Just the same I'll keep the shooting-iron handy. Sit still. A gun
don't keep me from talking sense, does it? You're here to take Hal's
place. Hal!" The little wail told a thousand things, and Pierre,
shocked out of the thought of his own troubles, waited.

"My brother, Hal; he's dead; he died last night, and on the way back
dad found you and brought you to take Hal's place.
Hal's
place!"

The accent showed how impossible it was that Hal's place could be
taken by any mortal man.

"I got orders to keep you here, but if I was to do what I'd like to
do, I'd give you the best horse on the place and tell you to clear
out. That's me!"

"Then do it."

"And face dad afterward?"

"Tell him I overpowered you. That would be easy; you a slip of a boy,
and me a man."

"Stranger, it goes to show you may have heard of Jim Boone, but you
don't anyways know him. When he orders a thing done he wants it done,
and he don't care how, and he don't ask questions why. He just
raises hell."

"He really expects to keep me here?"

"Expects? He will."

"Going to tie me up?" asked Pierre ironically.

"Maybe," answered Jack, overlooking the irony. "Maybe he'll just put
you on my shoulders to guard."

He moved the gun significantly.

"And I can do it."

"Of course. But he would have to let me go sometime."

"Not till you'd promised to stick by him. I told him that myself, but
he said that you're young and that he'd teach you to like this life
whether you wanted to or not. Me speaking personally, I agree with
Black Gandil: This is the worst fool thing that dad has ever done.
What do we want with you—in Hal's place!"

"But I've got a thing to do right away—today; it can't wait."

"Give dad your word to come back and he'll let you go. He says you're
the kind that will keep your word. You see, he found you with a
cross in your hand."

And Jack's lips curled again.

It was all absurd, too impossible to be real. The only real things
were the body of yellow-haired Mary Brown, under the tumbled rocks and
dirt of the landslide, and the body of Martin Ryder waiting to be
placed in that corner plot where the grass grew quicker than all other
grass in the spring of the year.

However, having fallen among madmen, he must use cunning to get away
before the outlaw and his men came back from wherever they had gone.
Otherwise there would be more bloodshed, more play of guns and hum
of lead.

"Tell me of Hal," he said, and dropped his elbows on his knees as if
he accepted his fate.

"Don't know you well enough to talk of Hal."

"I'm sorry."

The boy made a little gesture of apology.

"I guess that was a mean thing to say. Sure I'll tell you about
Hal—if I can."

"Tell me anything you can," said Pierre gently, "because I've got to
try to be like him, haven't I?"

"You could try till rattlers got tame, but it'd take ten like you to
make one like Hal. He was dad's own son—he was my brother."

The sob came openly now, and the tears were a mist in the boy's eyes.

"What's your name?"

"Pierre."

"Pierre? I suppose I got to learn it."

"I suppose so." And he edged farther forward so that he was sitting
only on the edge of the bunk.

"Please do." And he gathered his feet under him, ready for a spring
forward and a grip at the boy's threatening rifle.

Jack had canted his head a little to one side. "Did you ever see a
horse that was gentle and yet had never been ridden, or his spirit
broke, Pierre—"

Here Pierre made his leap swift as some bobcat of the northern woods;
his hand whipped out as lightning fast as the striking paw of the
lynx, and the gun was jerked from the hands of Jack. Not before the
boy clutched at it with a cry of horror, but the force of the pull
sent him lurching to the floor and broke his grip.

He was up in an instant, however, and a knife of ugly length glittered
in his hand as he sprang at Pierre.

Pierre tossed aside the rifle and met the attack barehanded. He caught
the knife-bearing hand at the wrist and under his grip the hand
loosened its hold and the steel tinkled on the floor. His other arm
caught the body of Jack in a mighty vise.

There was a brief and futile struggle, and a hissing of breath in the
silence till the hat tumbled from the head of Jack and down over the
shoulders streamed a torrent of silken black hair.

Pierre stepped back. This was the meaning, then, of the strangely
small feet and hands and the low music of the voice. It was the body
of a girl that he had held.

It was not fear nor shame that made the eyes of Jacqueline so wide as
she stared past Pierre toward the door. He glanced across his
shoulder, and blocking the entrance to the room, literally filling
the doorway, was the bulk of Jim Boone.

"Seems as if I was sort of steppin' in on a little family party," he
said. "I'm sure glad you two got acquainted so quick. Jack, how did
you and—What the hell's your name, lad?"

"He tricked me, dad, or he would never have got the gun away from me.
This—this Pierre—this beast—he got me to talk of Hal. Then
he stole—"

"The point," said Jim Boone coldly, "is that he
got
the gun. Run
along, Jack. You ain't so growed up as I was thinkin'. Or hold
on—maybe you're
more
grown up. Which is it? Are you turnin' into a
woman, Jack?"

She whirled on Pierre in a white fury.

"You see? You see what you've done? He'll never trust me again—never!
Pierre, I hate you. I'll always hate you. And if Hal were here—"

A storm of sobs and tears cut her short, and she disappeared through
the door. Boone and Pierre stood regarding each other critically.

Pierre spoke first: "You're not as big as I expected."

"I'm plenty big; but you're older than I thought."

"Too old for what you want of me. The girl told me what that was."

"Not too old to be made what I want."

And his hands passed through a significant gesture of molding the
empty air. The boy met his eye dauntlessly.

"I suppose," he said, "that I've a pretty small chance of getting
away."

"Just about none, Pierre. Come here."

Pierre stepped closer and looked down the hall into another room.
There, about a table, sat the five grimmest riders of the
mountain-desert that he had ever seen. They were such men as one could
judge at a glance, and Pierre made that instinctive motion for his
six-gun. "The girl," Jim Boone was saying, "kept you pretty busy
tryin' to make a break, and if she could do anything maybe you'd have
a pile of trouble with one of them guardin' you. But if I'd had a good
look at you, lad, I'd never have let Jack take the job of
guardin' you."