Max Brand (8 page)

"Thanks," answered Pierre dryly.

"You got reason; I can see that. Here's the point, Pierre. I know
young men because I can remember pretty close what I was at your age.
I wasn't any ladies' lap dog, at that, but time and older men molded
me the way I'm going to mold you. Understand?"

Pierre was nerved for many things, but the last word made him stir. It
roused in him a red-tinged desire to get through the forest of black
beard at the throat of Boone and dim the glitter of those keen eyes.
It brought him also another thought.

Two great tasks lay before him: the burial of his father and the
avenging of him on McGurk. As to the one, he knew it would be childish
madness for him to attempt to bury his father in Morgantown with only
his single hand to hold back the powers of the law or the friends of
the notorious Diaz and crippled Hurley.

And for the other, it was even more vain to imagine that through his
own unaided power he could strike down a figure of such almost
legendary terror as McGurk. The bondage of the gang might be a
terrible thing through the future, but the present need blinded him to
what might come.

He said: "Suppose I stop raising questions or making a fight, but give
you my hand and call myself a member—"

"Of the family? Exactly. If you did that I'd know it was because you
were wantin' something, Pierre, eh?"

"Two things."

"Lad, I like this way of talk. One—two—you hit quick like a two-gun
man. Well, I'm used to paying high for what I get. What's up?"
"The first—"

"Wait. Can I help you out by myself, or do you need the gang?"

"The gang."

"Then come, and I'll put it up to them. You first."

It was equally courtesy and caution, and Pierre smiled faintly as he
went first through the door. He stood in a moment under the eyes of
five silent men.

The booming voice of Jim Boone pronounced: "This is Pierre. He'll be
one of us if he can get the gang to do two things. I ask you, will you
hear him for me, and then pass on whether or not you try his game?"

They nodded. There were no greetings to acknowledge the introduction.
They waited, eyeing the youth with distrust.

Pierre eyed them in turn, and then he spoke directly to big Dick
Wilbur.

"Here's the first: I want to bury a man in Morgantown and I need help
to do it."

Black Gandil snarled: "You heard me, boys; blood to start with. Who's
the man you want us to put out?"

"He's dead—my father."

They came up straight in their chairs like trained actors rising to a
stage crisis. The snarl straightened on the lips of Black
Morgan Gandil.

"He's lying in his house a few miles out of Morgantown. As he died he
told me that he wanted to be buried in a corner plot in the Morgantown
graveyard. He'd seen the place and counted it for his a good many
years because he said the grass grew quicker there than any other
place, after the snow went."

"A damned good reason," said Garry Patterson. As the idea stuck more
deeply into his imagination he smashed his fist down on the table so
that the crockery on it danced. "A damned good reason, say I!"

"Who's your father?" asked Dick Wilbur, who eyed Pierre more
critically but with less enmity than the rest.

"Martin Ryder."

"A ringer!" cried Bud Mansie, and he leaned forward alertly. "You
remember what I said, Jim?"

"Shut up. Pierre, talk soft and talk quick. We all know Mart Ryder had
only two sons and you're not either of them."

The Northerner grew stiff and as his face grew pale the red mark where
the stone had struck his forehead stood out like a danger signal.

He said slowly: "I'm his son, but not by the mother of those two."

"Was he married twice?"

Pierre was paler still, and there was an uneasy twitching of his right
hand which every man understood.

He barely whispered. "No; damn you!"

But Black Gandil loved evil.

He said, with a marvelously unpleasant smile: "Then she was—"

The voice of Dick Wilbur cut in like the snapping of a whip: "Shut up,
Gandil, you devil!"

There were times when not even Boone would cross Wilbur, and this was
one of them.

Pierre went on: "The reason I can't go to Morgantown is that I'm not
very well liked by some of the men there."

"Why not?"

"When my father died there was no money to pay for his burial. I had
only a half-dollar piece. I went to the town and gambled and won a
great deal. But before I came out I got mixed up with a man called
Hurley, a professional gambler."

"And Diaz?" queried a chorus.

"Yes. Hurley was hurt in the wrist and Diaz died. I think I'm wanted
in Morgantown."

Out of a little silence came the voice of Black Gandil: "Dick, I'm
thankin' you now for cuttin' me so short a minute ago."

Phil Branch had not spoken, as usual, but now he repeated, with rapt,
far-off eyes: "'Hurley was hurt in the wrist and Diaz died?' Hurley
and Diaz! I played with Hurley, a couple of times."

"Speakin' personal," said Garry Patterson, his red verging toward
purple in excitement, "which I'm ready to go with you down to
Morgantown and bury your father."

"And do it shipshape," added Black Gandil.

"With all the trimmings," said Bud Mansie, "with all Morgantown
joinin' the mournin' voluntarily under cover of our six-guns."

"Wait," said Boone. "What's the second request?"

"That can wait."

"It's a bigger job than this one?"

"Lots bigger."

"And in the meantime?"

"I'm your man."

They shook hands. Even Black Gandil rose to take his share in the
ceremony—all save Bud Mansie, who had glanced out the window a moment
before and then silently left the room. A bottle of whisky was
produced and glasses filled all round. Jim Boone brought in the
seventh chair and placed it at the table. They raised their glasses.

"To the empty chair," said Boone.

They drank, and for the first time in his life, the liquid fire went
down the throat of Pierre. He set down his glass, coughing, and the
others laughed good-naturedly.

"Started down the wrong way?" asked Wilbur.

"It's beastly stuff; first I ever drank."

A roar of laughter answered him.

"Still I got an idea," broke in Jim Boone, "that he's worthy of takin'
the seventh chair. Draw it up lad."

Vaguely it reminded Pierre of a scene in some old play with himself
in the role of the hero signing away his soul to the devil, but an
interruption kept him from taking the chair. There was a racket at the
door—a half-sobbing, half-scolding voice, and the laughter of a man;
then Bud Mansie appeared carrying Jack in spite of her struggles. He
placed her on the floor and held her hands to protect himself from
her fury.

"I glimpsed her through the window," he explained. "She was lining out
for the stable and then a minute later I saw her swing a saddle
onto—what horse d'you think?"

"Out with it."

"Jim's big Thunder. Yep, she stuck the saddle on big black Thunder and
had a rifle in the holster. I saw there was hell brewing somewhere, so
I went out and nabbed her."

"Jack!" called Jim Boone. "What were you started for?"

Bud Mansie released her arms and she stood with them stiffening at her
sides and her fists clenched.

"Hal—he died, and there was nothing but talk about him—nothing done.
You got a live man in Hal's place."

She pointed an accusing finger at Pierre.

"Maybe he takes his place for you, but he's not my brother—I hate
him. I went out to get another man to make up for Pierre."

"Well?"

"A dead man. I shoot straight enough for that."

A very solemn silence spread through the room; for every man was
watching in the eyes of the father and daughter the same shining black
devil of wrath.

"Jack, get into your room and don't move out of it till I tell you to.
D'you hear?"

She turned on her heel like a soldier and marched from the room.

"Jack."

She stopped in the door but would not turn back. "Jack, don't you
love your old dad anymore?" She whirled and ran to him with
outstretched arms and clung to him, sobbing. "Oh, dad," she groaned.
"You've broken my heart."

The annals of the mountain-desert have never been written and can
never be written. They are merely a vast mass of fact and tradition
and imagining which floats from tongue to tongue from the Rockies to
the Sierra Nevadas. A man may be a fact all his life and die only a
local celebrity. Then again, he may strike sparks from that
imagination which runs riot by camp-fires and at the bars of the
crossroads saloons.

In that case he becomes immortal. It is not that lies are told about
him or impossible feats ascribed to him, but every detail about him is
seized upon and passed on with a most scrupulous and loving care.

In due time he will become a tradition. That is, he will be known
familiarly at widely separated parts of the range, places which he has
never visited. It has happened to a few of the famous characters of
the mountain-desert that they became traditions before their deaths.
It happened to McGurk, of course. It also happened to Red Pierre.

Oddly enough, the tradition of Red Pierre did not begin with his ride
from the school of Father Victor to Morgantown, distant many days of
difficult and dangerous travel. Neither did tradition seize on the
gunfight that crippled Hurley and "put out" wizard Diaz. These things
were unquestionably known to many, but they did not strike the popular
imagination. What set men first on fire was the way Pierre le Rouge
buried his father "at the point of the gun" in Morgantown.

That day Boone's men galloped out of the higher mountains down the
trail toward Morgantown. They stole a wagon out of a ranch stable on
the way and tied two lariats to the tongue. So they towed it, bounding
and rattling, over the rough trail to the house where Martin Ryder
lay dead.

His body was placed in state in the body of the wagon, pillowed with
everything in the line of cloth which the house could furnish. Thus
equipped they went on at a more moderate pace toward Morgantown.

What followed it is useless to repeat here. Tradition rehearsed every
detail of that day's work, and the purpose of this narrative is only
to give the details of some of the events which tradition does not
know, at least in their entirety.

They started at one end of Morgantown's street. Pierre guarded the
wagon in the center of the street and kept the people under cover of
his rifle. The rest of Boone's men cleaned out the houses as they went
and sent the occupants piling out to swell the crowd.

And so they rolled the crowd out of town and to the cemetery, where
"volunteers" dug the grave of Martin Ryder wide and deep, and Pierre
paid for the corner plot three times over in gold.

Then a coffin—improvised hastily for the occasion out of a
packing-box—was lowered reverently, also by "volunteer" mourners, and
before the first sod fell on the dead. Pierre raised over his head the
crucifix of Father Victor that brought good luck, and intoned a
service in the purest Ciceronian Latin, surely, that ever regaled
the ears of Morgantown's elect.

The moment he raised that cross the bull throat of Jim Boone bellowed
a command, the poised guns of the gang enforced it, and all the crowd
dropped to their knees, leaving the six outlaws scattered about the
edges of the mob like sheep dogs around a folding flock, while in the
center stood Pierre with white, upturned face and the raised cross.

So Martin Ryder was buried with "trimmings," and the gang rode back,
laughing and shouting, through the town and up into the safety of the
mountains. Election day was fast approaching and therefore the rival
candidates for sheriff hastily organized posses and made the usual
futile pursuit.

In fact, before the pursuit was well under way, Boone and his men sat
at their supper table in the cabin. The seventh chair was filled; all
were present except Jack, who sulked in her room. Pierre went to her
door and knocked. He carried under his arm a package which he had
secured in the General Merchandise Store of Morgantown.

"We're all waiting for you at the table," he explained.

"Just keep on waiting," said the husky voice of Jacqueline.

"I've brought you a present."

"I hate your presents!"

"It's a thing you've wanted for a long time, Jacqueline."

Only a stubborn silence.

"I'm putting your door a little ajar."

"If you dare to come in I'll—"

"And I'm leaving the package right here at the entrance. I'm so sorry,
Jacqueline, that you hate me."

And then he walked off down the hall—cunning Pierre—before she could
send her answer like an arrow after him. At the table he arranged an
eighth plate and drew up a chair before it. "If that's for Jack,"
remarked Dick Wilbur, "you're wasting your time. I know her and I know
her type. She'll never come out to the table tonight—nor tomorrow,
either. I know!"

In fact, he knew a good deal too much about girls and women also, did
Wilbur, and that was why he rode the long trails of the
mountain-desert with Boone and his men. Far south and east in the
Bahamas a great mansion stood vacant because he was gone, and the dust
lay thick on the carpets and powdered the curtains and tapestries with
a common gray.

He had built it and furnished it for a woman he loved, and afterward
for her sake he had killed a man and fled from a posse and escaped in
the steerage of a west-bound ship. Still the law followed him, and he
kept on west and west until he reached the mountain-desert, which
thinks nothing of swallowing men and their reputations.

There he was safe, but someday he would see some woman smile, catch
the glimmer of some eye, and throw safety away to ride after her.