Max Brand (9 page)

It was a weakness, but what made a tragic figure of handsome Dick
Wilbur was that he knew his weakness and sat still and let fate walk
up and overtake him.

Yet Pierre le Rouge answered this man of sorrowful wisdom: "In my part
of the country men say: 'If you would speak of women let money talk
for you.'"

And he placed a gold piece on the table.

"She will come out to the supper table."

"She will not," smiled Wilbur, and covered the coin. "Will you take
odds?"

"No charity. Who else will bet?"

"I," said Jim Boone instantly. "You figure her for an ordinary sulky
kid."

Pierre smiled upon him.

"There's a cut in my shirt where her knife passed through; and that's
the reason that I'll bet on her now." The whole table covered his
coin, with laughter.

"We've kept one part of your bargain, Pierre. We've seen your father
buried in the corner plot. Now, what's the second part?"

"I don't know you well enough to ask you that," said Pierre.

They plied him with suggestions.

"To rob the Berwin Bank?"

"Stick up a train?"

"No. That's nothing."

"Round up the sheriffs from here to the end of the mountains?"

"Too easy."

"Roll all those together," said Pierre, "and you'll begin to get an
idea of what I'll ask."

Then a low voice called from the black throat of the hall: "Pierre!"

The others were silent, but Pierre winked at them, and made great
flourish with knife and fork against his plate as if to cover the
sound of Jacqueline's voice.

"Pierre!" she called again. "I've come to thank you."

He jumped up and turned toward the hall.

"Do you like it?"

"It's a wonder!"

"Then we're friends?"

"If you want to be."

"There's nothing I want more. Then you'll come out and have supper
with us, Jack?"

There was a little pause, and then Jim Boone struck his fist on the
table and cursed, for she stepped from the darkness into the flaring
light of the room.

She wore a cartridge-belt slung jauntily across her hips and from it
hung a holster of stiff new leather with the top flap open to show the
butt of a man-sized forty-five caliber six-shooter—her first gun. Not
a man of the gang but had loaned her his guns time and again, but they
had never dreamed of giving her a weapon of her own.

So they stared at her agape, where she stood with her head back, one
hand resting on her hip, one hovering about the butt of the gun, as if
she challenged them to question her right to be called "man."

It was as if she abandoned all claims to femininity with that single
step; the gun at her side made her seem inches taller and years older.
She was no longer a child, but a long-rider who could shoot with
the best.

One glance she cast about the room to drink in the amazement of the
gang, and then her father broke in rather hoarsely: "Sit down, girl.
Sit down and be one of us. One of us you are by your own choice from
this day on. You're neither man nor woman, but a long-rider with every
man's hand against you. You've done with any hope of a home or of
friends. You're one of us. Poor Jack—my girl!"

"Poor?" she returned. "Not while I can make a quick draw and shoot
straight."

And then she swept the circle of eyes, daring them to take her boast
lightly, but they knew her too well, and were all solemnly silent. At
this she relented somewhat, and went directly to Pierre, flushing
from throat to hair. She held out her hand.

"Will you shake and call it square?"

"I sure will," nodded Pierre.

"And we're pals—you and me, like the rest of 'em?"

"We are."

She took the place beside him.

As the whisky went round after round the two seemed shut away from the
others; they were younger, less marked by life; they listened while
the others talked, and now and then exchanged glances of interest
or aversion.

"Listen," she said after a time, "I've heard this story before."

It was Phil Branch, square-built and square of jaw, who was talking.

"There's only one thing I can handle better than a gun, and that's a
sledgehammer. A gun is all right in its way, but for work in a crowd,
well, give me a hammer and I'll show you a way out."

Bud Mansie grinned: "Leave me my pair of sixes and you can have all
the hammers between here and Central Park in a crowd. There's nothing
makes a crowd remember its heels like a pair of barking sixes."

"Ah, ah!" growled Branch. "But when they've heard bone crunch under
the hammer there's nothing will hold them."

"I'd have to see that."

"Maybe you will, Bud, maybe you will. It was the hammer that started
me for the trail west. I had a big Scotchman in the factory who
couldn't learn how to weld. I'd taught him day after day and cursed
him and damn near prayed for him. But he somehow wouldn't learn—the
swine—ah, ah!"

He grew vindictively black at the memory.

"Every night he wiped out what I'd taught him during the day and the
eraser he used was booze. So one fine day I dropped the hammer after
watchin' him make a botch on a big bar, and cussed him up one leg and
down the other. The Scotchman had a hangover from the night before and
he made a pass at me. It was too much for me just then, for the day
was hot and the forge fire had been spitting cinders in my face all
morning. So I took him by the throat."

He reached out and closed his taut fingers slowly.

"I didn't mean nothin' by it, but after a man has been moldin' iron,
flesh is pretty weak stuff. When I let go of Scotchy he dropped on the
floor, and while I stood starin' down at him somebody seen what had
happened and spread the word.

"I wasn't none too popular, bein' not much on talk, so the boys got
together and pretty soon they come pilin' through the door at me,
packin' everything from hatchets to crowbars.

"Lads, I was sorry about Scotchy, but after I glimpsed that gang
comin' I wasn't sorry for nothing. I felt like singin', though there
wasn't no song that could say just what I meant. But I grabbed up the
big fourteen-pound hammer and met 'em halfway.

"The first swing of the hammer it met something hard, but not as hard
as iron. The thing crunched with a sound like an egg under a man's
heel. And when that crowd heard it they looked sick. God, how sick
they looked! They didn't wait for no second swing, but they beat it
hard and fast through the door with me after 'em. They scattered, but
I kept right on and didn't never really stop till I reached the
mountain-desert and you, Jim."

"Which is a good yarn," said Bud Mansie, "but I can tell you one
that'll cap it. It was—"

He stopped short, staring up at the door. Outside, the wind had kept
up a perpetual roaring, and no one noticed the noise of the opening
door. Bud Mansie, facing that door, however, turned a queer yellow
and sat with his lips parted on the last word. He was not pretty to
see. The others turned their heads, and there followed the strangest
panic which Pierre had ever seen.

Jim Boone jerked his hand back to his hip, but stayed the motion, half
completed, and swung his hands stiffly above his head. Garry Patterson
sat with his eyes blinked shut, pale, waiting for death to come. Dick
Wilbur rose, tall and stiff, and stood with his hands gripped at his
sides, and Black Morgan Gandil clutched at the table before him and
his eyes wandered swiftly about the room, seeking a place for escape.

There was only one sound, and that was a whispering moan of terror
from Jacqueline. Only Pierre made no move, yet he felt as he had when
the black mass of the landslide loomed above him.

What he saw in the door was a man of medium size and almost slender
build. In spite of the patch of gray hair at either temple he was only
somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. But to see him was to forget
all details except the strangest face which Pierre had ever seen or
would ever look upon in all his career.

It was pale, with a pallor strange to the ranges; even the lips seemed
bloodless, and they curved with a suggestion of a smile that was a
nervous habit rather than any sign of mirth. The nerves of the left
eye were also affected, and the lid dropped and fluttered almost shut,
so that he had to carry his head far back in order to see plainly.
There was such pride and scorn in the man that his name came up to the
lips of Pierre: "McGurk."

A surprisingly gentle voice said: "Jim, I'm sorry to drop in on you
this way, but I've had some unpleasant news."

His words dispelled part of the charm. The hands of big Boone lowered;
the others assumed more natural positions, but each, it seemed to
Pierre, took particular and almost ostentatious care that their
right hands should be always far from the holsters of their guns.

The stranger went on: "Martin Ryder is finished, as I suppose you
know. He left a spawn of two mongrels behind him. I haven't bothered
with them, but I'm a little more interested in another son that has
cropped up. He's sitting over there in your family party and his name
is Pierre. In his own country they call him Pierre le Rouge, which
means Red Pierre, in our talk.

"You know I've never crossed you in anything before, Jim. Have I?"

Boone moistened his white lips and answered: "Never," huskily, as if
it were a great muscular effort for him to speak.

"This time I have to break the custom. Boone, this fellow Pierre has
to leave the country. Will you see that he goes?"

The lips of Boone moved and made no sound.

He said at length: "McGurk, I'd rather cross the devil than cross you.
There's no shame in admitting that. But I've lost my boy, Hal."

"Too bad, Jim. I knew Hal; at a distance, of course."

"And Pierre is filling Hal's place in the family."

"Is that your answer?"

"McGurk, are you going to pin me down in this?"

And here Jack whirled and cried: "Dad, you won't let Pierre go!"

"You see?" pleaded Boone.

It was uncanny and horrible to see the giant so unnerved before this
stranger, but that part of it did not come to Pierre until later. Now
he felt a peculiar emptiness of stomach and a certain jumping chill
that traveled up and down his spine. Moreover, he could not move his
eyes from the face of McGurk, and he knew at length that this was
fear—the first real fear that he had ever known.

Shame made him hot, but fear made him cold again. He knew that if he
rose his knees would buckle under him; that if he drew out his
revolver it would slip from his palsied fingers. For the fear of death
is a mighty fear, but it is nothing compared with the fear of man.

"I've asked you a question," said McGurk. "What's your answer?"

There was a quiver in the black forest of Boone's beard, and if Pierre
was cold before, he was sick at heart to see the big man cringe
before McGurk.

He stammered: "Give me time."

"Good," said McGurk. "I'm afraid I know what your answer would be now,
but if you take a couple of days you will think things over and come
to a reasonable conclusion. I will be at Gaffney's place about fifteen
miles from here. You know it? Send your answer there. In the
meantime"—he stepped forward to the table and poured a small drink
of whisky into a glass and raised it high—"here's to the long health
and happiness of us all. Drink!"

There was a hasty pouring of liquor.

"And you also!"

Pierre jumped as if he had been struck, and obeyed the order hastily.

"So," said the master, pleasant again, and Pierre wiped his forehead
furtively and stared up with fascinated eyes. "An unwilling pledge is
better than none at all. To you, gentlemen, much happiness; to you,
Pierre le Rouge, bon voyage."

They drank; the master placed his glass on the table again, smiled
upon them, and was gone through the door. He turned his back in
leaving. There was no fitter way in which he could have expressed his
contempt.

The mirth died and in its place came a long silence. Jim Boone stared
upon Pierre with miserable eyes, and then rose and left the room. The
others one by one followed his example. Dick Wilbur in passing dropped
his hand on Pierre's shoulder. Jacqueline was silent.

As he sat there minute after minute and then hour after hour of the
long night Pierre saw the meaning of it. If they sent word that they
would not give up Pierre it was war, and war with McGurk had only one
ending. If they sent word that Pierre was surrendered the shame would
never leave Boone and his men.

Whatever they did there was ruin for them in the end. All this Pierre
conned slowly in his mind, until he was cold. Then he looked up and
saw that the lamp had burned out and that the wood in the fireplace
was consumed to a few red embers.

He replenished the fire, and when the yellow flames began to mount he
made his resolution and walked slowly up and down the floor with it.
For he knew that he must go to meet McGurk.

The very thought of the man sent the old chill through his blood, yet
he must go and face him and end the thing.

It came over him with a pang that he was very young; that life was
barely a taste in his mouth, whether bitter or sweet he could not
tell. He picked a flaming stick from the fire and went before a little
round mirror on the wall.

Back at him stared the face of a boy. He had seen so much of the
grim six in the last day that the contrast startled him. They were
men, hardened to life and filled with knowledge of it. They were books
written full. But he? He was a blank page with a scribbled word here
and there. Nevertheless, he was chosen and he must go.

Having reached that decision he closed his mind on what would happen.
There was a vague fear that when he faced McGurk he would be frozen
with fear; that his spirit would be broken and he would become a thing
too despicable for a man to kill.