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."

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.



CHAPTER X

THE GUARD

Consciousness returned to Pierre like the light of the rising moon which breaks dimly through the window and makes all the objects in a room grotesquely large and blackly shadowed. 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 crying 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 over-exertion of nerves and 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, and a light of infinite scorn blazed into those great black eyes.

"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 started and flushed a little.

"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 any one 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. His tone was thrillingly gentle 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 in pride and defiance.

"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, do you look like your father?"

Jack Boone smiled, strove to frown, and then burst into surprisingly musical laughter. It came in bursts and ripples, and seemed that it would never end. His merriment ended slowly, for he saw the eyes of Pierre stare into blank distance, and knew that the man with the red hair was thinking of the woman whom the landslide had buried. Something that was partially sympathy and partially curiosity altered Jack's expression.

After all, it was very difficult to remain hostile in front of the steady blue eyes of this stranger.

Pierre said gravely: "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 in his peculiarly winning way.

"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 some time."

"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!"

And a suggestion of a sob came in Jack's voice, though he set his teeth to keep it back.

"But I've got a thing to do right away—to-day; 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 white-handed, 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 low-down mean thing to say. Sure I'll tell you about Hal—if I can."

For his lips trembled at the thought of the dead.

"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 bright 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, smiling faintly for the joy of the memory.

"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 his lips were as white as the teeth over which they snarled.

Pierre tossed aside the rifle and met the attack bare-handed. Deadly swift was the thrust of the knife, but compared with the motion of Pierre it was as slow as tame things are when they are likened to the wild.

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, and his arm still tingled from the finger-tips to the shoulder.



CHAPTER XI

JACK GROWS UP

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 till my eyes filled up and I couldn't see. 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.

The boy 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 moulding 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 even 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."

"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 mean time?"

"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 whiskey 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 small brown 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, and still the room, watching that little tragedy, was breathless.

"Jack, don't you love your old dad any more?"

She whirled and ran to him with outstretched arms and clung to him, sobbing.

"Oh, dad—dear dad," she groaned. "You've broken my heart; you've broken my heart!"

The others filed softly out of the room and stood bareheaded under the winter sky.

Bud Mansie, his meager face transformed with wonder, said: "Fellers, what d'you know about it? Our Jack's grown up."

And Black Gandil answered: "Look at this Pierre frowning at the ground. It was him that changed her."



CHAPTER XII

THE BURIAL

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 gun fight 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 borrowed a long black cloak from one of the women and wrapped himself in it, in lieu of the robe of the priest, and 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.

"If I leave the table will you come out?"

She stammered: "Ye—n-no!"

"Yes or no?"

"No, no, no!"

And he heard the stamp of her foot and smiled a little.

"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 to-night—nor to-morrow, 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 some day he would see some woman smile, catch the glimmer of some eye, and throw safety away to ride after her.

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?"

"Pierre—"

"Yes?"

"I'm ashamed. I've been acting like a silly kid."

"But we're waiting for you."

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.



CHAPTER XIII

A TALE OF THE SLEDGE

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 the child a weapon of her own.

So they stared at her agape, where she stood with her head back, one slender 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 back any horse on the range and shoot with the best.

One glance she cast about the room to drink in the amazement of the gang, and then with a profound instinct guiding her, she picked out the best critic in the room and said to him with a frown: "Well, Dick, how's it hang?"

The big man was as flushed as the girl.

"Hangs like a charm," he said, "a charm that 'll be apt to make men step about."

And 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."

"Shake again."

She took the place beside him.

Garry Patterson was telling how he had said farewell to a Swedish sweetheart, and the roar of laughter took the eyes away from Jacqueline for a moment. So she leaned to Pierre le Rouge and whispered at his ear: "Pierre you've made me the happiest fellow on the range."

As the whisky went round after round and the fun waxed higher the two seemed shut away from the others; they were younger, less touched and 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 sledge-hammer. 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 long 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 hang-over 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 half-way.

"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 heavy 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 even 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 keen 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 indomitable 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 don't like to be dictatorial, and 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 mean time"—he stepped forward to the table and poured a small drink of whiskey 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, gentleman, 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.



CHAPTER XIV

MCGURK

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 and ready to be ended. 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 unmanned again and frozen with fear; that his spirit would be broken and he would become a thing too despicable for a man to kill.

One thing was certain: if he was to act a man's part and die a man's death he must not stand long before McGurk. It seemed to him then that he would die happy if he had the strength to fire one shot before the end.

Then he tiptoed from the house and went over the snow to the barn and saddled the horse of Hal Boone. It was already morning, and as he led the horse to the door of the barn a shadow, a faint shadow in that early light, fell across the snow before him.

He looked up and saw Jacqueline. She stepped close, and the horse nosed her shoulder affectionately.

She said: "Isn't there anything that will keep you from going?"

"It's just a little ride before breakfast. I'll be back in an hour."

It was foolish to try to blind her, as he saw by her wan, unchildish smile.

"Is there no other way, Pierre?"

"I don't know of any, do you?"

"You have to leave us, and never come back?"

"Is he as sure as that, Jack?"

"Sure? Who?"

She had not known, after all; she thought that he was merely riding away from the region where McGurk was king. Now she caught his wrists and shook them.

"Pierre, you are not going to face McGurk? Pierre!"

It was sweet and bitter-sweet that the child should wish him to stay, and it made the heart of Pierre old and stern to look down on her.

"If you were a man, you would understand."

"I know; because of your father. I do understand, but oh, Pierre, it makes me so unhappy—so terribly sad, Pierre."

Inspiration made her catch her breath.

"Listen! I can shoot as straight as almost any man. We will ride down together. We will go through the doors together—me first to take his fire, and you behind to shoot him down."

"I guess no man can be as brave as a woman, Jack. No; I have to see McGurk alone. He faced my father alone and shot him down. I'll face McGurk alone and live long enough to put my mark on him."

"But you don't know him. He can't be hurt. Do you think my father and—and Dick Wilbur would fear any man who could be hurt? No, but McGurk has been in a hundred fights and never been touched. There's a charm over him, don't you see?"

"I'll break the charm, that's all."

"You're only a boy, Pierre."

"I, also, carry a charm with me. Good-by."

He was up in the saddle.

"Then I'll call dad—I'll call them all—if you die they shall all follow you. I swear they shall, Pierre!"

He merely leaned forward and touched the horse with his spurs, but after he had raced the first hundred yards he glanced back. She was running hard for the house, and calling as she went. Pierre cursed and spurred the horse again.

Yet even if Jim Boone and his men started out after him they could never overtake him. Before they were in their saddles and up with him, he'd be a full three miles out in the hills. Not even black Thunder could make up as much ground as that.

So all the fifteen miles to Gaffney's place he urged his horse. The excitement of the race kept the thought of McGurk back in his mind. Only once he lost time when he had to pull up beside a buckboard and inquire the way. After that he flew on again. Yet as he clattered up to the door of Gaffney's crossroads saloon and swung to the ground he looked back and saw a cluster of horsemen swing around the shoulder of a hill and come tearing after him. Surely his time was short.

He thrust open the door of the place and called for a drink. The bartender spun the glass down the bar to him.

"Where's McGurk?"

The other stopped in the very act of taking out the bottle from the shelf, and his curious glance went over the face of Pierre le Rouge. He decided, apparently, that it was foolish to hold suspicions against so young a man.

"In that room," and he jerked his hand toward a door. "What do you want with him?"

"Got a message for him."

"Tell it to me, and I'll pass it along."

Pierre met the eye of the other and smiled faintly.

"Not this message."

"Oh," said the other, and then shouted: "McGurk!"

Far away came the rush of hoofs over a hard trail. Only a minute more and they would be here; only a minute more and the room would be full of fighting men ready to die with him and for him. Yet Pierre was glad; glad that he could meet the danger alone; ten minutes from now, if he lived, he could answer certainly one way or the other the greatest of all questions: "Am I a man?"

Out of the inner room the pleasant voice which he dreaded answered: "What's up?"

The barkeeper glanced Pierre le Rouge over again and then answered: "A friend with a message."

The door opened and framed McGurk. He did not start, seeing Pierre.

He said: "None of the rest of them had the guts even to bring me the message, eh?"

Pierre shrugged his shoulders. It was a mighty effort, but he was able to look his man fairly in the eyes.

"All right, lad. How long is it going to take you to clear out of the country?"

"That's not the message," answered a voice which Pierre did not recognize as his own.

"Out with it, then."

"It's in the leather on my hip."

And he went for his gun. Even as he started his hand he knew that he was too slow for McGurk, yet the finest split-second watch in the world could not have caught the differing time they needed to get their guns out of the holsters.

Just a breath before Pierre fired there was a stunning blow on his right shoulder and another on his hip. He lurched to the floor, his revolver clattering against the wood as he fell, but falling, he scooped up the gun with his left and twisted.

That movement made the third shot of McGurk fly wide and Pierre fired from the floor and saw a spasm of pain contract the face of the outlaw.

Instantly the door behind him flew open and Boone's men stormed into the room. Once more McGurk fired, but his wound made his aim wide and the bullet merely tore up a splinter beside Pierre's head. A fusillade from Boone and his men answered, but the outlaw had leaped back through the door.

"He's hurt," thundered Boone. "By God, the charm of McGurk is broken. Dick, Bud, Gandil, take the outside of the place. I'll force the door."

Wilbur and the other two raced through the door and raised a shout at once, and then there was a rattle of shots. Big Patterson leaned over Pierre.

He said in an awe-stricken voice: "Lad, it's a great work that you've done for all of us, if you've drawn the blood from McGurk."

"His left shoulder," said Pierre, and smiled in spite of his pain.

"And you, lad?"

"I'm going to live; I've got to finish the job. Who's that beside you? There's a mist over my eyes."

"It's Jack. She outrode us all."

Then the mist closed over the eyes of Pierre and his senses went out in the dark.



CHAPTER XV

GOLD HAIR

Those who are curious about the period which followed during which the title "Le Rouge" was forgotten and he became known only as "Red" Pierre through all the mountain-desert, can hear the tales of his doing from the analists of the ranges. This story has to do only with his struggle with McGurk, and must end where that struggle ended.

The gap of six years which occurs here is due to the fact that during that period McGurk vanished from the mountain-desert. He died away from the eyes of men and in their minds he became that tradition which lives still so vividly, the tradition of the pale face, the sneering, bloodless lips, and the hand which never failed.

During this lapse of time there were many who claimed that he had ridden off into some lonely haunt and died of the wound which he received from Pierre's bullet. A great majority, however, would never accept such a story, and even when the six years had rolled by they still shook their heads and "had their doubt on the matter" like Wouter Van Twiller of immortal memory.

They awaited his return just as certain stanch old Britons await the second coming of Arthur from the island of Avalon. In the mean time the terror of his name passed on to him who had broken the "charm" of McGurk.

Not all that grim significance passed on to "Red" Pierre, indeed, because he never impressed the public imagination as did the terrible ruthlessness of McGurk. At that he did enough to keep tongues wagging.

Cattlemen loved to tell those familiar exploits of the "two sheriffs," or that "thousand-mile pursuit of Canby," with its half-tragic, half-humorous conclusion, or the "Sacking of Two Rivers," or the "three-cornered battle" against Rodriguez and Blond.

But men could not forget that in all his work there rode behind Red Pierre six dauntless warriors of the mountain-desert, while McGurk had been always a single hand against the world, a veritable lone wolf.

Whatever kept him away through those six years, the memory of the wound he received at Gaffney's place never left McGurk, and now he was coming back with a single great purpose in his mind, and in his heart a consuming hatred for Pierre and all the other of Boone's men.

Certainly if he had sensed the second coming of McGurk, Pierre would not have ridden so jauntily through the hills this day, or whistled so carelessly, or swept the hills with such a complacent, lordly eye. A man of mark cannot bear himself too modestly, and Pierre, from boots to high-peaked, broad-brimmed sombrero, was the last word in elegance for a rider of the mountain-desert.

Even his mount seemed to sense the pride of his master. It was a cream-colored mustang, not one of the lump-headed, bony-hipped species common to the ranges, but one of those rare reversions to the Spanish thoroughbreds from which the Western cow-pony is descended. The mare was not over-large, but the broad hips and generous expanse of chest were hints, and only hints, of her strength and endurance. There was the speed of the blooded racer in her and the tirelessness of the mustang.

Now, down the rocky, half broken trail she picked her way as daintily as any debutante tiptoeing down a great stairway to the ballroom. Life had been easy for Mary since that thousand-mile struggle to overtake Canby, and now her sides were sleek from good feeding and some casual twenty miles a day, which was no more to her than a canter through the park is to the city horse.

The eye which had been so red-stained and fierce during the long ride after Canby was now bright and gentle. At every turn she pricked her small sharp ears as if she expected home and friends on the other side of the curve. And now and again she tossed her head and glanced back at the master for a moment and then whinnied across some echoing ravine.

It was Mary's way of showing happiness, and her master's acknowledgment was to run his gloved left hand up through her mane and with his ungloved right, that tanned and agile hand, pat her shoulder lightly.

Passing to the end of the down-grade, they reached a slight upward incline, and the mare, as if she had come to familiar ground, broke into a gallop, a matchless, swinging stride. Swerving to right and to left among the great boulders, like a football player running a broken field, she increased the gallop to a racing pace.

That twisting course would have shaken an ordinary horseman to the toes, but Pierre, swaying easily in the saddle, dropped the reins into the crook of his left arm and rolled a cigarette in spite of the motion and the wind. It was a little feat, but it would have drawn applause from a circus crowd.

He spoke to the mare while he lighted a match and she dropped to an easy canter, the pace which she could maintain from dawn to dark, eating up the gray miles of the mountain and the desert, and it was then that Red Pierre heard a gay voice singing in the distance.

His attitude changed at once. He caught a shorter grip on the reins and swung forward a little in the saddle, while his right hand touched the butt of the revolver in its holster and made sure that it was loose; for to those who hunt and are hunted every human voice in the mountain-desert is an ominous token.

The mare, sensing the change of her master through that weird telegraphy which passed down the taut bridle reins, held her head high and flattened her short ears against her neck.

The song and the singer drew closer, and the vigilence of Pierre ceased as he heard a mellow barytone ring out:

"They call me poor, yet I am rich In the touch of her golden hair, My heart is filled like a miser's hands With the red-gold of her hair. The sky I ride beneath all day Is the blue of her dear eyes; The only heaven I desire Is the blue of her dear eyes."

And here Dick Wilbur rode about the shoulder of a hill, broke off his song at the sight of Pierre le Rouge, and shouted a welcome. They came together and continued their journey side by side. The half-dozen years had hardly altered the blond, handsome face of Wilbur, and now, with the gladness of his singing still flushing his face, he seemed hardly more than a boy—younger, in fact, than Red Pierre, into whose eyes there came now and then a grave sternness.

"After hearing that song," said Pierre smiling, "I feel as if I'd listened to a portrait."

"Right!" said Wilbur, with unabated enthusiasm. "It's the bare and unadorned truth, Prince Pierre. My fine Galahad, if you came within eye-shot of her there'd be a small-sized hell raised."

"No. I'm immune there, you know."

"Nonsense. The beauty of a really lovely woman is like a fine perfume. It strikes right to a man's heart; there's no possibility of resistance. I know. You, Pierre, act like a man already in love or a boy who has never known a woman. Which is it, Pierre?"

The other made a familiar gesture with those who knew him, a touching of his left hand against his throat where the cross lay.

He said: "I suppose it seems like that to you."

"Like what? Dodging me, eh? Well, I never press the point, but I'd give the worth of your horse, Pierre, to see you and Mary together."

Red Pierre started, and then frowned.

"Irritates you a little, eh? Well, a woman is like a spur to most men."

He added, with a momentary gloom: "God knows, I bear the marks of 'em."

He raised his head, as if he looked up in response to his thought.

"But there's a difference with this girl. I've named the quality of her before—a fragrance, you know, that disarms a man, and like a fragrance there's just a touch of melancholy about her and an appeal that follows after you when she's gone."

Pierre looked to his friend with some alarm, for there was a saying among the followers of Boone that a woman would be the downfall of big Dick Wilbur again, as a woman had been his downfall before. The difference would be that this fall must be his last.

And Wilbur went on: "She's Eastern, Pierre, and out here visiting the daughter of old Barnes who owns about a thousand miles of range, you know. How long will she be here? That's the question I'm trying to answer for her. I met her riding over the hills—she was galloping along a ridge, and she rode her way right into my heart. Well, I'm a fool, of course, but about this girl I can't be wrong. To-night I'm taking her to a masquerade."

He pulled his horse to a full stop.

"Pierre, you have to come with me."



CHAPTER XVI

ENNUI

Pierre stared at his companion with almost open-mouthed astonishment.

"I? A dance?"

And then his head tilted back and he laughed.

"My good times, Dick, come out of the hills and the sky-line, and the gallop of Mary. But as for women, they bore me, Dick."

"Even Jack?"

"She's more man than woman."

It was the turn of Wilbur to laugh, and he responded uproariously until Pierre frowned and flushed a little.

"When I see you out here on your horse with your rifle in the boot and your six-gun swinging low in the scabbard, and riding the fastest bit of horse-flesh on the ranges," explained Wilbur, "I get to thinking that you're pretty much king of the mountains; but in certain respects, Pierre, you're a child. Ha, ha, ha! a regular infant."

Pierre stirred uneasily in his saddle. A man must be well over thirty before he can withstand ridicule.

He said dryly: "I've an idea that I know Jack about as well as the next man."

"Let it drop," said Wilbur, sober again, for he shared with all of Boone's crew a deep-rooted unwillingness to press Red Pierre beyond a certain point. "The one subject I won't quarrel about is Jack, God bless her."

"She's the best pal," said Pierre soberly, "and the nearest to a man I've ever met."

"Nearest to a man?" queried Wilbur, and smiled, but so furtively that even the sharp eye of Red Pierre did not perceive the mockery. He went on:

"But the dance, what of that? It's a masquerade. There'd be no fear of being recognized."

Pierre was silent a moment more. Then he said:

"This girl—what did you call her?"

"Mary."

"And about her hair—I think you said it was black?"

"Golden, Pierre."

"Mary, and golden hair," mused Red Pierre. "I think I'll go to that dance."

"With Jack? She dances wonderfully, you know."

"Well—with Jack."

So they reached a tumbled ranch-house squeezed between two hills so that it was sheltered from the storms of the winter but held all the heat of the summer.

Once it had been a goodly building, the home of some cattle-king. But bad times had come.

A bullet in a saloon brawl put an end to the cattle king, and now his home was a wreck of its former glory. The northern wing shelved down to the ground as if the building were kneeling to the power of the wind, and the southern portion of the house, though still erect, seemed tottering and rotten throughout and holding together until at a final blow the whole structure would crumple at once.

To the stables, hardly less ruinous than the big house, Pierre and Wilbur took their horses, and a series of whinnies greeted them from the stalls. To look down that line of magnificent heads raised above the partitions of the stalls was like glancing into the stud of some crowned head who made hunting and racing his chief end in life, for these were animals worthy of the sport of kings.

They were chosen each from among literal hundreds and thousands, and they were cared for far more tenderly than the masters cared for themselves. There was a reason in it, for upon their speed and endurance depended the life of the outlaw. Moreover, the policy of Jim Boone was one of actual "long riding."

Here he had come to a pause for a few days to recuperate his horses and his men. To-morrow, perhaps, he would be on the spur again and sweeping off to a distant point in the mountain desert to strike and be gone again before the rangers knew well that he had been there. Very rarely did one settler have another neighbor at a distance of less than two hundred miles. It meant arduous and continual riding, and a horse with any defect was worse than useless because the speed of the gang had to be the speed of the slowest horse in the lot.

It was some time before the two long riders had completed the grooming of their horses and had gone down the hill and into the house. In the largest habitable room they found a fire fed with rotten timbers from the wrecked portion of the building, and scattered through the room a sullen and dejected group: Mansie, Branch, Jim Boone, and Black Morgan Gandil.

At a glance it was easy to detect their malady; it was the horrible ennui which comes to men who are always surrounded by one set of faces. If a man is happily married he may bear with his wife and his children constantly through long stretches of time, but the glamour of life lies in the varying personalities which a man glimpses in passing, but never knows.

This was a rare crew. Every man of them was marked for courage and stamina and wild daring. Yet even so in their passive moments they hated each other with a hate that passed the understanding of common men.

Through seven years they had held together, through fair weather and foul, and now each knew from the other's expression the words that were about to be spoken, and each knew that the other was reading him, and loathing what he read.

So they were apt to relapse into long silences unless Jack was with them, for being a woman her variety was infinite, or Pierre le Rouge, whom all except Black Gandil loved and petted, and feared.

They were a battered crowd. Wind and hard weather and a thousand suns had marked them, and the hand of man had branded them. Here and there was a touch of gray in their hair, and about the mouth of each were lines which in such silent moments as this one gave an expression of infinite and wistful yearning.

"What's up? What's wrong?" asked Wilbur from the door, but since no answer was deigned he said no more.

But Pierre, like a charmed man who dares to walk among lions, strolled easily through the room, and looked into the face of big Boone, who smiled faintly up to him, and Black Gandil, who scowled doubly dark, and Bud Mansie, who shifted uneasily in his chair and then nodded, and finally to Branch. He dropped a hand on the massive shoulder of the blacksmith.

"Well?" he asked.

Branch let himself droop back into his chair. His big, dull, colorless eyes stared up to his friend.

"I dunno, lad. I'm just weary with the sort of tired that you can't help by sleepin'. Understand?"

Pierre nodded, slowly, because he sympathized. "And the trouble?"

Branch stared about as if searching for a reason.

"Jack's up-stairs sulking; Patterson hasn't come home yet."

And Black Gandil, who heard all things, said without looking up: "A man that saves a ship-wrecked fellow, he gets bad luck for thanks."

Pierre turned a considering eye on him, and Gandil scowled back.

"You've been croaking for six years, Morgan, about the bad luck that would come to Jim from saving me out of the snow. It's never happened, has it?"

Gandil, snarling from one side of his mouth, answered: "Where's Patterson?"

"Am I responsible if the blockhead has got drunk some place?"

"Patterson doesn't get drunk—not that way. And he knows that we were to start again to-day."

"There ain't no doubt of that," commented Branch.

"It's the straight dope. Patterson keeps his dates," said Bud Mansie.

The booming bass of Jim Boone broke in: "Shut up, the whole gang of you. We've had luck for the six years Pierre has been with us. Who calls him a Jonah?"

And Black Gandil answered: "I do. I've sailed the seas. I know bad luck when I see it."

"You've been seeing it for six years."

"The worst storms come on a voyage that starts with fair weather. Patterson? He's gone; he ain't just delayed; he's gone."

It was not the first of these gloomy prophecies which Gandil had made, but each time a heavy gloom broke over Red Pierre. For when he summed up the good fortune which the cross of Father Victor had brought him, he found that he had gained a father, and lost him at their first meeting; and he had won money on that night of the gambling, but it had cost the life of another man almost at once. The horse which carried him away from the vengeance in Morgantown had died on the way and he had been saved from the landslide, but the girl had perished.

He had driven McGurk from the ranges, and where would the penalty fall on those who were near and dear to him? In a superstitious horror he had asked himself the question a thousand times, and finally he could hardly bear to look into the ominous, brooding eyes of Black Gandil. It was as if the man had a certain and evil knowledge of the future.



CHAPTER XVII

BLACK GANDIL

The knowledge of the torment he was inflicting made the eye of Black Gandil bright with triumph.

He continued, and now every man in the room was sitting up, alert, with gloomy eyes fixed upon Pierre: "Patterson is the first, but he ain't the last. He's just the start. Who's next?" He looked slowly around.

"Is it you, Bud, or you, Phil, or you, Jim, or maybe me?"

And Pierre said: "What makes you think you know that trouble's coming, Morgan?"

"Because my blood runs cold in me when I look at you."

Red Pierre grew rigid and straightened in a way they knew.

"Damn you, Gandil, I've borne with you and your croaking too long, d'ye hear? Too long, and I'll hear no more of it, understand?"

"Why not? You'll hear from me every time I sight you in the offing. You c'n lay to that!"

The others were tense, ready to spring for cover, but Boone reared up his great figure.

"Don't answer him, Pierre. You, Gandil, shut your face or I'll break ye in two."

The fierce eyes of Pierre le Rouge never wavered from his victim, but he answered: "Keep out of this. This is my party. I'll tell you why you'll stop gibbering, Gandil."

He made a pace forward and every man shrank a little away from him.

"Because the cold in your blood is part hate and more fear, Black Gandil."

The eyes of Gandil glared back for an instant. With all his soul he yearned for the courage to pull his gun, but his arm was numb; he could not move it, and his eyes wavered and fell.

The shaggy gray head of Jim Boone fell likewise, and he was murmuring to his savage old heart:

"The good days are over. They'll never rest till one of 'em is dead, and then the rest will take sides and we'll have gun-plays at night. Seven years, and then to break up!"

Dick Wilbur, as usual, was the pacifier. He strode across the room, and the sharp sound of his heels on the creaking floor broke the tension. He said softly to Pierre: "You've raised hell enough. Now let's go up and get Jack down here to undo what you've just finished. Besides, you've got to ask her for that dance, eh?"

The glance of Pierre still lingered on Gandil as he turned and followed Wilbur up the complaining stairs to the one habitable room in the second story of the house. It was set aside for the use of Jacqueline.

At the door Wilbur said: "Shrug your shoulders back; you look as if you were going to jump at something. And wipe the wolf-look off your face. After all, Jack's a girl, not a gun-fighter."

Then he knocked and opened the door.

She lay face down on her bunk, her head turned from them and toward the wall. Slender and supple and strong, it was still only the size of her boots and her hands that would make one look at her twice and then guess that this was a woman, for she was dressed, from trousers even to the bright bandanna knotted around her throat, like any prosperous range rider.

Now, to be sure, the thick coils of black hair told her sex, but when the broad-brimmed sombrero was pulled well down on her head, when the cartridge-belt and the six-gun were slung about her waist, and most of all when she spurred her mount recklessly across the hills, no one could have suspected that this was not some graceful boy born and bred in the mountain-desert, wilful as a young mountain-lion, and as dangerous.

"Sleepy?" called Wilbur.

She waited a moment and then queried with exaggerated impudence: "Well?"

Ennui unspeakable was in that drawling monotone.

"Brace up; I've got news for you."

Her hand moved and all the graceful body, but it was only with a yawn. What need was there to speak? She wished to be alone.

"And I've brought Pierre along to tell you about it.

"Oh!"

And she sat bolt upright with shining eyes. Instantly she remembered to yawn again, but her glance smiled on them above her hand.

She apologized. "Awfully sleepy, Dick."

But he was not deceived. He said: "There's a dance down near the Barnes place, and Pierre wants you to go with him."

Back tilted her head, and her throat stirred as if she were singing.

"Pierre! A dance?"

He explained: "Dick's lost his head over a girl with yellow hair, and he wants me to go down and see her. He thought you might want to go along."

Her face changed like the moon when a cloud blows across it. Before she answered she slipped down on the bunk again, pillowed her head leisurely on her arm, and answered with another slow, insolent yawn: "Thanks! I'm staying home to-night."

Wilbur glared his rage covertly at Pierre, but the latter was blandly unconscious that he had made any faux pas.

He said carelessly: "Too bad. It might be interesting, Jack?"

At his voice she looked up—a sharp and graceful toss of the head.

"What?"

"The girl with the yellow hair."

"Then go ahead and see her. I won't keep you. You don't mind if I go on sleeping? Sit down and be at home."

With this she calmly turned her back again and seemed thoroughly disposed to carry out her word. Red Pierre flushed a little, watching her, and he spoke his anger outright: "You're acting like a sulky kid, Jack, not like a man."

It was a habit of his to forget that she was a woman. Without turning her head she answered: "Do you want to know why?"

"You're like a cat showing your claws. Go on! Tell me what the reason is."

"Because I get tired of you."

In all his life he had never been so scorned. He did not see the covert grin of Wilbur in the background. He blurted: "Tired?"

"Awfully. You don't mind me being frank, do you, Pierre?"

He could only stammer: "Sometimes I wish to God you were a man, Jack!"

"You don't often remember that I'm a woman."

"What do you mean by that?"

She was silent, but there was a perceptible tremor in the graceful body.

He repeated: "Do you mean that I'm rude or rough with you, Jacqueline?"

Still the silence, but Wilbur was grinning broader than ever. "Answer me!"

She started up and faced him, her face convulsed with rage.

"What do you want me to say? Yes, you are rude—I hate you and your lot. Go away from me; I don't want you; I hate you all."

And she would have said more, but furious sobs swelled her throat and she could not speak, but dropped, face down, on the bunk and gripped the blankets in each hard-set hand. Over her Pierre leaned, utterly bewildered, found nothing that he could say, and then turned and strode, frowning, from the room. Wilbur hastened after him and caught him just as the door was closing.

"Come back," he pleaded. "This is the best game I've ever seen. Come back, Pierre! You've made a wonderful start."

Pierre le Rouge shook off the detaining hand and glared up at Wilbur.

"Don't try irony, Dick. I feel like murder. Think of it! All this time she's been hating me; and now it's making her weep; think of it—Jack—weeping!"

"Why, you're a child, Pierre. Go back and take her in your arms and tell her you're going to make her go to the dance."

"Take her in my arms? She'd stab me, there's that much of the devil in her. Don't grin at me and keep chuckling like an utter ass. What's up, Dick?"

"Don't you see? No, you don't, but it's so plain that a baby of three years could understand. She's in love with you."

"With me?"

"With Red Pierre."

"You can't make a joke out of Jack with me. You ought to know that."

"Pierre, I'd as soon make a joke out of a wildcat."

"Grinning still? Wilbur, I'm taking more from you than I would from any man on the ranges."

"I know you are, and that's why I'm stringing this out because I'm going to have a laugh—ha, ha, ha!—the rest of my life—ha, ha, ha, ha!—whenever I think of this—ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"

The burst of merriment left him speechless, and Pierre, glowering, his right hand twitching dangerously close to that holster at his hip. He sobered, and said: "Go in and talk to her and prove that I'm right."

"Ask Jack if she loves me? Why, I'd as soon ask any man the same question."

The big long rider was instantly curious.

"Has she never appealed to you as a woman, Pierre?"

"How could she? I've watched her ride; I've watched her use her gun; I've slept rolled in the same blankets with her, back to back; I've walked and talked and traveled with her as if she were my kid brother."

Wilbur nodded, as if the miracle were being slowly unfolded before his eyes.

"And you've never noticed anything different about her? Never watched a little lift and grace in her walk that no man could ever have; never heard her laugh in a voice that no man could ever imitate; never seen her color change just because you, Pierre, came near or went far away from her?"

"Because of me?" asked the bewildered Pierre.

"You fool, you! Why, lad, I've been kept amused by you two for a whole evening, watching her play for your attention, saving her best smiles for you, keeping her best attitudes for you, and letting all the richness of her voice go out for—a block—a stone. Gad, the thing still doesn't seem possible! Pierre, one instant of that girl would give romance to a man's whole life."

"This girl? This Jack of ours?"

"He hasn't seen it! Why, if I hadn't seen years ago that she had tied her hands and turned her heart over to you, I'd have been down on my knees to her a thousand times, begging her for a smile, a shadow of a hope."

"If I didn't know you, Dick, I'd say that you were partly drunk and partly a fool."

"Here's a hundred—a cold hundred that I'm right. I'll make it a thousand, if you dare."

"Dare what?"

"Ask her to marry you."

"Marry—me?"

"Damn it all—well, then—whatever you like. But I say that if you go back into that room and sit still and merely look at her, she'll be in your arms within five minutes."

"I hate to take charity, but a bet is a bet. That hundred is in my pocket already. It's a go!"

They shook hands.

"But what will be your proof, Dick, whether I win or lose?"

"Your face, blockhead, when you come out of the room."

Upon this Pierre pondered a moment, and then turned toward the door. He set his hand on the knob, faltered, and finally set his teeth and entered the room.



CHAPTER XVIII

FIVE MINUTES' SILENCE

She lay as he had left her, except that her face was now pillowed in her arms, and the long sobs kept her body quivering. Awe and curiosity swept over Pierre, looking down at her, but chiefly a puzzled grief such as a strong man feels when a friend is in trouble. He came closer and laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Jack!"

She turned far enough to strike his hand away and instantly resumed her former position, though the sobs were softer. This childish anger irritated him. He was about to storm out of the room when the thought of the hundred dollars stopped him. It was not that he hoped to win the money, for dollars rolled easily into his hands and out again, but the bet had been made, and it was his pride that he would play out his part of it. It seemed unsportsmanlike to leave without some effort.

The effort which he finally made was that suggested by Wilbur. He folded his arms and stood silent, waiting, and ready to judge the time as nearly as he could until the five minutes should have elapsed. He was so busy computing the minutes that it was with a start that he noticed some time later that the weeping had ceased. She lay quiet. Her hand was dabbing furtively at her face for a purpose which Pierre could not surmise.

At last a broken voice murmured: "Pierre!"

He would not speak, but something in the voice made his anger go. After a little it came, and louder this time: "Pierre?"

He did not stir.

She whirled and sat on the edge of the bunk, crying: "Pierre!" with a note of fright. Then she flushed richly.

"I thought perhaps you were gone. I thought—Pierre—I was afraid—I mean I hoped—"

She could not go on.

And still he persisted in that silence, his arms folded, the keen blue eyes considering her as if from a great distance.

She explained: "I was afraid—Pierre! Why don't you speak? Tell me, are you angry?"

And she sprang up and made a pace toward him. She had never seemed so little manlike, so wholly womanly. For the thick coils of hair were loosed on her head, and the black hair framed a face stained, flushed, with eyes that were like a great black, bottomless well of sorrow and wistfulness. And the hand which stretched toward him, palm up, was a symbol of everything new and strange that he found in her.

He had seen it balled to a small, angry fist, brown and dangerous; he had seen it gripping the butt of a revolver, ready for the draw; he had seen it tugging at the reins and holding a racing horse in check with an ease which a man would envy; but never before had he seen it turned palm up, to his knowledge; and now, because he could not speak to her, according to his plan, he studied her thoroughly for the first time.

Slender and marvelously made was that hand. The whole woman was in it, finely fashioned, delicate, made for beauty, not for use. It was all he could do to keep from exclaiming.

She made a quick step toward him, eager, uncertain:

"Pierre, I thought you had left me—that you were gone, and angry."

The hearts of men are tinder; something caught on fire in Pierre, but still he would say nothing. He was beginning to feel a cruel pleasure in his victory, but it was not without a deep sense of danger.

She had laid aside her six-gun, but she had not abandoned it. She had laid aside her anger, but she could resume it again as swiftly as she could take up her revolver.

He exulted in the touch of victory, but it was as a man who rides a horse that paces docilely beneath him but may plunge into a fury of bucking in a moment. She was closer—very close, and somehow he knew that at his pleasure he could make her smile or tremble by speaking. Yet he would not speak. The five minutes were not yet up.

She cried with a little burst of rage: "Pierre, you are making a game of me!"

But seeing that he did not change she altered swiftly and caught his hand in both of hers. She spoke the name which she always used when she was greatly moved.

"Ah, Pierre le Rouge, what have I done?"

His silence tempted her on like the smile of the sphinx.

And suddenly she was inside his arms, though how she separated them he could not tell, and crying: "Pierre, I am unhappy. Help me, Pierre!"

It was true, then, and Wilbur had won his bet. But how could it have happened? He took the arms that encircled his neck and brought them slowly down, and watched her curiously. Something was expected of him, but what it was he could not tell, for women were as strange to him as the wild sea is strange to the Arab.

He hunted his mind, and then: "One of the boys has angered you, Jack?"

And she said, because she could think of no way to cover the confusion which came to her after the outbreak: "Yes."

He dropped her arms and strode a pace or two up and down the room.

"Gandil?"

"N-no!"

"You're lying. It was Gandil."

And he made straight for the door.

She ran after him and flung herself between him and the door. Clearly, as if it were a painted picture, she saw him facing Gandil—saw their hands leap for the guns—saw Gandil pitch face forward on the floor—writhe all his limbs—and then lie still. "Pierre—for God's sake!"

Her terror convinced him partially, and the furor went back from his eyes as a light goes back in a long, dark hall.

"On your honor, Jack, it's not Gandil?"

"On my honor."

"But some one has broken you up."

"No, I—"

"Don't lie. Why, even while you look at me your color changes. You're pale one minute and red the next. Some one has crossed you, Jack. And whoever crosses you crosses me, by God! Out with his name! Is it Branch?"

"No."

"Then it's big Patterson."

"No."

"I have it! Mansie! There's always something of the sneak about him that I never liked."

"No, no!"

"It is! He came up to you and whispered some dog's remark for you to hear. Damn him—I never trusted Mansie!"

He pushed her away from the door and set his hand on the knob, but he could not keep her back. She was upon him again and twisted between him and the entrance to the room.

"Pierre, upon my honor, it was none of these men."

He could not help but believe.

"Only Wilbur is left. Jack, I'd rather raise my hand against myself than to harm Dick, but if—"

"I'll never tell you who it was. Don't you see? It would be like a murder in cold blood if I were to send you after him."

"But he's here—he's one of us, this man who's bothered you."

She could not help but answer: "Yes."

He scowled down at the floor.

"You would never be able to guess who it is. Give it up. After all—I can live through it—I guess."

"It's something that has saddened you. Do you know, we've been so much together that I can almost read your mind, in a way. Why are you smiling?"

"I wish that you could read it—Pierre—at times."

He took her face between his hands and frowned down into her eyes. At his touch she grew very pale and trembled as If a wind were striking against her.

"You see, you've been so near to me, and so dear to me all these years, Jack, that you're like a sister, almost."

"And you to me, Pierre."

"But different—nearer even than a sister."

"So much nearer!"

"It's queer, isn't it? But you can't forget this trouble you've had. The tears come up in your eyes again. Tell me his name, Jack, and the dog—"

She said: "Only let me go. Take your hands away, Pierre."

He obeyed her, deeply worried, and she stood for a moment with a hand pressed over her eyes, swaying. He had never seen her like this; he was like a pilot striving to steer his ship through an unfathomable fog. Following what had become an instinct with him, he raised his left hand and touched the cross beneath his throat. And inspiration came to him.