The Max Brand Megapack (110 page)

The end was very near, he felt, yet the chances were at least ten to one that he would miss Pierre in the throat of the gorge, for among the great boulders, tall as houses, which littered it, a thousand men might have passed and repassed and never seen each other. Only the calling of Pierre could guide him surely.

The calling had ceased for some moments, and he began to fear that he had overrun his mark and missed Pierre in the heart of the pass, when, as he rounded a mighty boulder, the shout ran ringing in his very ears: “McGurk!” and a horseman swung into view.

“Here!” he called in answer, and stood with his right hand lifted, bringing his horse to a sharp halt, like some ancient cavalier stopping in the middle of the battle to exchange greetings with a friendly foe.

The other rider whirled alongside, his sombrero’s brim flaring back from his forehead, so that McGurk caught the glare of the eyes beneath the shadow.

“So for the third time, my friend—” said McGurk.

“Which is the fatal one,” answered Pierre. “How will you die, McGurk? On foot or on horseback?”

“On the ground, Pierre, for my horse might stir and make my work messy. I love a neat job, you know.”

“Good.”

They swung from the saddles and stood facing each other.

“Begin!” commanded McGurk. “I’ve no time to waste.”

“I’ve very little time to look at the living McGurk. Let me look my fill before the end.”

“Then look, and be done. I’ve a lady coming to meet me.”

The other grew marvelously calm.

“She is with you, McGurk?”

“My dear Pierre, I’ve been with her ever since she started up the Old Crow.”

“It will be easier to forget her. Are you ready?”

“So soon? Come, man, there’s much for us to say. Many old times to chat over.”

“I only wonder,” said Pierre, “how one death can pay back what you’ve done. Think of it! I’ve actually run away from you and hidden myself away among the hills. I’ve feared you, McGurk!”

He said it with a deep astonishment, as a grown man will speak of the way he feared darkness when he was a child. McGurk moistened his white lips. The white horse pawed the rocks as though impatient to be gone.

“Listen,” said Pierre, “your horse grows restive. Suppose we stand here—it’s a convenient distance apart, you see, and wait with our arms folded for the next time the white horse paws the rocks, because when I kill you, McGurk, I want you to die knowing that another man was faster on the draw and straighter with his bullets than you are. D’you see?”

He could not have spoken with a more formal politeness if he had been asking the other to pass first through the door of a dining-room. The wonder of McGurk grew and the sweat on his forehead seemed to be spreading a chill through his entire body.

He said: “I see. You trust all to the cross, eh, Pierre? The little cross under your neck?”

“The cross is gone,” said Pierre le Rouge. “Why should I use it against a night rider, McGurk? Are you ready?”

And McGurk, not trusting his voice for some strange reason, nodded. The two folded their arms.

But the white horse which had been pawing the stones so eagerly a moment before was now unusually quiet. The very postures of the men seemed to have frozen him to stone, a beautiful, marble statue, with the moonlight glistening on the muscles of his perfect shoulders.

At length he stirred. At once a quiver jerked through the tense bodies of the waiting men, but the white horse had merely stiffened and raised his head high. Now, with arched neck and flaunting tail he neighed loudly, as if he asked a question. How could he know, dumb brute, that what he asked only death could answer?

And as they waited an itching came at the palm of McGurk’s hand. It was not much, just a tingle of the blood. To ease it, he closed his fingers and found that his hand was moist with cold perspiration.

He began to wonder if his fingers would be slippery on the butt of the gun. Then he tried covertly to dry them against his shirt. But he ceased this again, knowing that he must be of hair-trigger alertness to watch for the stamp of the white horse.

It occurred to him, also, that he was standing on a loose stone which might wabble when he pulled his gun, and he cursed himself silently for his hasty folly. Pierre, doubtless, had noticed that stone, and therefore he had made the suggestion that they stand where they were. Otherwise, how could there be that singular calm in the steady eyes which looked across at him?

Also, how explain the hunger of that stare? Was not he McGurk, and was not this a man whom he had already once shot down? God, what a fool he had been not to linger an instant longer in that saloon in the old days and place the final shot in the prostrate body! In all his life he had made only one such mistake, and now that folly was pursuing him. And now—

The foot of the white horse lifted—struck the rock. The sound of its fall was lost in the explosion of two guns, and a ring of metal on metal. The revolver snapped from the hand of McGurk, whirled in a flashing circle, and clanged on the rocks at his feet. The bullet of Pierre had struck the barrel and knocked it cleanly from his hand.

It was luck, only luck, that placed that shot, and his own bullet, which had started first, had travelled wild for there stood Pierre le Rouge, smiling faintly, alert, calm. For the first time in his life McGurk had missed. He set his teeth and waited for death.

But that steady voice of Pierre said: “To shoot you would be a pleasure; it would even be a luxury, but there wouldn’t be any lasting satisfaction in it. So there lies your gun at your feet. Well, here lies mine.”

He dropped his own weapon to a position corresponding with that of McGurk’s.

“We were both very wild that time. We must do better now. We’ll stoop for our guns, McGurk. The signal? No, we won’t wait for the horse to stamp. The signal will be when you stoop for your gun. You shall have every advantage, you see? Start for that gun, McGurk, when you’re ready for the end.”

The hand of McGurk stretched out and his arm stiffened but it seemed as though all the muscles of his back had grown stiff. He could not bend. It was strange. It was both ludicrous and incomprehensible. Perhaps he had grown stiff with cold in that position.

But he heard the voice of Pierre explaining gently: “You can’t move, my friend. I understand. It’s fear that stiffened your back. It’s fear that sends the chill up and down your blood. It’s fear that makes you think back to your murders, one by one. McGurk, you’re done for. You’re through. You’re ready for the discard. I’m not going to kill you. I’ve thought of a finer hell than death, and that is to live as you shall live. I’ve beaten you, McGurk, beaten you fairly on the draw, and I’ve broken your heart by doing it. The next time you face a man you’ll begin to think—you’ll begin to remember how one other man beat you at the draw. And that wonder, McGurk, will make your hand freeze to your side, as you’ve made the hands of other men before me freeze. D’you understand?”

The lips of McGurk parted. The whisper of his dry panting reached Pierre, and the devil in him smiled.

“In six weeks, McGurk, you’ll take water from a Chinaman. Now get out!”

And pace by pace McGurk drew back, with his face still toward Pierre.

The latter cried: “Wait. Are you going to leave your gun?”

Only the steady retreat continued.

“And go unarmed through the mountains? What will men say when they see McGurk with an empty holster?”

But the outlaw had passed out of view beyond the corner of one of the monster boulders. After him went the white horse, slowly, picking his steps, as if he were treading on dangerous and unknown ground and would not trust his leader. Pierre was left to the loneliness of the gorge.

The moonlight only served to make more visible its rocky nakedness, and like that nakedness was the life of Pierre under his hopeless inward eye. Over him loomed from either side the gleaming pinnacles of the Twin Bears, and he remembered many a time when he had looked up toward them from the crests of lesser mountains—looked up toward them as a man looks to a great and unattainable ideal.

Here he was come to the crest of all the ranges; here he was come to the height and limit of his life, and what had he attained? Only a cruel, cold isolation. It had been a steep ascent; the declivity of the farther side led him down to a steep and certain ruin and the dark night below. But he stiffened suddenly and threw his head high as if he faced his fate; and behind him the cream-colored mare raised her head with a toss and whinnied softly.

It seemed to him that he had heard something calling, for the sound was lost against the sweep of wind coming up the gorge. Something calling there in the night of the mountains as he himself had called when he rode so wildly in the quest for McGurk. How long ago had that been?

But it came once more, clear beyond all doubt. He recognized the voice in spite of the panting which shook it; a wild wail like that of a heart-broken child, coming closer to him like some one, running: “Pierre! Oh, Pierre!”

And all at once he knew that the moon was broad and bright and fair, and the heavens clear and shining with golden points of light. Once more the cry. He raised his arms and waited.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE CROSS GOES ON

So Mary, running through the wilderness of boulders, was guided straight and found Pierre, and before the morning came, they were journeying east side by side, east and down to the cities of culture and a new life; but Jacqueline, a thousand times quicker of foot and surer of eye and ear, missed her goal, went past it, and still on and on, running finally at a steady trot.

Until at last she knew that she had far overstepped her mark and sank down against one of the rocks to rest and think out what next she must do. There seemed nothing left. Even the sound of a gun fired she might not hear, for that sharp call would not travel far against the wind.

It was while she sat there, burying Pierre in her thoughts, a white shape came glimmering down to her through the moonlight. She was on her feet at once, alert and gun in hand. It could only be one horse, only one rider, McGurk coming down from his last killing with the sneer on his pale lips. Well, he would complete his work this night and kill her fighting face to face.

A man’s death; that was all she craved. She rose; she stepped boldly out into the center of the trail between the rocks.

There she saw the greatest wonder she had ever looked on. It was McGurk walking with bare, bowed head, and after him, like a dog after the master, followed the white horse. She shoved the revolver back into the holster. This should be a fair fight.

“McGurk!”

Very slowly the head went up and back, and there he stood, not ten paces from her, with the white moon full on his face. The sneer was still there; the eyelid fluttered in scornful derision. And the heart of Jacqueline came thundering in her throat.

But she cried in a strong voice: “McGurk, d’you know me?”

He did not answer.

“You murderer, you night-rider! Look again: it’s the last of the Boones!”

The sneer, it seemed to her, grew bitterer, but still the man did not speak. Then the thought of Pierre, lying dead somewhere among the rocks, burned across her mind. Her hand leaped for the revolver, and whipped it out in a blinding flash to cover him, but with her finger curling on the trigger she checked herself in the nick of time. McGurk had made no move to protect himself.

A strange feeling came to her that perhaps the man would not war against women; the case of Mary was almost proof enough of that. But as she stepped forward, wondering, she looked at the holster at his side and saw that it was empty. Then she understood.

Understood in a daze that Pierre had met the man and conquered him and sent him out through the mountains disarmed. The white horse raised his head and whinnied, and the sound gave a thought to her. She could not kill this man, unarmed as he was; she could do a more shameful thing.

“The bluff you ran was a strong one, McGurk,” she said bitterly, “and you had these parts pretty well at a standstill; but Pierre was a bit too much for you, eh?”

The white face had not altered, and still it did not change, but the sneer was turned steadily on her.

She cried: “Go on! Go on down the gorge!”

Like an automaton the man stepped forward, and after him paced the white horse. She stepped between, caught the reins, and swung up to the saddle, and sat there, controlling between her stirrups the best-known mount in all the mountain-desert. A thrill of wild exultation came to her. She cried: “Look back, McGurk! Your gun is gone, your horse is gone; you’re weaker than a woman in the mountains!”

Yet he went on without turning, not with the hurried step of a coward, but still as one stunned. Then, sitting quietly in the saddle, she forgot McGurk and remembered Pierre. He was happy by this time with the girl of the yellow hair; there was nothing remaining to her from him except the ominous cross which touched cold against her breast. That he had abandoned as he had abandoned her.

What, then, was left for her? The horse of an outlaw for her to ride; the heart of an outlaw in her breast.

She touched the white horse with the spurs and went at a reckless gallop, weaving back and forth among the boulders down the gorge. For she was riding away from the past.

The dawn came as she trotted out into a widening valley of the Old Crow. To maintain even that pace she had to use the spurs continually, for the white horse was deadly weary, and his head fell more and more. She decided to make a brief halt, at last, and in order to make a fire that would take the chill of the cold morning from her, she swung up to the edge of the woods. There, before she could dismount, she saw a man turn the shoulder of the slope. She drew the horse back deeper among the trees and waited.

He came with a halting step, reeling now and again, a big man, hatless, coatless, apparently at the last verge of exhaustion. Now his foot apparently struck a small rock, and he pitched to his face. It required a long struggle before he could regain his feet; and now he continued his journey at the same gait, only more uncertainly than ever, close and closer. There was something familiar now about the fellow’s size, and something in the turn of his head. Suddenly she rode out, crying: “Wilbur!”