The Max Brand Megapack (92 page)

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.