The Max Brand Megapack (96 page)

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 M
INUTES’ 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?”