Riders of the Silences (3 page)

But the boy did not seem to notice or to understand.

"It is a long journey, and I will need a strong horse. It must be eight
hundred miles to that town."

"Pierre, what claim has he upon you? What debt have you to repay?"

And Pierre le Rouge answered: "He loved my mother."

He raised his face a little higher and smiled upon them.

"It is a beautiful name, is it notIrene?"

There was no voice from Jean Paul Victor, so he turned to Father Anthony.

"It is a charming name, Pierre."

"I would give my revolver with the pearl handle, and my skates, and the
engraven knife of old Canole just for one glimpse of her."

"You are going?"

The boy asked in astonishment: "Would you not have me go, Father?"

And Jean Paul Victor could not meet the sorrowful blue eyes.

He bowed his head and answered: "My child, I would have you go. But promise
with your hand in mine that you will come back to me when your father is
buried."

The lean fingers caught the extended hand of Pierre and froze about it.

"But first I have a second duty in the southland."

"A second?"

"You taught me to shoot and to use a knife. Once you said: 'An eye for an
eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' Father Victor, my father was killed by another
man."

"Pierre, dear lad, swear to me here on this cross that you will not raise
your hands against the murderer. 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.'"

"He must have an instrument for his wrath. He shall work through me in this."

"Pierre, you blaspheme."

"'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'"

"It was a demon in me that quoted that in your hearing, and not myself."

"The horse, Father Victormay I have the roan?"

"Pierre, I command you"

The light in the blue eyes was as cold and steady as that in the starved eyes
of Jean Paul Victor.

"Hush!" he said calmly. "For the sake of the love that I bear for you, do not
command me."

"Pierre, I have prayed God for you night and morning, and for the sake of
those prayers which are dearer than gold in heaven, stay with me!"

"Dear Father Victor, you also hope for hands that love you to close your eyes
at the end."

And the stern priest dropped his head. He said at last: "I have nothing
saving one great and terrible treasure which I see was predestined to you. It is
the cross of Father Meilan. You have worn it before. You shall wear it hereafter
as your own."

He took from his own neck a silver cross suspended by a slender silver chain,
and the boy, with startled eyes, dropped to his knees and received the gift.

"It has brought good to all who possessed it, but for every good thing that
it works for you it will work evil on some other. Great is its blessing and
great is its burden. I, alas, know; but you also have heard of its history. Do
you accept it, Pierre?"

"Dear Father, with all my heart."

The colorless hands touched the dark-red hair, and the prophet eyes of the
priest went up.

"God pardon the sins you shall commit."

Pierre crushed the hand of Jean Paul Victor against his lips and rushed from
the room, while the tall priest, staring down at the fingers which had been
kissed, pronounced:

"It is better that he should commit murder with his hands than to slay in his
evil thoughts."

"Can you resign him like this?"

"I have forged a thunderbolt. Father Gabrielle, you are a prophet. It is too
great for my hand. Listen!"

And they heard clearly the sharp clang of a horse's hoofs on the hard-packed
snow, loud at first, but fading rapidly away. The wind, increasing suddenly,
shook the house furiously about them.

It was a north wind, and traveled south before the rider of the strong roan.
Over a thousand miles of plain and hills it passed, and down into the cattle
country of the mountain-desert which the Rockies hem on one side and the tall
Sierras on the other.

It was a trail to try even the endurance of Pierre and the strong roan, but
the boy clung to it doggedly. On a trail that led down from the edges of the
northern mountain the roan crashed to the ground in a plunging fall, hitting
heavily on his knees. He was dead before the boy had freed his feet from the
stirrups.

Pierre threw the saddle over his shoulder and walked eight miles to the
nearest ranchhouse, where he spent practically the last cent of his money on
another horse, and drove on south once more.

There was little hope in him as day after day slipped past. Only the ghost of
a chance remained that Martin Ryder could fight away death for another
fortnight; yet Pierre had seen many a man from the mountain-desert stave off the
end through weeks and weeks of the bitterest suffering. His father must be a man
of the same hard durable metal, and upon that Pierre staked all his hopes.

And always he carried the picture of the dying man alone with his two
wolf-eyed sons who waited for his eyes to weaken. Whenever he thought of that he
touched his horse with the spurs and rode fiercely for a time. They were his
flesh and blood, the man, and even the two wolf-eyed sons.

So he came at last to a gap in the hills and looked down on Morgantown in the
hollow, twoscore unpainted houses sprawling along a single street. The snow was
everywhere white and pure, and the town was like a stain on the landscape with
wisps of smoke rising and trailing across the hilltops.

Down to the edge of the town he rode, left his cow-pony standing with hanging
head outside a saloon, strode through the swinging doors, and asked of the
bartender the way to the house of Martin Ryder.

The bartender stopped in his labor of rubbing down the surface of his bar and
stared at the black-serge robe of the stranger, with curiosity rather than
criticism, for women, madmen, and clergymen have the right-of-way in the
mountain-desert.

He said: "Well, I'll be damned!askin' your pardon. So old Mart Ryder has
come down to this, eh? Partner, you're sure going to have a rough ride getting
Mart to heaven. Better send a posse along with him, because some first-class
angels are going to get considerable riled when they sight him coming. Ha, ha,
ha! Sure I'll show you the way. Take the northwest road out of town and go five
miles till you see a broken-backed shack lyin' over to the right. That's Mart
Ryder's place."

Out to the broken-backed shack rode Pierre le Rouge, Pierre the Red, as every
one in the north country knew him. His second horse, staunch cow-pony that it
was, stumbled on with sagging knees and hanging head, but Pierre rode upright,
at ease, for his mind was untired.

Broken-backed indeed was the house before which he dismounted. The roof
sagged from end to end, and the stove pipe chimney leaned at a drunken angle.
Nature itself was withered beside that house; before the door stood a great
cottonwood, gashed and scarred by lightning, with the limbs almost entirely
stripped away from one side. Under this broken monster Pierre stepped and
through the door. Two growls like the snarls of watch-dogs greeted him, and two
tall, unshaven men barred his way.

Behind them, from the bed in the corner, a feeble voice called: "Who's
there?"

"In the name of God," said the boy gravely, for he saw a hollow-eyed specter
staring toward him from the bed in the corner, "let me pass! I am his son!"

It was not that which made them give back, but a shrill, faint cry of triumph
from the sick man toward which they turned. Pierre slipped past them and stood
above Martin Ryder. He was wasted beyond beliefonly the monster hand showed
what he had been.

"Son?" he queried with yearning and uncertainty.

"Pierre, your son."

And he slipped to his knees beside the bed. The heavy hand fell upon his hair
and stroked it.

"There ain't no ways of doubting it. It's red silk, like the hair of Irene.
Seein' you, boy, it ain't so hard to die. Look up! So! Pierre, my son! Are you
scared of me, boy?"

"I'm not afraid."

"Not with them eyes you ain't. Now that you're here, pay the coyotes and let
'em go off to gnaw the bones."

He dragged out a small canvas bag from beneath the blankets and gestured
toward the two lurkers in the corner.

"Take it, and be damned to you!"

A dirty, yellow hand seized the bag; there was a chortle of exultation, and
the two scurried out of the room.

"Three weeks they've watched an' waited for me to go out, Pierre. Three weeks
they've waited an' sneaked up to my bed an' sneaked away agin, seein' my eyes
open."

Looking into their fierce fever brightness, Pierre understood why they had
quailed. For the man, though wrecked beyond hope of living, was terrible still.
The thick, gray stubble on his face could not hide altogether the hard lines of
mouth and jaw, and on the wasted arm the hand was grotesquely huge. It was
horror that widened the eyes of Pierre as he looked at Martin Ryder; it was a
grim happiness that made his lips almost smile.

"You've taken holy orders, lad?"

"No."

"But the black dress?"

"I'm only a novice. I've sworn no vows."

"And you don't hate meyou hold no grudge against me for the sake of your
mother, Pierre?"

He took the heavy hand.

"Are you not my father? And my mother was happy with you. For her sake I love
you."

"The good Father Victor. He sent you to me."

"I came of my own will. He would not have let me go."

"Hehe would have kept my flesh and blood away from me?"

"Do not reproach him. He would have kept me from a sin."

"Sin? By God, boy, no matter what I've done, is it sin for my son to come to
me? What sin?"

"The sin of murder!"

"Ha!"

"I have come to find McGurk."

Like some old father-bear watching his cub flash teeth against a stalking
lynx, half proud and half fearful of such courage, so the dying cattleman looked
at his son. Excitement set a high and dangerous color in his cheek. His eyes
were too bright.

"Pierrebrave boy! Look at me. I ain't no imitation-man, even now, but I
ain't a ghost of what I was. There wasn't no man I wouldn't of met fair and
square with bare hands or with a gun. Maybe my hands was big, but they were fast
on the draw. I've lived all my life with iron on the hip, and my six-gun has
seven notches.

"But McGurk downed me fair and square. There wasn't no murder. I was out for
his hide, and he knew it. I done the provokin', an' he jest done the finishin',
that was all. It hurts me a lot to say it, but he's a better man than I was. A
kid like you, why, he'd jest eat you, Pierre."

Pierre le Rouge smiled again. He felt a stern and aching pride to be the son
of this man.

"So that's settled," went on Martin Ryder, "an' a damned good thing it is.
Son, you didn't come none too soon. I'm goin' out fast. There ain't enough light
left in me so's I can see my own way. Here's all I ask: When I die touch my
eyelids soft an' draw 'em shutI've seen the look in a dead man's eyes. Close
'em, and I know I'll go to sleep an' have good dreams. And down in the middle of
Morgantown is the buryin'-ground. I've ridden past it a thousand times an'
watched a corner plot, where the grass grows quicker than it does anywheres else
in the cemetery. Pierre, I'd die plumb easy if I knew I was goin' to sleep the
rest of time in that place."

"It shall be done."

"But that corner plot, it would cost a pile, son. And I've no money. I gave
what I had to them wolf-eyed boys, Bill an' Bert. Money was what they wanted,
an' after I had Irene's son with me, money was the cheapest way of gettin' rid
of 'em."

"I'll buy the plot."

"Have you got that much money, lad?"

"Yes," lied Pierre calmly.

The bright eyes grew dimmer and then fluttered close. Pierre started to his
feet, thinking that the end had come. But the voice began again, fainter,
slowly:

"No light left inside of me, but dyin' this way is easy. There ain't no wind
will blow on me after I'm dead, but I'll be blanketed safe from head to foot in
cool, sweet-smellin' sodthe kind that has tangles of the roots of grass. There
ain't no snow will reach to me where I lie. There ain't no sun will burn down to
me. Dyin' like that is jestgoin' to sleep."

After that he said nothing for a time, and the late afternoon darkened slowly
through the room.

As for Pierre, he did not move, and his mind went back. He did not see the
bearded wreck who lay dying before him, but a picture of Irene, with the sun
lighting her copper hair with places of burning gold, and a handsome young giant
beside her. They rode together on some upland trail at sunset rime, sharply
framed against the bright sky. Their hands were together; their faces were
raised; they laughed, from the midst of their small heaven.

There was a whisper below him: "Irene!"

And Pierre looked down to blankly staring eyes. He groaned, and dropped to
his knees.

"I have come for you," said the whisper, "because the time has come, Irene.
We have to ride out together. We have a long ways to go. Are you ready?"

"Yes," said Pierre.

"Thank God! It's a wonderful night. The stars are asking us out. Quick! Into
your saddle. Now the spurs. So! We are alone and free, with the winds around us,
and all that we have been forgotten behind us. Irene, look up with me!"

The eyes opened wide and stared up; without a stir in the great, gaunt body
he was dead. Pierre drew the eyes reverently shut. There were no tears in his
eyes, but a feeling of hollowness about his heart, and a great pain. He
straightened and looked about him and found that the room was quite dark.

So in the dimness Pierre fumbled, by force of habit, at his throat, and found
the cross which he wore by a silver chain about his throat. He held it in a
great grip and closed his eyes and prayed. When he opened his eyes again it was
almost deep night in the room, and Pierre had passed from youth to manhood.
Through the gloom nothing stood out distinctly save the white face of the dead
man, and from that Pierre looked quickly away.