Riders of the Silences Part 19

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 superst.i.tious 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 17

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.

"d.a.m.n 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 s.h.a.ggy 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!"

d.i.c.k 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 h.e.l.l enough. Now let's go 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 gunfighter."

Then he knocked and opened the door.

She lay face down on her bunk, her head turned from them 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 s.e.x, 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, willful 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. And I've brought Pierre along to tell you about it."

"Oh!"

And she sat bolt upright with s.h.i.+ning eyes. Instantly she remembered to yawn again, but her glance smiled on them above her hand.

She apologized. "Awfully sleepy, d.i.c.k."

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

"Pierre! A dance?"

He explained: "d.i.c.k'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.

She answered with another slow, insolent yawn: "Thanks! I'm staying home tonight."

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 her 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?"