Riders of the Silences

Pierre turned and looked calmly upon the other.

And the man whispered in a sort of awe:  “Well, I’ll be damned!”

“Stand aside!”

The other fell back a pace, and Pierre went straight to the table and said to Cochrane:  “Sir, I have come to take you home.”

The old man looked up and rubbed his eyes as though waking from a sleep.

“Stand back from the table!” warned Hurley.

“By the Lord, have they been missing me?” queried old Cochrane.  “You are waited for,” answered Pierre le Rouge, “and I’ve been sent to take you home.”

“If that’s the case—­”

“It ain’t the case.  The kid’s lying.”

“Lying?” repeated Cochrane, as if he had never heard the word before, and he peered with clearing eyes toward Pierre.  “No, I think this boy has never lied.”

Silence had spread through the place like a vapor.  Even the slight sounds in the gaming-room were done now, and one pair after another of eyes swung toward the table of Cochrane and Hurley.  The wave of the silence reached to the barroom.  No one could have carried the tidings so soon, but the air was surcharged with the consciousness of an impending crisis.

Half a dozen men started to make their way on tiptoe toward the back room.  One stood with his whisky glass suspended in midair, and tilted back his head to listen.  In the gaming-room Hurley pushed back his chair and leaned to the left, giving him a free sweep for his right hand.  The Mexican smiled with a slow and deep content.

“Thank you,” answered Pierre, “but I am waiting still, sir.”

The left hand of Hurley played impatiently on the table.

He said:  “Of course, if you have enough—­”

“I—­enough?” flared the old aristocrat.

Pierre le Rouge turned fairly upon Hurley.

“In the name of God,” he said calmly, “make an end of your game.  You’re playing for money, but I think this man is playing for his eternal soul.”

The solemn, bookish phraseology came smoothly from his tongue.  He knew no other.  It drew a murmur of amusement from the room and a snarl from Hurley.

“Put on skirts, kid, and join the Salvation Army, but don’t get yourself messed all up in here.  This is my party, and I’m damned particular who I invite!  Now, run along!” The head of Pierre tilted back, and he burst into laughter which troubled even Hurley.

The gambler blurted:  “What’s happening to you, kid?”

“I’ve been making a lot of good resolutions, Mr. Hurley, about keeping out of trouble; but here I am in it up to the neck.”

“No trouble as long as you keep your hand out of another man’s game, kid.”

“That’s it.  I can’t see you rob Mr. Cochrane like this.  You aren’t gambling—­you’re digging gold.  The game stops now.”

It was a moment before the crowd realized what was about to happen; they saw it reflected first in the face of Hurley, which suddenly went taut and pale, and then, even as they looked with a smile of curiosity and derision toward Pierre le Rouge, they saw and understood.

For the moment Pierre said, “The game stops now,” the calm which had been with him was gone.  It was like the scent of blood to the starved wolf.  The last word was scarcely off his tongue when he was crouched with a devil of green fury in his eyes—­the light struck his hair into a wave of flame—­his face altered by a dozen ugly years.

“D’you mean?” whispered Hurley, as if he feared to break the silence with his full voice.

“Get out of the room.”

And the impulse of Hurley, plainly enough, was to obey the order, and go anywhere to escape from that relentless stare.  His glance wavered and flashed around the circle and then back to Red Pierre, for the expectancy of the crowd forced him back.

When the leader of the pack springs and fails to kill, the rest of the pack tear him to pieces.  Remembering this, Mac Hurley forced his glance back to Pierre.  Moreover, there was a soft voice from behind, and he remembered Diaz.

All this had taken place in the length of time that it takes a heavy body to totter on the brink of a precipice or a cat to regain its feet after a fall.  After the voice of Diaz there was a sway through the room, a pulse of silence, and then three hands shot for their hips—­Pierre, Diaz, and Hurley.

No stop-watch could have caught the differing lengths of time which each required for the draw.  The muzzle of Hurley’s revolver was not clear of the holster—­the gun of Diaz was nearly at the level when Pierre’s weapon exploded at his hip.  The bullet cut through the wrist of Hurley.  Never again would that slender, supple hand fly over the cards, doing things other than they seemed.  He made no effort to escape from the next bullet, but stood looking down at his broken wrist; horror for the moment gave him a dignity oddly out of place with his usual appearance.  He alone in all the room was moveless.

The crowd, undecided for an instant, broke for the doors at the first shot; Pierre le Rouge pitched to the floor as Diaz leaped forward, the revolver in either hand spitting lead and fire.

It was no bullet that downed Pierre but his own cunning.  He broke his fall with an outstretched left hand, while the bullets of Diaz pumped into the void space which his body had filled a moment before.

Lying there at ease, he leveled the revolver, grinning with the mirthless lust of battle, and fired over the top of the table.  The guns dropped from the hands of huge Diaz.  He caught at his throat and staggered back the full length of the room, crashing against the wall.  When he pitched forward on his face he was dead before he struck the floor.

Pierre, now Red Pierre, indeed, rose and ran to the fallen man, and, looking at the bulk of the giant, he wondered with a cold heart.  He knew before he slipped his hand over the breast of Diaz that this was death.  Then he rose again and watched the still fingers which seemed to be gripping at the boards.  These he saw, and nothing else, and all he heard was the rattling of the wind of winter, wrenching at some loose shingle on the roof, and he knew that he was alone in the world, for he had put out a life.

He found a strange weight pulling down his right hand, and started when he saw the revolver.  He replaced it in the holster automatically, and in so doing touched the barrel and found it warm.

Then fear came to Pierre, the first real fear of his life.  He jerked his head high and looked about him.  The room was utterly empty.  He tiptoed to the door and found even the long bar deserted, littered with tall bottles and overturned glasses.  The cold in his heart increased.  A moment before he had been hand in hand with all the mirth in that place.

Now the men whose laughter he had repeated with smiles, the men against whose sleeves his elbow had touched, were further away from him than they had been when all the snow-covered miles from Morgantown to the school of Father Victor had laid between them.  They were men who might lose themselves in any crowd, but he was set apart with a brand, even as Hurley and Diaz had been set apart that eventful evening.

He had killed a man.  That fact blotted out the world.  He drew his gun again and stole down the length of the bar.  Once he stopped and poised the weapon before he realized that the white, fierce face that squinted at him was his own reflection in a mirror.

Outside the door the free wind caught at his face, and he blessed it in his heart, as if it had been the touch of the hand of a friend.  Beyond the long, dark, silent street the moor rose and passed up through the safe, dark spaces of the sky.

He must move quickly now.  The pursuit was not yet organized, but it would begin in a space of minutes.  From the group of half a dozen horses which stood before the saloon he selected the best—­a tall, raw-boned nag with an ugly head.  Into the saddle he swung, wondering faintly that the theft of a horse mattered so little to him.  His was the greatest sin.  All other things mattered nothing.

Down the long street he galloped.  The sharp echoes flew out at him from every unlighted house, but not a human being was in sight.  So he swung out onto the long road which wound up through the hills, and beside him rode a grim brotherhood, the invisible fellowship of Cain.

The moon rose higher, brighter, and a grotesque black shadow galloped over the snow beside him.  He turned his head sharply to the other side and watched the sweep of white hills which reached back in range after range until they blended with the shadows of night.

The road faded to a bridle path, and this in turn he lost among the windings of the valley.  He was lost from even the traces of men, and yet the fear of men pursued him.  Fear, and yet with it there was a thrill of happiness, for every swinging stride of the tall, wild roan carried him deeper into freedom, the unutterable fierce freedom of the hunted.