Riders of the Silences

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 gunfight 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 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.

The moment he raised that cross the bull throat of Jim Boone bellowed a command, the poised guns of the gang enforced it, and all the crowd dropped to their knees, leaving the six outlaws scattered about the edges of the mob like sheep dogs around a folding flock, while in the center stood Pierre with white, upturned face and the raised cross.

So Martin Ryder was buried with “trimmings,” and the gang rode back, laughing and shouting, through the town and up into the safety of the mountains.  Election day was fast approaching and therefore the rival candidates for sheriff hastily organized posses and made the usual futile pursuit.

In fact, before the pursuit was well under way, Boone and his men sat at their supper table in the cabin.  The seventh chair was filled; all were present except Jack, who sulked in her room.  Pierre went to her door and knocked.  He carried under his arm a package which he had secured in the General Merchandise Store of Morgantown.

“We’re all waiting for you at the table,” he explained.

“Just keep on waiting,” said the husky voice of Jacqueline.

“I’ve brought you a present.”

“I hate your presents!”

“It’s a thing you’ve wanted for a long time, Jacqueline.”

Only a stubborn silence.

“I’m putting your door a little ajar.”

“If you dare to come in I’ll—­”

“And I’m leaving the package right here at the entrance.  I’m so sorry, Jacqueline, that you hate me.”

And then he walked off down the hall—­cunning Pierre—­before she could send her answer like an arrow after him.  At the table he arranged an eighth plate and drew up a chair before it.  “If that’s for Jack,” remarked Dick Wilbur, “you’re wasting your time.  I know her and I know her type.  She’ll never come out to the table tonight—­nor tomorrow, either.  I know!”

In fact, he knew a good deal too much about girls and women also, did Wilbur, and that was why he rode the long trails of the mountain-desert with Boone and his men.  Far south and east in the Bahamas a great mansion stood vacant because he was gone, and the dust lay thick on the carpets and powdered the curtains and tapestries with a common gray.

He had built it and furnished it for a woman he loved, and afterward for her sake he had killed a man and fled from a posse and escaped in the steerage of a west-bound ship.  Still the law followed him, and he kept on west and west until he reached the mountain-desert, which thinks nothing of swallowing men and their reputations.

There he was safe, but someday he would see some woman smile, catch the glimmer of some eye, and throw safety away to ride after her.

It was a weakness, but what made a tragic figure of handsome Dick Wilbur was that he knew his weakness and sat still and let fate walk up and overtake him.

Yet Pierre le Rouge answered this man of sorrowful wisdom:  “In my part of the country men say:  ’If you would speak of women let money talk for you.’”

And he placed a gold piece on the table.

“She will come out to the supper table.”

“She will not,” smiled Wilbur, and covered the coin.  “Will you take odds?”

“No charity.  Who else will bet?”

“I,” said Jim Boone instantly.  “You figure her for an ordinary sulky kid.”

Pierre smiled upon him.

“There’s a cut in my shirt where her knife passed through; and that’s the reason that I’ll bet on her now.”  The whole table covered his coin, with laughter.

“We’ve kept one part of your bargain, Pierre.  We’ve seen your father buried in the corner plot.  Now, what’s the second part?”

“I don’t know you well enough to ask you that,” said Pierre.

They plied him with suggestions.

“To rob the Berwin Bank?”

“Stick up a train?”

“No.  That’s nothing.”

“Round up the sheriffs from here to the end of the mountains?”

“Too easy.”

“Roll all those together,” said Pierre, “and you’ll begin to get an idea of what I’ll ask.”

Then a low voice called from the black throat of the hall:  “Pierre!”

The others were silent, but Pierre winked at them, and made great flourish with knife and fork against his plate as if to cover the sound of Jacqueline’s voice.

“Pierre!” she called again.  “I’ve come to thank you.”

He jumped up and turned toward the hall.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s a wonder!”

“Then we’re friends?”

“If you want to be.”

“There’s nothing I want more.  Then you’ll come out and have supper with us, Jack?”

There was a little pause, and then Jim Boone struck his fist on the table and cursed, for she stepped from the darkness into the flaring light of the room.