Riders of the Silences

Dick Wilbur, telling Mary how Pierre had cut himself adrift, did not even pretend to sorrow, and she listened to him with her eyes fixed steadily on his own.  As a matter of fact, she had shown neither hope nor excitement from the moment he came back to her and started to tell his message.  But if she showed neither hope nor excitement for herself, surely she gave Dick still fewer grounds for any optimistic foresights.

So he finished gloomily:  “And as far as I can make out, Pierre is right.  There’s some rotten bad luck that follows him.  It may not be the cross—­I don’t suppose you believe in superstition like that, Miss Brown?”

She said:  “It saved my life.”

“The cross?”

“Yes.”

“Then Pierre—­you mean—­you met before the dance—­you mean—­”

He was stammering so that he couldn’t finish his thoughts, and she broke in:  “If he will not come to me, then I must go to him.”

“Follow Pierre le Rouge?” queried Wilbur.  “You’re an optimist.  But that’s because you’ve never seen him ride.  I consider it a good day’s work to start out with him and keep within sight till night, but as for following and over-taking him—­”

He laughed heartily at the thought.

And she smiled a little sadly, answering:  “But I have the most boundless patience in the world.  He may gallop all the way, but I will walk, and keep on walking, and reach him in the end.”

Her hands moved out as though testing their power, gripping at the air.

“Where will you go to hunt for him?”

“I don’t know.  But every evening, when I look out at the sunset hills, with the purple along the valleys, I think that he must be out there somewhere, going toward the highest ranges.  If I were up in that country I know that I could find him.”  “Never in a thousand years.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s on the trail—­”

“On the trail?”

“Of McGurk.”

She started.

“What is this man McGurk?  I hear of him on all sides.  If one of the men rides a bucking horse successfully, someone is sure to say:  ’Who taught you what you know, Bud—­McGurk?’ And then the rest laugh.  The other day a man was pointed out to me as an expert shot.  ’Not as fast as McGurk,’ it was said, ‘but he shoots just as straight.’  Finally I asked someone about McGurk.  The only answer I received was:  ’I hope you never find out what he is.’  Tell me, what is McGurk?”

Wilbur considered the question gravely.

He said at last:  “McGurk is—­hell!”

He expanded his statement:  “Think of a man who can ride anything that walks on four feet, who never misses with either a rifle or a revolver, who doesn’t know the meaning of fear, and then imagine that man living by himself and fighting the rest of the world like a lone wolf.  That’s McGurk.  He’s never had a companion; he’s never trusted any man.  Perhaps that’s why they say about him the same thing that they say about me.”

“What’s that?”

“You will smile when you hear.  They say that McGurk will lose out in the end on account of some woman.”

“And they say that of you?”

“They say right of me.  I know it myself.  Look at me now.  What right have I here?  If I’m found I’m the meat of the first man who sights me, but here I stay, and wait and watch for your smiles—­like a love-sick boy.  By God, you must despise me, Mary!”

“I don’t try to understand you Westerners,” she answered, “and that’s why I have never questioned you before.  Tell me, why is it that you come so stealthily to see me and run away as soon as anyone else appears?”

He said with wonder:  “Haven’t you guessed?”

“I don’t dare guess.”

“But you have, and your guess was right.  There’s a price on my head.  By right, I should be out there on the ranges with Pierre le Rouge and McGurk.  There’s the only safe place; but I saw you and I came down out of the wilds and can’t go back.  I’ll stay, I suppose, till I run my head into a halter.”

She was too much moved to speak for a moment, and then:  “You come to me in spite of that?  Dick, whatever you have done, I know that it’s only chance which made you go wrong, just as it made Pierre.  I wish—­”

The dimness of her eyes encouraged him with a hope.  He moved closer to her.

He repeated:  “You wish—­”

“That you could be satisfied with a mere friendship.  I could give you that, Dick, with all my heart.”

He stepped back and smiled somewhat grimly on her.

She went on:  “And this McGurk—­what do you mean when you say that Pierre is on his trail?”

“Hunting him with a gun.”

She grew paler, but her voice remained steady.

“But in all those miles of mountains they may never meet?”

“They can’t stay apart any more than iron can stay away from a magnet.  Listen:  half a dozen years ago McGurk had the reputation of bearing a charmed life.  He had been in a hundred fights and he was never touched with either a knife or a bullet.  Then he crossed Pierre le Rouge when Pierre was only a youngster just come onto the range.  He put two bullets through Pierre, but the boy shot him from the floor and wounded him for the first time.  The charm of McGurk was broken.

“For half a dozen years McGurk was gone; there was never a whisper about him.  Then he came back and went on the trail of Pierre.  He has killed the friends of Pierre one by one; Pierre himself is the next in order—­Pierre or myself.  And when those two meet there will be the greatest fight that was ever staged in the mountain-desert.”

She stood straight, staring past Wilbur with hungry eyes.

“I knew he needed me.  I have to save him, Dick.  You see that?  I have to bring him down from the mountains and keep him safe from McGurk.  McGurk!  Somehow the sound means what ‘devil’ used to mean to me.”

“You’ve never traveled alone, and yet you’d go up there and brave everything that comes for the sake of Pierre?  What has he done to deserve it, Mary?”.

“What have I done, Dick, to deserve the care you have for me?”

He stared gloomily on her.

“When do you start?”

“Tonight.”

“Your friends won’t let you go.”

“I’ll steal away and leave a note behind me.”

“And you’ll go alone?”

She caught at a hope.

“Unless you’ll go with me, Dick?”

“I?  Take you—­to Pierre?”

She did not speak to urge him, but in the silence her beauty pleaded for her.

He said:  “Mary, how lovely you are.  If I go I will have you for a few days—­for a week at most, all to myself.”

She shook her head.  From the window behind her the sunset light flared in her hair, flooding it with red-gold.

“All the time that we are gone, you will never say things like this, Dick?”

“I suppose not.  I should be near you, but terribly far away from your thoughts all the while.  Still, you will be near.  You will be very beautiful, Mary, riding up the trail through the pines, with all the scents of the evergreens blowing about you, and I—­well, I must go back to a second childhood and play a game of suppose—­”

“A game of what?”

“Of supposing that you are really mine, Mary, and riding out into the wilderness for my sake.”

She stepped a little closer, peering into his face.

“No matter what you suppose, I’m sure you’ll leave that part of it merely a game, Dick!”

He laughed suddenly, though the sound broke off as short and sharp as it began.

“Haven’t I played a game all my life with the fair ladies?  And have I anything to show for it except laughter?  I’ll go with you, Mary, if you’ll let me.”

“Dick, you’ve a heart of gold!  What shall I take?”

“I’ll make the pack up, and I’ll be back here an hour after dark and whistle.  Like this—­”

And he gave the call of Boone’s gang.

“I understand.  I’ll be ready.  Hurry, Dick, for we’ve very little time.”

He hesitated, then:  “All the time we’re on the trail you must be far from me, and at the end of it will be Pierre le Rouge—­and happiness for you.  Before we start, Mary, I’d like to—­”

It seemed that she read his mind, for she slipped suddenly inside his arms, kissed him, and was gone from the room.  He stood a moment with a hand raised to his face.

“After all,” he muttered, “that’s enough to die for, and—­” He threw up his long arms in a gesture of resignation.

“The will of God be done!” said Wilbur, and laughed again.