Riders of the Silences

After that call first reached him, clear to his ears though vague as a murmur at the ear of Mary, McGurk swung to the saddle of his white horse, and galloped down the gorge like a veritable angel of death.

The end was very near, he felt, yet the chances were at least ten to one that he would miss Pierre in the throat of the gorge, for among the great boulders, tall as houses, which littered it, a thousand men might have passed and repassed and never seen each other.  Only the calling of Pierre could guide him surely.

The calling had ceased for some moments, and he began to fear that he had overrun his mark and missed Pierre in the heart of the pass, when, as he rounded a mighty boulder, the shout ran ringing in his very ears:  “McGurk!” and a horseman swung into view.

“Here!” he called in answer, and stood with his right hand lifted, bringing his horse to a sharp halt, like some ancient cavalier stopping in the middle of the battle to exchange greetings with a friendly foe.

The other rider whirled alongside, his sombrero’s brim flaring back from his forehead, so that McGurk caught the glare of the eyes beneath the shadow.

“So for the third time, my friend—­” said McGurk.

“Which is the fatal one,” answered Pierre.  “How will you die, McGurk?  On foot or on horseback?”

“On the ground, Pierre, for my horse might stir and make my work messy.  I love a neat job, you know.”  “Good.”

They swung from the saddles and stood facing each other.

“Begin!” commanded McGurk.  “I’ve no time to waste.”

“I’ve very little time to look at the living McGurk.  Let me look my fill before the end.”

“Then look, and be done.  I’ve a lady coming to meet me.”

The other grew marvelously calm.

“She is with you, McGurk?”

“My dear Pierre, I’ve been with her ever since she started up the Old Crow.”

“It will be easier to forget her.  Are you ready?”

“So soon?  Come, man, there’s much for us to say.  Many old times to chat over.”

“I only wonder,” said Pierre, “how one death can pay back what you’ve done.  Think of it!  I’ve actually run away from you and hidden myself among the hills.  I’ve feared you, McGurk!”

He said it with a deep astonishment, as a grown man will speak of the way he feared darkness when he was a child.  McGurk moistened his white lips.  The white horse pawed the rocks as though impatient to be gone.

“Listen,” said Pierre, “your horse grows restive.  Suppose we stand here—­it’s a convenient distance apart—­and wait with our arms folded for the next time the white horse paws the rocks, because when I kill you, McGurk, I want you to die knowing that another man was faster on the draw and straighter with his bullets than you are.  D’you see?”

He could not have spoken with a more formal politeness if he had been asking the other to pass first through the door of a dining-room.  The wonder of McGurk grew and the sweat on his forehead seemed to be spreading a chill through his entire body.  He said:  “I see.  You trust all to the cross, eh, Pierre?  The little cross under your neck?”

“It’s gone,” said Pierre le Rouge.  “Why should I use it against a night rider, McGurk?  Are you ready?”

And McGurk, not trusting his voice for some strange reason, nodded.  The two folded their arms.

But the white horse which had been pawing the stones only a moment before was now unusually quiet.  The very postures of the men seemed to turn him to stone, a beautiful, marble statue with the moonlight glistening on the muscles of his perfect shoulders.

At length he stirred.  At once a quiver jerked through the tense bodies of the waiting men, but the white horse had merely stiffened and raised his head high.  Now, with arched neck and flaunting tail he neighed loudly, as if he asked a question.  How could he know, dumb brute, that what he asked only death could answer?

And as they waited an itching came at the palm of McGurk’s hand.  It was not much, just a tingle of the blood.  To ease it, he closed his fingers and found that his hand was moist with cold perspiration.

He began to wonder if his fingers would be slippery on the butt of the gun.  Then he tried covertly to dry them against his shirt.  But he ceased this again, knowing that he must be of hair-trigger alertness to watch for the stamp of the white horse.

It occurred to him, also, that he was standing on a loose stone which might wobble when he pulled his gun, and he cursed himself silently for his hasty folly.  Pierre, doubtless, had noticed that stone, and therefore he had made the suggestion that they stand where they were.  Otherwise, how could there be that singular calm in the steady eyes which looked across at him?

Also, how explain the hunger of that stare?  Was not he McGurk, and was not this man whom he had already once shot down?  God, what a fool he had been not to linger an instant longer in that saloon in the old days and place the final shot in the prostrate body!  In all his life he had made only one such mistake, and now that folly was pursuing him.  And now—­

The foot of the white horse lifted—­struck the rock.  The sound of its fall was lost in the explosion of two guns, and a ring of metal on metal.  The revolver snapped from the hand of McGurk, whirled in a flashing circle, and clanged on the rocks at his feet.  The bullet of Pierre had struck the barrel and knocked it cleanly from his hand.

It was luck, only luck, that placed that shot, and his own bullet, which had started first, had traveled wild, for there stood Pierre le Rouge, smiling faintly, alert, calm.  For the first time in his life McGurk had missed.  He set his teeth and waited for death.

But that steady voice of Pierre said:  “To shoot you would be a pleasure, but there wouldn’t be any lasting satisfaction in it.  So there lies your gun at your feet.  Well, here lies mine.”

He dropped his own weapon to a position corresponding with that of McGurk’s.

“We were both very wild that time.  We must do better now.  We’ll stoop for our guns, McGurk.  The signal?  No, we won’t wait for the horse to stamp.  The signal will be when you stoop for your gun.  You shall have every advantage, you see?  Start for that gun, McGurk, when you’re ready for the end.”

The hand of McGurk stretched out and his arm stiffened but it seemed as though all the muscles of his back had grown stiff.  He could not bend.  It was strange.  It was both ludicrous and incomprehensible.  Perhaps he had grown stiff with cold in that position.

But he heard the voice of Pierre explaining gently:  “You can’t move, my friend.  I understand.  It’s fear that stiffened your back.  It’s fear that sends the chill up and down your blood.  It’s fear that makes you think back to your murders, one by one.  McGurk, you’re done for.  You’re through.  You’re ready for the discard.  I’m not going to kill you.  I’ve thought of a finer hell than death, and that is to live as you shall live.  I’ve beaten you, McGurk, beaten you fairly on the draw, and I’ve broken your heart by doing it.  The next time you face a man you’ll begin to think—­you’ll begin to remember how one other man beat you at the draw.  And that wonder, McGurk, will make your hand freeze to your side, as you’ve made the hands of other men before me freeze.  D’you understand?”

The lips of McGurk parted.  The whisper of his dry panting reached Pierre, and the devil in him smiled.

“In six weeks, McGurk, you’ll be finished.  Now get out!”

And pace by pace McGurk drew back, with his face still toward Pierre.

The latter cried:  “Wait.  Are you going to leave your gun?”

Only the steady retreat continued.

“And go unarmed through the mountains?  What will men say when they see McGurk with an empty holster?”

But the outlaw had passed out of view beyond the corner of one of the monster boulders.  After him went the white horse, slowly, picking his steps, as if he were treading on dangerous and unknown ground and would not trust his leader.  Pierre was left to the loneliness of the gorge.

The moonlight only served to make more visible its rocky nakedness, and like that nakedness was the life of Pierre under his hopeless inward eye.  Over him loomed from either side the gleaming pinnacles of the Twin Bears, and he remembered many a time when he had looked up toward them from the crests of lesser mountains—­looked up toward them as a man looks to a great and unattainable ideal.  Here he was come to the crest of all the ranges; here he was come to the height and limit of his life, and what had he attained?  Only a cruel, cold isolation.  It had been a steep ascent; the declivity of the farther side led him down to a steep and certain ruin and the dark night below.  But he stiffened suddenly and threw his head high as if he faced his fate; and behind him the cream-colored mare raised her head with a toss and whinnied softly.

It seemed to him that he had heard something calling, for the sound was lost against the sweep of wind coming up the gorge.  Something calling there in the night of the mountains as he himself had called when he rode so wildly in the quest for McGurk.  How long ago had that been?

But it came once more, clear beyond all doubt.  He recognized the voice in spite of the panting which shook it; a wild wail like that of a heartbroken child, coming closer to him like someone running:  “Pierre!  Oh, Pierre!”

And all at once he knew that the moon was broad and bright and fair, and the heavens clear and shining with gold points of light.  Once more the cry.  He raised his arms and waited.