Riders of the Silences Part 36

Jack was speechless with scorn.

"Sat down and cried, eh?"

"I was dazed; I couldn't think. But he couldn't have been killed by some other man. There was no shot fired; I should have heard it."

Jack moistened his lips.

"Lady, a knife don't make much sound either going or coming out--not much more sound than a whisper, but that whisper means a lot. I got an idea that d.i.c.k heard it. Then the river covered him up."

He stopped short and stared at Mary with squinted eyes.

"D'you mean to tell me that you had the nerve to come all the way up the Old Crow by yourself?"

"Every inch of the way."

Jack leaned forward, sneering, savage.

"Then I suppose you put the hitch that's on that pack outside?"

"No."

Jack was dumbfounded.

"Then you admit--"

"That first night when I went to sleep I felt as if there were something near me. When I woke up there was a bright fire burning in front of me and the pack had been lashed and placed on one of the horses. At first I thought that it was d.i.c.k, who had come back. But d.i.c.k didn't appear all day. The next night--" "Wait!" said Jack.

"This is gettin' sort of creepy. If you was the drinking kind I'd say you'd been hitting up the red-eye."

"The next evening," continued Mary steadily, "I came about dark on a camp-fire with a bed of twigs near it. I stayed by the fire, but no one appeared. Once I thought I heard a horse whinny far away, and once I thought that I saw a streak of white disappear over the top of a hill."

The boy sprang up, shuddering with panic.

"You saw what?"

"Nothing. I thought for a minute that it was a bit of something white, but it was gone all at once."

"White--vanished at once--went into the dark as fast as a horse can gallop?"

"Something like that. Do you think it was someone?"

For answer the boy whipped out his revolver, examined it, and spun the cylinder with shaking hands. Then he said through set teeth: "So you come up here trailin' him after you, eh?"

"Who?"

"McGurk!"

The name came like a rifle shot and Mary rose in turn and shrank back toward the wall, for there was murder in the lighted black eyes which stared after her and crumbling fear in her own heart at the thought of McGurk hovering near--of the peril that impended for Pierre. Of the nights in the valley of the Crow she refused to let herself think.

Cold beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead.

"You fool--you fool! d.a.m.n your pretty pink-and-white face--you've done for us all! Get out!"

Mary moved readily enough toward the door, her teeth chattering with terror in the face of this fury.

Jack continued wildly: "Done for us all; got us all as good as under the sod. I wish you was in--Get out quick, or I'll forget--you're a woman!" He broke into hysterical laughter, which stopped short and finished in a heartbroken whisper: "Pierre!"

CHAPTER 30

At that Mary, who stood with her hand on the latch, whirled and stood wide-eyed, her astonishment greater than her fear, for that whisper told her a thousand things.

Through her mind all the time that she stayed in the cabin there had pa.s.sed a curious surmise that this very place might be the covert of Pierre le Rouge. There was a fatality about it, for the invisible Power which had led her up the valley of the Old Crow surely would not make mistakes.

In her search for Pierre, Providence brought her to this place, and Providence could not be wrong. This, a vague emotion stirring in her somewhere between reason and the heart, grew to an almost certain knowledge as she heard the whisper, the faint, heartbroken whisper: "Pierre!"

And when she turned to the boy again, noting the s.h.i.+rts and the chaps hanging at the wall, she knew they belonged to Pierre as surely as if she had seen him hang them there.

The fingers of Jack were twisted around the b.u.t.t of his revolver, white with the intensity of the pressure.

Now he cried: "Get out! You've done your work; get out!"

But Mary stepped straight toward the murderous, pale face. "I'll stay," she said, "and wait for Pierre."

The boy blanched.

"Stay?" he echoed.

The heart of Mary went out to this trusted companion who feared for his friend.

She said gently: "Listen; I've come all this way looking for Pierre, but not to harm him or to betray him, I'm his friend. Can't you trust me Jack?"

"Trust you? No more than I'll trust what came with you!"

And the fierce black eyes lingered on Mary and then fled past her toward the door, as if the boy debated hotly and silently whether or not it would be better to put an end to this intruder, but stayed his hand, fearing that Power which had followed her up the valley of the Old Crow.

It was that same invisible guardian who made Mary strong now; it was like the hand of a friend on her shoulder, like the voice of a friend whispering rea.s.suring words at her ear. She faced those blazing, black eyes steadily. It would be better to be frank, wholly frank.

"This is the house of Pierre. I know it as surely as if I saw him sitting here now. You can't deceive me. And I'll stay. I'll even tell you why. Once he said that he loved me, Jack, but he left me because of a strange superst.i.tion; and so I've followed to tell him that I want to be near no matter what fate hangs over him."

And the boy, whiter still, and whiter, looked at her with clearing, narrowing eyes.

"So you're one of them," said the boy softly; "you're one of the fools who listen to Red Pierre. Well, I know you; I've known you from the minute I seen you crouched there at the fire. You're the one Pierre met at the dance at the Crittenden schoolhouse. Tell me!"

"Yes," said Mary, marveling greatly.

"And he told you he loved you?"