RIDERS OF THE SILENCES
Down all the length of the mountain-desert and across its width of
rocks and mountains and valleys and stern plateaus there is a saying:
"You can tell a man by the horse he rides." For most other important
things are apt to go by opposites, which is the usual way in which a
man selects his wife. With dogs, for instance--a quiet man is apt to
want an active dog, and a tractable fellow may keep the most vicious of
wolf-dogs.
But when it comes to a horse, a man's heart speaks for itself, and if
he has sufficient knowledge of the king of beasts he will choose a
sympathetic mount. A dainty woman loves a neat-stepping saddle-horse;
a philosopher likes a nodding, stumble-footed nag which will jog all
day long and care not a whit whether it goes up dale or down.
To know the six wild riders who galloped over the white reaches of the
mountain-desert this night, certainly their horses should be studied
first and the men secondly, for the one explained the other.
They came in a racing triangle. Even the storm at its height could not
daunt such furious riders. At the point of the triangle thundered a
mighty black stallion, his muzzle and his broad chest flecked with
white foam, for he stretched his head out and champed at the bit with
ears laid flat back, as though even that furious pace gave him no
opportunity to use fully his strength.
He was no cleanly cut beauty, but an ugly headed monster with a
savagely hooked Roman nose and small, keen eyes, always red at the
corners. A medieval baron in full panoply of plate armor would have
chosen such a charger among ten thousand steeds, yet the black stallion
needed all his strength to uphold the unarmored giant who bestrode him,
a savage figure.
When the broad brim of his hat flapped up against the wind the
moonshine caught at shaggy brows, a cruelly arched nose, thin, straight
lips, and a forward-thrusting jaw. It seemed as if nature had hewn him
roughly and designed him for a primitive age where he could fight his
way with hands and teeth.
This was Jim Boone. To his right and a little behind him galloped a
riderless horse, a beautiful young animal continually tossing its head
and looking as if for guidance at the big stallion.
To the left strode a handsome bay with pricking ears. A mound
interfered with his course, and he cleared it in magnificent style that
would have brought a cheer from the lips of any English lover of the
chase.
Straight in the saddle sat Dick Wilbur, and he raised his face a little
to the wind, smiling faintly as if he rejoiced in its fine strength, as
handsome as the horse he rode, as cleanly cut, as finely bred. The
moon shone a little brighter on him than on any others of the six stark
riders.
Bud Mansie behind, for instance, kept his head slightly to one side and
cursed beneath his breath at the storm and set his teeth at the wind.
His horse, delicately formed, with long, slender legs, could not have
endured that charge against the storm save that it constantly edged
behind the leaders and let them break the wind. It carried less weight
than any other mount of the six, and its strength was cunningly nursed
by the rider so that it kept its place, and at the finish it would be
as strong as any and swifter, perhaps, for a sudden, short effort, just
as Bud Mansie might be numbed through all his nervous, slender body,
but never too numb for swift and deadly action.
On the opposite wing of the flying wedge galloped a dust-colored gray,
ragged of mane and tail, and vindictive of eye, like its down-headed
rider, who shifted his glance rapidly from side to side and watched the
ground closely before his horse as if he were perpetually prepared for
danger.
He distrusted the very ground over which his mount strode. For all
this he seemed the least formidable of all the riders. To see him pass
none could have suspected that this was Black Morgan Gandil.
Last of the crew came two men almost as large as Jim Boone himself, on
strong steady-striding horses. They came last in this crew, but among
a thousand other long-riders they would have ridden first, either
red-faced, good-humored, loud-voiced Garry Patterson, or Phil Branch,
stout-handed, blunt of jaw, who handled men as he had once hammered red
iron at the forge.
Each of them should have ridden alone in order to be properly
appreciated. To see them together was like watching a flock of eagles
every one of which should have been a solitary lord of the air. But
after scanning that lordly train which followed, the more terrible
seemed the rider of the great black horse.
Yet the king was sad, and the reason for his sadness was the riderless
horse which galloped so freely beside him. His son had ridden that
horse when they set out, and all the way down to the railroad Handsome
Hal Boone had kept his mount prancing and curveting and had ridden
around and around tall Dick Wilbur, playing pranks, and had teased his
father's black until the big stallion lashed out wildly with furious
heels.
It was the memory of this that kept the grave shadow of a smile on the
father's lips for all the sternness of his eyes. He never turned his
head, for, looking straight forward, he could conjure up the laughing
vision; but when he glanced to the empty saddle he heard once more the
last unlucky shot fired from the train as they raced off with their
booty, and saw Hal reel in his saddle and pitch forward; and how he had
tried to check his horse and turn back; and how big Dick Wilbur, and
Patterson, and mighty-handed Phil Branch had forced him to go on and
leave that form lying motionless on the snow.
At that he groaned, and spurred the black, and so the cavalcade rushed
faster and faster through the night.
They came over a sharp ridge and veered to the side just in time, for
all the further slope was a mass of treacherous sand and rubble and raw
rocks and mud, where a landslide had stripped the hill to the stone.
As they veered about the ruin and thundered on down to the foot of the
hill, Jim Boone threw up his hand for a signal and brought his stallion
to a halt on back-braced, sliding legs.
For a metallic glitter had caught his eye, and then he saw, half
covered by the pebbles and dirt, the figure of a man. He must have
been struck by the landslide and not overwhelmed by it, but rather
carried before it like a stick in a rush of water. At the outermost
edge of the wave he lay with the rocks and dirt washed over him. Boone
swung from the saddle and lifted Pierre le Rouge.
The gleam of metal was the cross which his fingers still gripped.
Boone examined it with a somewhat superstitious caution, took it from
the nerveless fingers, and slipped it into a pocket of Pierre's shirt.
A small cut on the boy's forehead showed where the stone struck which
knocked him senseless, but the cut still bled--a small trickle--Pierre
lived. He even stirred and groaned and opened his eyes, large and
deeply blue.
It was only an instant before they closed, but Boone had seen. He
turned with the figure lifted easily in his arms as if Pierre had been
a child fallen asleep by the hearth and now about to be carried off to
bed.
And the outlaw said: "I've lost my boy to-night. This here one was
given me by the will of--God."
Black Morgan Gandil reined his horse close by, leaned to peer down, and
the shadow of his hat fell across the face of Pierre.
"There's no good comes of savin' shipwrecked men. Leave him where you
found him, Jim. That's my advice. Sidestep a red-headed man. That's
what I say."
The quick-stepping horse of Bud Mansie came near, and the rider wiped
his blue, stiff lips, and spoke from the side of his mouth, a prison
habit of the line that moves in the lock-step: "Take it from me, Jim,
there ain't any place in our crew for a man you've picked up without
knowing him beforehand. Let him lay, I say."
But big Dick Wilbur was already leading up the horse of Hal Boone, and
into the saddle Jim Boone swung the inert body of Pierre. The argument
was settled, for every man of them knew that nothing could turn Boone
back from a thing once begun. Yet there were muttered comments that
drew Black Morgan Gandil and Bud Mansie together.
And Gandil, from the South Seas, growled with averted eyes:
"This is the most fool stunt the chief has ever pulled."
"Right, pal," answered Mansie. "You take a snake in out of the cold,
and it bites you when it comes to in the warmth; but the chief has
started, and there ain't nothing that'll make him stop, except maybe
God or McGurk."
And Black Gandil answered with his evil, sudden grin: "Maybe McGurk,
but not God."
They started on again with Garry Patterson and Dick Wilbur riding close
on either side of Pierre, supporting his limp body. It delayed the
whole gang, for they could not go on faster than a jog-trot. The wind,
however, was falling off in violence. Its shrill whistling ceased, at
length, and they went on, accompanied only by the harsh crunching of
the snow underfoot.