THE BURIAL
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 gun
fight 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 borrowed a long black
cloak from one of the women and wrapped himself in it, in lieu of the
robe of the priest, and 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.
"If I leave the table will you come out?"
She stammered: "Ye--n-no!"
"Yes or no?"
"No, no, no!"
And he heard the stamp of her foot and smiled a little.
"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
to-night--nor to-morrow, 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 some day 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?"
"Pierre--"
"Yes?"
"I'm ashamed. I've been acting like a silly kid."
"But we're waiting for you."
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.