THE LUCK OF THE SHIPWRECKED
It was early morning before Pierre reached the refuge of Boone's gang,
but there was still a light through the window of the large room, and
he entered to find Boone, Mansie, and Gandil grouped about the fire,
all ominously silent, all ominously wakeful. They looked up to him and
big Jim nodded his gray head. Otherwise there was no greeting.
From a shadowy corner Jacqueline rose and went toward the door. He
crossed quickly and barred the way.
"What is it, Jack?"
"Get out of the way."
"Not till you tell me what's wrong."
A veritable devil of fury came blazing in her eyes, and her hand
twitched nervously back to her hip where the dark holster hung. She
said in a voice that shook with anger: "Don't try your bluff on me. I
ain't no shorthorn, Pierre le Rouge."
He stepped aside, frowning.
"To-morrow I'll argue the point with you, Jack."
She turned at the door and snapped back: "You? You ain't fast enough
on the draw to argue with me!"
And she was gone. He turned to face the mocking smile of Black Gandil
and a rapid volley of questions.
"Where's Patterson?"
"No more idea than you have."
"And Branch?"
"What's become of Branch? Hasn't he returned?"
"No. And Dick Wilbur?"
"Boys, he's done with this life and I'm glad of it. He's starting on a
new track."
"After a woman?" sneered Bud Mansie.
"Shut up, Bud," broke in Boone, and then slowly to Pierre: "Patterson
is gone for two days now. You ought to know what that means. Branch
ought to have returned from looking for him, and Branch is still out.
Wilbur is gone. Out of seven we're only four left. Who's next?"
He stared gloomily from face to face, and Gandil snarled: "A fellow who
saves a shipwrecked man--"
"Damn you, keep still, Gandil."
"Don't damn me, Pierre le Rouge, but damn the luck you've brought to
Jim Boone."
"Jim, do you chalk all this up against me?"
"I, lad? No, no! But it's queer. Patterson's done for; there's no
doubt of that. Good-natured Garry Patterson. God, boy, how we'll miss
him! And Branch seems to have gone the same way. If neither of them
show up before morning we can cross 'em off the list. Now Wilbur has
gone and Jack has ridden home looking like a small-sized thunder storm,
and now you come with a white face and a blank eye. What hell is
trailin' us, Pierre, what hell is in store for us. You've seen
something, and we want to know what it is."
"A ghost, Jim, that's all. Just a ghost."
Bud Mansie said softly: "There's only one ghost that could make you
look like this. Was it McGurk, Pierre?"
Boone commanded: "No more of that, Bud. Boy's we're going to turn in,
and to-morrow we'll climb the hills looking for the two we've lost.
But there's something or some one after us. Lads, I'm thinking our
good days are over. The seven of us have been too many for a small
posse and too fast for a big one, but the seven are down to four. The
good days are over."
And the three answered in a solemn chorus: "The good days are over."
All eyes fixed on Pierre, and his glance was settled on the floor.
The morning brought them no better cheer, for Jack, whose singing
generally wakened them, was not to be coaxed into speech, and when
Pierre entered the room she rose and left the breakfast-table. The sad
eyes of Jim Boone followed her and then turned to Pierre. No
explanation was forthcoming, and he asked for none. The old fatalist
had accepted the worst, and now he waited for doom to descend.
They took their horses after breakfast and rode out to search the
hills, for it was quite possible that an accident had crippled at least
one of the two lost men, either Patterson or Branch. Not a gully
within miles was left unsearched, but toward evening they rode back,
one by one, with no tidings.
One by one they rode up, and whistled to announce their coming, and
then rode on to the stable to unsaddle their horses. About the supper
table all gathered with the exception of Bud Mansie. So they waited
the meal and each from time to time stole a glance at the fifth plate
where Bud should sit.
It was Jack who finally stirred herself from her dumb gloom to take up
that fifth and carry it out of the room. It was as if she had
announced the death of Mansie.
After that, they ate what they could and then went back around the
fire. The evening waned, but it brought no sign of any of the missing
three. The wood burned low in the fire. The first to break the long
silence was Jim Boone, with "Who brings in the wood?"
And Black Gandil answered: "We'll match, eh?"
In an outburst of energy the day before he disappeared Garry Patterson
had chopped up some wood and left a pile of it at the corner of the
house. It was a very little thing to bring in an armful of that wood,
but long-riders do not love work, and now they started the matching
seriously. The odd man was out, and Pierre went out on the first toss
of the coins.
"You see," said Gandil. "Bad luck to every one but himself."
At the next throw Jacqueline was the lucky one, and her father
afterward. Gandil rose and stretched himself leisurely, yet as he
sauntered toward the door his backward glance at Pierre was black
indeed. He glanced curiously toward Jack--who looked away sharply--and
then turned his eyes to her father.
The latter was considering him with a gloomy, foreboding stare and
considering over and over again, as Pierre le Rouge well knew, the
prophecy of Black Morgan Gandil.
He fell in turn into a solemn brooding, and many a picture out of the
past came up beside him and stood near till he could almost feel its
presence. He was roused by the creaking of the floor beneath the
ponderous step of Jim Boone, who flung the door open and shouted: "Oh,
Morgan."
In the silence he turned and stared back at Pierre.
"What's up with Gandil?"
"God knows, not I."
Pierre rose and ran from the room and around the side of the building.
There by the woodpile lay the prostrate body. It was a mere limp
weight when he turned and raised it in his arms. So he walked back
into the house carrying all that was left of Black Morgan Gandil, and
placed his burden on a bunk at the side of the room.
There had been no outcry from either Jim Boone or his daughter, but
they came quickly to him, and Jacqueline pressed her ear over the heart
of the hurt man.
She said; "He's still alive, but nearly gone. Where's the wound?"
They found it when they drew off his coat--a small cut high on the
right breast, and another lower and more to the left. Either of them
would been fatal, and about each the flesh was discolored where the
hilt of the knife or the fist of the striker had driven home the blade.
They stood back and made no hopeless effort to save him. It was
uncanny that Black Morgan Gandil, after all of his battles, should die
without a struggle in this way. And it had been no cowardly attack
from the rear. Both wounds were in the front. A hope came to them
when his color increased at one time, but it was for only a moment; it
went out again as if some one were erasing paint from his cheeks.
But just as they were about to turn away his body stirred with a slight
convulsion, the eyes opened wide, and he strove to speak. A red froth
came on his lips. He made another desperate effort, and twisting
himself onto one elbow pointed a rigid arm at Pierre. He gasped:
"McGurk--God!" and dropped. He was dead before his head touched the
blanket.
It was Jacqueline who closed the staring eyes, for the two men were
frozen where they stood. They had heard the story of Patterson and
Branch and Mansie in one word from the lips of the dying man.
McGurk was back. McGurk was prowling about the last of the gang of
Boone, and the lone wolf had pulled down four of the band one by one on
successive days. Only two remained, and these two looked at one
another with a common thought.
"The lights!" cried Jacqueline, turning from the body of Gandil. "He
can shoot us down through the windows at his leisure."
"But he won't," said her father. "I've lived too long with the name of
McGurk in my ears not to know the man. He'll never kill by stealth,
but openly and man to man. I know him, damn him. He'll wait till he
meets us alone, and then we'll finish as poor Gandil, there, or
Patterson and Branch and Bud Mansie, all of them fallen somewhere in
the mountains with the buzzards left to bury 'em. That's how we'll
finish with McGurk on our trail. And you--Gandil was right--it's you
that's brought him on us. A shipwrecked man--by God, Gandil was right!"
His right hand froze on the butt of his gun and his face convulsed with
impotent rage, for he knew, as both the others knew, that long before
that gun was clear of the holster the bullet from Pierre's gun would be
on its way. But Pierre threw his arms wide, and standing so, his
shadow made a black cross on the wall behind him. He even smiled to
tempt the big man further.