THE WAITING
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
away 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, you see, 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?"
"The cross is 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 so eagerly a
moment before was now unusually quiet. The very postures of the men
seemed to have frozen 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 wabble 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 a 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 travelled 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; it would even be a luxury, 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 take water from a Chinaman. 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
heart-broken child, coming closer to him like some one, 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 golden points of light. Once
more the cry. He raised his arms and waited.