Riders of the Silences | Page 5

your life,
lad, and you'll be seeing her blue eyes and the red-gold of her hair in
the dark of the night as I see it now. Me, I'm a hard man, but it breaks
my heart, that ghost of Irene. So here I'll lie, waiting for you, Pierre,

and lingering out the days with whisky, and fighting the wolf eyes of
them there sons of mine. If I weaken--If they find they can look me
square in the eye--they'll finish me quick and make off with the coin.
Pierre, come quick.
"MARTIN RYDER."
The hand of Pierre dropped slowly to his side, and the letter fluttered
with a crisp rustling to the floor.


CHAPTER 3
Then came a voice that startled the two priests, for it seemed that a
fourth man had entered the room, so changed was it from the musical
voice of Pierre.
"Father Victor, the roan is a strong horse. May I take him?"
"Pierre!" and the priest reached out his bony hands.
But the boy did not seem to notice or to understand.
"It is a long journey, and I will need a strong horse. It must be eight
hundred miles to that town."
"Pierre, what claim has he upon you? What debt have you to repay?"
And Pierre le Rouge answered: "He loved my mother."
"You are going?"
The boy asked in astonishment: "Would you not have me go, Father?"
And Jean Paul Victor could not meet the sorrowful blue eyes.

He bowed his head and answered: "My child, I would have you go. But
promise with your hand in mine that you will come back to me when
your father is buried."
The lean fingers caught the extended hand of Pierre and froze about it.
"But first I have a second duty in the southland."
"A second?"
"You taught me to shoot and to use a knife. Once you said: 'An eye for
an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' Father Victor, my father was killed by
another man."
"Pierre, dear lad, swear to me here on this cross that you will not raise
your hands against the murderer. 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.'"
"He must have an instrument for his wrath. He shall work through me
in this."
"Pierre, you blaspheme."
"'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'"
"It was a demon in me that quoted that in your hearing, and not
myself."
"The horse, Father Victor--may I have the roan?"
"Pierre, I command you--"
The light in the blue eyes was as cold and steady as that in the starved
eyes of Jean Paul Victor.
"Hush!" he said calmly. "For the sake of the love that I bear for you, do
not command me."
The stern priest dropped his head. He said at last: "I have nothing
saving one great and terrible treasure which I see was predestined to

you. It is the cross of Father Meilan. You have worn it before. You
shall wear it hereafter as your own."
He took from his own neck a silver cross suspended by a slender silver
chain, and the boy, with startled eyes, dropped to his knees and
received the gift.
"It has brought good to all who possessed it, but for every good thing
that it works for you it will work evil on some other. Great is its
blessing and great is its burden. I, alas, know; but you also have heard
of its history. Do you accept it, Pierre?"
"Dear Father, with all my heart."
The colorless hands touched the dark-red hair.
"God pardon the sins you shall commit."
Pierre crushed the hand of Jean Paul Victor against his lips and rushed
from the room, while the tall priest, staring down at the fingers which
had been kissed, pronounced: "I have forged a thunderbolt, Father
Gabrielle. It is too great for my hand. Listen!" And they heard clearly
the sharp clang of a horse's hoofs on the hard-packed snow, loud at first,
but fading rapidly away. The wind, increasing suddenly, shook the
house furiously about them.
It was a north wind, and traveled south before the rider of the strong
roan. Over a thousand miles of plain and hills it passed, and down into
the cattle country of the mountain-desert which the Rockies hem on
one side and the tall Sierras on the other.
It was a trail to try even the endurance of Pierre and the strong roan, but
the boy clung to it doggedly. On a trail that led down from the edges of
the northern mountain the roan crashed to the ground in a plunging fall,
hitting heavily on his knees. He was dead before the boy had freed his
feet from the stirrups.
Pierre threw the saddle over his shoulder and