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 walked eight miles
to the nearest ranch house, where he spent practically the last
cent of his money on another horse, and drove on south once
more.
There was little hope in him as day after day slipped past. Only
the ghost of a chance remained that Martin Ryder could fight away
death for another fortnight; yet Pierre had seen many a man from
the mountain-desert stave off the end through weeks and weeks of
the bitterest suffering. His father must be a man of the same hard
durable metal, and upon that Pierre staked all his hopes.
And always he carried the picture of the dying man alone with
his two wolf-eyed sons who waited for his eyes to weaken. Whenever
he thought of that he touched his horse with the spurs and rode
fiercely for a time. They were his flesh and blood, the man, and
even the two wolf-eyed sons.
So he came at last to a gap in the hills and looked down on
Morgantown in the hollow, twoscore unpainted houses sprawling along
a single street. The snow was everywhere white and pure, and the
town was like a stain on the landscape with wisps of smoke rising
and trailing across the hilltops.
Down to the edge of the town he rode, left his cow-pony standing
with hanging head outside a saloon, strode through the swinging
doors, and asked of the bartender the way to the house of Martin
Ryder.
The bartender stopped in his labor of rubbing down the surface
of his bar and stared at the black-serge robe of the stranger, with
curiosity rather than criticism, for women, madmen, and clergymen
have the right-of-way in the mountain-desert.
He said: "Well, I'll be damned!—askin' your pardon. So old Mart
Ryder has come down to this, eh? Partner, you're sure going to have
a rough ride getting Mart to heaven. Better send a posse along with
him, because some first-class angels are going to get considerable
riled when they sight him coming. Ha, ha, ha! Sure I'll show you
the way. Take the northwest road out of town and go five miles till
you see a broken-backed shack lyin' over to the right. That's Mart
Ryder's place."
Out to the broken-backed shack rode Pierre le Rouge, Pierre the
Red, as everyone in the north country knew him. His second horse,
staunch cow-pony that it was, stumbled on with sagging knees and
hanging head, but Pierre rode upright, at ease, for his mind was
untired.
Broken-backed indeed was the house before which he dismounted.
The roof sagged from end to end, and the stove pipe chimney leaned
at a drunken angle. Nature itself was withered beside that house;
before the door stood a great cottonwood, gashed and scarred by
lightning, with the limbs almost entirely stripped away from one
side. Under this broken monster Pierre stepped and through the
door. Two growls like the snarls of watch-dogs greeted him, and two
tall, unshaven men barred his way. Behind them, from the bed in the
corner, a feeble voice called: "Who's there?"
"In the name of God," said the boy gravely, for he saw a
hollow-eyed specter staring toward him from the bed in the corner,
"let me pass! I am his son!"
It was not that which made them give back, but a shrill, faint
cry of triumph from the sick man toward which they turned. Pierre
slipped past them and stood above Martin Ryder. He was wasted
beyond belief—only the monster hand showed what he had been.
"Son?" he queried with yearning and uncertainty.
"Pierre, your son."
And he slipped to his knees beside the bed. The heavy hand fell
upon his hair and stroked it.
"There ain't no ways of doubting it. It's red silk, like the
hair of Irene. Seein' you, boy, it ain't so hard to die. Look up!
So! Pierre, my son! Are you scared of me, boy?"
"I'm not afraid."
"Not with them eyes you ain't. Now that you're here, pay the
coyotes and let 'em go off to gnaw the bones."
He dragged out a small canvas bag from beneath the blankets and
gestured toward the two lurkers in the corner.
"Take it, and be damned to you!"
A dirty, yellow hand seized the bag; there was a chortle of
exultation, and the two scurried out of the room.
"Three weeks they've watched an' waited for me to go out,
Pierre. Three weeks they've waited an' sneaked up to my bed an'
sneaked away agin, seein' my eyes open."
Looking into their fierce fever brightness, Pierre understood
why they had quailed. For the man, though wrecked beyond hope of
living, was terrible still. The thick, gray stubble on his face
could not hide altogether the hard lines of mouth and jaw, and on
the wasted arm the hand was grotesquely huge. It was horror that
widened the eyes of Pierre as he looked at Martin Ryder; it was a
grim happiness that made his lips almost smile.
"You've taken holy orders, lad?"
"No."
"But the black dress?"
"I'm only a novice. I've sworn no vows."
"And you don't hate me—you hold no grudge against me for the
sake of your mother?"
Pierre took the heavy hand.
"Are you not my father? And my mother was happy with you. For
her sake I love you."
"The good Father Victor. He sent you to me."
"I came of my own will. He would not have let me go."
"He—he would have kept my flesh and blood away from me?"
"Do not reproach him. He would have kept me from a sin."
"Sin? By God, boy, no matter what I've done, is it sin for my
son to come to me? What sin?"
"The sin of murder!"
"Ha!"
"I have come to find McGurk."