Read Online Max Brand by Riders of the Silences - Free Book Online Page A

last word made him stir. It
roused in him a red-tinged desire to get through the forest of black
beard at the throat of Boone and dim the glitter of those keen eyes.
It brought him also another thought.
    Two great tasks lay before him: the burial of his father and the
avenging of him on McGurk. As to the one, he knew it would be childish
madness for him to attempt to bury his father in Morgantown with only
his single hand to hold back the powers of the law or the friends of
the notorious Diaz and crippled Hurley.
    And for the other, it was even more vain to imagine that through his
own unaided power he could strike down a figure of such almost
legendary terror as McGurk. The bondage of the gang might be a
terrible thing through the future, but the present need blinded him to
what might come.
    He said: "Suppose I stop raising questions or making a fight, but give
you my hand and call myself a member—"
    "Of the family? Exactly. If you did that I'd know it was because you
were wantin' something, Pierre, eh?"
    "Two things."
    "Lad, I like this way of talk. One—two—you hit quick like a two-gun
man. Well, I'm used to paying high for what I get. What's up?"
"The first—"
    "Wait. Can I help you out by myself, or do you need the gang?"
    "The gang."
    "Then come, and I'll put it up to them. You first."
    It was equally courtesy and caution, and Pierre smiled faintly as he
went first through the door. He stood in a moment under the eyes of
five silent men.
    The booming voice of Jim Boone pronounced: "This is Pierre. He'll be
one of us if he can get the gang to do two things. I ask you, will you
hear him for me, and then pass on whether or not you try his game?"
    They nodded. There were no greetings to acknowledge the introduction.
They waited, eyeing the youth with distrust.
    Pierre eyed them in turn, and then he spoke directly to big Dick
Wilbur.
    "Here's the first: I want to bury a man in Morgantown and I need help
to do it."
    Black Gandil snarled: "You heard me, boys; blood to start with. Who's
the man you want us to put out?"
    "He's dead—my father."
    They came up straight in their chairs like trained actors rising to a
stage crisis. The snarl straightened on the lips of Black
Morgan Gandil.
    "He's lying in his house a few miles out of Morgantown. As he died he
told me that he wanted to be buried in a corner plot in the Morgantown
graveyard. He'd seen the place and counted it for his a good many
years because he said the grass grew quicker there than any other
place, after the snow went."
    "A damned good reason," said Garry Patterson. As the idea stuck more
deeply into his imagination he smashed his fist down on the table so
that the crockery on it danced. "A damned good reason, say I!"
    "Who's your father?" asked Dick Wilbur, who eyed Pierre more
critically but with less enmity than the rest.
    "Martin Ryder."
    "A ringer!" cried Bud Mansie, and he leaned forward alertly. "You
remember what I said, Jim?"
    "Shut up. Pierre, talk soft and talk quick. We all know Mart Ryder had
only two sons and you're not either of them."
    The Northerner grew stiff and as his face grew pale the red mark where
the stone had struck his forehead stood out like a danger signal.
    He said slowly: "I'm his son, but not by the mother of those two."
    "Was he married twice?"
    Pierre was paler still, and there was an uneasy twitching of his right
hand which every man understood.
    He barely whispered. "No; damn you!"
    But Black Gandil loved evil.
    He said, with a marvelously unpleasant smile: "Then she was—"
    The voice of Dick Wilbur cut in like the snapping of a whip: "Shut up,
Gandil, you devil!"
    There were times when not even Boone would cross Wilbur, and this was
one of them.
    Pierre went on: "The reason I can't go to Morgantown is that I'm not
very well liked by some of the men there."
    "Why not?"
    "When my father died there was no money to pay for his burial. I had
only a half-dollar piece. I went to the town and gambled and won a
great deal. But