Read Online Riders of the Silences by John Frederick - Free Book Online

place
in our crew for a man you've picked up without knowing him beforehand. Let him
lay, I say."
    But big Dick Wilbur was already leading up the horse of Hal Boone, and into
the saddle Jim Boone swung the inert body of Pierre. The argument was settled,
for every man of them knew that nothing could turn Boone back from a thing once
begun. Yet there were muttered comments that drew Black Morgan Gandil and Bud
Mansie together.
    And Gandil, from the South Seas, growled with averted eyes:
    "This is the most fool stunt the chief has ever pulled."
    "Right, pal," answered Mansie. "You take a snake in out of the cold, and it
bites you when it comes to in the warmth; but the chief has started, and there
ain't nothing that'll make him stop, except maybe God or McGurk."
    And Black Gandil answered with his evil, sudden grin: "Maybe McGurk, but not
God."
    They started on again with Garry Patterson and Dick Wilbur riding close on
either side of Pierre, supporting his limp body. It delayed the whole gang, for
they could not go on faster than a jog-trot. The wind, however, was falling off
in violence. Its shrill whistling ceased, at length, and they went on,
accompanied only by the harsh crunching of the snow underfoot.
     
     
     
CHAPTER X
THE GUARD
    Consciousness returned to Pierre like the light of the rising moon which
breaks dimly through the window and makes all the objects in a room grotesquely
large and blackly shadowed. Many a time his eyes opened, and he saw nothing, but
when he did see and hear it was by vague glimpses.
    He heard the crying crunch of the snow underfoot; he heard the panting and
snorting of the horses; he felt the swing and jolt of the saddle beneath him; he
saw the grim faces of the long-riders, and he said: "The law has taken me."
    Thereafter he let his will lapse, and surrendered to the sleepy numbness
which assailed his brain in waves. He was riding without support by this time,
but it was an automatic effort. There was no more real life in him than in a
dummy figure. It was not the effect of the blow. It was rather the long exposure
and the over-exertion of nerves and mind and body during the evening and night.
He had simply collapsed beneath the strain.
    But an old army man has said: "Give me a soldier of eighteen or twenty. In a
single day he may not march quite so far as a more mature man or carry quite so
much weight. He will go to sleep each night dead to the world. But in the
morning he awakens a new man. He is like a slate from which all the writing has
been erased. He is ready for a new day and a new world. Thirty days of
campaigning leaves him as strong and fresh as ever.
    "Thirty days of campaigning leaves the old soldier a wreck. Why? Because as a
man grows older he loses the ability to sleep soundly. He carries the nervous
strain of one day over to the next. Life is a serious problem to a man over
thirty. To a man under thirty it is simply a game. For my part, give me men who
can play at war."
    So it was with Pierre le Rouge. He woke with a faint heaviness of head, and
stretched himself. There were many sore places, but nothing more. He looked up,
and the slant winter sun cut across his face and made a patch of bright yellow
on the wall beside him.
    Next he heard a faint humming, and, turning his head, saw a boy of fourteen
or perhaps a little more, busily cleaning a rifle in a way that betokened the
most expert knowledge of the weapon. Pierre himself knew rifles as a preacher
knows his Bible, and as he lay half awake and half asleep he smiled with
enjoyment to see the deft fingers move here and there, wiping away the oil. A
green hand will spend half a day cleaning a gun, and then do the work
imperfectly; an expert does the job efficiently in ten minutes. This was an
expert.
    Undoubtedly this was a true son of the mountain desert. He wore his old
slouch hat even in the house, and his skin was that olive brown which comes from
many years of exposure to