CHAPTER XVII
BLACK GANDIL
The knowledge of the torment he was inflicting made the eye of Black Gandil bright with triumph. He continued, and now every man in the room was sitting up, alert, with gloomy eyes fixed upon Pierre: "Patterson is the first, but he ain't the last. He's just the start. Who's next?" He looked slowly around.
"Is it you, Bud, or you, Phil, or you, Jim, or maybe me?"
And Pierre said: "What makes you think you know that trouble's coming, Morgan?"
"Because my blood runs cold in me when I look at you."
Red Pierre grew rigid and straightened in a way they knew.
"Damn you, Gandil, I've borne with you and your croaking too long, d'ye hear? Too long, and I'll hear no more of it, understand?"
"Why not? You'll hear from me every time I sight you in the offing. You c'n lay to that!"
The others were tense, ready to spring for cover, but Boone reared up his great figure.
"Don't answer him, Pierre. You, Gandil, shut your face or I'll break ye in two."
The fierce eyes of Pierre le Rouge never wavered from his victim, but he answered: "Keep out of this. This is my party. I'll tell you why you'll stop gibbering, Gandil."
He made a pace forward and every man shrank a little away from him.
"Because the cold in your blood is part hate and more fear, Black Gandil."
The eyes of Gandil glared back for an instant. With all his soul he yearned for the courage to pull his gun, but his arm was numb; he could not move it, and his eyes wavered and fell.
The shaggy gray head of Jim Boone fell likewise, and he was murmuring to his savage old heart: "The good days are over. They'll never rest till one of 'em is dead, and then the rest will take sides and we'll have gun-plays at night. Seven years, and then to break up!"
Dick Wilbur, as usual, was the pacifier. He strode across the room, and the sharp sound of his heels on the creaking floor broke the tension. He said softly to Pierre: "You've raised hell enough. Now let's go up and get Jack down here to undo what you've just finished. Besides, you've got to ask her for that dance, eh?"
The glance of Pierre still lingered on Gandil as he turned and followed Wilbur up the complaining stairs to the one habitable room in the second story of the house. It was set aside for the use of Jacqueline.
At the door Wilbur said: "Shrug your shoulders back; you look as if you were going to jump at everything. And wipe the wolf-look off your face. After all, Jack's a girl, not a gun-fighter."
Then he knocked and opened the door.
She lay face down on her bunk, her head turned from them and toward the wall. Slender and supple and strong, it was still only the size of her boots and her hands that would make one look at her twice and then guess that this was a woman, for she was dressed, from trousers even to the bright bandanna knotted around her throat, like any prosperous range rider.
Now, to be sure, the thick coils of black hair told her sex, but when the broad-brimmed sombrero was pulled well down on her head, when the cartridge-belt and the six-gun were slung about her waist, and most of all when she spurred her mount recklessly across the hills, no one could have suspected that this was not some graceful boy born and bred in the mountain-desert, wilful as a young mountain-lion, and as dangerous.
"Sleepy?" called Wilbur.
She waited a moment and then queried with exaggerated impudence: "Well?"
Ennui unspeakable was in that drawling monotone.
"Brace up; I've got news for you."
Her hand moved and all the graceful body, but it was only with a yawn. What need was there to speak? She wished to be alone.
"And I've brought Pierre along to tell you about it."
"Oh!"
And she sat bolt upright with shining eyes. Instantly she remembered to yawn again, but her glance smiled on them above her hand.
She apologized. "Awfully sleepy, Dick."
But he was not deceived. He said: "There's a dance down near the Barnes place, and Pierre wants you to go with him."
Back tilted her head, and her throat stirred as if she were singing.
"Pierre! A dance?"
He explained: "Dick's lost his head over a girl with yellow hair, and he wants me to go down and see her. He thought you might want to go along."
Her face changed like the moon when a cloud blows across it. Before she answered she slipped down on the bunk again, pillowed her head leisurely on her arm, and answered with another slow, insolent yawn: "Thanks! I'm staying home to-night."
Wilbur glared his rage covertly at Pierre, but the latter was blandly unconscious that he had made any faux pas.
He said carelessly: "Too bad. It might be interesting, Jack?"
At his voice she looked up a sharp and graceful toss of the head.
"What?"
"The girl with the yellow hair."
"Then go ahead and see her. I won't keep you. You don't mind if I go on sleeping? Sit down and be at home."
With this she calmly turned her back again and seemed thoroughly disposed to carry out her word.
Red Pierre flushed a little, watching her, and he spoke his anger outright: "You're acting like a sulky kid, Jack, not like a man."
It was a habit of his to forget that she was a woman. Without turning her head she answered: "Do you want to know why?"
"You're like a cat showing your claws. Go on! Tell me what the reason is."
"Because I get tired of you."
In all his life he had never been so scorned. He did not see the covert grin of Wilbur in the background. He blurted: "Tired?"
"Awfully. You don't mind me being frank, do you, Pierre?"
He could only stammer: "Sometimes I wish to God you were a man, Jack!"
"You don't often remember that I'm a woman."
"What do you mean by that?"
She was silent, but there was a perceptible tremor in the graceful body.
He repeated: "Do you mean that I'm rude or rough with you, Jacqueline?"
Still the silence, but Wilbur was grinning broader than ever. "Answer me!"
She started up and faced him, her face convulsed with rage.
"What do you want me to say? Yes, you are rude—I hate you and your lot. Go away from me; I don't want you; I hate you all."
And she would have said more, but furious sobs swelled her throat and she could not speak, but dropped, face down, on the bunk and gripped the blankets in each hard-set hand. Over her Pierre leaned, utterly bewildered, found nothing that he could say, and then turned and strode, frowning, from the room. Wilbur hastened after him and caught him just as the door was closing.
"Come back," he pleaded. "This is the best game I've ever seen. Come back, Pierre! You've made a wonderful start."
Pierre le Rouge shook off the detaining hand and glared up at Wilbur.
"Don't try irony, Dick. I feel like murder. Think of it! All this time she's been hating me; and now it's making her weep; think of it—Jack—weeping!"
"Why, you're a child, Pierre. Go back and take her in your arms and tell her you're going to make her go to the dance."
"Take her in my arms? She'd stab me, there's that much of the devil in her. Don't grin at me and keep chuckling like an utter ass. What's up, Dick?"
"Don't you see? No, you don't, but it's so plain that a baby of three years could understand. She's in love with you."
"With me?"
"With Red Pierre."
"You can't make a joke out of Jack with me. You ought to know that."
'Pierre, I'd as soon make a joke out of a wild-cat."
"Grinning still? Wilbur, I'm taking more from you than I would from any man on the ranges."
"I know you are, and that's why I'm stringing this out because I'm going to have a laugh—ha, ha, ha!—the rest of my life—ha, ha, ha, ha!—whenever I think of this—ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"
The burst of merriment left him speechless, and Pierre, glowering, his right hand twitching dangerously close to that holster at his hip. He sobered, and said: "Go in and talk to her and prove that I'm right."
"Ask Jack if she loves me? Why, I'd as soon ask any man the same question."
The big long rider was instantly curious.
"Has she never appealed to you as a woman, Pierre?"
"How could she? I've watched her ride; I've watched her use her gun; I've slept rolled in the same blankets with her, back to back; I've walked and talked and traveled with her as if she were my kid brother."
Wilbur nodded, as if the miracle were being slowly unfolded before his eyes.
"And you've never noticed anything different about her? Never watched a little lift and grace in her walk that no man could ever have; never heard her laugh in a voice that no man could ever imitate; never seen her color change just because you, Pierre, came near or went far away from her?"
"Because of me?" asked the bewildered Pierre.
"You fool, you! Why, lad, I've been kept amused by you two for a whole evening, watching her play for your attention, saving her best smiles for you, keeping her best attitudes for you, and letting all the richness of her voice go out for—a block—a stone. Gad, the thing still doesn't seem possible! Pierre, one instant of that girl would give romance to a man's whole life."
"This girl? This Jack of ours?"
"He hasn't seen it! Why, if I hadn't seen years ago that she had tied her hands and turned her heart over to you, I'd have been down on my knees to her a thousand times, begging her for a smile, a shadow of a hope."
"If I didn't know you, Dick, I'd say that you were partly drunk and partly a fool."
"Here's a hundred—a cold hundred that I'm right. I'll make it a thousand, if you dare."
"Dare what?"
"Ask her to marry you."
"Marry—me?"
"Damn it all—well, then—whatever you like. But I say that if you go back into that room and sit still and merely look at her, she'll be in your arms within five minutes."
"I hate to take charity, but a bet is a bet. That hundred is in my pocket already. It's a go!"
They shook hands.
"But what will be your proof, Dick, whether I win or lose?"
"Your face, blockhead, when you come out of the room."
Upon this Pierre pondered a moment, and then turned toward the door. He set his hand on the knob, faltered, and finally set his teeth and entered the room.