Riders of the Silences/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
FIVE MINUTES' SILENCE
She lay as he had left her, except that her face was now pillowed in her arms, and the long sobs kept her body quivering. Awe and curiosity swept over Pierre, looking down at her, but chiefly a puzzled grief such as a strong man feels when a friend is in trouble. He came closer and laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Jack!"
She turned far enough to strike his hand away and instantly rescumed her former position, though the sobs were softer. This childish anger irritated him. He was about to storm out of the room when the thought of the hundred dollars stopped him. It was not that he hoped to win the money, for dollars rolled easily into his hands and out again, but the bet had been made, and it was his pride that he would play out his part of it. It seemed unsportsmanlike to leave without some effort.
The effort which he finally made was that suggested by Wilbur. He folded his arms and stood silent, waiting, and ready to judge the time as nearly as he could until the five minutes should have elapsed. He was so busy computing the minutes that it was with a start that he noticed some time later that the weeping had ceased. She lay quiet. Her hand was dabbing furtively at her face for a purpose which Pierre could not surmise.
At last a broken voice murmured: "Pierre!"
He would not speak, but something in the voice made his anger go. After a little it came, and louder this time: "Pierre?"
He did not stir.
She whirled and sat on the edge of the bunk, crying: "Pierre!" with a note of fright. Then she flushed richly.
"I thought perhaps you were gone. I thought—Pierre—I was afraid—I mean I hoped—"
She could not go on.
And still he persisted in that silence, his arms folded, the keen blue eyes considering her as if from a great distance.
She explained: "I was afraid—Pierre! Why don't you speak? Tell me, are you angry?"
And she sprang up and made a pace toward him. She had never seemed so little manlike, so wholly womanly. For the thick coils of hair were loosed on her head, and the black hair framed a face stained, flushed, with eyes that were like a great black, bottomless well of sorrow and wistfulness. And the hand which stretched toward him, palm up, was a symbol of everything new and strange that he found in her.
He had seen it balled to a small, angry fist, brown and dangerous; he had seen it gripping the butt of a revolver, ready for the draw; he had seen it tugging at the reins and holding a racing horse in check with an ease which a man would envy; but never before had he seen it turned palm up, to his knowledge; and now, because he could not speak to her, according to his plan, he studied her thoroughly for the first time.
Slender and marvelously made was that hand. The whole woman was in it, finely fashioned, delicate, made for beauty, not for use. It was all he could do to keep from exclaiming.
She made a quick step toward him, eager, uncertain:
"Pierre, I thought you had left me—that you were gone, and angry."
The hearts of men are tinder; something caught on fire in Pierre, but still he would say nothing. He was beginning to feel a cruel pleasure in his victory, but it was not without a deep sense of danger.
She had laid aside her six-gun, but she had not abandoned it. She had laid aside her anger, but she could resume it again as swiftly ts she could take up her revolver.
He exulted in the touch of victory, but it was as a man who rides a horse that paces docilely beneath him but may plunge into a fury of bucking in a moment. She was closer—very close, and somehow he knew that at his pleasure he could make her smile or tremble by speaking. Yet he would not speak. The five minutes were not yet up.
She cried with a little burst of rage: "Pierre, you are making a game of me!"
But seeing that he did not change she altered swiftly and caught his hand in both of hers. She spoke the name which she always used when she was greatly moved.
"Ah, Pierre le Rouge, what have I done?"
His silence tempted her on like the smile of the sphinx.
And suddenly she was inside his arms, though how she separated them he could not tell, and crying: "Pierre, I am unhappy. Help me, Pierre!"
It was true, then, and Wilbur had won his bet. But how could it have happened? He took the arms that encircled his neck and brought them slowly down, and watched her curiously. Something was expected of him, but what it was he could not tell, for women were as strange to him as the wild sea is strange to the Arab.
He hunted his mind, and then: "One of the boys has angered you, Jack?"
And she said, because she could think of no way to cover the confusion which came to her after the outbreak: "Yes."
He dropped her arms and strode a pace or two up and down the room.
"Gandil?"
"N-no!"
"You're lying. It was Gandil."
And he made straight for the door.
She ran after him and flung herself between him and the door. Clearly, as if it were a painted picture, she saw him facing Gandil—saw their hands leap for the guns—saw Gandil pitch face forward on the floor—writhe all his limbs—and then lie still. "Pierre for God's sake!"
Her terror convinced him partially, and the furor went back from his eyes as a light goes back in a long, dark hall.
"On your honor, Jack, it's not Gandil?"
"On my honor."
"But some one has broken you up."
"No, I—"
"Don't lie. Why, even while you look at me your color changes. You're pale one minute and red the next. Some one has crossed you, Jack. And whoever crosses you crosses me, by God! Out with his name! Is it Branch?"
"No."
"Then it's big Patterson."
"No."
"I have it! Mansie! There's always something of the sneak about him that I never liked."
"No, no!"
"It is! He came up to you and whispered some dog's remark for you to hear. Damn him—I never trusted Mansie!"
He pushed her away from the door and set his hand on the knob, but he could not keep her back. She was upon him again and twisted between him and the entrance to the room.
"Pierre, upon my honor, it was none of these men."
He could not help but believe.
"Only Wilbur is left. Jack, I'd rather raise my hand against myself than to harm Dick, but if—"
"I'll never tell you who it was. Don't you see? It would be like a murder in cold blood if I were to send you after him."
"But he's here—he's one of us, this man who's bothered you."
She could not help but answer: "Yes."
He scowled down at the floor.
"You would never be able to guess who it is. Give it up. After all—I can live through it—I guess."
"It's something that has saddened you. Do you know, we've been so much together that I can almost read your mind, in a way. Why are you smiling?"
"I wish that you could read it—Pierre—at times."
He took her face between his hands and frowned down into her eyes. At his touch she grew very pale and trembled as if a wind were striking against her.
"You see, you've been so near to me, and so dear to me all these years, Jack, that you're like a sister, almost."
"And you to me, Pierre."
"But different—nearer even than a sister."
"So much nearer!"
"It's queer, isn't it? But you can't forget this trouble you've had. The tears come up in your eyes again. Tell me his name, Jack, and the dog—"
She said: "Only let me go. Take your hands away, Pierre."
He obeyed her, deeply worried, and she stood for a moment with a hand pressed over her eyes, swaying. He had never seen her like this; he was like a pilot striving to steer his ship through an unfathomable fog. Following what had become an instinct with him, he raised his left hand and touched the cross beneath his throat. And inspiration came to him.