FullReads

Pierre smiled–he was pleased at this. “Ah, my young friend,” he said, “I do not forget that either, for though he had shaved my ear with a bullet, you would not have him handed over to the Riders of the Plains–such a tender heart!”

Her eyes suddenly grew wide. She was childlike in her amazement, indeed, childlike in all ways, for she was very sincere. It was her great advantage to live where nothing was required of her but truth, she had not suffered that sickness, social artifice.

“I never knew,” she said, “that he had shot at you–never! You did not tell that.”

“There is a time for everything–the time for that was not till now.”

“What could I have done then?”

“You might have left it to me. I am not so pious that I can’t be merciful to the sinner. But this man–this Brickney–was a vile scoundrel always, and I wanted him locked up. I would have shot him myself, but I was tired of doing the duty of the law. Yes, yes,” he added, as he saw her smile a little. “It is so. I have love for justice, even I, Pretty Pierre. Why not justice on myself? Ha! The law does not its duty. And maybe some day I shall have to do its work on myself. Some are coaxed out of life, some are kicked out, and some open the doors quietly for themselves, and go a-hunting Outside.”

“They used to talk as if one ought to fear you,” she said, “but”–she looked him straight in the eyes–“but maybe that’s because you’ve never hid any badness.”

“It is no matter, anyhow,” he answered. “I live in the open, I walk in the open road, and I stand by what I do to the open law and the gospel. It is my whim–every man to his own saddle.”

“It is ten years,” she said abruptly.

“Ten years less five days,” he answered as sententiously.

“Come inside,” she said quietly, and turned to the door.

Without a word he turned also, but instead of going direct to the door came and touched the broken shutter and the dark stain on one corner with a delicate forefinger. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her on the doorstep, looking intently.

He spoke as if to himself: “It has not been touched since then–no. It was hardly big enough for him, so his legs hung over. Ah, yes, ten years–Abroad, John Marcey!” Then, as if still musing, he turned to the girl: “He had no father or mother–no one, of course; so that it wasn’t so bad after all. If you’ve lived with the tongue in the last hole of the buckle as you’ve gone, what matter when you go! C’est egal–it is all the same.”

Her face had become pale as he spoke, but no muscle stirred; only her eyes filled with a deeper color, and her hand closed tightly on the door-jamb. “Come in, Pierre,” she said, and entered. He followed her. “My mother is at the Fort,” she added, “but she will be back soon.”

She placed two chairs not far from the open door. They sat, and Pierre slowly rolled a cigarette and lighted it.

“How long have you lived here?” he asked presently.

“It is seven years since we came first,” she replied. “After that night they said the place was haunted, and no one would live in it, but when my father died my mother and I came for three years. Then we went east, and again came back, and here we have been.”

“The shutter?” Pierre asked.

They needed few explanations–their minds were moving with the same thought.

“I would not have it changed, and of course no one cared to touch it. So it has hung there.”

“As I placed it ten years ago,” he said.

They both became silent for a time, and at last he said: “Marcey had no one,–Sergeant Laforce a mother.”

“It killed his mother,” she whispered, looking into the white sunlight. She was noting how it was flashed from the bark of the birch-trees near the Fort.