They drank, and for the first time in his life, the
liquid fire went down the throat of Pierre. He
set down his glass, coughing, and the others laughed
good-naturedly.
“Started down the wrong way?” asked Wilbur.
“It’s beastly stuff; first I ever drank.”
A roar of laughter answered him.
“Still I got an idea,” broke in Jim Boone,
“that he’s worthy of takin’ the
seventh chair. Draw it up lad.”
Vaguely it reminded Pierre of a scene in some old
play with himself in the role of the hero signing
away his soul to the devil, but an interruption kept
him from taking the chair. There was a racket
at the door—a half-sobbing, half-scolding
voice, and the laughter of a man; then Bud Mansie
appeared carrying Jack in spite of her struggles.
He placed her on the floor and held her hands to protect
himself from her fury.
“I glimpsed her through the window,” he
explained. “She was lining out for the
stable and then a minute later I saw her swing a saddle
onto—what horse d’you think?”
“Out with it.”
“Jim’s big Thunder. Yep, she stuck
the saddle on big black Thunder and had a rifle in
the holster. I saw there was hell brewing somewhere,
so I went out and nabbed her.”
“Jack!” called Jim Boone. “What
were you started for?”
Bud Mansie released her arms and she stood with them
stiffening at her sides and her fists clenched.
“Hal—he died, and there was nothing
but talk about him—nothing done. You
got a live man in Hal’s place.”
She pointed an accusing finger at Pierre.
“Maybe he takes his place for you, but he’s
not my brother—I hate him. I went
out to get another man to make up for Pierre.”
“Well?”
“A dead man. I shoot straight enough for
that.”
A very solemn silence spread through the room; for
every man was watching in the eyes of the father and
daughter the same shining black devil of wrath.
“Jack, get into your room and don’t move
out of it till I tell you to. D’you hear?”
She turned on her heel like a soldier and marched
from the room.
“Jack.”
She stopped in the door but would not turn back.
“Jack, don’t you love your old dad anymore?”
She whirled and ran to him with outstretched arms
and clung to him, sobbing. “Oh, dad,”
she groaned. “You’ve broken my heart.”
The annals of the mountain-desert have never been
written and can never be written. They are merely
a vast mass of fact and tradition and imagining which
floats from tongue to tongue from the Rockies to the
Sierra Nevadas. A man may be a fact all his life
and die only a local celebrity. Then again, he
may strike sparks from that imagination which runs
riot by camp-fires and at the bars of the crossroads
saloons.
In that case he becomes immortal. It is not that
lies are told about him or impossible feats ascribed
to him, but every detail about him is seized upon
and passed on with a most scrupulous and loving care.
