“I don’t know you well enough to ask you
that,” said Pierre.
They plied him with suggestions.
“To rob the Berwin Bank?”
“Stick up a train?”
“No. That’s nothing.”
“Round up the sheriffs from here to the end
of the mountains?”
“Too easy.”
“Roll all those together,” said Pierre,
“and you’ll begin to get an idea of what
I’ll ask.”
Then a low voice called from the black throat of the
hall: “Pierre!”
The others were silent, but Pierre winked at them,
and made great flourish with knife and fork against
his plate as if to cover the sound of Jacqueline’s
voice.
“Pierre!” she called again. “I’ve
come to thank you.”
He jumped up and turned toward the hall.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s a wonder!”
“Then we’re friends?”
“If you want to be.”
“There’s nothing I want more. Then
you’ll come out and have supper with us, Jack?”
There was a little pause, and then Jim Boone struck
his fist on the table and cursed, for she stepped
from the darkness into the flaring light of the room.
She wore a cartridge-belt slung jauntily across her
hips and from it hung a holster of stiff new leather
with the top flap open to show the butt of a man-sized
forty-five caliber six-shooter—her first
gun. Not a man of the gang but had loaned her
his guns time and again, but they had never dreamed
of giving her a weapon of her own.
So they stared at her agape, where she stood with
her head back, one hand resting on her hip, one hovering
about the butt of the gun, as if she challenged them
to question her right to be called “man.”
It was as if she abandoned all claims to femininity
with that single step; the gun at her side made her
seem inches taller and years older. She was no
longer a child, but a long-rider who could shoot with
the best.
One glance she cast about the room to drink in the
amazement of the gang, and then her father broke in
rather hoarsely: “Sit down, girl.
Sit down and be one of us. One of us you are by
your own choice from this day on. You’re
neither man nor woman, but a long-rider with every
man’s hand against you. You’ve done
with any hope of a home or of friends. You’re
one of us. Poor Jack—my girl!”
“Poor?” she returned. “Not
while I can make a quick draw and shoot straight.”
And then she swept the circle of eyes, daring them
to take her boast lightly, but they knew her too well,
and were all solemnly silent. At this she relented
somewhat, and went directly to Pierre, flushing from
throat to hair. She held out her hand.
“Will you shake and call it square?”
“I sure will,” nodded Pierre.
“And we’re pals—you and me,
like the rest of ’em?”
“We are.”
She took the place beside him.
