“You see, I was married before I met Irene.
So there ain’t no alibi for me. But me
being so close to hell now, I look back to that time,
and somehow I see no wrong in it still.
“And if I done wrong then, I’ve got my
share of hell-fire for it. Here I lie, with my
boys, Bill and Bert, sitting around in the corner of
the room waiting for me to go out. They ain’t
men, Pierre. They’re wolves in the skins
of men. They’re the right sons of their
mother. When I go out they’ll grab the
coin I’ve saved up, and leave me to lie here
and rot, maybe.
“Lad, it’s a fearful thing to die without
having no one around that cares, and to know that
even after I’ve gone out I’m going to lie
here and have my dead eyes looking up at the ceiling.
So I’m writing to you, Pierre, part to tell
you what you ought to know; part because I got a sort
of crazy idea that maybe you could get down here to
me before I go out.
“You don’t owe me nothing but hard words,
Pierre; but if you don’t try to come to me,
the ghost of your mother will follow you all your life,
lad, and you’ll be seeing her blue eyes and the
red-gold of her hair in the dark of the night as I
see it now. Me, I’m a hard man, but it
breaks my heart, that ghost of Irene. So here
I’ll lie, waiting for you, Pierre, and lingering
out the days with whisky, and fighting the wolf eyes
of them there sons of mine. If I weaken—If
they find they can look me square in the eye—they’ll
finish me quick and make off with the coin. Pierre,
come quick.
“Martin Ryder.”
The hand of Pierre dropped slowly to his side, and
the letter fluttered with a crisp rustling to the
floor.
Then came a voice that startled the two priests, for
it seemed that a fourth man had entered the room,
so changed was it from the musical voice of Pierre.
“Father Victor, the roan is a strong horse.
May I take him?”
“Pierre!” and the priest reached out his
bony hands.
But the boy did not seem to notice or to understand.
“It is a long journey, and I will need a strong
horse. It must be eight hundred miles to that
town.”
“Pierre, what claim has he upon you? What
debt have you to repay?”
And Pierre le Rouge answered: “He loved
my mother.”
“You are going?”
The boy asked in astonishment: “Would you
not have me go, Father?”
And Jean Paul Victor could not meet the sorrowful
blue eyes.
He bowed his head and answered: “My child,
I would have you go. But promise with your hand
in mine that you will come back to me when your father
is buried.”
The lean fingers caught the extended hand of Pierre
and froze about it.
“But first I have a second duty in the southland.”
“A second?”
“You taught me to shoot and to use a knife.
Once you said: ’An eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a tooth.’ Father Victor, my
father was killed by another man.”
