Max Brand Read Free

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."
    "Pierre, dear lad, swear to me here on this cross that you will not
raise your hands against the murderer. 'Vengeance is mine, saith
the Lord.'"
    "He must have an instrument for his wrath. He shall work through me in
this."
    "Pierre, you blaspheme."
    "'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'"
    "It was a demon in me that quoted that in your hearing, and not
myself."
    "The horse, Father Victor—may I have the roan?"
    "Pierre, I command you—"
    The light in the blue eyes was as cold and steady as that in the
starved eyes of Jean Paul Victor.
    "Hush!" he said calmly. "For the sake of the love that I bear for you,
do not command me."
    The stern priest dropped his head. He said at last: "I have nothing
saving one great and terrible treasure which I see was predestined to
you. It is the cross of Father Meilan. You have worn it before. You
shall wear it hereafter as your own."
    He took from his own neck a silver cross suspended by a slender silver
chain, and the boy, with startled eyes, dropped to his knees and
received the gift.
    "It has brought good to all who possessed it, but for every good thing
that it works for you it will work evil on some other. Great is its
blessing and great is its burden. I, alas, know; but you also have
heard of its history. Do you accept it, Pierre?"
    "Dear Father, with all my heart."
    The colorless hands touched the dark-red hair.
    "God pardon the sins you shall commit."
    Pierre crushed the hand of Jean Paul Victor against his lips and
rushed from the room, while the tall priest, staring down at the
fingers which had been kissed, pronounced: "I have forged a
thunderbolt, Father Gabrielle. It is too great for my hand. Listen!"
And they heard clearly the sharp clang of a horse's hoofs on the
hard-packed snow, loud at first, but fading rapidly away. The wind,
increasing suddenly, shook the house furiously about them.
    It was a north wind, and traveled south before the rider of the strong
roan. Over a thousand miles of plain and hills it passed, and down
into the cattle country of the mountain-desert which the Rockies hem
on one side and the tall Sierras on the other.
    It was a trail to try even the endurance of Pierre and the strong
roan, but the boy clung to it doggedly. On a trail that led down from
the edges of the northern mountain the roan crashed to the ground in a
plunging fall, hitting heavily on his knees. He was dead before the
boy had freed his feet from the stirrups.
    Pierre threw the saddle over his shoulder and walked eight miles to
the nearest ranch house, where he spent practically the last cent of
his money on another horse, and drove on south once more.
    There was little hope in him as day after day slipped past. Only the
ghost of a chance remained that Martin Ryder could fight away death
for another fortnight; yet Pierre had seen many a man from the
mountain-desert stave off the end through weeks and weeks of the
bitterest suffering. His father must be a man of the same hard durable
metal, and upon that Pierre staked all his hopes.
    And always he carried the picture of the dying man alone with his two
wolf-eyed sons who waited for his eyes to weaken. Whenever he thought
of that he touched his horse with the spurs and