Max Brand Read Online Free PDF Page B

voice.
    "Get out of the room."
    And the impulse of Hurley, plainly enough, was to obey the order, and
go anywhere to escape from that relentless stare. His glance wavered
and flashed around the circle and then back to Red Pierre, for the
expectancy of the crowd forced him back.
    When the leader of the pack springs and fails to kill, the rest of the
pack tear him to pieces. Remembering this, Mac Hurley forced his
glance back to Pierre. Moreover, there was a soft voice from behind,
and he remembered Diaz.
    All this had taken place in the length of time that it takes a heavy
body to totter on the brink of a precipice or a cat to regain its feet
after a fall. After the voice of Diaz there was a sway through the
room, a pulse of silence, and then three hands shot for their
hips—Pierre, Diaz, and Hurley.
    No stop-watch could have caught the differing lengths of time which
each required for the draw. The muzzle of Hurley's revolver was not
clear of the holster—the gun of Diaz was nearly at the level when
Pierre's weapon exploded at his hip. The bullet cut through the wrist
of Hurley. Never again would that slender, supple hand fly over the
cards, doing things other than they seemed. He made no effort to
escape from the next bullet, but stood looking down at his broken
wrist; horror for the moment gave him a dignity oddly out of place
with his usual appearance. He alone in all the room was moveless.
    The crowd, undecided for an instant, broke for the doors at the first
shot; Pierre le Rouge pitched to the floor as Diaz leaped forward, the
revolver in either hand spitting lead and fire.
    It was no bullet that downed Pierre but his own cunning. He broke his
fall with an outstretched left hand, while the bullets of Diaz pumped
into the void space which his body had filled a moment before.
    Lying there at ease, he leveled the revolver, grinning with the
mirthless lust of battle, and fired over the top of the table. The
guns dropped from the hands of huge Diaz. He caught at his throat and
staggered back the full length of the room, crashing against the wall.
When he pitched forward on his face he was dead before he struck
the floor.
    Pierre, now Red Pierre, indeed, rose and ran to the fallen man, and,
looking at the bulk of the giant, he wondered with a cold heart. He
knew before he slipped his hand over the breast of Diaz that this was
death. Then he rose again and watched the still fingers which seemed
to be gripping at the boards. These he saw, and nothing else, and
all he heard was the rattling of the wind of winter, wrenching at some
loose shingle on the roof, and he knew that he was alone in the world,
for he had put out a life.
    He found a strange weight pulling down his right hand, and started
when he saw the revolver. He replaced it in the holster automatically,
and in so doing touched the barrel and found it warm.
    Then fear came to Pierre, the first real fear of his life. He jerked
his head high and looked about him. The room was utterly empty. He
tiptoed to the door and found even the long bar deserted, littered
with tall bottles and overturned glasses. The cold in his heart
increased. A moment before he had been hand in hand with all the mirth
in that place.
    Now the men whose laughter he had repeated with smiles, the men
against whose sleeves his elbow had touched, were further away from
him than they had been when all the snow-covered miles from Morgantown
to the school of Father Victor had laid between them. They were men
who might lose themselves in any crowd, but he was set apart with a
brand, even as Hurley and Diaz had been set apart that eventful evening.
    He had killed a man. That fact blotted out the world. He drew his gun
again and stole down the length of the bar. Once he stopped and poised
the weapon before he realized that the white, fierce face that
squinted at him was his own reflection in a mirror.
    Outside the door the free wind caught at his face, and he blessed it
in his heart, as if it had been the