Max Brand by Riders of the Silences

his chief end in life, for
these were animals worthy of the sport of kings.
    They were chosen each from among literal hundreds, and they were cared
for far more tenderly than the masters cared for themselves. There was
a reason in it, for upon their speed and endurance depended the life
of the outlaw. Moreover, the policy of Jim Boone was one of actual
"long riding."
    Here he had come to a pause for a few days to recuperate his horses
and his men. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would be on the spur again and
sweeping off to a distant point in the mountain-desert to strike and
be gone again before the rangers knew well that he had been there.
Very rarely did one settler have another neighbor at a distance of
less than two hundred miles. It meant arduous and continual riding,
and a horse with any defect was worse than useless because the speed
of the gang had to be the speed of the slowest horse in the lot.
    It was some time before the two long riders had completed the grooming
of their horses and had gone down the hill and into the house. In the
largest habitable room they found a fire fed with rotten timbers from
the wrecked portion of the building, and scattered through the room a
sullen and dejected group: Mansie, Branch, Jim Boone, and Black
Morgan Gandil.
    At a glance it was easy to detect their malady; it was the horrible
ennui which comes to men who are always surrounded by one set of
faces. If a man is happily married he may bear with his wife and his
children constantly through long stretches of time, but the glamour of
life lies in the varying personalities which a man glimpses in
passing, but never knows.
    This was a rare crew. Every man of them was marked for courage and
stamina and wild daring. Yet even so in their passive moments they
hated each other with a hate that passed the understanding of
common men.
    Through seven years they had held together, through fair weather and
foul, and now each knew from the other's expression the words that
were about to be spoken, and each knew that the other was reading him,
and loathing what he read.
    So they were apt to relapse into long silences unless Jack was with
them, for being a woman her variety was infinite, or Pierre le Rouge,
whom all except Black Gandil loved and petted, and feared.
    They were a battered crowd. Wind and hard weather and a thousand suns
had marked them, and the hand of man had branded them. Here and there
was a touch of gray in their hair, and about the mouth of each were
lines which in such silent moments as this one gave an expression
of yearning.
    "What's up? What's wrong?" asked Wilbur from the door, but since no
answer was deigned he said no more.
    But Pierre, like a charmed man who dares to walk among lions, strolled
easily through the room, and looked into the face of big Boone, who
smiled faintly up to him, and Black Gandil, who scowled doubly dark,
and Bud Mansie, who shifted uneasily in his chair and then nodded, and
finally to Branch. He dropped a hand on the massive shoulder of the
blacksmith.
    "Well?" he asked.
    Branch let himself droop back into his chair. His big, dull, colorless
eyes stared up to his friend.
    "I dunno, lad. I'm just weary with the sort of tired that you can't
help by sleepin'. Understand?"
    Pierre nodded, slowly, because he sympathized. "And the trouble?"
    Branch stared about as if searching for a reason. "Jack's upstairs
sulking; Patterson hasn't come home yet."
    And Black Gandil, who heard all things, said without looking up: "A
man that saves a shipwrecked fellow, he gets bad luck for thanks."
    Pierre turned a considerable eye on him, and Gandil scowled back.
    "You've been croaking for six years, Morgan, about the bad luck that
would come to Jim from saving me out of the snow. It's never
happened, has it?"
    Gandil, snarling from one side of his mouth, answered: "Where's
Patterson?"
    "Am I responsible if the blockhead has got drunk someplace?"
    "Patterson doesn't get drunk—not that way. And he knows that we were
to start