Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/138

132 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 some place?"

"Patterson doesn't get drunk—not that way. And he knows that we were to start again to-day."

"There ain't no doubt of that," commented Branch.

"It's the straight dope. Paterson keeps his dates," said Bud Mansie.

The booming bass of Jim Boone broke in: "Shut up, the whole gang of you. We've had luck for the six years Pierre has been with us. Who calls him a Jonah?"

And Black Gandil answered: "I do. I've sailed the seas. I know bad luck when I see it."

"You've been seeing it for six years."

"The worst storms come on a voyage that starts with fair weather. Patterson? He's gone; he ain't just delayed; he's gone."

It was not the first of these gloomy prophecies which Gandil had made, but each time a heavy gloom broke over Red Pierre. For when he summed up the good fortune which the cross of Father Victor had brought him, he found that he had gained a father, and lost him at their first meeting; and he had won money on that night of the gambling, but it had cost the life of another man almost at once. The horse which carried him away from the vengeance in Morgantown had died on the way and