Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/149

Rh later that the weeping had ceased. She lay quiet. Her hand was dabbing furtively at her face for a purpose which Pierre could not surmise.

At last a broken voice murmured: "Pierre!"

He would not speak, but something in the voice made his anger go. After a little it came, and louder this time: "Pierre?"

He did not stir.

She whirled and sat on the edge of the bunk, crying: "Pierre!" with a note of fright. Then she flushed richly.

"I thought perhaps you were gone. I thought—Pierre—I was afraid—I mean I hoped—"

She could not go on.

And still he persisted in that silence, his arms folded, the keen blue eyes considering her as if from a great distance.

She explained: "I was afraid—Pierre! Why don't you speak? Tell me, are you angry?"

And she sprang up and made a pace toward him. She had never seemed so little manlike, so wholly womanly. For the thick coils of hair were loosed on her head, and the black hair framed a face stained, flushed, with eyes that were like a great black, bottomless well of sorrow and wistfulness. And the hand which stretched toward him, palm up, was a symbol of everything new and strange that he found in her.

He had seen it balled to a small, angry fist, brown and dangerous; he had seen it gripping the butt of a revolver, ready for the draw; he had seen it tugging at the reins and holding a racing horse in check