Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/227

Rh of him was vague, nebulous, and taking many forms. Sometimes he was tall and dark and stern. Again he was short and heavy and somewhat deformed of body. But always he was everywhere in the night about her.

She guessed at his voice rumbling through an echo of the thunder; she heard the sound of his pursuing horse in the rattle of the following rain. Her work was to keep this relentless lone rider away from Pierre; it was as if she strove to keep the ocean tide away from the shore. They seemed doomed to meet and shock.

All this she pondered as they began the ride up the valley, but as the long journey continued, and the hours and the miles rolled past them, a racking weariness possessed her and numbed her mind. She began to wish desperately for morning, but even morning might not bring an end to the ride. That would be at the will of the outlaw beside her. Finally, only one picture remained to her. It stabbed across the darkness of her mind—the red hair and the keen eyes of Pierre.

The storm decreased as they went up the valley. Finally the wind fell off to a pleasant breeze, and the clouds of the rain broke in the center of the heavens and toppled west in great tumbling masses. In half an hour's time the sky was clear, and a cold moon looked down on the blue-black evergreens, shining faintly with the wet, and on the dead black of the mountains.

For the first time in all that ride her companion spoke: "In an hour the gray will begin in the east.