Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/258

252 And the girl answered steadily: "For every man there is one woman, and for that woman the man will do strange things."

"You poor, white-faced, whimpering fool," snarled the boy, gripping at his gun again, "d'you dream that you're the one that's picked out for Pierre? No, there's another!"

"Another? A woman who"

"Who loves Pierre—a woman that's fit for him. She can ride like a man; she can shoot almost as straight and as fast as Pierre; she can handle a knife; and she's been through hell for Pierre, and she'll go through it again. She can ride the trail all day with him and finish it less fagged than he is. She can chop down a tree as well as he can, and build a fire better. She can hold up a train with him or rob a bank and slip through a town in the middle of the night and laugh with him about it afterward around a camp-fire. I ask you, is that the sort of a woman that's meant for Pierre?" And the girl answered, with bowed head: "She is." She cried instantly afterward, cutting short the look of wild triumph on the face of the boy: "But there's no such woman; there's no one who could do these things! I know it!"

The boy sprang to his feet, flushing as red as the girl was white.

"You fool, if you're blind and got to have your eyes open to see, look at the woman!"

And she tore the wide-brimmed sombrero from her head. Down past the shoulders flooded a mass