Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/304

298 he was a child. McGurk moistened his white lips. The white horse pawed the rocks as though impatient to be gone.

"Listen," said Pierre, "your horse grows restive. Suppose we stand here—it's a convenient distance apart, you see, and wait with our arms folded for the next time the white horse paws the rocks, because when I kill you, McGurk, I want you to die knowing that another man was faster on the draw and straighter with his bullets than you are. D'you see?"

He could not have spoken with a more formal politeness if he had been asking the other to pass first through the door, of a dining-room. The wonder of McGurk grew and the sweat on his forehead seemed to be spreading a chill through his entire body.

He said: "I see. You trust all to the cross, eh, Pierre? The little cross under your neck?"

"The cross is gone," said Pierre le Rouge. "Why should I use it against a night rider, McGurk? Are you ready?"

And McGurk, not trusting his voice for some strange reason, nodded. The two folded their arms.

But the white horse which had been pawing the stones so eagerly a moment before was now unusually quiet. The very postures of the men seemed to have frozen him to stone, a beautiful, marble statue, with the moonlight glistening on the muscles of his perfect shoulders.

At length he stirred. At once a quiver jerked through the tense bodies of the waiting men, but