She took the place beside him.
As the whisky went round after round the two seemed shut away from the others; they were younger, less marked by life; they listened while the others talked, and now and then exchanged glances of interest or aversion.
“Listen,” she said after a time, “I've heard this story before.”
It was Phil Branch, square-built and square of jaw, who was talking.
“There's only one thing I can handle better than a gun, and that's a sledgehammer. A gun is all right in its way, but for work in a crowd, well, give me a hammer and I'll show you a way out.”
Bud Mansie grinned: “Leave me my pair of sixes and you can have all the hammers between here and Central Park in a crowd. There's nothing makes a crowd remember its heels like a pair of barking sixes.”
“Ah, ah!” growled Branch. “But when they've heard bone crunch under the hammer there's nothing will hold them.”
“I'd have to see that.”
“Maybe you will, Bud, maybe you will. It was the hammer that started me for the trail west. I had a big Scotchman in the factory who couldn't learn how to weld. I'd taught him day after day and cursed him and damn near prayed for him. But he somehow wouldn't learn—the swine—ah, ah!”
He grew vindictively black at the memory.
“Every night he wiped out what I'd taught him during the day and the eraser he used was booze. So one fine day I dropped the hammer after watchin' him make a botch on a big bar, and cussed him up one leg and down the other. The Scotchman had a hangover from the night before and he made a pass at me. It was too much for me just then, for the day was hot and the forge fire had been spitting cinders in my face all morning. So I took him by the throat.”
He reached out and closed his taut fingers slowly.
“I didn't mean nothin' by it, but after a man has been moldin' iron, flesh is pretty weak stuff. When I let go of Scotchy he dropped on the floor, and while I stood starin' down at him somebody seen what had happened and spread the word.
“I wasn't none too popular, bein' not much on talk, so the boys got together and pretty soon they come pilin' through the door at me, packin' everything from hatchets to crowbars.
“Lads, I was sorry about Scotchy, but after I glimpsed that gang comin' I wasn't sorry for nothing. I felt like singin', though there wasn't no song that could say just what I meant. But I grabbed up the big fourteen-pound hammer and met 'em halfway.
“The first swing of the hammer it met something hard, but not as hard as iron. The thing crunched with a sound like an egg under a man's heel. And when that crowd heard it they looked sick. God, how sick they looked! They didn't wait for no second swing, but they beat it hard and fast through the door with me after 'em. They scattered, but I kept right on and didn't never really stop till I reached the mountain-desert and you, Jim.”
“Which is a good yarn,” said Bud Mansie, “but I can tell you one that'll cap it. It was—”
He stopped short, staring up at the door. Outside, the wind had kept up a perpetual roaring, and no one noticed the noise of the opening door. Bud Mansie, facing that door, however, turned a queer yellow and sat with his lips parted on the last word. He was not pretty to see. The others turned their heads, and there followed the strangest panic which Pierre had ever seen.
Jim Boone jerked his hand back to his hip, but stayed the motion, half completed, and swung his hands stiffly above his head. Garry Patterson sat with his eyes blinked shut, pale, waiting for death to come. Dick Wilbur rose, tall and stiff, and stood with his hands gripped at his sides, and Black Morgan Gandil clutched at the table before him and his eyes wandered swiftly about the room, seeking a place for escape.
There was only one sound, and that was a whispering moan of terror from Jacqueline. Only Pierre made no move, yet he felt as he had when the black mass of the landslide loomed above him.
What he saw in the door was a man of medium size and almost slender build. In spite of the patch of gray hair at either temple he was only somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. But to see him was to forget all details except the strangest face which Pierre had ever seen or would ever look upon in all his career.
It was pale, with a pallor strange to the ranges; even the lips seemed bloodless, and they curved with a suggestion of a smile that was a nervous habit rather than any sign of mirth. The nerves of the left eye were also affected, and the lid dropped and fluttered almost shut, so that he had to carry his head far back in order to see plainly. There was such pride and scorn in the man that his name came up to the lips of Pierre: “McGurk.”
A surprisingly gentle voice said: “Jim, I'm sorry to drop in on you this way, but I've had some unpleasant news.”
His words dispelled part of the charm. The hands of big Boone lowered; the others assumed more natural positions, but each, it seemed to Pierre, took particular and almost ostentatious care that their right hands should be always far from the holsters of their guns.
The stranger went on: “Martin Ryder is finished, as I suppose you know. He left a spawn of two mongrels behind him. I haven't bothered with them, but I'm a little more interested in another son that has cropped up. He's sitting over there in your family party and his name is Pierre. In his own country they call him Pierre le Rouge, which means Red Pierre, in our talk.
“You know I've never crossed you in anything before, Jim. Have I?”
Boone moistened his white lips and answered: “Never,” huskily, as if it were a great muscular effort for him to speak.
“This time I have to break the custom. Boone, this fellow Pierre has to leave the country. Will you see that he goes?”
The lips of Boone moved and made no sound.
He said at length: “McGurk, I'd rather cross the devil than cross you. There's no shame in admitting that. But
