Free Riders of the Silences by John Frederick Page A

anything maybe you'd have a pile of trouble with one
of them guardin' you. But if I'd had a good look at you, lad, I'd never have let
Jack take the job of guardin' you."
    "Thanks," answered Pierre dryly.
    "You got reason; I can see that. Here's the point, Pierre. I know young men
because I can remember pretty close what I was at your age. I wasn't any ladies'
lap dog, at that, but time and older men molded me the way I'm going to mold
you. Understand?"
    Pierre was nerved for many things, but the last word made him stir. It roused
in him a red-tinged desire to get through the forest of black beard at the
throat of Boone and dim the glitter of those keen eyes. It brought him also
another thought.
    Two great tasks lay before him: the burial of his father and the avenging of
him on McGurk. As to the one, he knew it would be childish madness for him to
attempt to bury his father in Morgantown with only his single hand to hold back
the powers of the law or the friends of the notorious Diaz and crippled Hurley.
    And for the other, it was even more vain to imagine that through his own
unaided power he could strike down a figure of such almost legendary terror as
McGurk. The bondage of the gang might be a terrible thing through the future,
but the present need blinded him to what might come.
    He said: "Suppose I stop raising questions or making a fight, but give you my
hand and call myself a member"
    "Of the family? Exactly. If you did that I'd know it was because you were
wantin' something, Pierre, eh?"
    "Two things."
    "Lad, I like this way of talk. Onetwoyou hit quick like a two-gun man.
Well, I'm used to paying high for what I get. What's up?"
    "The first"
    "Wait. Can I help you out by myself, or do you need the gang?"
    "The gang."
    "Then come, and I'll put it up to them. You first."
    It was equally courtesy and caution, and Pierre smiled faintly as he went
first through the door. He stood in a moment under the eyes of five silent men.
    The booming voice of Jim Boone pronounced:
    "This is Pierre. He'll be one of us if he can get the gang to do two things.
I ask you, will you hear him for me, and then pass on whether or not you try his
game?"
    They nodded. There were no greetings to acknowledge the introduction. They
waited, eyeing the youth with distrust.
    Pierre eyed them in turn, and then he spoke directly to big Dick Wilbur.
    "Here's the first: I want to bury a man in Morgantown and I need help to do
it."
    Black Gandil snarled: "You heard me, boys; blood to start with. Who's the man
you want us to put out?"
    "He's deadmy father."
    They came up straight in their chairs like trained actors rising to a stage
crisis. The snarl straightened on the lips of Black Morgan Gandil.
    "He's lying in his house a few miles out of Morgantown. As he died he told me
that he wanted to be buried in a corner plot in the Morgantown graveyard. He'd
seen the place and counted it for his a good many years because he said the
grass grew quicker there than any other place, after the snow went."
    "A damned good reason," said Garry Patterson. As the idea stuck more deeply
into his imagination he smashed his fist down on the table so that the crockery
on it danced. "A damned good reason, say I!"
    "Who's your father?" asked Dick Wilbur, who eyed Pierre more critically but
with less enmity than the rest.
    "Martin Ryder."
    "A ringer!" cried Bud Mansie, and he leaned forward alertly. "You remember
what I said, Jim?"
    "Shut up. Pierre, talk soft and talk quick. We all know Mart Ryder had only
two sons and you're not either of them."
    The Northerner grew stiff and as his face grew pale the red mark where the
stone had struck his forehead stood out like a danger signal.
    He said slowly: "I'm his son, but not by the mother of those two."
    "Was he married twice?"
    Pierre was paler still, and there was an uneasy twitching of his right hand
which every man understood.
    He barely whispered. "No; damn you!"
    But Black Gandil loved