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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Riders of the Silences, by John Frederick,
+Illustrated by Frank Tenney Johnson
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Riders of the Silences
+
+
+Author: John Frederick
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 7, 2006  [eBook #20044]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIDERS OF THE SILENCES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustration.
+      See 20044-h.htm or 20044-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/0/4/20044/20044-h/20044-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/0/4/20044/20044-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+RIDERS OF THE SILENCES
+
+by
+
+JOHN FREDERICK
+
+With Frontispiece by Frank Tenney Johnson
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Each one of them should have ridden alone to be properly
+appreciated.  To see them together was like watching a flock of eagles.]
+
+
+
+
+A. L. Burt Company
+Publishers -------- New York
+Published by arrangement with The H. K. Fly Company
+Copyright, 1920, by
+The H. K. Fly Company
+Copyright, 1920,
+The Munsey Co.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+       I.  The Thunderbolt
+      II.  Irene
+     III.  The Launching of The Bolt
+      IV.  The Corner Plot
+       V.  Hurley
+      VI.  Fear
+     VII.  The Voice in The Storm
+    VIII.  Belief
+      IX.  Riders of The Silences
+       X.  The Guard
+      XI.  Jack Grows Up
+     XII.  The Burial
+    XIII.  A Tale of The Sledge
+     XIV.  McGurk
+      XV.  Gold Hair
+     XVI.  Ennui
+    XVII.  Black Gandil
+   XVIII.  Five Minutes' Silence
+     XIX.  Partners
+      XX.  Full Dress
+     XXI.  The Dance
+    XXII.  The Overtone
+   XXIII.  The Fear of The Living
+    XXIV.  The Luck of The Shipwrecked
+     XXV.  Jacqueline Waits
+    XXVI.  A Game of Suppose
+   XXVII.  The Trail
+  XXVIII.  A Hint of White
+    XXIX.  Jack
+     XXX.  The Whisper of The Knife
+    XXXI.  Laughter
+   XXXII.  A Tale of A Careless Man
+  XXXIII.  A Count To Ten
+   XXXIV.  Tiger-Heart
+    XXXV.  Jack Hears a Small Voice
+   XXXVI.  A Voice in The Night
+  XXXVII.  A Man's Death
+ XXXVIII.  The Waiting
+   XXXIX.  The Cross Goes On
+
+
+
+
+RIDERS OF THE SILENCES
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE THUNDERBOLT
+
+It seemed that Father Anthony gathered all the warmth of the short
+northern summer and kept it for winter use, for his good nature was an
+actual physical force.  From his ruddy face beamed such an ardent
+kindliness that people literally reached out towards him as they might
+extend their hands toward a comfortable fire.
+
+All the labors of his work as an Inspector of Jesuit institutions
+across the length and breadth of Canada could not lessen the flame of
+the good father's enthusiasm; his smile was as indefatigable as his
+critical eyes.  The one looked sharply into every corner of a room and
+every nook and hidden cranny of thoughts and deeds; the other veiled
+the criticism and soothed the wounds of vanity.
+
+On this day, however, the sharp eyes grew a little less keen and
+somewhat wider, while that smile was fixed rather by habit than
+inclination.  In fact, his expression might be called a frozen
+kindliness as he looked across the table to Father Victor.
+
+It required a most indomitable geniality, indeed, to outface the rigid
+piety of Jean Paul Victor.  His missionary work had carried him far
+north, where the cold burns men thin.  The eternal frost of the Arctics
+lay on his hair, and his starved eyes looked out from hollows shadowed
+with blue.  He might have posed for a painting of one of those damned
+souls whom Dante placed in the frozen circle of the "Inferno."
+
+It was his own spirit which tortured him--the zeal which drove him
+north and north and north over untracked regions, drove him until his
+body failed, drove him even now, though his body was crippled.
+
+A mighty yearning, and a still mightier self-contempt whipped him on,
+and the school over which he was master groaned and suffered under his
+regime, and the disciples caught his spirit and went out like warriors
+in the name of God to spread the faith.
+
+He despised them as he despised himself, for he said continually in his
+heart: "How great is the purpose and how little is our labor!"
+
+Some such thought as that curled his thin lip as he stared across at
+Father Anthony like a wolf that has not eaten for a fortnight.  The
+good father sustained the gaze, but he shivered a little and sighed.
+There was awe, and pity, and even a touch of horror in his eyes.
+
+He said gently: "Are there none among all your lads, dear Father
+Victor, whom you find something more than imperfect machines?"
+
+The man of the north drew from a pocket of his robe a letter.  His
+marvelously lean fingers touched it almost with a caress, and when he
+spoke the softening which could not appear in the rigid features came
+into his voice and made it lower and deeper.
+
+"One."
+
+Father Anthony started in astonishment, as one might start to hear a
+divine prophet admit a mistake, but being wise he remained silent,
+waiting.  Jean Paul Victor peered into space.
+
+"Pierre Ryder.  He is like a pleasant summer, and I"--he clasped his
+colorless hands--"am frozen--frozen to the heart."
+
+Still Father Anthony waited, but his eyes were like diamonds for
+brightness.
+
+"He shall carry on my mission in the north.  I, who am silent, have
+done much; but Pierre sings, and he will do more.  I had to fight my
+first battle to conquer my own stubborn soul, and the battle left me
+weak for the great work in the snows, but Pierre will not fight that
+battle, for I have trained him."
+
+He repeated after a pause: "For those who sing forget themselves and
+their weariness.  I, Jean Paul Victor, have never sung."
+
+He bowed his head, submitting to the judgment of God.
+
+"This letter is for him.  Shall we not carry it to him?  For two days I
+have not seen Pierre."
+
+Father Anthony winced.
+
+He said: "Do you deny yourself even the pleasure of the lad's company?
+Alas, Father Victor, you forge your own spurs and goad yourself with
+your own hands.  What harm is there in being often with the lad?"
+
+The sneer returned to the lips of Jean Paul Victor.
+
+"The purpose would be lost--lost to my eyes and lost to his--the
+purpose for which I have lived and for which he shall live--the purpose
+to which you are dedicated, Gabrielle Antoine Anthony."
+
+He relented in his fierceness, and continued with the strange gentle
+note in his voice: "Our love for the young, it is like a vine that
+climbs through the branches of a strong tree.  When the vine is young
+it may be taken away in safety and both the tree and the vine will
+live, but if it grows old it will kill the tree when the vine is torn
+away.
+
+"I am the strong tree, and Pierre has grown into my heart.  It is time
+that he be torn away.  He is almost ready.  The work is prepared.  He
+must start forth."
+
+Even while he announced his purpose the sweat poured out on his
+forehead.  He rose and paced noiselessly up and down the bare room, his
+black robe catching around the long, bony legs.  Father Anthony drew a
+great breath.  At last Jean Paul Victor could speak again.
+
+"In all the history of our order, there is hardly one man who will go
+out armed like Pierre Ryder.  He is young, he is strong, he is
+fearless, he is pure of heart and single of mind.  He has never tasted
+wine; he has never looked wrongly on a woman."
+
+"A prodigy--but it is your work."
+
+"Mine--all mine!"
+
+The whole soul of the man stood up in his eyes in a fierce triumph.
+
+"Hear how I worked.  When I first saw him he was a child, a baby, but
+he came to me and took one finger of my hand in his small fist and
+looked up to me.  Ah, Gabrielle the smile of an infant goes to the
+heart swifter than the thrust of a knife!  I looked down upon him and
+thought many things, and I knew that I was chosen to teach the child.
+There was a voice that spoke in me.  You will smile, but even now I
+think I can hear it."
+
+"I swear to you that I believe," said Father Anthony, and his voice
+trembled.
+
+"Another man would have given Pierre a Bible and a Latin grammar and a
+cell.  I gave him the testament and the grammar; I gave him also the
+wild north country to say his prayers in and patter his Latin.  I
+taught his mind, but I did not forget his body.
+
+"He is to go out among wild men.  He must have strength of the spirit.
+He must also have a strength of the body that they will understand and
+respect.  How else can he translate for them the truths of the Holy
+Spirit?  Every day of his life I have made him handle firearms.  Other
+men think, and aim, and fire; Pierre thinks and shoots, and has
+forgotten how to miss.
+
+"He goes among wild men.  These lessons must be learned.  He is a
+soldier of God.  He can ride a horse standing; he can run a hundred
+miles in a day behind a dog-team.  He can wrestle and fight with his
+hands, for I have brought skilled men to teach him.  I have made him a
+thunderbolt to hurl among the ignorant and the unenlightened; and this
+is the hand which shall wield it.  Ha!"
+
+A flash of cold fire came for a single instant in his eyes as he stood
+with upturned face.  He changed.
+
+"Yet he is gentle as a woman.  He goes out through the villages and
+comes back unharmed, and after him come letters from girls and old men
+and dames.  Even strong men come many miles to see him and they write
+to him.  He is known.  It is now hardly a six month since he saved a
+trapper from a bobcat and killed the animal with a knife."
+
+His heart failed him at the thought, and he murmured: "It must have
+been my prayers which saved him from the teeth and the claws."
+
+Good Father Anthony rose.
+
+"You have described a young David.  I am eager to see him.  Let us go."
+
+"Wait.  Before you go you must know that he does not suspect that he
+differs from other youths.  Women have looked lewdly upon him and
+written him letters with singing words, but Pierre being of a simple
+nature, he answers them briefly and commends them to God.  In fact, the
+flattery of women he does not understand, and the flattery of men he
+thinks is mere kindliness.  Are you prepared to meet him, father?"
+
+Father Anthony nodded, and the two went out together.  The chill of the
+open was hardly more than the bitter cold inside the building, but
+there was a wind that drove the cold through the blood and bones of a
+man.
+
+They staggered along against it until they came to a small outhouse,
+long and low.  On the sheltered side of it they paused to take breath,
+and Feather Victor explained: "This is his hour in the gymnasium.  To
+make the body strong required thought and care.  Mere riding and
+running and swinging of the ax will not develop every muscle.  So I
+made this gymnasium, and here Pierre works every day.  His teachers of
+boxing and wrestling have abandoned him."
+
+There was almost a smile on the lean face.
+
+"The last man left with a swollen jaw and limping on one leg."
+
+Conscience-stricken, he stopped short, crossed himself, and then went
+on: "So I give him for partners men who have committed small sins.
+Their penance is to stand before Pierre and box each day for a few
+minutes and then to wrestle against him.  They are fierce men, these
+woodsmen and trappers, and big of body; but little Pierre, they dread
+him like a whip of fire.  One and all, they come to me within a
+fortnight and beg for an easier penance."
+
+Here he opened the door, and they slipped inside.  The air was warmed
+by a big stove, and the room--for the afternoon was dark--lighted by
+two swinging lanterns suspended from the low roof.  By that
+illumination Father Anthony saw two men stripped naked, save for a
+loin-cloth, and circling each other slowly in the center of a ring
+which was fenced in with ropes and floored with a padded mat.
+Certainly Father Victor had spared nothing in expense to make the
+fittings of the gymnasium perfect.
+
+Of the two wrestlers, one was a veritable giant of a Canuck, swarthy of
+skin, hairy-chested.  His great hands were extended to grasp or to
+parry--his head lowered with a ferocious scowl--and across his forehead
+swayed a tuft of black, shaggy hair.  He might have stood for one of
+those northern barbarians whom the Romans loved to pit against their
+native champions in the arena.  He was the greater because of the
+opponent he faced, and it was upon this opponent that the eyes of
+Father Anthony centered.
+
+Like Father Victor, he was caught first by the bright hair.  It was a
+dark red, and where the light struck it strongly there were places like
+fire.  Down from this hair the light slipped like running water over a
+lithe body, slender at the hips, strong-chested, round and smooth of
+limb, with long muscles everywhere leaping and trembling at every move.
+
+He, like the big Canuck, circled cautiously about, but the impression
+he gave was as different from the other as day is from night.  His head
+was carried high; in place of a scowl, he smiled with a sort of boyish
+eagerness, and a light which was partly exultation and partly mischief
+sparkled in his eyes.  Once or twice the giant caught at the other, but
+David slipped from under the grip of Goliath easily.  It seemed as if
+his skin were oiled.  The big man snarled with anger, and lunged more
+eagerly at Pierre.  Father Anthony caught the shoulder of his friend.
+
+"Quick!" he whispered anxiously.  "Stop them, for if the black fellow
+sets his fingers on the boy he will break him like a willow wand,
+and--in the name of God, Jean Paul!"
+
+For the two, abandoning their feints, suddenly rushed together, and the
+swarthy arms of the monster slipped around the white body of Pierre.
+For a moment they whirled, twisting and struggling.
+
+"Now!" murmured Father Victor; and as if in answer to a command, Pierre
+slipped down, whipped his hands to a new grip, and the two crashed to
+the mat, with Pierre above.
+
+"Open your eyes, Father Anthony.  The lad is safe.  How Goliath grunts!"
+
+The boy had not cared to follow his advantage, but rose and danced
+away, laughing softly.  The Canuck floundered up and rushed like a
+furious bull.  His downfall was only the swifter.  The impact of the
+two bodies sounded like hands clapped together, and then Goliath rose
+into the air, struggling mightily, and pitched with a thud to the mat.
+
+He writhed there, for the wind was knocked from his body by the fall.
+At length he struggled to a sitting posture and glared up at the
+conqueror.  The boy reached out a hand to his fallen foe.
+
+"You would have thrown me that way the first time," he said, "but you
+let me change grips on you.  In another week you will be too much for
+me, _bon ami_."
+
+The other accepted the hand after an instant of hesitation and was
+dragged to his feet.  He stood resting one elbow on the gleaming
+shoulder of Pierre and looking down into the boy's face with a singular
+grin.  But there was no triumph in the eye of Pierre--only a
+good-natured interest.
+
+"In another week," answered the giant, "there will not be a sound bone
+in my body.  This very night I shall go to Father Victor.  I had rather
+starve for three days in the forest than stand up to you for three
+minutes, little brother."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+IRENE
+
+"You have seen him," murmured the tall priest.  "Now let us go back and
+wait for him.  I will leave word."
+
+He touched one of the two or three men who were watching the athletes,
+and whispered his message in the other's ear.  Then he went back with
+Father Anthony.
+
+"You have seen him," he repeated, when they sat once more in the
+cheerless room.  "Now pronounce on him."
+
+The other answered: "I have seen a wonderful body--but the mind, Father
+Victor?"
+
+"It is as simple as that of a child--his thoughts run as clear as
+spring water."
+
+"Ah, but they are swift thoughts.  Suppose the spring water gathers up
+a few stones and rushes on down the side of the mountain.  Very soon it
+is wearing a deeper channel--then but a little space, and it is a
+raging torrent and tears down great trees from its banks and goes
+shouting and leaping out toward the sea.
+
+"Suppose a strange thought came in the mind of your Pierre.  It would
+be like the pebbles in the swift-running spring water.  He would carry
+it on, rushing.  It would tear away the old boundaries of his mind--it
+might wipe out the banks you have set down for him--it might tear away
+the choicest teachings."
+
+Father Victor sat straight and stiff with stern, set lips.
+
+He said dryly: "Father Anthony has been much in the world."
+
+"I speak from the best intention, good father.  Look you, now, I have
+seen that same red hair and those same lighted blue eyes before, and
+wherever I have seen them has been war and trouble and unrest.  I have
+seen that same whimsical smile which stirs the heart of a woman and
+makes a man reach for his revolver.  This boy whose mind is so
+clear--arm him with a single wrong thought, with a single doubt of the
+eternal goodness of God's plans, and he will be a thunderbolt indeed,
+dear Father, but one which even your strong hand could not control."
+
+"I have heard you," said the priest; "but you will see.  He is coming
+now."
+
+There was a knock at the door; then it opened and showed a modest
+novice in a simple gown of black serge girt at the waist with the flat
+encircling band.  His head was downward; it was not till the blue eyes
+flashed inquisitively up that Father Anthony recognized Pierre.
+
+The hard voice of Jean Paul Victor pronounced: "This is that Father
+Anthony of whom I have spoken."
+
+The novice slipped to his knees and folded his hands.  The two priests
+exchanged glances, one of triumph and one of wonder, while the plump
+fingers of Father Anthony poised over that dark red hair, pressed
+smooth on top where the skull-cap rested, and curling somewhat at the
+sides.  The blessing which he spoke was Latin, and Father Victor looked
+somewhat anxiously toward his protege till the latter answered in a
+diction so pure that Cicero himself would have smiled to hear it:
+
+"Father, I thank thee, and if my mind were as old as thine I might be
+able to wish blessings as great as these in return."
+
+"Stand up!" cried Father Anthony.  "By Heavens, Jean Paul, it is the
+purest Latin I have heard this twelvemonth."
+
+And the lad answered: "It must be pure Latin; Father Victor has taught
+me."
+
+Gabrielle Anthony stared, and to save him from too obvious confusion
+the other priest interrupted: "I have a letter for you, my son."
+
+And he passed the envelope to Pierre.  The latter examined it with
+interest.
+
+"The writing sprawls like the knees of a boy of ten.  What old man has
+written to you, Pierre?"
+
+"No man that I know.  This comes from the south.  It is marked from the
+United States."
+
+"So far!" exclaimed the tall priest.  "Give me the letter, lad."
+
+But here he caught the whimsical eyes of Father Anthony, and he allowed
+his outstretched hand to fall.  Yet he scowled as he said: "No; keep it
+and read it, Pierre."
+
+"I have no great wish to keep it," answered Pierre, studying anxiously
+the dark brow of the priest.
+
+"It is yours.  Open it and read."
+
+The lad obeyed instantly.  He shook out the folded paper and moved a
+little nearer the light.  Then he read aloud, as if it had never
+entered his mind that what was addressed to him might be meant for his
+eyes alone.  And as he read he reminded Father Anthony of some childish
+chorister pronouncing words beyond his understanding.  The tears came
+to the eyes of the good father.
+
+And he said in his heart: "Alas!  I have been too much in the world of
+men, and now a child can teach me."
+
+The musical voice of the boy began:
+
+
+"Morgantown,
+  "R. F. D. No. 4.
+
+"SON PIERRE:
+
+"Here I lie with a chunk of lead from the gun of Bob McGurk resting
+somewheres in the insides of me, and there ain't no way of doubting
+that I'm about to go out.  Now, I ain't complaining none.  I've had my
+fling.  I've eat my meat to order, well done and rare--mostly rare.
+Maybe some folks will be saying that I've got what I've been asking
+for, and I know that Bob McGurk got me fair and square, shooting from
+the hip.  That don't help me none, lying here with a through ticket to
+some place that's farther south than Texas."
+
+
+Pierre lowered the letter and looked gravely upon Father Victor.
+
+"There are blasphemies coming.  Shall I read on?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He began again, a little spot of red coming into either cheek:
+
+
+"Hell ain't none too bad for me, I know.  I ain't whining none.  I just
+lie here and watch the world getting dimmer until I begin to be seeing
+things out of my past.  That shows the devil ain't losing no time with
+me.  But the thing that comes back oftenest and hits me the hardest is
+the sight of your mother, lying with you in the hollow of her arm and
+looking up at me and whispering, 'Dad,' just before she went out."
+
+
+The hand of the boy fell, and his wide eyes sought the face of Father
+Victor.  The latter was standing.
+
+"You told me I had no father--"
+
+An imperious arm stretched toward him.
+
+"Give me the letter."
+
+He moved to obey, and then checked himself.
+
+"This is my father's writing, is it not?"
+
+"No, no!  It's a lie, Pierre!"
+
+But Pierre stood with the letter held behind his back, and the first
+doubt in his life stood up darkly in his eyes.  Father Victor sank
+slowly back into his chair.  All his gaunt frame was trembling.
+
+"Read on," he commanded.
+
+And Pierre, white of face, read on:
+
+
+"So I got a idea that I had to write to you, Pierre.  There ain't
+nothing I can make up to you, but knowing the truth may help some.
+Poor kid, you ain't got no father in the eyes of the law, and neither
+did you have no mother, and there ain't no name that belongs to you by
+rights."
+
+
+Father Anthony veiled his eyes, but the bright starved eyes of Jean
+Paul Victor stared on at the reader.  His voice was lower now, and the
+lips moved slowly, as though numb with cold:
+
+
+I was a man in them days, and your mother was a woman that brought your
+heart into your throat and set it singing.  She and me, we were too
+busy being just plain happy to care much what was right or wrong; so
+you just sort of happened along, Pierre.  Me being so close to hell, I
+remember her eyes that was bluer than heaven looking up to me, and her
+hair, that was copper with gold lights in it, ran down across the white
+of her shoulder, and even past her side and around you, Pierre, till it
+seemed like you was lying in a red river.  She being about all in, she
+got hold of my hand and looked up to me with them blue eyes I been
+talking about, and said 'Dad,' and went out.  And I damned near
+followed her.
+
+"I buried Irene on the side of the mountain under a big, rough rock,
+and I didn't carve nothing on the rock.  Then I took you, Pierre, and I
+knew I wasn't no sort of a man to raise up the son of Irene; so I
+brought you to Father Victor on a winter night and left you in his
+arms.  That was after I'd done my best to raise you and you was just
+about old enough to chatter a bit.  There wasn't nothing else to do.
+My wife, she went pretty near crazy when I brought you home.  And she'd
+of killed you, Pierre, if I hadn't took you away.
+
+"You see, I was married before I met Irene.  So there ain't no alibi
+for me.  I just acted the hound.  But me being so close to hell now, I
+look back to that time, and somehow I see no wrong in it still.
+
+"And if I done wrong then, I've got my share of hell-fire for it.  Here
+I lie, with my boys, Bill and Bert, sitting around in the corner of the
+room waiting for me to go out.  They ain't men, Pierre.  They're wolves
+in the skins of men.  They're the right sons of their mother.  When I
+go out they'll grab the coin I've saved up, and leave me to lie here
+and rot, maybe.
+
+"Lad, it's a fearful thing to die without having no one around that
+cares, and to know that even after I've gone out I'm going to lie here
+and have my dead eyes looking up at the ceiling.  So I'm writing to
+you, Pierre, part to tell you what you ought to know; part because I
+got a sort of crazy idea that maybe you could get down here to me
+before I go out.
+
+"You don't owe me nothing but hard words, Pierre; but if you don't try
+to come to me, the ghost of your mother will follow you all your life,
+lad, and you'll be seeing her blue eyes and the red-gold of her hair in
+the dark of the night as I see it now.  Me, I'm a hard man, but it
+breaks my heart, that ghost of Irene.  So here I'll lie, waiting for
+you, Pierre, and lingering out the days with whisky, and fighting the
+wolf eyes of them there sons of mine.  If I weaken--If they find they
+can look me square in the eye--they'll finish me quick, and make off
+with the coin.  Pierre, come quick.
+
+"MARTIN RYDER."
+
+
+The hand of Pierre dropped slowly to his side, and the letter fluttered
+with a crisp rustling to the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE LAUNCHING OF THE BOLT
+
+Then came a voice that startled the two priests, for it seemed that a
+fourth man had entered the room, so changed was it from the musical
+voice of Pierre.
+
+"Father Victor, the roan is a strong horse.  May I take him?"
+
+"Pierre!" and the priest reached out his bony hands.
+
+But the boy did not seem to notice or to understand.
+
+"It is a long journey, and I will need a strong horse.  It must be
+eight hundred miles to that town."
+
+"Pierre, what claim has he upon you?  What debt have you to repay?"
+
+And Pierre le Rouge answered: "He loved my mother."
+
+He raised his face a little higher and smiled upon them.
+
+"It is a beautiful name, is it not--Irene?"
+
+There was no voice from Jean Paul Victor, so he turned to Father
+Anthony.
+
+"It is a charming name, Pierre."
+
+"I would give my revolver with the pearl handle, and my skates, and the
+engraven knife of old Canole just for one glimpse of her."
+
+"You are going?"
+
+The boy asked in astonishment: "Would you not have me go, Father?"
+
+And Jean Paul Victor could not meet the sorrowful blue eyes.
+
+He bowed his head and answered: "My child, I would have you go.  But
+promise with your hand in mine that you will come back to me when your
+father is buried."
+
+The lean fingers caught the extended hand of Pierre and froze about it.
+
+"But first I have a second duty in the southland."
+
+"A second?"
+
+"You taught me to shoot and to use a knife.  Once you said: 'An eye for
+an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'  Father Victor, my father was killed
+by another man."
+
+"Pierre, dear lad, swear to me here on this cross that you will not
+raise your hands against the murderer.  'Vengeance is mine, saith the
+Lord.'"
+
+"He must have an instrument for his wrath.  He shall work through me in
+this."
+
+"Pierre, you blaspheme."
+
+"'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'"
+
+"It was a demon in me that quoted that in your hearing, and not myself."
+
+"The horse, Father Victor--may I have the roan?"
+
+"Pierre, I command you--"
+
+The light in the blue eyes was as cold and steady as that in the
+starved eyes of Jean Paul Victor.
+
+"Hush!" he said calmly.  "For the sake of the love that I bear for you,
+do not command me."
+
+"Pierre, I have prayed God for you night and morning, and for the sake
+of those prayers which are dearer than gold in heaven, stay with me!"
+
+"Dear Father Victor, you also hope for hands that love you to close
+your eyes at the end."
+
+And the stern priest dropped his head.  He said at last: "I have
+nothing saving one great and terrible treasure which I see was
+predestined to you.  It is the cross of Father Meilan.  You have worn
+it before.  You shall wear it hereafter as your own."
+
+He took from his own neck a silver cross suspended by a slender silver
+chain, and the boy, with startled eyes, dropped to his knees and
+received the gift.
+
+"It has brought good to all who possessed it, but for every good thing
+that it works for you it will work evil on some other.  Great is its
+blessing and great is its burden.  I, alas, know; but you also have
+heard of its history.  Do you accept it, Pierre?"
+
+"Dear Father, with all my heart."
+
+The colorless hands touched the dark-red hair, and the prophet eyes of
+the priest went up.
+
+"God pardon the sins you shall commit."
+
+Pierre crushed the hand of Jean Paul Victor against his lips and rushed
+from the room, while the tall priest, staring down at the fingers which
+had been kissed, pronounced:
+
+"It is better that he should commit murder with his hands than to slay
+in his evil thoughts."
+
+"Can you resign him like this?"
+
+"I have forged a thunderbolt.  Father Gabrielle, you are a prophet.  It
+is too great for my hand.  Listen!"
+
+And they heard clearly the sharp clang of a horse's hoofs on the
+hard-packed snow, loud at first, but fading rapidly away.  The wind,
+increasing suddenly, shook the house furiously about them.
+
+It was a north wind, and traveled south before the rider of the strong
+roan.  Over a thousand miles of plain and hills it passed, and down
+into the cattle country of the mountain-desert which the Rockies hem on
+one side and the tall Sierras on the other.
+
+It was a trail to try even the endurance of Pierre and the strong roan,
+but the boy clung to it doggedly.  On a trail that led down from the
+edges of the northern mountain the roan crashed to the ground in a
+plunging fall, hitting heavily on his knees.  He was dead before the
+boy had freed his feet from the stirrups.
+
+Pierre threw the saddle over his shoulder and walked eight miles to the
+nearest ranchhouse, where he spent practically the last cent of his
+money on another horse, and drove on south once more.
+
+There was little hope in him as day after day slipped past.  Only the
+ghost of a chance remained that Martin Ryder could fight away death for
+another fortnight; yet Pierre had seen many a man from the
+mountain-desert stave off the end through weeks and weeks of the
+bitterest suffering.  His father must be a man of the same hard durable
+metal, and upon that Pierre staked all his hopes.
+
+And always he carried the picture of the dying man alone with his two
+wolf-eyed sons who waited for his eyes to weaken.  Whenever he thought
+of that he touched his horse with the spurs and rode fiercely for a
+time.  They were his flesh and blood, the man, and even the two
+wolf-eyed sons.
+
+So he came at last to a gap in the hills and looked down on Morgantown
+in the hollow, twoscore unpainted houses sprawling along a single
+street.  The snow was everywhere white and pure, and the town was like
+a stain on the landscape with wisps of smoke rising and trailing across
+the hilltops.
+
+Down to the edge of the town he rode, left his cow-pony standing with
+hanging head outside a saloon, strode through the swinging doors, and
+asked of the bartender the way to the house of Martin Ryder.
+
+The bartender stopped in his labor of rubbing down the surface of his
+bar and stared at the black-serge robe of the stranger, with curiosity
+rather than criticism, for women, madmen, and clergymen have the
+right-of-way in the mountain-desert.
+
+He said: "Well, I'll be damned!--askin' your pardon.  So old Mart Ryder
+has come down to this, eh?  Partner, you're sure going to have a rough
+ride getting Mart to heaven.  Better send a posse along with him,
+because some first-class angels are going to get considerable riled
+when they sight him coming.  Ha, ha, ha!  Sure I'll show you the way.
+Take the northwest road out of town and go five miles till you see a
+broken-backed shack lyin' over to the right.  That's Mart Ryder's
+place."
+
+Out to the broken-backed shack rode Pierre le Rouge, Pierre the Red, as
+every one in the north country knew him.  His second horse, staunch
+cow-pony that it was, stumbled on with sagging knees and hanging head,
+but Pierre rode upright, at ease, for his mind was untired.
+
+Broken-backed indeed was the house before which he dismounted.  The
+roof sagged from end to end, and the stove pipe chimney leaned at a
+drunken angle.  Nature itself was withered beside that house; before
+the door stood a great cottonwood, gashed and scarred by lightning,
+with the limbs almost entirely stripped away from one side.  Under this
+broken monster Pierre stepped and through the door.  Two growls like
+the snarls of watch-dogs greeted him, and two tall, unshaven men barred
+his way.
+
+Behind them, from the bed in the corner, a feeble voice called: "Who's
+there?"
+
+"In the name of God," said the boy gravely, for he saw a hollow-eyed
+specter staring toward him from the bed in the corner, "let me pass!  I
+am his son!"
+
+It was not that which made them give back, but a shrill, faint cry of
+triumph from the sick man toward which they turned.  Pierre slipped
+past them and stood above Martin Ryder.  He was wasted beyond
+belief--only the monster hand showed what he had been.
+
+"Son?" he queried with yearning and uncertainty.
+
+"Pierre, your son."
+
+And he slipped to his knees beside the bed.  The heavy hand fell upon
+his hair and stroked it.
+
+"There ain't no ways of doubting it.  It's red silk, like the hair of
+Irene.  Seein' you, boy, it ain't so hard to die.  Look up!  So!
+Pierre, my son!  Are you scared of me, boy?"
+
+"I'm not afraid."
+
+"Not with them eyes you ain't.  Now that you're here, pay the coyotes
+and let 'em go off to gnaw the bones."
+
+He dragged out a small canvas bag from beneath the blankets and
+gestured toward the two lurkers in the corner.
+
+"Take it, and be damned to you!"
+
+A dirty, yellow hand seized the bag; there was a chortle of exultation,
+and the two scurried out of the room.
+
+"Three weeks they've watched an' waited for me to go out, Pierre.
+Three weeks they've waited an' sneaked up to my bed an' sneaked away
+agin, seein' my eyes open."
+
+Looking into their fierce fever brightness, Pierre understood why they
+had quailed.  For the man, though wrecked beyond hope of living, was
+terrible still.  The thick, gray stubble on his face could not hide
+altogether the hard lines of mouth and jaw, and on the wasted arm the
+hand was grotesquely huge.  It was horror that widened the eyes of
+Pierre as he looked at Martin Ryder; it was a grim happiness that made
+his lips almost smile.
+
+"You've taken holy orders, lad?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But the black dress?"
+
+"I'm only a novice.  I've sworn no vows."
+
+"And you don't hate me--you hold no grudge against me for the sake of
+your mother, Pierre?"
+
+He took the heavy hand.
+
+"Are you not my father?  And my mother was happy with you.  For her
+sake I love you."
+
+"The good Father Victor.  He sent you to me."
+
+"I came of my own will.  He would not have let me go."
+
+"He--he would have kept my flesh and blood away from me?"
+
+"Do not reproach him.  He would have kept me from a sin."
+
+"Sin?  By God, boy, no matter what I've done, is it sin for my son to
+come to me?  What sin?"
+
+"The sin of murder!"
+
+"Ha!"
+
+"I have come to find McGurk."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE CORNER PLOT
+
+Like some old father-bear watching his cub flash teeth against a
+stalking lynx, half proud and half fearful of such courage, so the
+dying cattleman looked at his son.  Excitement set a high and dangerous
+color in his cheek.  His eyes were too bright.
+
+"Pierre--brave boy!  Look at me.  I ain't no imitation-man, even now,
+but I ain't a ghost of what I was.  There wasn't no man I wouldn't of
+met fair and square with bare hands or with a gun.  Maybe my hands was
+big, but they were fast on the draw.  I've lived all my life with iron
+on the hip, and my six-gun has seven notches.
+
+"But McGurk downed me fair and square.  There wasn't no murder.  I was
+out for his hide, and he knew it.  I done the provokin', an' he jest
+done the finishin', that was all.  It hurts me a lot to say it, but
+he's a better man than I was.  A kid like you, why, he'd jest eat you,
+Pierre."
+
+Pierre le Rouge smiled again.  He felt a stern and aching pride to be
+the son of this man.
+
+"So that's settled," went on Martin Ryder, "an' a damned good thing it
+is.  Son, you didn't come none too soon.  I'm goin' out fast.  There
+ain't enough light left in me so's I can see my own way.  Here's all I
+ask: When I die touch my eyelids soft an' draw 'em shut--I've seen the
+look in a dead man's eyes.  Close 'em, and I know I'll go to sleep an'
+have good dreams.  And down in the middle of Morgantown is the
+buryin'-ground.  I've ridden past it a thousand times an' watched a
+corner plot, where the grass grows quicker than it does anywheres else
+in the cemetery.  Pierre, I'd die plumb easy if I knew I was goin' to
+sleep the rest of time in that place."
+
+"It shall be done."
+
+"But that corner plot, it would cost a pile, son.  And I've no money.
+I gave what I had to them wolf-eyed boys, Bill an' Bert.  Money was
+what they wanted, an' after I had Irene's son with me, money was the
+cheapest way of gettin' rid of 'em."
+
+"I'll buy the plot."
+
+"Have you got that much money, lad?"
+
+"Yes," lied Pierre calmly.
+
+The bright eyes grew dimmer and then fluttered close.  Pierre started
+to his feet, thinking that the end had come.  But the voice began
+again, fainter, slowly:
+
+"No light left inside of me, but dyin' this way is easy.  There ain't
+no wind will blow on me after I'm dead, but I'll be blanketed safe from
+head to foot in cool, sweet-smellin' sod--the kind that has tangles of
+the roots of grass.  There ain't no snow will reach to me where I lie.
+There ain't no sun will burn down to me.  Dyin' like that is
+jest--goin' to sleep."
+
+After that he said nothing for a time, and the late afternoon darkened
+slowly through the room.
+
+As for Pierre, he did not move, and his mind went back.  He did not see
+the bearded wreck who lay dying before him, but a picture of Irene,
+with the sun lighting her copper hair with places of burning gold, and
+a handsome young giant beside her.  They rode together on some upland
+trail at sunset rime, sharply framed against the bright sky.  Their
+hands were together; their faces were raised; they laughed, from the
+midst of their small heaven.
+
+There was a whisper below him: "Irene!"
+
+And Pierre looked down to blankly staring eyes.  He groaned, and
+dropped to his knees.
+
+"I have come for you," said the whisper, "because the time has come,
+Irene.  We have to ride out together.  We have a long ways to go.  Are
+you ready?"
+
+"Yes," said Pierre.
+
+"Thank God!  It's a wonderful night.  The stars are asking us out.
+Quick!  Into your saddle.  Now the spurs.  So!  We are alone and free,
+with the winds around us, and all that we have been forgotten behind
+us.  Irene, look up with me!"
+
+The eyes opened wide and stared up; without a stir in the great, gaunt
+body he was dead.  Pierre drew the eyes reverently shut.  There were no
+tears in his eyes, but a feeling of hollowness about his heart, and a
+great pain.  He straightened and looked about him and found that the
+room was quite dark.
+
+So in the dimness Pierre fumbled, by force of habit, at his throat, and
+found the cross which he wore by a silver chain about his throat.  He
+held it in a great grip and closed his eyes and prayed.  When he opened
+his eyes again it was almost deep night in the room, and Pierre had
+passed from youth to manhood.  Through the gloom nothing stood out
+distinctly save the white face of the dead man, and from that Pierre
+looked quickly away.
+
+One by one he numbered his obligations to Martin Ryder, and first and
+last he remembered the lie which had soothed his father.  The money for
+that corner plot where the grass grew first in the spring of the
+year--where was he to find it?  He fumbled in his pocket and found only
+a single coin.
+
+He leaned back against the wall and strove to concentrate on the
+problem, but his thoughts wandered in spite of himself back to the
+snows of Canada, to the letter, to the ride south, the death of the
+roan, and so on until he reached his entry to that very room.
+
+Looking backward, he remembered all things much more clearly than when
+he had actually seen them.  For instance, he recalled now that as he
+walked through the door the two figures which had started up to block
+his way had left behind them some playing-cards at the corner table.
+One of these cards had slipped from the edge of the board and flickered
+slowly to the floor.
+
+With that memory the thoughts of Pierre le Rouge stopped.  The picture
+of the falling card remained; all else went out in his mind like the
+snuffing of the candle.  Then, as if he heard a voice directing him
+through the utter blackness of the room, he knew what he must do.
+
+All his wealth was the single half-dollar piece in his pocket, and
+there was only one way in which that coin could be increased to the sum
+he would need to buy that corner plot, where the soul of old Martin
+Ryder could sleep long and deep.
+
+From his brothers he would get no help.  The least memory of those
+sallow, hungry faces convinced him of that.
+
+There remained the gaming table.  In the north country he had watched
+men sit in a silent circle, smoking, drinking, with the flare of an
+oil-lamp against deep, seamed faces, and only the slip and whisper of
+card against card.
+
+Cold conscience tapped the shoulder of Pierre, remembering the lessons
+of Father Victor, but a moment later his head went up and his eyes were
+shining through the dark.  After all, the end justified the means.  It
+was typical of him that sorrow sat lightly on him.
+
+A moment later he was laughing softly as a boy in the midst of a prank,
+and busily throwing off the robe of serge.  Fumbling through the night
+he located the shirt and overalls he had seen hanging from a nail on
+the wall.  Into these he slipped, leaned to kiss the chill, damp
+forehead of the sleeper, and then went out under the open sky.
+
+The rest had revived the strength of the tough little cow-pony, and he
+drove on at a gallop toward the twinkling lights of Morgantown.  There
+was a new consciousness about Pierre as if he had changed his whole
+nature with his clothes.  The sober sense of duty which had kept him in
+awe all his life like a lifted finger, was almost gone, and in its
+place was a joyous freedom.
+
+For the first time he faintly realized what an existence other than
+that of a priest might be.  Now for a brief moment he could forget the
+part of the subdued novice and become merely a man with nothing about
+him to distinguish him from other men, nothing to make heads turn at
+his approach and raise whispers as he passed.
+
+It was a game, but he rejoiced in it as a girl does in her first
+masquerade.  To-morrow he must be grave and sober-footed and an example
+to other men; to-night he could frolic as he pleased.  The good Father
+Victor would hear and frown, perhaps, but remembering the purpose for
+which the thing was done he would forgive.
+
+So Pierre le Rouge tossed back his head and laughed up to the frosty
+stars.  The loose sleeves and the skirts of the robe no longer
+entangled his limbs.  He threw up his arms and shouted.  A hillside
+caught the sound and echoed it back to him with a wonderful clearness,
+and up and down the long ravine beat the clatter of the flying hoofs.
+The whole world shouted and laughed and rode with him on Morgantown.
+
+If the people in the houses that he passed had known they would have
+started up from their chairs and taken rifle and horse and after him on
+the trail.  But how could they tell from the passing of those ringing
+hoofs that Pierre, the novice, was dead, and Red Pierre was born?
+
+So they drowsed on about their comfortable fires, and Pierre drew rein
+with a jerk before the largest of Morgantown's saloons.  With a hand on
+the swinging doors he paused a breathless moment, thinking, doubting,
+wondering--and a little cold of heart like the boy who stands on the
+bank of the river to take the first plunge in the spring of the year.
+He had to set his teeth before he could summon the resolution to throw
+open the door.  It was done; he stepped inside, and stood blinking in
+the sudden rush of light against his face.
+
+It was all bewildering at first; the radiance, the blue tangle of
+smoke, the storm of voices.  For Muldoon's was packed from door to
+door.  Coins rang in a steady chorus along the bar, and the crowd
+waited three and four deep.
+
+Some one was singing a rollicking song of the range at one end of the
+bar, and a chorus of four bellowed a profane parody at the other end.
+
+The ears of Pierre le Rouge tingled hotly, and he lowered his eyes to
+the floor.  Truly, Father Victor would be very wrath when all this was
+confessed.  Partly to escape this uproar he worked his way to the
+quieter room at the back of the saloon.
+
+It was almost as crowded as the bar, but here no one spoke except for
+an occasional growl.  Sudden speaking, and a loud voice, indeed, was
+hardly safe.  Some one cursed at his ill-luck as Pierre entered, and a
+dozen hands reached for six-guns.  In such a place one had to be
+prepared.
+
+Pierre remembered with quick dismay that he was not armed.  All his
+life the straight black gown had been weapon enough to make all men
+give way before him.  Now he carried no borrowed strength upon his
+shoulders.
+
+Automatically he slipped his fingers under the breast of his shirt
+until their tips touched the cold metal of the cross.  That gave him
+stronger courage.  The joy of the adventure made his blood warm again
+as he drew out his one coin and looked for a place to start his venture.
+
+"It is God who governs me," he said, "and why should I doubt Him?"
+
+So he approached the nearest table.  On the surface of it were marked
+six squares with chalk, and each with its appropriate number.  The man
+who ran the game stood behind the table and shook three dice.  The
+numbers which turned up paid the gambler.  The numbers which failed to
+show paid the owner of the game.
+
+His luck had been too strong that night, and now only two men faced
+him, and both of them lost persistently.  They had passed the stage of
+intelligent gaming; they were "bucking" the dice with savage
+stubbornness.
+
+Pierre edged closer, shut his eyes, and deposited his coin.  When he
+looked again he saw that he had wagered on the five.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HURLEY
+
+The dice clattered across the table and were swept up by the hand of
+the man behind the table before Pierre could note them.  Sick at heart,
+he began to turn away, as he saw that hand reach out and gather in the
+coins of the other two betters.  It went out a third time and laid
+another fifty-cent piece upon his.  The heart of Pierre bounded up to
+his throat.
+
+Again the dice rolled, and this time he saw distinctly two fives turn
+up.  Two dollars in silver were dropped upon his, and still he let the
+money lie.  Again, again, and again the dice rolled.  And now there
+were pieces of gold among the silver that covered the square of the
+five.
+
+The other two looked askance at him, and the owner of the game growled:
+"Gimme room for the coins, stranger, will you?"
+
+Pierre picked up his winnings.  In his left hand he held them, and the
+coins brimmed his cupped palm.  With the free hand he placed his new
+wagers.  But he lost now.
+
+"I cannot win forever," thought Pierre, and redoubled his bets in an
+effort to regain the lost ground.
+
+Still his little fortune dwindled, till the sweat came out on his
+forehead and the blood that had flushed his face ran back and left him
+pale with dread.  And at last there remained only one gold piece.  He
+hesitated, holding it poised for the wager, while the owner of the game
+rattled the dice loudly and looked up at the coin with hungry eyes.
+
+Once more Pierre closed his eyes and laid his wager, while his empty
+left hand slipped again inside his shirt and touched the metal of the
+cross, and once more when he opened his eyes the hand of the gambler
+was going out to lay a second coin over his.
+
+"It is the cross!" thought Pierre, and thrilled mightily.  "It is the
+cross which brings me luck."
+
+The dice rattled out.  He won.  Again, and still he won.  The gambler
+wiped his forehead and looked up anxiously.  For these were wagers in
+gold, and the doubling stakes were running high.  About Pierre a crowd
+had grown--a dozen cattlemen who watched the growing heap of gold with
+silent fascination.  Then they began to make wagers of their own, and
+there were faint whispers of wrath and astonishment as the dice clicked
+out and each time the winnings of Pierre doubled.
+
+Suddenly the dealer stopped and held up his left hand as a warning.
+With his right, very slowly, inch by inch lest any one should suspect
+him of a gun play, he drew out a heavy forty-five and laid it on the
+table with the belt of cartridges.
+
+"Three years she's been on my hip through thick and thin, stranger.
+Three years she's shot close an' true.  There ain't a butt in the world
+that hugs your hand tighter.  There ain't a cylinder that spins easier.
+Shoot?  Lad, even a kid like you could be a killer with that six-gun.
+What will you lay ag'in' it?"
+
+And his red-stained eyes glanced covetously at the yellow heap of
+Pierre's money.
+
+"How much?" said Pierre eagerly.  "Is there enough on the table to buy
+the gun?"
+
+"Buy?" said the other fiercely.  "There ain't enough coin west of the
+Rockies to buy that gun.  D'you think I'm yaller hound enough to sell
+my six?  No, but I'll risk it in a fair bet.  There ain't no disgrace
+in that; eh, pals?"
+
+There was a chorus of low grunts of assent.
+
+"All right," said Pierre.  "That pile against the gun."
+
+"All of it?"
+
+"All."
+
+"Look here, kid, if you're tryin' to play a charity game with me--"
+
+"Charity?"
+
+The direct, frank surprise of that look disarmed the other.  He swept
+up the dice-box, and shook it furiously, while his lips stirred.  It
+was as if he murmured an incantation for success.  The dice rolled out,
+winking in the light, spun over, and the owner of the gun stood with
+both hands braced against the edge of the table, and stared hopelessly
+down.
+
+A moment before his pockets had sagged with a precious weight, and
+there had been a significant drag of the belt over his right hip.  Now
+both burdens were gone.
+
+He looked up with a short laugh.
+
+"I'm dry.  Who'll stake me to a drink?"
+
+Pierre scooped up a dozen pieces of the gold.
+
+"Here."
+
+The other drew back.
+
+"You're very welcome to it.  Here's more, if you'll have it."
+
+"The coin I've lost to you?  Take back a gamblin' debt?"
+
+"Easy there," said one of the men.  "Don't you see the kid's green?
+Here's a five-spot."
+
+The loser accepted the coin as carelessly as if he were conferring a
+favor by taking it, cast another scowl in the direction of Pierre, and
+went out toward the bar.  Pierre, very hot in the face, pocketed his
+winnings and belted on the gun.  It hung low on his thigh, just in easy
+gripping distance of his hand, and he fingered the butt with a smile.
+
+"The kid's feelin' most a man," remarked a sarcastic voice.  "Say, kid,
+why don't you try your luck with Mac Hurley?  He's almost through with
+poor, old Cochrane."
+
+Following the direction of the pointing finger, Pierre saw one of those
+mute tragedies of the gambling hall.  Cochrane, an old cattleman whose
+carefully trimmed, pointed white beard and slender, tapering fingers
+set him apart from the others in the room, was rather far gone with
+liquor.  He was still stiffly erect in his chair, and would be till the
+very moment consciousness left him, but his eyes were misty, and when
+he spoke the fine-cut lips moved slowly, as though numbed by cold.
+
+Beside him stood a tall, black bottle with a little whisky glass to
+flank it.  He made his bets with apparent carelessness, but with a real
+and deepening gloom.  Once or twice he glanced up sharply as though
+reckoning his losses, though it seemed to Pierre le Rouge almost like
+an appeal.
+
+And what appeal could affect Mac Hurley?  There was no color in the
+man, either body or soul.  No emotion could show in those pale, small
+eyes or change the color of the flabby cheeks.  If his hands had been
+cut off he might have seemed some sodden victim of a drug habit, but
+the hands saved him.
+
+They seemed to belong to another body--beautiful, swift, and strong,
+and grafted by some foul mischance onto this rotten hulk.  Very white
+they were, and long, with a nervous uneasiness in every motion,
+continually hovering around the cards with little touches which were
+almost caresses.
+
+"It ain't a game," said the man who had first pointed out the group to
+Pierre, "it's just a slaughter.  Cochrane's too far gone to see
+straight.  Look at that deal now!  A kid could see that he's crooking
+the cards!"
+
+It was Blackjack, and Hurley, as usual, was dealing.  He dealt with one
+hand, flipping the cards out with a snap of the wrist, the fingers
+working rapidly over the pack.  Now and then he glanced over to the
+crowd, as if to enjoy their admiration of his skill.  He was showing it
+now, not so much by the deftness of his cheating as by the openness
+with which he exposed his tricks.
+
+As the stranger remarked to Pierre, a child could have discovered that
+the cards were being dealt at will from the top and the bottom of the
+pack, but the gambler was enjoying himself by keeping his game just
+open enough to be apparent to every other man in the room--just covert
+enough to deceive the drink-misted brain of Cochrane.  And the pale,
+swinish eyes twinkled as they stared across at the dull sorrow of the
+old man.  There was an ominous sound from Pierre:
+
+"Do you let a thing like that happen in this country?" he asked
+fiercely.
+
+The other turned to him with a sneer.
+
+"_Let_ it happen?  Who'll stop him?  Say, partner, you ain't meanin' to
+say that you don't know who Hurley is?"
+
+"I don't need telling.  I can see."
+
+"What you can't see means a lot more than what you can.  I've been in
+the same room when Hurley worked his gun once.  It wasn't any killin',
+but it was the prettiest bit of cheatin' I ever seen.  But even if
+Hurley wasn't enough, what about Carl Diaz?"
+
+He glared his triumph at Pierre, but the latter was too puzzled to
+quail, and too stirred by the pale, gloomy face of Cochrane to turn
+toward the other.
+
+"What of Diaz?"
+
+"Look here, boy.  You're a kid, all right, but you ain't that young.
+D'you mean to say that you ain't heard of Carlos Diaz?"
+
+It came back to Pierre then, for even into the snow-bound seclusion of
+the north country the shadow of the name of Diaz had gone.  He could
+not remember just what they were, but he seemed to recollect grim tales
+through which that name figured.
+
+The other went on: "But if you ain't ever seen him before, look him
+over now.  They's some says he's faster on the draw than Bob McGurk,
+but, of course, that's stretchin' him out a size too much.  What's the
+matter, kid; you've met McGurk?"
+
+"No, but I'm going to."
+
+"Might even be carried to him, eh--feet first?"
+
+Pierre turned and laid a hand on the shoulder of the other.
+
+"Don't talk like that," he said gently.  "I don't like it."
+
+The other reached up to snatch the hand from his shoulder, but he
+stayed his arm.
+
+He said after an uncomfortable moment of that silent staring: "Well,
+partner, there ain't a hell of a lot to get sore over, is there?  You
+don't figure you're a mate for McGurk, do you?"
+
+He seemed oddly relieved when the eyes of Pierre moved away from him
+and returned to the figure of Carlos Diaz.  The Mexican was a perfect
+model for a painting of a melodramatic villain.  He had waxed and
+twirled the end of his black mustache so that it thrust out a little
+spur on either side of his long face.  His habitual expression was a
+scowl; his habitual position was with a cigarette in the fingers of his
+left hand, and his right hand resting on his hip.
+
+He sat in a chair directly behind that of Hurley, and Pierre's
+new-found acquaintance explained:
+
+"He's the bodyguard for Hurley.  Maybe there's some who could down
+Hurley in a straight gun fight; maybe there's one or two like McGurk
+that could down Diaz--damn his yellow hide--but there ain't no one can
+buck the two of 'em.  It ain't in reason.  So they play the game
+together.  Hurley works the cards and Diaz covers up the retreat.
+Can't beat that, can you?"
+
+Pierre le Rouge slipped his left hand once more Inside his shirt until
+the fingers touched the cross.
+
+"Nevertheless, that game has to stop."
+
+"Who'll--say, kid, are you stringin' me, or are you drunk?  Look me in
+the eye!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+FEAR
+
+Pierre turned and looked calmly upon the other.
+
+And the man whispered in a sort of awe: "Well, I'll be damned!"
+
+"Stand aside!"
+
+The other fell back a pace, and Pierre went straight to the table and
+said to Cochrane: "Sir, I have come to take you home."
+
+The old man looked up and rubbed his eyes as though waking from a sleep.
+
+"Stand back from the table!" warned Hurley.
+
+"By the Lord, have they been missing me?" queried old Cochrane.
+
+"You are waited for," answered Pierre le Rouge, "and I've been sent to
+take you home."
+
+"If that's the case--"
+
+"It ain't the case.  The kid's lying."
+
+"Lying?" repeated Cochrane, as if he had never heard the word before,
+and he peered with clearing eyes toward Pierre.  "No, I think this boy
+has never lied."
+
+Silence had spread through the place like a vapor.  Even the slight
+sounds in the gaming-room were done now, and one pair after another of
+eyes swung toward the table of Cochrane and Hurley.  The wave of the
+silence reached to the barroom.  No one could have carried the tidings
+so soon, but the air was surcharged with the consciousness of an
+impending crisis.
+
+Half a dozen men started to make their way on tiptoe toward the back
+room.  One stood with his whisky glass suspended in mid air, and tilted
+back his head to listen.  In the gaming-room Hurley pushed back his
+chair and leaned to the left, giving him a free sweep for his right
+hand.  The Mexican smiled with a slow and deep content.
+
+"Thank you," answered Pierre, "but I am waiting still, sir."
+
+The left hand of Hurley played impatiently on the table.
+
+He said: "Of course, if you have enough--"
+
+"I--enough?" flared the old aristocrat.
+
+Pierre le Rouge turned fairly upon Hurley.
+
+"In the name of God," he said calmly, and God on his lips was as gentle
+as music, "make an end of your game.  You're playing for money, but I
+think this man is playing for his eternal soul."
+
+The solemn, bookish phraseology came smoothly from his tongue.  He knew
+no other.  It drew a murmur of amusement from the room and a snarl from
+Hurley.
+
+"Put on skirts, kid, and join the Salvation Army, but don't get
+yourself messed all up in here.  This is my party, and I'm damned
+particular who I invite!  Now, run along!"
+
+The head of Pierre tilted back, and he burst into laughter which
+troubled even Hurley.
+
+The gambler blurted: "What's happening to you, kid?"
+
+"I've been making a lot of good resolutions, Mr. Hurley, about keeping
+out of trouble; but here I am in it up to the neck."
+
+"No trouble as long as you keep your hand out of another man's game,
+kid."
+
+"That's it.  I can't see you rob Mr. Cochrane like this.  You aren't
+gambling--you're digging gold.  The game stops now."
+
+It was a moment before the crowd realized what was about to happen;
+they saw it reflected first in the face of Hurley, which suddenly went
+taut and pale, and then, even as they looked with a smile of curiosity
+and derision toward Pierre le Rouge, they saw and understood.
+
+For the moment Pierre said, "The game stops now," the calm which had
+been with him was gone.  It was like the scent of blood to the starved
+wolf.  The last word was scarcely off his tongue when he was crouched
+with a devil of green fury in his eyes--the light struck his hair into
+a wave of flame--his face altered by a dozen ugly years.
+
+"D'you mean?" whispered Hurley, as if he feared to break the silence
+with his full voice.
+
+"Get out of the room."
+
+And the impulse of Hurley, plainly enough, was to obey the order, and
+go anywhere to escape from that relentless stare.  His glance wavered
+and flashed around the circle and then back to Red Pierre, for the
+expectancy and the alertness of all the crowd forced him back.
+
+When the leader of the pack springs and fails to kill, the rest of the
+pack tear him to pieces.  Remembering this, Mac Hurley forced his
+glance back to Pierre.  Moreover, there was a soft voice from behind,
+and he remembered Diaz.
+
+All this had taken place in the length of time that it takes a heavy
+body to totter on the brink of a precipice or a cat to regain its feet
+after a fall.  After the voice of Diaz there was a sway through the
+room, a pulse of silence, and then three hands shot for their
+hips--Pierre, Diaz, and Hurley.
+
+No stop-watch could have caught the differing lengths of time which
+each required for the draw.  The muzzle of Hurley's revolver was not
+clear of the holster--the gun of Diaz was nearly at the level when
+Pierre's weapon exploded at his hip.  The bullet cut through the wrist
+of Hurley.  Never again would that slender, supple hand fly over the
+cards, doing things other than they seemed.  He made no effort to
+escape from the next bullet, but stood looking down at his broken
+wrist; horror for the moment gave him a dignity oddly out of place with
+his usual appearance.  He alone in all the room was moveless.
+
+The crowd, undecided for an instant, broke for the doors at the first
+shot; Pierre le Rouge, pitched to the floor as Diaz leaped forward, the
+revolver in either hand spitting lead and fire.
+
+It was no bullet that downed Pierre but his own cunning.  He broke his
+fall with an outstretched left hand, while the bullets of Diaz pumped
+into the void space which his body had filled a moment before.
+
+Lying there at ease, he leveled the revolver, grinning with the
+mirthless lust of battle, and fired over the top of the table.  The
+guns dropped from the hands of huge Diaz.  He caught at his throat and
+staggered back the full length of the room, crashing against the wall.
+When he pitched forward on his face he was dead before he struck the
+floor.
+
+Pierre, now Red Pierre, indeed, rose and ran to the fallen man, and,
+looking at the bulk of the giant, he wondered with a cold heart.  He
+knew before he slipped his hand over the breast of Diaz that this was
+death.  Then he rose again and watched the still fingers which seemed
+to be gripping at the boards.
+
+These he saw, and nothing else, and all he heard was the rattling of
+the wind of winter, wrenching at some loose shingle on the roof, and he
+knew that he was alone in the world, for he had put out a life.
+
+He found a strange weight pulling down his right hand, and started when
+he saw the revolver.  He replaced it in the holster automatically, and
+in so doing touched the barrel and found it warm.
+
+Then fear came to Pierre, the first real fear of his life.  He jerked
+his head high and looked about him.  The room was utterly empty.  He
+tiptoed to the door and found even the long bar deserted, littered with
+tall bottles and overturned glasses.  The cold in his heart increased.
+A moment before he had been hand in hand with all the mirth in that
+place.
+
+Now the men whose laughter he had repeated with smiles, the men against
+whose sleeves his elbow had touched, were further away from him than
+they had been when all the snow-covered miles from Morgantown to the
+school of Father Victor had laid between them.  They were men who might
+lose themselves in any crowd, but he was set apart with a brand, even
+as Hurley and Diaz had been set apart that eventful evening.
+
+He had killed a man.  That fact blotted out the world.  He drew his gun
+again and stole down the length of the bar.  Once he stopped and poised
+the weapon before he realized that the white, fierce face that squinted
+at him was his own reflection in a mirror.
+
+Outside the door the free wind caught at his face, and he blessed it in
+his heart, as if it had been the touch of the hand of a friend.  Beyond
+the long, dark, silent street the moon rose and passed up through the
+safe, dark spaces of the sky.
+
+He must move quickly now.  The pursuit was not yet organized, but it
+would begin in a space of minutes.  From the group of half a dozen
+horses which stood before the saloon he selected the best--a tall,
+raw-boned nag with an ugly head.  Into the saddle he swung, wondering
+faintly that the theft of a horse mattered so little to him.  His was
+the greatest sin.  All other things mattered nothing.
+
+Down the long street he galloped.  The sharp echoes flew out at him
+from every unlighted house, but not a human being was in sight.  So he
+swung out onto the long road which wound up through the hills, and
+beside him rode a grim brotherhood, the invisible fellowship of Cain.
+
+The moon rose higher, brighter, and a grotesque black shadow galloped
+over the snow beside him.  He turned his head sharply to the other side
+and watched the sweep of white hills which reached back in range after
+range until they blended with the shadows of night.
+
+The road faded to a bridle path, and this in turn he lost among the
+windings of the valley.  He was lost from even the traces of men, and
+yet the fear of men pursued him.  Fear, and yet with it there was a
+thrill of happiness, for every swinging stride of the tall, wild roan
+carried him deeper into freedom, the unutterable fierce freedom of the
+hunted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE VOICE IN THE STORM
+
+All life was tame compared with this sudden awakening of Pierre, for
+his whole being burst into flower, his whole nature opened.  He had
+killed a man.  For fear of it he raced the tall roan furiously through
+the night.
+
+He had killed a man.  For the joy of it his head was high, he shouted a
+song that went ringing across the blank, white hills.  What place was
+there in Red Pierre for solemn qualms of conscience?  Had he not met
+the first and last test triumphantly?  The oldest instinct in creation
+was satisfied in him.  Now he stood ready to say to all the world:
+Behold, a man!
+
+Let it be remembered that his early years had been passed in a dull,
+dun silence, and time had slipped by him with softly padding,
+uneventful hours.  Now, with the rope of restraint snapped, he rode at
+the world with hands, palm upward, asking for life, and that life which
+lies under the hills of the mountain-desert heard his question and sent
+a cold, sharp echo back to answer his lusty singing.
+
+The first answer, as he plunged on, not knowing where, and not caring,
+was when the roan reeled suddenly and flung forward to the ground.
+Even that violent stop did not unseat Red Pierre.  He jerked up on the
+reins with a curse and drove in the spurs.  Valiantly the horse reared
+his shoulders up, but when he strove to rise the right foreleg dangled
+helplessly.  He had stepped in some hole and the bone was broken
+cleanly across.
+
+The rider slipped from the saddle and stood facing the roan, which
+pricked its ears forward and struggled once more to regain its feet.
+The effort was hopeless, and Pierre took the broken leg and felt the
+rough edges of the splintered bone through the skin.  The animal, as if
+it sensed that the man was trying to do it some good, nosed his
+shoulder and whinnied softly.
+
+Pierre stepped back and drew his revolver.  The bullet would do quickly
+what the cold would accomplish after lingering hours of torture, yet,
+facing those pricking ears and the brave trust of the eyes, he was
+blinded by a mist and could not aim.  He had to place the muzzle of the
+gun against the roan's temple and pull the trigger.  When he turned his
+back he was the only living thing within the white arms of the hills.
+
+Yet, when the next hill was behind him, he had already forgotten the
+second life which he put out that night, for regret is the one sorrow
+which never dodges the footsteps of the hunted.  Like all his
+brotherhood of Cain, Pierre le Rouge pressed forward across the
+mountain-desert with his face turned toward the brave to-morrow.  In
+the evening of his life, if he should live to that time, he would walk
+and talk with God.
+
+Now he had no mind save for the bright day coming.
+
+He had been riding with the wind and had scarcely noticed its violence
+in his headlong course.  Now he felt it whipping sharply at his back
+and increasing with each step.  Overhead the sky was clear, pitilessly
+clear.  It seemed to give vision for the wind and cold to seek him out,
+and the moon made his following shadow long and black across the snow.
+
+The wind quickened rapidly to a gale that cut off the surface of the
+snow and whipped volleys of the small particles level with the surface.
+It cut the neck of Red Pierre, and the gusts struck his shoulders with
+staggering force like separate blows, twisting him a little from side
+to side.
+
+Coming from the direction of Morgantown, it seemed as if the vengeance
+for Diaz was following the slayer.  Once he turned and laughed hard and
+short in the teeth of the wind, and shook his fist back at Morgantown
+and all the avenging powers of the law.
+
+Yet he was glad to turn away from the face of the storm and stride on
+down-wind.  Even traveling with the gale grew more and more impossible.
+The snowdrifts which the wind picked up and hurried across the hills
+pressed against Pierre's back like a great, invisible hand, bowing him
+as if beneath a burden.  In the hollows the labor was not so great, but
+when he approached a summit the gale screamed in his ear and struck him
+savagely.
+
+For all his optimism, for all his young, undrained strength, a doubt
+began to grow in the mind of Pierre le Rouge.  At length, remembering
+how that weight of gold came in his pockets, he slipped his left hand
+into the bosom of his shirt and touched the icy metal of the cross.
+Almost at once he heard, or thought he heard, a faint, sweet sound of
+singing.
+
+The heart of Red Pierre stopped.  For he knew the visions which came to
+men perishing with cold; but he grew calmer again in a moment.  This
+touch of cold was nothing compared with whole months of hard exposure
+which he had endured in the northland.  It had not the edge.  If it
+were not for the wind it was scarcely a threat to life.  Moreover, the
+singing sounded no more.  It had been hardly more than a phrase of
+music, and it must have been a deceptive murmur of the wind.
+
+After all, a gale brought wilder deceptions than that.  Some men had
+actually heard voices declaiming words in such a wind.  He himself had
+heard them tell their stories.  So he leaned forward again and gave his
+stanch heart to the task.  Yet once more he stopped, for this time the
+singing came clearly, sweetly to him.
+
+There was no doubt of it now.  Of course it was wildly impossible,
+absurd; but beyond all question he heard the voice of a woman, high and
+tender, come whistling down the wind.  He could almost catch the words.
+For a little moment he lingered still.  Then he turned and fought his
+way into the strong arms of the storm.
+
+Every now and then he paused and crouched to the snow.  Usually there
+was only the shriek of the wind in his ears, but a few times the
+singing came to him and urged him on.  If he had allowed the idea of
+failure to enter his mind, he must have given up the struggle, but
+failure was a stranger to his thoughts.
+
+He lowered his head against the storm.  Sometimes it caught under him
+and nearly lifted him from his feet.  But he clung against the slope of
+the hill, sometimes gripping hard with his hands.  So he worked his way
+to the right, the sound of the singing coming more and more frequently
+and louder and louder.  When he was almost upon the source of the music
+it ceased abruptly.
+
+He waited a moment, but no sound came.  He struggled forward a few more
+yards and pitched down exhausted, panting.  Still he heard the singing
+no longer.  With a falling heart he rose and resigned himself to wander
+on his original course with the wind, but as he started he placed his
+hand once more against the cross, and it was then that he saw her.
+
+For he had simply gone past her, and the yelling of the storm had cut
+off the sound of her voice.  Now he saw her lying, a spot of bright
+color on the snow.  He read the story at a glance.  As she passed this
+steep-sided hill the loosely piled snow had slid down and carried with
+it the dead trunk of a fallen tree.
+
+Pierre came from behind and stood over her unnoticed.  He saw that the
+oncoming tree, by a strange chance, had knocked down the girl and
+pinned her legs to the ground.  His strength and the strength of a
+dozen men would not be sufficient to release her.  This he saw at the
+first glance, and saw the bright gold of her hair against the snow.
+Then he dropped on his knees beside her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BELIEF
+
+The girl tossed up her arms in a silent ecstasy, and Pierre caught the
+small cold hands and saw that she was only a child of twelve or
+fourteen, lovely as only a child can be, and still more beautiful with
+the wild storm sweeping over her and the waste of snow around them.
+
+He crouched lower still, and when he did so the strength of the wind
+against his face decreased wonderfully, for the sharp angle of the
+hill's declivity protected them.  Seeing him kneel there, helpless with
+wonder, she cried out with a little wail: "Help me--the tree--help me!"
+And, bursting into a passion of sobbing, she tugged her hands from his
+and covered her face.
+
+Pierre placed his shoulder under the trunk and lifted till the muscles
+of his back snapped and cracked.  He could not budge the weight; he
+could not even send a tremor through the mass of wood; He dropped back
+beside her with a groan.  He felt her eyes upon him; she had ceased her
+sobs, and looked steadily, gravely, into his face.
+
+It would have been easy for him to meet that look on the morning of
+this day, but after that night's work in Morgantown he had to brace his
+nerve mightily to withstand it.
+
+She said: "You can't budge the tree?"
+
+"Yes--in a minute; I will try again."
+
+"You'll only hurt yourself for nothing.  I saw how you strained at it."
+
+The greatest miracle he had ever seen was her calm.  Her eyes were wide
+and sorrowful indeed, but she was almost smiling up to him.
+
+After a while he was able to say, in a faint, small voice: "Are you
+very cold?"
+
+She answered: "I'm not afraid.  But if you stay longer with me, you may
+freeze.  The snow and even the tree help to keep me almost warm; but
+you will freeze.  Go for help; hurry, and if you can, send it back to
+me."
+
+He thought of the long miles back to Morgantown; no human being could
+walk that distance against this wind; not even a strong horse could
+make its way through the storm.  If he went on with the wind, how long
+would it be before he reached a house?  Before him, over range after
+range of hills, he saw no single sign of a building.  If he reached
+some such place it would be the same story as the trip to Morgantown;
+men simply could not beat a way against that wind.
+
+Then a cold hand touched his, and he looked up to find her eyes grave
+and wide once more, and her lips half smiling, as if she strove to
+deceive him.
+
+"There's no chance of bringing help?"
+
+He merely stared hungrily at her, and the loveliest thing he had ever
+seen was the play of golden hair beside her cheek.  Her smile went out.
+She withdrew her hand, but she repeated:
+
+"I'm not afraid.  I'll simply grow numb and then fall asleep.  But you
+go on and save yourself."
+
+Seeing him shake his head, she caught his hands again, and so strongly
+that the chill of her touch filled his veins with an icy fire.
+
+"I'll be unhappy.  You'll make me so unhappy if you stay.  Please go."
+
+He raised the small, white hand and pressed it to his lips.
+
+She said: "You are crying!"
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"There!  I see the tears shining on my hand.  What is your name?"
+
+"Pierre."
+
+"Pierre?  I like that name.  Pierre, to make me happy, will you go?
+Your face is all white and touched with a shadow of blue.  It is the
+cold.  Oh, won't you go?"  Then she pleaded, finding him obdurate: "If
+you won't go for me, then go for your father."
+
+He raised his head with a sudden laughter, and, raising it, the wind
+beat into his face fiercely and the particles of snow whipped his skin.
+
+"Dear Pierre, then for your mother?"
+
+He bowed his head.
+
+"Not for all the people who love you and wait for you now by some warm
+fire--some cozy fire, all yellow and bright?"
+
+He took her hands and with them covered his eyes.
+
+"Listen: I have no father; I have no mother."
+
+"Pierre!  Oh, Pierre, I'm sorry!"
+
+"And for the rest of 'em, I've killed a man.  The whole world hates me;
+the whole world's hunting me."
+
+The small hands tugged away.  He dared not raise his bowed and
+miserable head for fear of her eyes.  And then the hands came back to
+him and touched his face.
+
+She was saying tremulously: "Then he deserved to be killed.  There must
+be men like that--almost.  And I--like you still, Pierre."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"I almost think I like you more--because you could kill a man--and then
+stay here for me."
+
+"If you were a grown-up girl, do you know what I'd say?"
+
+"Please tell me."
+
+"That I could love you."
+
+"Pierre--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"My name is Mary Brown."
+
+He repeated several times: "Mary."
+
+"And if I were a grown-up girl, do you know what I would answer?"
+
+"I don't dare guess it."
+
+"That I could love you, Pierre, if you were a grown-up man."
+
+"But I am."
+
+"Not a really one."
+
+And they both broke into laughter--happy laughter that died out before
+a sound of rushing and of thunder, as a mass slid swiftly past them,
+snow and mud and sand and rubble.  The wind fell away from them, and
+when Pierre looked up he saw that a great mass of tumbled rock and soil
+loomed above them.
+
+The landslide had not touched them, by some miracle, but in a moment
+more it might shake loose again, and all that mass of ton upon ton of
+stone and loam would overwhelm them.  The whole mass quaked and
+trembled and trembled, and the very hillside shuddered beneath them.
+
+She looked up and saw the coming ruin; but her cry was for him, not
+herself.
+
+"Run, Pierre--you can save yourself."
+
+With that terror threatening him from above, he rose and started to run
+down the hill.  A moan of woe followed him, and he stopped and turned
+back, and fought his way through the wind until he was beside her once
+more.
+
+She was wringing the white, cold hands and weeping:
+
+"Pierre--I couldn't help it--but when you left me the whole world went
+out, and my heart broke.  I couldn't help calling out for you; but now
+I'm strong again, and I won't have you stay.  The whole mountain is
+shaking and falling toward us.  Go now, Pierre, and I'll never make a
+sound to bring you back."
+
+He said: "Hush!  I've something here which will keep us both safe.
+Look!"
+
+He tore from the chain which held it at his throat the little metal
+cross, and held it high overhead, glimmering in the pallid light.  She
+forgot her fear in wonder.
+
+"I gambled with only one coin to lose, and I came out to-night with
+hundreds and hundreds of dollars because I had the cross.  It is a
+charm against all danger and against all bad fortune.  It has never
+failed me."
+
+Over them the piled mass slid closer.  The forehead of Pierre gleamed
+with sweat, but a strong purpose made him talk on.  At least he could
+take all the foreboding of death from the child, and when the end came
+it would be swift and wipe them both out at one stroke.  She clung to
+him, eager to believe.
+
+"I've closed my eyes so that I can believe."
+
+"It has never failed me.  It saved me once when I fought a big bobcat
+with only a knife.  It saved me again when I fought two men.  Both of
+them were famous fighters, but neither of them had the cross.  One of
+them I crippled and the other died.  You see, the power of the cross is
+as great as that.  Do you doubt it now, Mary?"
+
+"Do you believe in it so much--really--Pierre?"
+
+Each time there was a little lowering of her voice, a little pause and
+caress in the tone as she uttered his name, and nothing in all his life
+had stirred Red Pierre so deeply with happiness and sorrow.
+
+"Do you believe, Pierre?" she repeated.
+
+He looked up and saw the shuddering mass of the landslide creeping upon
+them inch by inch.  In another moment it would loose itself with a rush
+and cover them.
+
+"I believe," he said.
+
+"If you should live, and I should die--"
+
+"I would throw the cross away."
+
+"No, you would keep it; and every time it touched cold against your
+breast you would think of me, Pierre, would you not?"
+
+"When you reach out to me like that, you sort of take my heart between
+your hands."
+
+"And when you look at me like that I feel grown-up and sad and happy
+both together.  But, listen, Pierre, I know why I cannot die now.  God
+means us to be so happy together, doesn't He?  Because after we've been
+together on such a night, how can we ever be apart again?"
+
+The mass of the landslide toppled right above them.  She did not seem
+to see.
+
+"Of course we never can be."
+
+"But we'll be like a brother and sister and something more."
+
+"And something more, Mary."
+
+She clapped her hands and laughed.  The laughter hurt him more than her
+sobbing, for as she lay wrapped in her thick furs, even the pale, cold
+light could not make her pallid.
+
+The blowing hair was as warm as yellow sunshine to the heart of Pierre
+le Rouge, and the color of her cheeks was as dear to him as the early
+flowers of spring in the northland.
+
+"I'm so happy, Pierre.  I was never so happy."
+
+And he said, with his eyes on the approaching ruin:
+
+"It was your singing that brought me to you.  Will you sing again?"
+
+"I sang because I knew that when I sang the sound would carry farther
+through the wind than if I called for help.  What shall I sing for you
+now, Pierre?"
+
+"What you sang when I came to you."
+
+And the light, sweet voice rose easily through the sweep of the wind.
+She smiled as she sang, and the smile and music were all for Pierre, he
+knew, and all the pathos of the climax was for him; but through the
+last stanza of the song the rumble of the approaching death grew
+louder, and as she ended he threw himself beside her and gathered her
+into protecting arms.
+
+She cried: "Pierre!  What is it?"
+
+"I must keep you warm; the snow will eat away your strength."
+
+"No; it's more than that.  Tell me, Pierre!  You don't trust the power
+of the cross?"
+
+"Are you afraid?"
+
+"Oh, no; I'm not afraid, Pierre."
+
+"If one life would be enough, I'd give mine a thousand times.  Mary, we
+are to die."
+
+A small arm slipped around his neck--a cold hand pressed against his
+cheek.
+
+"Pierre."
+
+"Yes."
+
+The thunder broke above them with a mighty roaring.
+
+"You have no fear."
+
+"Mary, if I had died alone I would have dropped down to hell under my
+sins; but, with your arm around me, you'll take me with you.  Hold me
+close."
+
+"With all my heart, Pierre.  See--I'm not afraid.  It is like going to
+sleep.  What wonderful dreams we'll have!"
+
+And then the black mass of the landslide swept upon them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+RIDERS OF THE SILENCES
+
+Down all the length of the mountain-desert and across its width of
+rocks and mountains and valleys and stern plateaus there is a saying:
+"You can tell a man by the horse he rides."  For most other important
+things are apt to go by opposites, which is the usual way in which a
+man selects his wife.  With dogs, for instance--a quiet man is apt to
+want an active dog, and a tractable fellow may keep the most vicious of
+wolf-dogs.
+
+But when it comes to a horse, a man's heart speaks for itself, and if
+he has sufficient knowledge of the king of beasts he will choose a
+sympathetic mount.  A dainty woman loves a neat-stepping saddle-horse;
+a philosopher likes a nodding, stumble-footed nag which will jog all
+day long and care not a whit whether it goes up dale or down.
+
+To know the six wild riders who galloped over the white reaches of the
+mountain-desert this night, certainly their horses should be studied
+first and the men secondly, for the one explained the other.
+
+They came in a racing triangle.  Even the storm at its height could not
+daunt such furious riders.  At the point of the triangle thundered a
+mighty black stallion, his muzzle and his broad chest flecked with
+white foam, for he stretched his head out and champed at the bit with
+ears laid flat back, as though even that furious pace gave him no
+opportunity to use fully his strength.
+
+He was no cleanly cut beauty, but an ugly headed monster with a
+savagely hooked Roman nose and small, keen eyes, always red at the
+corners.  A medieval baron in full panoply of plate armor would have
+chosen such a charger among ten thousand steeds, yet the black stallion
+needed all his strength to uphold the unarmored giant who bestrode him,
+a savage figure.
+
+When the broad brim of his hat flapped up against the wind the
+moonshine caught at shaggy brows, a cruelly arched nose, thin, straight
+lips, and a forward-thrusting jaw.  It seemed as if nature had hewn him
+roughly and designed him for a primitive age where he could fight his
+way with hands and teeth.
+
+This was Jim Boone.  To his right and a little behind him galloped a
+riderless horse, a beautiful young animal continually tossing its head
+and looking as if for guidance at the big stallion.
+
+To the left strode a handsome bay with pricking ears.  A mound
+interfered with his course, and he cleared it in magnificent style that
+would have brought a cheer from the lips of any English lover of the
+chase.
+
+Straight in the saddle sat Dick Wilbur, and he raised his face a little
+to the wind, smiling faintly as if he rejoiced in its fine strength, as
+handsome as the horse he rode, as cleanly cut, as finely bred.  The
+moon shone a little brighter on him than on any others of the six stark
+riders.
+
+Bud Mansie behind, for instance, kept his head slightly to one side and
+cursed beneath his breath at the storm and set his teeth at the wind.
+His horse, delicately formed, with long, slender legs, could not have
+endured that charge against the storm save that it constantly edged
+behind the leaders and let them break the wind.  It carried less weight
+than any other mount of the six, and its strength was cunningly nursed
+by the rider so that it kept its place, and at the finish it would be
+as strong as any and swifter, perhaps, for a sudden, short effort, just
+as Bud Mansie might be numbed through all his nervous, slender body,
+but never too numb for swift and deadly action.
+
+On the opposite wing of the flying wedge galloped a dust-colored gray,
+ragged of mane and tail, and vindictive of eye, like its down-headed
+rider, who shifted his glance rapidly from side to side and watched the
+ground closely before his horse as if he were perpetually prepared for
+danger.
+
+He distrusted the very ground over which his mount strode.  For all
+this he seemed the least formidable of all the riders.  To see him pass
+none could have suspected that this was Black Morgan Gandil.
+
+Last of the crew came two men almost as large as Jim Boone himself, on
+strong steady-striding horses.  They came last in this crew, but among
+a thousand other long-riders they would have ridden first, either
+red-faced, good-humored, loud-voiced Garry Patterson, or Phil Branch,
+stout-handed, blunt of jaw, who handled men as he had once hammered red
+iron at the forge.
+
+Each of them should have ridden alone in order to be properly
+appreciated.  To see them together was like watching a flock of eagles
+every one of which should have been a solitary lord of the air.  But
+after scanning that lordly train which followed, the more terrible
+seemed the rider of the great black horse.
+
+Yet the king was sad, and the reason for his sadness was the riderless
+horse which galloped so freely beside him.  His son had ridden that
+horse when they set out, and all the way down to the railroad Handsome
+Hal Boone had kept his mount prancing and curveting and had ridden
+around and around tall Dick Wilbur, playing pranks, and had teased his
+father's black until the big stallion lashed out wildly with furious
+heels.
+
+It was the memory of this that kept the grave shadow of a smile on the
+father's lips for all the sternness of his eyes.  He never turned his
+head, for, looking straight forward, he could conjure up the laughing
+vision; but when he glanced to the empty saddle he heard once more the
+last unlucky shot fired from the train as they raced off with their
+booty, and saw Hal reel in his saddle and pitch forward; and how he had
+tried to check his horse and turn back; and how big Dick Wilbur, and
+Patterson, and mighty-handed Phil Branch had forced him to go on and
+leave that form lying motionless on the snow.
+
+At that he groaned, and spurred the black, and so the cavalcade rushed
+faster and faster through the night.
+
+They came over a sharp ridge and veered to the side just in time, for
+all the further slope was a mass of treacherous sand and rubble and raw
+rocks and mud, where a landslide had stripped the hill to the stone.
+
+As they veered about the ruin and thundered on down to the foot of the
+hill, Jim Boone threw up his hand for a signal and brought his stallion
+to a halt on back-braced, sliding legs.
+
+For a metallic glitter had caught his eye, and then he saw, half
+covered by the pebbles and dirt, the figure of a man.  He must have
+been struck by the landslide and not overwhelmed by it, but rather
+carried before it like a stick in a rush of water.  At the outermost
+edge of the wave he lay with the rocks and dirt washed over him.  Boone
+swung from the saddle and lifted Pierre le Rouge.
+
+The gleam of metal was the cross which his fingers still gripped.
+Boone examined it with a somewhat superstitious caution, took it from
+the nerveless fingers, and slipped it into a pocket of Pierre's shirt.
+A small cut on the boy's forehead showed where the stone struck which
+knocked him senseless, but the cut still bled--a small trickle--Pierre
+lived.  He even stirred and groaned and opened his eyes, large and
+deeply blue.
+
+It was only an instant before they closed, but Boone had seen.  He
+turned with the figure lifted easily in his arms as if Pierre had been
+a child fallen asleep by the hearth and now about to be carried off to
+bed.
+
+And the outlaw said: "I've lost my boy to-night.  This here one was
+given me by the will of--God."
+
+Black Morgan Gandil reined his horse close by, leaned to peer down, and
+the shadow of his hat fell across the face of Pierre.
+
+"There's no good comes of savin' shipwrecked men.  Leave him where you
+found him, Jim.  That's my advice.  Sidestep a red-headed man.  That's
+what I say."
+
+The quick-stepping horse of Bud Mansie came near, and the rider wiped
+his blue, stiff lips, and spoke from the side of his mouth, a prison
+habit of the line that moves in the lock-step: "Take it from me, Jim,
+there ain't any place in our crew for a man you've picked up without
+knowing him beforehand.  Let him lay, I say."
+
+But big Dick Wilbur was already leading up the horse of Hal Boone, and
+into the saddle Jim Boone swung the inert body of Pierre.  The argument
+was settled, for every man of them knew that nothing could turn Boone
+back from a thing once begun.  Yet there were muttered comments that
+drew Black Morgan Gandil and Bud Mansie together.
+
+And Gandil, from the South Seas, growled with averted eyes:
+
+"This is the most fool stunt the chief has ever pulled."
+
+"Right, pal," answered Mansie.  "You take a snake in out of the cold,
+and it bites you when it comes to in the warmth; but the chief has
+started, and there ain't nothing that'll make him stop, except maybe
+God or McGurk."
+
+And Black Gandil answered with his evil, sudden grin: "Maybe McGurk,
+but not God."
+
+They started on again with Garry Patterson and Dick Wilbur riding close
+on either side of Pierre, supporting his limp body.  It delayed the
+whole gang, for they could not go on faster than a jog-trot.  The wind,
+however, was falling off in violence.  Its shrill whistling ceased, at
+length, and they went on, accompanied only by the harsh crunching of
+the snow underfoot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE GUARD
+
+Consciousness returned to Pierre like the light of the rising moon
+which breaks dimly through the window and makes all the objects in a
+room grotesquely large and blackly shadowed.  Many a time his eyes
+opened, and he saw nothing, but when he did see and hear it was by
+vague glimpses.
+
+He heard the crying crunch of the snow underfoot; he heard the panting
+and snorting of the horses; he felt the swing and jolt of the saddle
+beneath him; he saw the grim faces of the long-riders, and he said:
+"The law has taken me."
+
+Thereafter he let his will lapse, and surrendered to the sleepy
+numbness which assailed his brain in waves.  He was riding without
+support by this time, but it was an automatic effort.  There was no
+more real life in him than in a dummy figure.  It was not the effect of
+the blow.  It was rather the long exposure and the over-exertion of
+nerves and mind and body during the evening and night.  He had simply
+collapsed beneath the strain.
+
+But an old army man has said: "Give me a soldier of eighteen or twenty.
+In a single day he may not march quite so far as a more mature man or
+carry quite so much weight.  He will go to sleep each night dead to the
+world.  But in the morning he awakens a new man.  He is like a slate
+from which all the writing has been erased.  He is ready for a new day
+and a new world.  Thirty days of campaigning leaves him as strong and
+fresh as ever.
+
+"Thirty days of campaigning leaves the old soldier a wreck.  Why?
+Because as a man grows older he loses the ability to sleep soundly.  He
+carries the nervous strain of one day over to the next.  Life is a
+serious problem to a man over thirty.  To a man under thirty it is
+simply a game.  For my part, give me men who can play at war."
+
+So it was with Pierre le Rouge.  He woke with a faint heaviness of
+head, and stretched himself.  There were many sore places, but nothing
+more.  He looked up, and the slant winter sun cut across his face and
+made a patch of bright yellow on the wall beside him.
+
+Next he heard a faint humming, and, turning his head, saw a boy of
+fourteen or perhaps a little more, busily cleaning a rifle in a way
+that betokened the most expert knowledge of the weapon.  Pierre himself
+knew rifles as a preacher knows his Bible, and as he lay half awake and
+half asleep he smiled with enjoyment to see the deft fingers move here
+and there, wiping away the oil.  A green hand will spend half a day
+cleaning a gun, and then do the work imperfectly; an expert does the
+job efficiently in ten minutes.  This was an expert.
+
+Undoubtedly this was a true son of the mountain desert.  He wore his
+old slouch hat even in the house, and his skin was that olive brown
+which comes from many years of exposure to the wind and sun.  At the
+same time there was a peculiar fineness about the boy.  His feet were
+astonishingly small and the hands thin and slender for all their supple
+strength.  And his neck was not bony, as it is in most youths at this
+gawky age, but smoothly rounded.
+
+Men grow big of bone and sparse of flesh in the mountain desert.  It
+was the more surprising to Pierre to see this young fellow with the
+marvelously delicate-cut features.  By some freak of nature here was a
+place where the breed ran to high blood.
+
+The cleaning completed, the boy tossed the butt of the gun to his
+shoulder and squinted down the barrel.  Then he loaded the magazine,
+weighted the gun deftly at the balance, and dropped the rifle across
+his knees.
+
+"Morning," said Pierre le Rouge cheerily, and swung off the bunk to the
+floor.  "How old's the gun?"
+
+The boy, without the slightest show of excitement, snapped the butt to
+his shoulder and drew a bead on Pierre's breast.
+
+"Sit down before you get all heated up," said a musical voice.
+"There's nobody waiting for you on horseback."
+
+And Pierre sat down, partly because Western men never argue a point
+when that little black hole is staring them in the face, partly because
+he remembered with a rush that the last time he had fully possessed his
+consciousness he had been lying in the snow with the cross gripped hard
+and the toppling mass of the landslide above him.  All that had
+happened between was blotted from his memory.  He fumbled at his
+throat.  The cross was not there.  He touched his pockets.
+
+"Ease your hands away from your hip," said the cold voice of the boy,
+who had dropped his gun to the ready with a significant finger curled
+around the trigger, "or I'll drill you clean."
+
+Pierre obediently raised his hands to the level of his shoulders.  The
+boy sneered, and a light of infinite scorn blazed into those great
+black eyes.
+
+"This isn't a hold-up," he explained.  "Put 'em down again, but watch
+yourself."
+
+The sneer varied to a contemptuous smile.
+
+"I guess you're tame, all right."
+
+"Point that gun another way, will you, son?"
+
+The boy started and flushed a little.
+
+"Don't call me son."
+
+"Is this a lockup--a jail?"
+
+"This?"
+
+"What is it, then?  The last I remember I was lying in the snow with--"
+
+"I wish to God you'd been let there," said the boy bitterly.
+
+But Pierre, overwhelmed with the endeavor to recollect, rushed on with
+his questions and paid no heed to the tone.
+
+"I had a cross in my hand--"
+
+The scorn of the boy grew to mighty proportions.
+
+"It's there in the breast-pocket of your shirt."
+
+Pierre drew out the little cross, and the touch of it against his palm
+restored whatever of his strength was lacking.  Very carefully he
+attached it to the chain about his throat.  Then he looked up to the
+contempt of the boy, and as he did so another memory burst on him and
+brought him to his feet.  The gun went to the boy's shoulders at the
+same time.
+
+"When I was found--was any one else with me?"
+
+"Nope."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"Must have been buried in the landslide.  Half a hill caved in, and the
+dirt rolled you down to the bottom.  Plain luck, that's all, that kept
+you from going out."
+
+"Luck?" said Pierre and he laid his hand against his breast where he
+could feel the outline of the cross.  "Yes, I suppose it was luck.  And
+she--"
+
+He sat down slowly and buried his face in his hands.  A new tone came
+in the voice of the boy.  His tone was thrillingly gentle as he asked:
+"Was a woman with you?"  But Pierre heard only the tone and not the
+words.  His face was gray when he looked up again, and his voice hard.
+
+"Tell me as briefly as you can how I come here, and who picked me up."
+
+"My father and his men.  They passed you lying on the snow.  They
+brought you home."
+
+"Who is your father?"
+
+The boy stiffened and his color rose in pride and defiance.
+
+"My father is Jim Boone."
+
+Instinctively, while he stared, the right hand of Pierre le Rouge crept
+toward his hip.
+
+"Keep your hand steady," said the boy.  "I got a nervous
+trigger-finger.  Yeh, dad is pretty well known."
+
+"You're his son?"
+
+"I'm Jack Boone."
+
+"But I've heard--tell me, do you look like your father?"
+
+Jack Boone smiled, strove to frown, and then burst into surprisingly
+musical laughter.  It came in bursts and ripples, and seemed that it
+would never end.  His merriment ended slowly, for he saw the eyes of
+Pierre stare into blank distance, and knew that the man with the red
+hair was thinking of the woman whom the landslide had buried.
+Something that was partially sympathy and partially curiosity altered
+Jack's expression.
+
+After all, it was very difficult to remain hostile in front of the
+steady blue eyes of this stranger.
+
+Pierre said gravely: "Why am I under guard?"
+
+Jack was instantly aflame with the old anger.
+
+"Not because I want you here."
+
+"Who does?"
+
+"Dad."
+
+"Put away your pop-gun and talk sense.  I won't try to get away until
+Jim Boone comes.  I only fight men."
+
+Even the anger and grief of the boy could not keep him from smiling in
+his peculiarly winning way.
+
+"Just the same I'll keep the shooting-iron handy.  Sit still.  A gun
+don't keep me from talking sense, does it?  You're here to take Hal's
+place.  Hal!"
+
+The little wail told a thousand things, and Pierre, shocked out of the
+thought of his own troubles, waited.
+
+"My brother, Hal; he's dead; he died last night, and on the way back
+dad found you and brought you to take Hal's place.  _Hal's_ place!"
+
+The accent showed how impossible it was that Hal's place could be taken
+by any mortal man.
+
+"I got orders to keep you here, but if I was to do what I'd like to do,
+I'd give you the best horse on the place and tell you to clear out.
+That's me!"
+
+"Then do it."
+
+"And face dad afterward?"
+
+"Tell him I overpowered you.  That would be easy; you a slip of a boy,
+and me a man."
+
+"Stranger, it goes to show you may have heard of Jim Boone, but you
+don't anyways know him.  When he orders a thing done he wants it done,
+and he don't care how, and he don't ask questions why.  He just raises
+hell."
+
+"He really expects to keep me here?"
+
+"Expects?  He will."
+
+"Going to tie me up?" asked Pierre ironically.
+
+"Maybe," answered Jack, overlooking the irony.  "Maybe he'll just put
+you on my shoulders to guard."
+
+He moved the gun significantly.
+
+"And I can do it."
+
+"Of course.  But he would have to let me go some time."
+
+"Not till you'd promised to stick by him.  I told him that myself, but
+he said that you're young and that he'd teach you to like this life
+whether you wanted to or not.  Me speaking personally, I agree with
+Black Gandil: This is the worst fool thing that dad has ever done.
+What do we want with you--in Hal's place!"
+
+And a suggestion of a sob came in Jack's voice, though he set his teeth
+to keep it back.
+
+"But I've got a thing to do right away--to-day; it can't wait.
+
+"Give dad your word to come back and he'll let you go.  He says you're
+the kind that will keep your word.  You see, he found you with a cross
+in your hand."
+
+And Jack's lips curled again.
+
+It was all absurd, too impossible to be real.  The only real things
+were the body of white-handed, yellow-haired Mary Brown under the
+tumbled rocks and dirt of the landslide, and the body of Martin Ryder
+waiting to be placed in that corner plot where the grass grew quicker
+than all other grass in the spring of the year.
+
+However, having fallen among madmen, he must use cunning to get away
+before the outlaw and his men came back from wherever they had gone.
+Otherwise there would be more bloodshed, more play of guns and hum of
+lead.
+
+"Tell me of Hal," he said, and dropped his elbows on his knees as if he
+accepted his fate.
+
+"Don't know you well enough to talk of Hal."
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+The boy made a little gesture of apology.
+
+"I guess that was a low-down mean thing to say.  Sure I'll tell you
+about Hal--if I can."
+
+For his lips trembled at the thought of the dead.
+
+"Tell me anything you can," said Pierre gently, "because I've got to
+try to be like him, haven't I?"
+
+"You could try till rattlers got tame, but it'd take ten like you to
+make one like Hal.  He was dad's own son--he was my brother."
+
+The sob came openly now, and the tears were a bright mist in the boy's
+eyes.
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Pierre."
+
+"Pierre?  I suppose I got to learn it."
+
+"I suppose so."  And he edged farther forward, so that he was sitting
+only on the edge of the bunk.
+
+"Please do."  And he gathered his feet under him, ready for a spring
+forward and a grip at the boy's threatening rifle.
+
+Jack had canted his head a little to one side, smiling faintly for the
+joy of the memory.
+
+"Did you ever see a horse that was gentle and yet had never been
+ridden, or his spirit broke, Pierre--"
+
+Here Pierre made his leap swift as some bobcat of the northern woods;
+his hand whipped out as lightning fast as the striking paw of the lynx,
+and the gun was jerked from the hands of Jack.  Not before the boy
+clutched at it with a cry of horror, but the force of the pull sent him
+lurching to the floor and broke his grip.
+
+He was up in an instant, however, and a knife of ugly length glittered
+in his hand; as he sprang at Pierre his lips were as white as the teeth
+over which they snarled.
+
+Pierre tossed aside the rifle and met the attack bare-handed.  Deadly
+swift was the thrust of the knife, but compared with the motion of
+Pierre it was as slow as tame things are when they are likened to the
+wild.
+
+He caught the knife-bearing hand at the wrist and under his grip the
+hand loosened its hold and the steel tinkled on the floor.  His other
+arm caught the body of Jack in a mighty vise.
+
+There was a brief and futile struggle, and a hissing of breath in the
+silence till the hat tumbled from the head of Jack and down over the
+shoulders streamed a torrent of silken black hair.
+
+Pierre stepped back.  This was the meaning, then, of the strangely
+small feet and hands and the low music of the voice.  It was the body
+of a girl that he had held, and his arm still tingled from the
+finger-tips to the shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+JACK GROWS UP
+
+It was not fear nor shame that made the eyes of Jacqueline so wide as
+she stared past Pierre toward the door.  He glanced across his
+shoulder, and blocking the entrance to the room, literally filling the
+doorway, was the bulk of Jim Boone.
+
+"Seems as if I was sort of steppin' in on a little family party," he
+said.  "I'm sure glad you two got acquainted so quick.  Jack, how did
+you and--  What the hell's your name, lad?"
+
+"He tricked me, dad, or he would never have got the gun away from me.
+This--this Pierre--this beast--he got me to talk of Hal till my eyes
+filled up and I couldn't see.  Then he stole----"
+
+"The point," said Jim Boone coldly, "is that he got the gun.  Run
+along, Jack.  You ain't so growed up as I was thinkin'.  Or hold
+on--maybe you're more grown up.  Which is it?  Are you turnin' into a
+woman, Jack?"
+
+She whirled on Pierre in a white fury.
+
+"You see?  You see what you've done?  He'll never trust me
+again--never!  Pierre, I hate you.  I'll always hate you.  And if Hal
+were here----"
+
+A storm of sobs and tears cut her short, and she disappeared through
+the door.  Boone and Pierre stood regarding each other critically.
+
+The boy spoke first: "You're not as big as I expected."
+
+"I'm plenty big; but you're older than I thought."
+
+"Too old for what you want of me.  The girl told me what that was."
+
+"Not too old to be made what I want."
+
+And his hands passed through a significant gesture of moulding the
+empty air.  The boy met his eye dauntlessly.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "that I've a pretty small chance of getting away."
+
+"Just about none, Pierre.  Come here."
+
+Pierre stepped closer and looked down the hall into another room.
+There, about a table, sat the five grimmest riders of the mountain
+desert that he had even seen.  They were such men as one could judge at
+a glance, and Pierre made that instinctive motion for his six-gun.
+
+"The girl," Jim Boone was saying, "kept you pretty busy tryin' to make
+a break, and if she could do 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.  One--two--you 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 dead--my 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 evil.
+
+He said, with a marvelously unpleasant smile: "Then she was----"
+
+The voice of Dick Wilbur cut in like the snapping of a whip: "Shut up,
+Gandil, you devil!"
+
+There were times when not even Boone would cross Wilbur, and this was
+one of them.
+
+Pierre went on: "The reason I can't go to Morgantown is that I'm not
+very well liked by some of the men there."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"When my father died there was no money to pay for his burial.  I had
+only a half-dollar piece.  I went to the town and gambled and won a
+great deal.  But before I came out I got mixed up with a man called
+Hurley, a professional gambler."
+
+"And Diaz?" queried a chorus.
+
+"Yes.  Hurley was hurt in the wrist and Diaz died.  I think I'm wanted
+in Morgantown."
+
+Out of a little silence came the voice of Black Gandil: "Dick, I'm
+thankin' you now for cuttin' me so short a minute ago."
+
+Phil Branch had not spoken, as usual, but now he repeated, with rapt,
+far-off eyes: "'Hurley was hurt in the wrist and Diaz died?'  Hurley
+and Diaz!  I played with Hurley, a couple of times."
+
+"Speakin' personal," said Garry Patterson, his red verging toward
+purple in excitement, "which I'm ready to go with you down to
+Morgantown and bury your father."
+
+"And do it shipshape," added Black Gandil.
+
+"With all the trimmings," said Bud Mansie, "with all Morgantown joinin'
+the mournin' voluntarily under cover of our six-guns."
+
+"Wait," said Boone.  "What's the second request?"
+
+"That can wait."
+
+"It's a bigger job than this one?"
+
+"Lots bigger."
+
+"And in the mean time?"
+
+"I'm your man."
+
+They shook hands.  Even Black Gandil rose to take his share in the
+ceremony--all save Bud Mansie, who had glanced out the window a moment
+before and then silently left the room.  A bottle of whiskey was
+produced and glasses filled all round.  Jim Boone brought in the
+seventh chair and placed it at the table.  They raised their glasses.
+
+"To the empty chair," said Boone.
+
+They drank, and for the first time in his life, the liquid fire went
+down the throat of Pierre.  He set down his glass, coughing, and the
+others laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"Started down the wrong way?" asked Wilbur.
+
+"It's beastly stuff; first I ever drank."
+
+A roar of laughter answered him.
+
+"Still I got an idea," broke in Jim Boone, "that he's worthy of takin'
+the seventh chair.  Draw it up lad."
+
+Vaguely it reminded Pierre of a scene in some old play with himself in
+the role of the hero signing away his soul to the devil, but an
+interruption kept him from taking the chair.  There was a racket at the
+door--a half-sobbing, half-scolding voice, and the laughter of a man;
+then Bud Mansie appeared carrying Jack in spite of her struggles.  He
+placed her on the floor and held her hands to protect himself from her
+fury.
+
+"I glimpsed her through the window," he explained.  "She was lining out
+for the stable and then a minute later I saw her swing a saddle
+onto--what horse d'you think?"
+
+"Out with it."
+
+"Jim's big Thunder.  Yep, she stuck the saddle on big black Thunder and
+had a rifle in the holster.  I saw there was hell brewing somewhere, so
+I went out and nabbed her."
+
+"Jack!" called Jim Boone.  "What were you started for?"
+
+Bud Mansie released her arms and she stood with them stiffening at her
+sides and her small brown fists clenched.
+
+"Hal--he died, and there was nothing but talk about him--nothing done.
+You got a live man in Hal's place."
+
+She pointed an accusing finger at Pierre.
+
+"Maybe he takes his place for you, but he's not my brother--I hate him.
+I went out to get another man to make up for Pierre."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"A dead man.  I shoot straight enough for that."
+
+A very solemn silence spread through the room; for every man was
+watching in the eyes of the father and daughter the same shining black
+devil of wrath.
+
+"Jack, get into your room and don't move out of it till I tell you to.
+D'you hear?"
+
+She turned on her heel like a soldier and marched from the room.
+
+"Jack."
+
+She stopped in the door but would not turn back, and still the room,
+watching that little tragedy, was breathless.
+
+"Jack, don't you love your old dad any more?"
+
+She whirled and ran to him with outstretched arms and clung to him,
+sobbing.
+
+"Oh, dad--dear dad," she groaned.  "You've broken my heart; you've
+broken my heart!"
+
+The others filed softly out of the room and stood bareheaded under the
+winter sky.
+
+Bud Mansie, his meager face transformed with wonder, said: "Fellers,
+what d'you know about it?  Our Jack's grown up."
+
+And Black Gandil answered: "Look at this Pierre frowning at the ground.
+It was him that changed her."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE BURIAL
+
+The annals of the mountain desert have never been written and can never
+be written.  They are merely a vast mass of fact and tradition and
+imagining which floats from tongue to tongue from the Rockies to the
+Sierra Nevadas.  A man may be a fact all his life and die only a local
+celebrity.  Then again, he may strike sparks from that imagination
+which runs riot by camp-fires and at the bars of the crossroads saloons.
+
+In that case he becomes immortal.  It is not that lies are told about
+him or impossible feats ascribed to him, but every detail about him is
+seized upon and passed on with a most scrupulous and loving care.
+
+In due time he will become a tradition.  That is, he will be known
+familiarly at widely separated parts of the range, places which he has
+never visited.  It has happened to a few of the famous characters of
+the mountain desert that they became traditions before their deaths.
+It happened to McGurk, of course.  It also happened to Red Pierre.
+
+Oddly enough, the tradition of Red Pierre did not begin with his ride
+from the school of Father Victor to Morgantown, distant many days of
+difficult and dangerous travel.  Neither did tradition seize on the gun
+fight that crippled Hurley and "put out" wizard Diaz.  These things
+were unquestionably known to many, but they did not strike the popular
+imagination.  What set men first on fire was the way Pierre le Rouge
+buried his father "at the point of the gun" in Morgantown.
+
+That day Boone's men galloped out of the higher mountains down the
+trail toward Morgantown.  They stole a wagon out of a ranch stable on
+the way and tied two lariats to the tongue.  So they towed it, bounding
+and rattling, over the rough trail to the house where Martin Ryder lay
+dead.
+
+His body was placed in state in the body of the wagon, pillowed with
+everything in the line of cloth which the house could furnish.  Thus
+equipped they went on at a more moderate pace toward Morgantown.
+
+What followed it is useless to repeat here.  Tradition rehearsed every
+detail of that day's work, and the purpose of this narrative is only to
+give the details of some of the events which tradition does not know,
+at least in their entirety.
+
+They started at one end of Morgantown's street.  Pierre guarded the
+wagon in the center of the street and kept the people under cover of
+his rifle.  The rest of Boone's men cleaned out the houses as they went
+and sent the occupants piling out to swell the crowd.
+
+And so they rolled the crowd out of town and to the cemetery, where
+"volunteers" dug the grave of Martin Ryder wide and deep, and Pierre
+paid for the corner plot three times over in gold.
+
+Then a coffin--improvised hastily for the occasion out of a
+packing-box--was lowered reverently, also by "volunteer" mourners, and
+before the first sod fell on the dead, Pierre borrowed a long black
+cloak from one of the women and wrapped himself in it, in lieu of the
+robe of the priest, and raised over his head the crucifix of Father
+Victor that brought good luck, and intoned a service in the purest
+Ciceronian Latin, surely, that ever regaled the ears of Morgantown's
+elect.
+
+The moment he raised that cross the bull throat of Jim Boone bellowed a
+command, the poised guns of the gang enforced it, and all the crowd
+dropped to their knees, leaving the six outlaws scattered about the
+edges of the mob like sheep dogs around a folding flock, while in the
+center stood Pierre with white, upturned face and the raised cross.
+
+So Martin Ryder was buried with "trimmings," and the gang rode back,
+laughing and shouting, through the town and up into the safety of the
+mountains.  Election day was fast approaching and therefore the rival
+candidates for sheriff hastily organized posses and made the usual
+futile pursuit.
+
+In fact, before the pursuit was well under way, Boone and his men sat
+at their supper table in the cabin.  The seventh chair was filled; all
+were present except Jack, who sulked in her room.  Pierre went to her
+door and knocked.  He carried under his arm a package which he had
+secured in the General Merchandise Store of Morgantown.
+
+"We're all waiting for you at the table," he explained.
+
+"Just keep on waiting," said the husky voice of Jacqueline.
+
+"If I leave the table will you come out?"
+
+She stammered: "Ye--n-no!"
+
+"Yes or no?"
+
+"No, no, no!"
+
+And he heard the stamp of her foot and smiled a little.
+
+"I've brought you a present."
+
+"I hate your presents!"
+
+"It's a thing you've wanted for a long time, Jacqueline."
+
+Only a stubborn silence.
+
+"I'm putting your door a little ajar."
+
+"If you dare to come in I'll--"
+
+"And I'm leaving the package right here at the entrance.  I'm so sorry,
+Jacqueline, that you hate me."
+
+And then he walked off down the hall--cunning Pierre--before she could
+send her answer like an arrow after him.  At the table he arranged an
+eighth plate and drew up a chair before it.
+
+"If that's for Jack," remarked Dick Wilbur, "you're wasting your time.
+I know her and I know her type.  She'll never come out to the table
+to-night--nor to-morrow, either.  I know!"
+
+In fact, he knew a good deal too much about girls and women also, did
+Wilbur, and that was why he rode the long trails of the mountain-desert
+with Boone and his men.  Far south and east in the Bahamas a great
+mansion stood vacant because he was gone, and the dust lay thick on the
+carpets and powdered the curtains and tapestries with a common gray.
+
+He had built it and furnished it for a woman he loved, and afterward
+for her sake he had killed a man and fled from a posse and escaped in
+the steerage of a west-bound ship.  Still the law followed him, and he
+kept on west and west until he reached the mountain-desert which thinks
+nothing of swallowing men and their reputations.
+
+There he was safe, but some day he would see some woman smile, catch
+the glimmer of some eye, and throw safety away to ride after her.
+
+It was a weakness, but what made a tragic figure of handsome Dick
+Wilbur was that he knew his weakness and sat still and let fate walk up
+and overtake him.
+
+Yet Pierre le Rouge answered this man of sorrowful wisdom: "In my part
+of the country men say: 'If you would speak of women let money talk for
+you.'"
+
+And he placed a gold piece on the table.
+
+"She will come out to the supper table."
+
+"She will not," smiled Wilbur, and covered the coin.  "Will you take
+odds?"
+
+"No charity.  Who else will bet?"
+
+"I," said Jim Boone instantly.  "You figure her for an ordinary sulky
+kid."
+
+Pierre smiled upon him.
+
+"There's a cut in my shirt where her knife passed through; and that's
+the reason that I'll bet on her now."
+
+The whole table covered his coin, with laughter.
+
+"We've kept one part of your bargain, Pierre.  We've seen your father
+buried in the corner plot.  Now, what's the second part?"
+
+"I don't know you well enough to ask you that," said Pierre.
+
+They plied him with suggestions.
+
+"To rob the Berwin Bank?"
+
+"Stick up a train?"
+
+"No.  That's nothing."
+
+"Round up the sheriffs from here to the end of the mountains?"
+
+"Too easy."
+
+"Roll all those together," said Pierre, "and you'll begin to get an
+idea of what I'll ask."
+
+Then a low voice called from the black throat of the hall "Pierre!"
+
+The others were silent, but Pierre winked at them, and made great
+flourish with knife and fork against his plate as if to cover the sound
+of Jacqueline's voice.
+
+"Pierre!" she called again.  "I've come to thank you."
+
+He jumped up and turned toward the hall.
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"It's a wonder!"
+
+"Then we're friends?"
+
+"If you want to be."
+
+"There's nothing I want more.  Then you'll come out and have supper
+with us, Jack?"
+
+"Pierre--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I'm ashamed.  I've been acting like a silly kid."
+
+"But we're waiting for you."
+
+There was a little pause, and then Jim Boone struck his fist on the
+table and cursed, for she stepped from the darkness into the flaring
+light of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A TALE OF THE SLEDGE
+
+She wore a cartridge belt slung jauntily across her hips and from it
+hung a holster of stiff new leather with the top flap open to show the
+butt of a man-sized forty-five caliber six-shooter--her first gun.  Not
+a man of the gang but had loaned her his guns time and again, but they
+had never dreamed of giving the child a weapon of her own.
+
+So they stared at her agape, where she stood with her head back, one
+slender hand resting on her hip, one hovering about the butt of the
+gun, as if she challenged them to question her right to be called "man."
+
+It was as if she abandoned all claims to femininity with that single
+step; the gun at her side made her seem inches taller and years older.
+She was no longer a child, but a long-rider who could back any horse on
+the range and shoot with the best.
+
+One glance she cast about the room to drink in the amazement of the
+gang, and then with a profound instinct guiding her, she picked out the
+best critic in the room and said to him with a frown: "Well, Dick,
+how's it hang?"
+
+The big man was as flushed as the girl.
+
+"Hangs like a charm," he said, "a charm that 'll be apt to make men
+step about."
+
+And her father broke in rather hoarsely: "Sit down, girl.  Sit down and
+be one of us.  One of us you are by your own choice from this day on.
+You're neither man nor woman, but a long-rider with every man's hand
+against you.  You've done with any hope of a home or of friends.
+You're one of us.  Poor Jack--my girl!"
+
+"Poor?" she returned.  "Not while I can make a quick draw and shoot
+straight."
+
+And then she swept the circle of eyes, daring them to take her boast
+lightly, but they knew her too well, and were all solemnly silent.  At
+this she relented somewhat, and went directly to Pierre, flushing from
+throat to hair.  She held out her hand.
+
+"Will you shake and call it square?"
+
+"I sure will," nodded Pierre.
+
+"And we're pals--you and me, like the rest of 'em?"
+
+"We are."
+
+"Shake again."
+
+She took the place beside him.
+
+Garry Patterson was telling how he had said farewell to a Swedish
+sweetheart, and the roar of laughter took the eyes away from Jacqueline
+for a moment.  So she leaned to Pierre le Rouge and whispered at his
+ear: "Pierre you've made me the happiest fellow on the range."
+
+As the whisky went round after round and the fun waxed higher the two
+seemed shut away from the others; they were younger, less touched and
+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
+sledge-hammer.  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 long 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 hang-over 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 half-way.
+
+"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 heavy
+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 even 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
+keen 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 indomitable 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 don't like to be dictatorial, and 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 I've lost my boy, Hal."
+
+"Too bad, Jim.  I knew Hal; at a distance, of course."
+
+"And Pierre is filling Hal's place in the family."
+
+"Is that your answer?"
+
+"McGurk, are you going to pin me down in this?"
+
+And here Jack whirled and cried: "Dad, you won't let Pierre go!"
+
+"You see?" pleaded Boone.
+
+It was uncanny and horrible to see the giant so unnerved before this
+stranger, but that part of it did not come to Pierre until later.  Now
+he felt a peculiar emptiness of stomach and a certain jumping chill
+that traveled up and down his spine.  Moreover, he could not move his
+eyes from the face of McGurk, and he knew at length that this was
+fear--the first real fear that he had ever known.
+
+Shame made him hot, but fear made him cold again.  He knew that if he
+rose his knees would buckle under him; that if he drew out his revolver
+it would slip from his palsied fingers.  For the fear of death is a
+mighty fear, but it is nothing compared with the fear of man.
+
+"I've asked you a question," said McGurk.  "What's your answer?"
+
+There was a quiver in the black forest of Boone's beard, and if Pierre
+was cold before, he was sick at heart to see the big man cringe before
+McGurk.
+
+He stammered: "Give me time."
+
+"Good," said McGurk.  "I'm afraid I know what your answer would be now,
+but if you take a couple of days you will think things over and come to
+a reasonable conclusion.  I will be at Gaffney's place about fifteen
+miles from here.  You know it?  Send your answer there.  In the mean
+time"--he stepped forward to the table and poured a small drink of
+whiskey into a glass and raised it high--"here's to the long health and
+happiness of us all.  Drink!"
+
+There was a hasty pouring of liquor.
+
+"And you also!"
+
+Pierre jumped as if he had been struck, and obeyed the order hastily.
+
+"So," said the master, pleasant again, and Pierre wiped his forehead
+furtively and stared up with fascinated eyes.  "An unwilling pledge is
+better than none at all.  To you, gentleman, much happiness; to you,
+Pierre le Rouge, _bon voyage_."
+
+They drank; the master placed his glass on the table again, smiled upon
+them, and was gone through the door.  He turned his back in leaving.
+There was no fitter way in which he could have expressed his contempt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+MCGURK
+
+The mirth died and in its place came a long silence.  Jim Boone stared
+upon Pierre with miserable eyes, and then rose and left the room.  The
+others one by one followed his example.  Dick Wilbur in passing dropped
+his hand on Pierre's shoulder.  Jacqueline was silent.
+
+As he sat there minute after minute and then hour after hour of the
+long night Pierre saw the meaning of it.  If they sent word that they
+would not give up Pierre it was war, and war with McGurk had only one
+ending.  If they sent word that Pierre was surrendered the shame would
+never leave Boone and his men.
+
+Whatever they did there was ruin for them in the end.  All this Pierre
+conned slowly in his mind, until he was cold.  Then he looked up and
+saw that the lamp had burned out and that the wood in the fireplace was
+consumed to a few red embers.
+
+He replenished the fire, and when the yellow flames began to mount he
+made his resolution and walked slowly up and down the floor with it.
+For he knew that he must go to meet McGurk.
+
+The very thought of the man sent the old chill through his blood, yet
+he must go and face him and end the thing.
+
+It came over him with a pang that he was very young; that life was
+barely a taste in his mouth, whether bitter or sweet he could not tell.
+He picked a flaming stick from the fire and went before a little round
+mirror on the wall.
+
+Back at him stared the face of a boy.  He had seen so much of the grim
+six in the last day that the contrast startled him.  They were men,
+hardened to life and filled with knowledge of it.  They were books
+written full and ready to be ended.  But he?  He was a blank page with
+a scribbled word here and there.  Nevertheless, he was chosen and he
+must go.
+
+Having reached that decision he closed his mind on what would happen.
+There was a vague fear that when he faced McGurk he would be unmanned
+again and frozen with fear; that his spirit would be broken and he
+would become a thing too despicable for a man to kill.
+
+One thing was certain: if he was to act a man's part and die a man's
+death he must not stand long before McGurk.  It seemed to him then that
+he would die happy if he had the strength to fire one shot before the
+end.
+
+Then he tiptoed from the house and went over the snow to the barn and
+saddled the horse of Hal Boone.  It was already morning, and as he led
+the horse to the door of the barn a shadow, a faint shadow in that
+early light, fell across the snow before him.
+
+He looked up and saw Jacqueline.  She stepped close, and the horse
+nosed her shoulder affectionately.
+
+She said: "Isn't there anything that will keep you from going?"
+
+"It's just a little ride before breakfast.  I'll be back in an hour."
+
+It was foolish to try to blind her, as he saw by her wan, unchildish
+smile.
+
+"Is there no other way, Pierre?"
+
+"I don't know of any, do you?"
+
+"You have to leave us, and never come back?"
+
+"Is he as sure as that, Jack?"
+
+"Sure?  Who?"
+
+She had not known, after all; she thought that he was merely riding
+away from the region where McGurk was king.  Now she caught his wrists
+and shook them.
+
+"Pierre, you are not going to face McGurk?  Pierre!"
+
+It was sweet and bitter-sweet that the child should wish him to stay,
+and it made the heart of Pierre old and stern to look down on her.
+
+"If you were a man, you would understand."
+
+"I know; because of your father.  I do understand, but oh, Pierre, it
+makes me so unhappy--so terribly sad, Pierre."
+
+Inspiration made her catch her breath.
+
+"Listen!  I can shoot as straight as almost any man.  We will ride down
+together.  We will go through the doors together--me first to take his
+fire, and you behind to shoot him down."
+
+"I guess no man can be as brave as a woman, Jack.  No; I have to see
+McGurk alone.  He faced my father alone and shot him down.  I'll face
+McGurk alone and live long enough to put my mark on him."
+
+"But you don't know him.  He can't be hurt.  Do you think my father
+and--and Dick Wilbur would fear any man who could be hurt?  No, but
+McGurk has been in a hundred fights and never been touched.  There's a
+charm over him, don't you see?"
+
+"I'll break the charm, that's all."
+
+"You're only a boy, Pierre."
+
+"I, also, carry a charm with me.  Good-by."
+
+He was up in the saddle.
+
+"Then I'll call dad--I'll call them all--if you die they shall all
+follow you.  I swear they shall, Pierre!"
+
+He merely leaned forward and touched the horse with his spurs, but
+after he had raced the first hundred yards he glanced back.  She was
+running hard for the house, and calling as she went.  Pierre cursed and
+spurred the horse again.
+
+Yet even if Jim Boone and his men started out after him they could
+never overtake him.  Before they were in their saddles and up with him,
+he'd be a full three miles out in the hills.  Not even black Thunder
+could make up as much ground as that.
+
+So all the fifteen miles to Gaffney's place he urged his horse.  The
+excitement of the race kept the thought of McGurk back in his mind.
+Only once he lost time when he had to pull up beside a buckboard and
+inquire the way.  After that he flew on again.  Yet as he clattered up
+to the door of Gaffney's crossroads saloon and swung to the ground he
+looked back and saw a cluster of horsemen swing around the shoulder of
+a hill and come tearing after him.  Surely his time was short.
+
+He thrust open the door of the place and called for a drink.  The
+bartender spun the glass down the bar to him.
+
+"Where's McGurk?"
+
+The other stopped in the very act of taking out the bottle from the
+shelf, and his curious glance went over the face of Pierre le Rouge.
+He decided, apparently, that it was foolish to hold suspicions against
+so young a man.
+
+"In that room," and he jerked his hand toward a door.  "What do you
+want with him?"
+
+"Got a message for him."
+
+"Tell it to me, and I'll pass it along."
+
+Pierre met the eye of the other and smiled faintly.
+
+"Not _this_ message."
+
+"Oh," said the other, and then shouted: "McGurk!"
+
+Far away came the rush of hoofs over a hard trail.  Only a minute more
+and they would be here; only a minute more and the room would be full
+of fighting men ready to die with him and for him.  Yet Pierre was
+glad; glad that he could meet the danger alone; ten minutes from now,
+if he lived, he could answer certainly one way or the other the
+greatest of all questions: "Am I a man?"
+
+Out of the inner room the pleasant voice which he dreaded answered:
+"What's up?"
+
+The barkeeper glanced Pierre le Rouge over again and then answered: "A
+friend with a message."
+
+The door opened and framed McGurk.  He did not start, seeing Pierre.
+
+He said: "None of the rest of them had the guts even to bring me the
+message, eh?"
+
+Pierre shrugged his shoulders.  It was a mighty effort, but he was able
+to look his man fairly in the eyes.
+
+"All right, lad.  How long is it going to take you to clear out of the
+country?"
+
+"That's not the message," answered a voice which Pierre did not
+recognize as his own.
+
+"Out with it, then."
+
+"It's in the leather on my hip."
+
+And he went for his gun.  Even as he started his hand he knew that he
+was too slow for McGurk, yet the finest split-second watch in the world
+could not have caught the differing time they needed to get their guns
+out of the holsters.
+
+Just a breath before Pierre fired there was a stunning blow on his
+right shoulder and another on his hip.  He lurched to the floor, his
+revolver clattering against the wood as he fell, but falling, he
+scooped up the gun with his left and twisted.
+
+That movement made the third shot of McGurk fly wide and Pierre fired
+from the floor and saw a spasm of pain contract the face of the outlaw.
+
+Instantly the door behind him flew open and Boone's men stormed into
+the room.  Once more McGurk fired, but his wound made his aim wide and
+the bullet merely tore up a splinter beside Pierre's head.  A fusillade
+from Boone and his men answered, but the outlaw had leaped back through
+the door.
+
+"He's hurt," thundered Boone.  "By God, the charm of McGurk is broken.
+Dick, Bud, Gandil, take the outside of the place.  I'll force the door."
+
+Wilbur and the other two raced through the door and raised a shout at
+once, and then there was a rattle of shots.  Big Patterson leaned over
+Pierre.
+
+He said in an awe-stricken voice: "Lad, it's a great work that you've
+done for all of us, if you've drawn the blood from McGurk."
+
+"His left shoulder," said Pierre, and smiled in spite of his pain.
+
+"And you, lad?"
+
+"I'm going to live; I've got to finish the job.  Who's that beside you?
+There's a mist over my eyes."
+
+"It's Jack.  She outrode us all."
+
+Then the mist closed over the eyes of Pierre and his senses went out in
+the dark.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+GOLD HAIR
+
+Those who are curious about the period which followed during which the
+title "Le Rouge" was forgotten and he became known only as "Red" Pierre
+through all the mountain-desert, can hear the tales of his doing from
+the analists of the ranges.  This story has to do only with his
+struggle with McGurk, and must end where that struggle ended.
+
+The gap of six years which occurs here is due to the fact that during
+that period McGurk vanished from the mountain-desert.  He died away
+from the eyes of men and in their minds he became that tradition which
+lives still so vividly, the tradition of the pale face, the sneering,
+bloodless lips, and the hand which never failed.
+
+During this lapse of time there were many who claimed that he had
+ridden off into some lonely haunt and died of the wound which he
+received from Pierre's bullet.  A great majority, however, would never
+accept such a story, and even when the six years had rolled by they
+still shook their heads and "had their doubt on the matter" like
+_Wouter Van Twiller_ of immortal memory.
+
+They awaited his return just as certain stanch old Britons await the
+second coming of Arthur from the island of Avalon.  In the mean time
+the terror of his name passed on to him who had broken the "charm" of
+McGurk.
+
+Not all that grim significance passed on to "Red" Pierre, indeed,
+because he never impressed the public imagination as did the terrible
+ruthlessness of McGurk.  At that he did enough to keep tongues wagging.
+
+Cattlemen loved to tell those familiar exploits of the "two sheriffs,"
+or that "thousand-mile pursuit of Canby," with its half-tragic,
+half-humorous conclusion, or the "Sacking of Two Rivers," or the
+"three-cornered battle" against Rodriguez and Blond.
+
+But men could not forget that in all his work there rode behind Red
+Pierre six dauntless warriors of the mountain-desert, while McGurk had
+been always a single hand against the world, a veritable lone wolf.
+
+Whatever kept him away through those six years, the memory of the wound
+he received at Gaffney's place never left McGurk, and now he was coming
+back with a single great purpose in his mind, and in his heart a
+consuming hatred for Pierre and all the other of Boone's men.
+
+Certainly if he had sensed the second coming of McGurk, Pierre would
+not have ridden so jauntily through the hills this day, or whistled so
+carelessly, or swept the hills with such a complacent, lordly eye.  A
+man of mark cannot bear himself too modestly, and Pierre, from boots to
+high-peaked, broad-brimmed sombrero, was the last word in elegance for
+a rider of the mountain-desert.
+
+Even his mount seemed to sense the pride of his master.  It was a
+cream-colored mustang, not one of the lump-headed, bony-hipped species
+common to the ranges, but one of those rare reversions to the Spanish
+thoroughbreds from which the Western cow-pony is descended.  The mare
+was not over-large, but the broad hips and generous expanse of chest
+were hints, and only hints, of her strength and endurance.  There was
+the speed of the blooded racer in her and the tirelessness of the
+mustang.
+
+Now, down the rocky, half broken trail she picked her way as daintily
+as any debutante tiptoeing down a great stairway to the ballroom.  Life
+had been easy for Mary since that thousand-mile struggle to overtake
+Canby, and now her sides were sleek from good feeding and some casual
+twenty miles a day, which was no more to her than a canter through the
+park is to the city horse.
+
+The eye which had been so red-stained and fierce during the long ride
+after Canby was now bright and gentle.  At every turn she pricked her
+small sharp ears as if she expected home and friends on the other side
+of the curve.  And now and again she tossed her head and glanced back
+at the master for a moment and then whinnied across some echoing ravine.
+
+It was Mary's way of showing happiness, and her master's acknowledgment
+was to run his gloved left hand up through her mane and with his
+ungloved right, that tanned and agile hand, pat her shoulder lightly.
+
+Passing to the end of the down-grade, they reached a slight upward
+incline, and the mare, as if she had come to familiar ground, broke
+into a gallop, a matchless, swinging stride.  Swerving to right and to
+left among the great boulders, like a football player running a broken
+field, she increased the gallop to a racing pace.
+
+That twisting course would have shaken an ordinary horseman to the
+toes, but Pierre, swaying easily in the saddle, dropped the reins into
+the crook of his left arm and rolled a cigarette in spite of the motion
+and the wind.  It was a little feat, but it would have drawn applause
+from a circus crowd.
+
+He spoke to the mare while he lighted a match and she dropped to an
+easy canter, the pace which she could maintain from dawn to dark,
+eating up the gray miles of the mountain and the desert, and it was
+then that Red Pierre heard a gay voice singing in the distance.
+
+His attitude changed at once.  He caught a shorter grip on the reins
+and swung forward a little in the saddle, while his right hand touched
+the butt of the revolver in its holster and made sure that it was
+loose; for to those who hunt and are hunted every human voice in the
+mountain-desert is an ominous token.
+
+The mare, sensing the change of her master through that weird
+telegraphy which passed down the taut bridle reins, held her head high
+and flattened her short ears against her neck.
+
+The song and the singer drew closer, and the vigilence of Pierre ceased
+as he heard a mellow barytone ring out:
+
+  "They call me poor, yet I am rich
+    In the touch of her golden hair,
+  My heart is filled like a miser's hands
+    With the red-gold of her hair.
+  The sky I ride beneath all day
+    Is the blue of her dear eyes;
+  The only heaven I desire
+    Is the blue of her dear eyes."
+
+
+And here Dick Wilbur rode about the shoulder of a hill, broke off his
+song at the sight of Pierre le Rouge, and shouted a welcome.  They came
+together and continued their journey side by side.  The half-dozen
+years had hardly altered the blond, handsome face of Wilbur, and now,
+with the gladness of his singing still flushing his face, he seemed
+hardly more than a boy--younger, in fact, than Red Pierre, into whose
+eyes there came now and then a grave sternness.
+
+"After hearing that song," said Pierre smiling, "I feel as if I'd
+listened to a portrait."
+
+"Right!" said Wilbur, with unabated enthusiasm.  "It's the bare and
+unadorned truth, Prince Pierre.  My fine _Galahad_, if you came within
+eye-shot of her there'd be a small-sized hell raised."
+
+"No.  I'm immune there, you know."
+
+"Nonsense.  The beauty of a really lovely woman is like a fine perfume.
+It strikes right to a man's heart; there's no possibility of
+resistance.  I know.  You, Pierre, act like a man already in love or a
+boy who has never known a woman.  Which is it, Pierre?"
+
+The other made a familiar gesture with those who knew him, a touching
+of his left hand against his throat where the cross lay.
+
+He said: "I suppose it seems like that to you."
+
+"Like what?  Dodging me, eh?  Well, I never press the point, but I'd
+give the worth of your horse, Pierre, to see you and Mary together."
+
+Red Pierre started, and then frowned.
+
+"Irritates you a little, eh?  Well, a woman is like a spur to most men."
+
+He added, with a momentary gloom: "God knows, I bear the marks of 'em."
+
+He raised his head, as if he looked up in response to his thought.
+
+"But there's a difference with this girl.  I've named the quality of
+her before--a fragrance, you know, that disarms a man, and like a
+fragrance there's just a touch of melancholy about her and an appeal
+that follows after you when she's gone."
+
+Pierre looked to his friend with some alarm, for there was a saying
+among the followers of Boone that a woman would be the downfall of big
+Dick Wilbur again, as a woman had been his downfall before.  The
+difference would be that this fall must be his last.
+
+And Wilbur went on: "She's Eastern, Pierre, and out here visiting the
+daughter of old Barnes who owns about a thousand miles of range, you
+know.  How long will she be here?  That's the question I'm trying to
+answer for her.  I met her riding over the hills--she was galloping
+along a ridge, and she rode her way right into my heart.  Well, I'm a
+fool, of course, but about this girl I can't be wrong.  To-night I'm
+taking her to a masquerade."
+
+He pulled his horse to a full stop.
+
+"Pierre, you have to come with me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ENNUI
+
+Pierre stared at his companion with almost open-mouthed astonishment.
+
+"I?  A dance?"
+
+And then his head tilted back and he laughed.
+
+"My good times, Dick, come out of the hills and the sky-line, and the
+gallop of Mary.  But as for women, they bore me, Dick."
+
+"Even Jack?"
+
+"She's more man than woman."
+
+It was the turn of Wilbur to laugh, and he responded uproariously until
+Pierre frowned and flushed a little.
+
+"When I see you out here on your horse with your rifle in the boot and
+your six-gun swinging low in the scabbard, and riding the fastest bit
+of horse-flesh on the ranges," explained Wilbur, "I get to thinking
+that you're pretty much king of the mountains; but in certain respects,
+Pierre, you're a child.  Ha, ha, ha! a regular infant."
+
+Pierre stirred uneasily in his saddle.  A man must be well over thirty
+before he can withstand ridicule.
+
+He said dryly: "I've an idea that I know Jack about as well as the next
+man."
+
+"Let it drop," said Wilbur, sober again, for he shared with all of
+Boone's crew a deep-rooted unwillingness to press Red Pierre beyond a
+certain point.  "The one subject I won't quarrel about is Jack, God
+bless her."
+
+"She's the best pal," said Pierre soberly, "and the nearest to a man
+I've ever met."
+
+"Nearest to a man?" queried Wilbur, and smiled, but so furtively that
+even the sharp eye of Red Pierre did not perceive the mockery.  He went
+on:
+
+"But the dance, what of that?  It's a masquerade.  There'd be no fear
+of being recognized."
+
+Pierre was silent a moment more.  Then he said:
+
+"This girl--what did you call her?"
+
+"Mary."
+
+"And about her hair--I think you said it was black?"
+
+"Golden, Pierre."
+
+"Mary, and golden hair," mused Red Pierre.  "I think I'll go to that
+dance."
+
+"With Jack?  She dances wonderfully, you know."
+
+"Well--with Jack."
+
+So they reached a tumbled ranch-house squeezed between two hills so
+that it was sheltered from the storms of the winter but held all the
+heat of the summer.
+
+Once it had been a goodly building, the home of some cattle-king.  But
+bad times had come.
+
+A bullet in a saloon brawl put an end to the cattle king, and now his
+home was a wreck of its former glory.  The northern wing shelved down
+to the ground as if the building were kneeling to the power of the
+wind, and the southern portion of the house, though still erect, seemed
+tottering and rotten throughout and holding together until at a final
+blow the whole structure would crumple at once.
+
+To the stables, hardly less ruinous than the big house, Pierre and
+Wilbur took their horses, and a series of whinnies greeted them from
+the stalls.  To look down that line of magnificent heads raised above
+the partitions of the stalls was like glancing into the stud of some
+crowned head who made hunting and racing his chief end in life, for
+these were animals worthy of the sport of kings.
+
+They were chosen each from among literal hundreds and thousands, and
+they were cared for far more tenderly than the masters cared for
+themselves.  There was a reason in it, for upon their speed and
+endurance depended the life of the outlaw.  Moreover, the policy of Jim
+Boone was one of actual "long riding."
+
+Here he had come to a pause for a few days to recuperate his horses and
+his men.  To-morrow, perhaps, he would be on the spur again and
+sweeping off to a distant point in the mountain desert to strike and be
+gone again before the rangers knew well that he had been there.  Very
+rarely did one settler have another neighbor at a distance of less than
+two hundred miles.  It meant arduous and continual riding, and a horse
+with any defect was worse than useless because the speed of the gang
+had to be the speed of the slowest horse in the lot.
+
+It was some time before the two long riders had completed the grooming
+of their horses and had gone down the hill and into the house.  In the
+largest habitable room they found a fire fed with rotten timbers from
+the wrecked portion of the building, and scattered through the room a
+sullen and dejected group: Mansie, Branch, Jim Boone, and Black Morgan
+Gandil.
+
+At a glance it was easy to detect their malady; it was the horrible
+ennui which comes to men who are always surrounded by one set of faces.
+If a man is happily married he may bear with his wife and his children
+constantly through long stretches of time, but the glamour of life lies
+in the varying personalities which a man glimpses in passing, but never
+knows.
+
+This was a rare crew.  Every man of them was marked for courage and
+stamina and wild daring.  Yet even so in their passive moments they
+hated each other with a hate that passed the understanding of common
+men.
+
+Through seven years they had held together, through fair weather and
+foul, and now each knew from the other's expression the words that were
+about to be spoken, and each knew that the other was reading him, and
+loathing what he read.
+
+So they were apt to relapse into long silences unless Jack was with
+them, for being a woman her variety was infinite, or Pierre le Rouge,
+whom all except Black Gandil loved and petted, and feared.
+
+They were a battered crowd.  Wind and hard weather and a thousand suns
+had marked them, and the hand of man had branded them.  Here and there
+was a touch of gray in their hair, and about the mouth of each were
+lines which in such silent moments as this one gave an expression of
+infinite and wistful yearning.
+
+"What's up?  What's wrong?" asked Wilbur from the door, but since no
+answer was deigned he said no more.
+
+But Pierre, like a charmed man who dares to walk among lions, strolled
+easily through the room, and looked into the face of big Boone, who
+smiled faintly up to him, and Black Gandil, who scowled doubly dark,
+and Bud Mansie, who shifted uneasily in his chair and then nodded, and
+finally to Branch.  He dropped a hand on the massive shoulder of the
+blacksmith.
+
+"Well?" he asked.
+
+Branch let himself droop back into his chair.  His big, dull, colorless
+eyes stared up to his friend.
+
+"I dunno, lad.  I'm just weary with the sort of tired that you can't
+help by sleepin'.  Understand?"
+
+Pierre nodded, slowly, because he sympathized.  "And the trouble?"
+
+Branch stared about as if searching for a reason.
+
+"Jack's up-stairs sulking; Patterson hasn't come home yet."
+
+And Black Gandil, who heard all things, said without looking up: "A man
+that saves a ship-wrecked fellow, he gets bad luck for thanks."
+
+Pierre turned a considering eye on him, and Gandil scowled back.
+
+"You've been croaking for six years, Morgan, about the bad luck that
+would come to Jim from saving me out of the snow.  It's never happened,
+has it?"
+
+Gandil, snarling from one side of his mouth, answered: "Where's
+Patterson?"
+
+"Am I responsible if the blockhead has got drunk some place?"
+
+"Patterson doesn't get drunk--not that way.  And he knows that we were
+to start again to-day."
+
+"There ain't no doubt of that," commented Branch.
+
+"It's the straight dope.  Patterson keeps his dates," said Bud Mansie.
+
+The booming bass of Jim Boone broke in: "Shut up, the whole gang of
+you.  We've had luck for the six years Pierre has been with us.  Who
+calls him a Jonah?"
+
+And Black Gandil answered: "I do.  I've sailed the seas.  I know bad
+luck when I see it."
+
+"You've been seeing it for six years."
+
+"The worst storms come on a voyage that starts with fair weather.
+Patterson?  He's gone; he ain't just delayed; he's gone."
+
+It was not the first of these gloomy prophecies which Gandil had made,
+but each time a heavy gloom broke over Red Pierre.  For when he summed
+up the good fortune which the cross of Father Victor had brought him,
+he found that he had gained a father, and lost him at their first
+meeting; and he had won money on that night of the gambling, but it had
+cost the life of another man almost at once.  The horse which carried
+him away from the vengeance in Morgantown had died on the way and he
+had been saved from the landslide, but the girl had perished.
+
+He had driven McGurk from the ranges, and where would the penalty fall
+on those who were near and dear to him?  In a superstitious horror he
+had asked himself the question a thousand times, and finally he could
+hardly bear to look into the ominous, brooding eyes of Black Gandil.
+It was as if the man had a certain and evil knowledge of the future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+BLACK GANDIL
+
+The knowledge of the torment he was inflicting made the eye of Black
+Gandil bright with triumph.
+
+He continued, and now every man in the room was sitting up, alert, with
+gloomy eyes fixed upon Pierre: "Patterson is the first, but he ain't
+the last.  He's just the start.  Who's next?"  He looked slowly around.
+
+"Is it you, Bud, or you, Phil, or you, Jim, or maybe me?"
+
+And Pierre said: "What makes you think you know that trouble's coming,
+Morgan?"
+
+"Because my blood runs cold in me when I look at you."
+
+Red Pierre grew rigid and straightened in a way they knew.
+
+"Damn you, Gandil, I've borne with you and your croaking too long, d'ye
+hear?  Too long, and I'll hear no more of it, understand?"
+
+"Why not?  You'll hear from me every time I sight you in the offing.
+You c'n lay to that!"
+
+The others were tense, ready to spring for cover, but Boone reared up
+his great figure.
+
+"Don't answer him, Pierre.  You, Gandil, shut your face or I'll break
+ye in two."
+
+The fierce eyes of Pierre le Rouge never wavered from his victim, but
+he answered: "Keep out of this.  This is my party.  I'll tell you why
+you'll stop gibbering, Gandil."
+
+He made a pace forward and every man shrank a little away from him.
+
+"Because the cold in your blood is part hate and more fear, Black
+Gandil."
+
+The eyes of Gandil glared back for an instant.  With all his soul he
+yearned for the courage to pull his gun, but his arm was numb; he could
+not move it, and his eyes wavered and fell.
+
+The shaggy gray head of Jim Boone fell likewise, and he was murmuring
+to his savage old heart:
+
+"The good days are over.  They'll never rest till one of 'em is dead,
+and then the rest will take sides and we'll have gun-plays at night.
+Seven years, and then to break up!"
+
+Dick Wilbur, as usual, was the pacifier.  He strode across the room,
+and the sharp sound of his heels on the creaking floor broke the
+tension.  He said softly to Pierre: "You've raised hell enough.  Now
+let's go up and get Jack down here to undo what you've just finished.
+Besides, you've got to ask her for that dance, eh?"
+
+The glance of Pierre still lingered on Gandil as he turned and followed
+Wilbur up the complaining stairs to the one habitable room in the
+second story of the house.  It was set aside for the use of Jacqueline.
+
+At the door Wilbur said: "Shrug your shoulders back; you look as if you
+were going to jump at something.  And wipe the wolf-look off your face.
+After all, Jack's a girl, not a gun-fighter."
+
+Then he knocked and opened the door.
+
+She lay face down on her bunk, her head turned from them and toward the
+wall.  Slender and supple and strong, it was still only the size of her
+boots and her hands that would make one look at her twice and then
+guess that this was a woman, for she was dressed, from trousers even to
+the bright bandanna knotted around her throat, like any prosperous
+range rider.
+
+Now, to be sure, the thick coils of black hair told her sex, but when
+the broad-brimmed sombrero was pulled well down on her head, when the
+cartridge-belt and the six-gun were slung about her waist, and most of
+all when she spurred her mount recklessly across the hills, no one
+could have suspected that this was not some graceful boy born and bred
+in the mountain-desert, wilful as a young mountain-lion, and as
+dangerous.
+
+"Sleepy?" called Wilbur.
+
+She waited a moment and then queried with exaggerated impudence: "Well?"
+
+Ennui unspeakable was in that drawling monotone.
+
+"Brace up; I've got news for you."
+
+Her hand moved and all the graceful body, but it was only with a yawn.
+What need was there to speak?  She wished to be alone.
+
+"And I've brought Pierre along to tell you about it.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+And she sat bolt upright with shining eyes.  Instantly she remembered
+to yawn again, but her glance smiled on them above her hand.
+
+She apologized.  "Awfully sleepy, Dick."
+
+But he was not deceived.  He said: "There's a dance down near the
+Barnes place, and Pierre wants you to go with him."
+
+Back tilted her head, and her throat stirred as if she were singing.
+
+"Pierre!  A dance?"
+
+He explained: "Dick's lost his head over a girl with yellow hair, and
+he wants me to go down and see her.  He thought you might want to go
+along."
+
+Her face changed like the moon when a cloud blows across it.  Before
+she answered she slipped down on the bunk again, pillowed her head
+leisurely on her arm, and answered with another slow, insolent yawn:
+"Thanks!  I'm staying home to-night."
+
+Wilbur glared his rage covertly at Pierre, but the latter was blandly
+unconscious that he had made any _faux pas_.
+
+He said carelessly: "Too bad.  It might be interesting, Jack?"
+
+At his voice she looked up--a sharp and graceful toss of the head.
+
+"What?"
+
+"The girl with the yellow hair."
+
+"Then go ahead and see her.  I won't keep you.  You don't mind if I go
+on sleeping?  Sit down and be at home."
+
+With this she calmly turned her back again and seemed thoroughly
+disposed to carry out her word.  Red Pierre flushed a little, watching
+her, and he spoke his anger outright: "You're acting like a sulky kid,
+Jack, not like a man."
+
+It was a habit of his to forget that she was a woman.  Without turning
+her head she answered: "Do you want to know why?"
+
+"You're like a cat showing your claws.  Go on!  Tell me what the reason
+is."
+
+"Because I get tired of you."
+
+In all his life he had never been so scorned.  He did not see the
+covert grin of Wilbur in the background.  He blurted: "Tired?"
+
+"Awfully.  You don't mind me being frank, do you, Pierre?"
+
+He could only stammer: "Sometimes I wish to God you were a man, Jack!"
+
+"You don't often remember that I'm a woman."
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+She was silent, but there was a perceptible tremor in the graceful body.
+
+He repeated: "Do you mean that I'm rude or rough with you, Jacqueline?"
+
+Still the silence, but Wilbur was grinning broader than ever.  "Answer
+me!"
+
+She started up and faced him, her face convulsed with rage.
+
+"What do you want me to say?  Yes, you are rude--I hate you and your
+lot.  Go away from me; I don't want you; I hate you all."
+
+And she would have said more, but furious sobs swelled her throat and
+she could not speak, but dropped, face down, on the bunk and gripped
+the blankets in each hard-set hand.  Over her Pierre leaned, utterly
+bewildered, found nothing that he could say, and then turned and
+strode, frowning, from the room.  Wilbur hastened after him and caught
+him just as the door was closing.
+
+"Come back," he pleaded.  "This is the best game I've ever seen.  Come
+back, Pierre!  You've made a wonderful start."
+
+Pierre le Rouge shook off the detaining hand and glared up at Wilbur.
+
+"Don't try irony, Dick.  I feel like murder.  Think of it!  All this
+time she's been hating me; and now it's making her weep; think of
+it--Jack--weeping!"
+
+"Why, you're a child, Pierre.  Go back and take her in your arms and
+tell her you're going to make her go to the dance."
+
+"Take her in my arms?  She'd stab me, there's that much of the devil in
+her.  Don't grin at me and keep chuckling like an utter ass.  What's
+up, Dick?"
+
+"Don't you see?  No, you don't, but it's so plain that a baby of three
+years could understand.  She's in love with you."
+
+"With me?"
+
+"With Red Pierre."
+
+"You can't make a joke out of Jack with me.  You ought to know that."
+
+"Pierre, I'd as soon make a joke out of a wildcat."
+
+"Grinning still?  Wilbur, I'm taking more from you than I would from
+any man on the ranges."
+
+"I know you are, and that's why I'm stringing this out because I'm
+going to have a laugh--ha, ha, ha!--the rest of my life--ha, ha, ha,
+ha!--whenever I think of this--ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"
+
+The burst of merriment left him speechless, and Pierre, glowering, his
+right hand twitching dangerously close to that holster at his hip.  He
+sobered, and said: "Go in and talk to her and prove that I'm right."
+
+"Ask Jack if she loves me?  Why, I'd as soon ask any man the same
+question."
+
+The big long rider was instantly curious.
+
+"Has she never appealed to you as a woman, Pierre?"
+
+"How could she?  I've watched her ride; I've watched her use her gun;
+I've slept rolled in the same blankets with her, back to back; I've
+walked and talked and traveled with her as if she were my kid brother."
+
+Wilbur nodded, as if the miracle were being slowly unfolded before his
+eyes.
+
+"And you've never noticed anything different about her?  Never watched
+a little lift and grace in her walk that no man could ever have; never
+heard her laugh in a voice that no man could ever imitate; never seen
+her color change just because you, Pierre, came near or went far away
+from her?"
+
+"Because of me?" asked the bewildered Pierre.
+
+"You fool, you!  Why, lad, I've been kept amused by you two for a whole
+evening, watching her play for your attention, saving her best smiles
+for you, keeping her best attitudes for you, and letting all the
+richness of her voice go out for--a block--a stone.  Gad, the thing
+still doesn't seem possible!  Pierre, one instant of that girl would
+give romance to a man's whole life."
+
+"This girl?  This Jack of ours?"
+
+"He hasn't seen it!  Why, if I hadn't seen years ago that she had tied
+her hands and turned her heart over to you, I'd have been down on my
+knees to her a thousand times, begging her for a smile, a shadow of a
+hope."
+
+"If I didn't know you, Dick, I'd say that you were partly drunk and
+partly a fool."
+
+"Here's a hundred--a cold hundred that I'm right.  I'll make it a
+thousand, if you dare."
+
+"Dare what?"
+
+"Ask her to marry you."
+
+"Marry--me?"
+
+"Damn it all--well, then--whatever you like.  But I say that if you go
+back into that room and sit still and merely look at her, she'll be in
+your arms within five minutes."
+
+"I hate to take charity, but a bet is a bet.  That hundred is in my
+pocket already.  It's a go!"
+
+They shook hands.
+
+"But what will be your proof, Dick, whether I win or lose?"
+
+"Your face, blockhead, when you come out of the room."
+
+Upon this Pierre pondered a moment, and then turned toward the door.
+He set his hand on the knob, faltered, and finally set his teeth and
+entered the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+FIVE MINUTES' SILENCE
+
+She lay as he had left her, except that her face was now pillowed in
+her arms, and the long sobs kept her body quivering.  Awe and curiosity
+swept over Pierre, looking down at her, but chiefly a puzzled grief
+such as a strong man feels when a friend is in trouble.  He came closer
+and laid a hand on her shoulder.
+
+"Jack!"
+
+She turned far enough to strike his hand away and instantly resumed her
+former position, though the sobs were softer.  This childish anger
+irritated him.  He was about to storm out of the room when the thought
+of the hundred dollars stopped him.  It was not that he hoped to win
+the money, for dollars rolled easily into his hands and out again, but
+the bet had been made, and it was his pride that he would play out his
+part of it.  It seemed unsportsmanlike to leave without some effort.
+
+The effort which he finally made was that suggested by Wilbur.  He
+folded his arms and stood silent, waiting, and ready to judge the time
+as nearly as he could until the five minutes should have elapsed.  He
+was so busy computing the minutes that it was with a start that he
+noticed some time later that the weeping had ceased.  She lay quiet.
+Her hand was dabbing furtively at her face for a purpose which Pierre
+could not surmise.
+
+At last a broken voice murmured: "Pierre!"
+
+He would not speak, but something in the voice made his anger go.
+After a little it came, and louder this time: "Pierre?"
+
+He did not stir.
+
+She whirled and sat on the edge of the bunk, crying: "Pierre!" with a
+note of fright.  Then she flushed richly.
+
+"I thought perhaps you were gone.  I thought--Pierre--I was afraid--I
+mean I hoped--"
+
+She could not go on.
+
+And still he persisted in that silence, his arms folded, the keen blue
+eyes considering her as if from a great distance.
+
+She explained: "I was afraid--Pierre!  Why don't you speak?  Tell me,
+are you angry?"
+
+And she sprang up and made a pace toward him.  She had never seemed so
+little manlike, so wholly womanly.  For the thick coils of hair were
+loosed on her head, and the black hair framed a face stained, flushed,
+with eyes that were like a great black, bottomless well of sorrow and
+wistfulness.  And the hand which stretched toward him, palm up, was a
+symbol of everything new and strange that he found in her.
+
+He had seen it balled to a small, angry fist, brown and dangerous; he
+had seen it gripping the butt of a revolver, ready for the draw; he had
+seen it tugging at the reins and holding a racing horse in check with
+an ease which a man would envy; but never before had he seen it turned
+palm up, to his knowledge; and now, because he could not speak to her,
+according to his plan, he studied her thoroughly for the first time.
+
+Slender and marvelously made was that hand.  The whole woman was in it,
+finely fashioned, delicate, made for beauty, not for use.  It was all
+he could do to keep from exclaiming.
+
+She made a quick step toward him, eager, uncertain:
+
+"Pierre, I thought you had left me--that you were gone, and angry."
+
+The hearts of men are tinder; something caught on fire in Pierre, but
+still he would say nothing.  He was beginning to feel a cruel pleasure
+in his victory, but it was not without a deep sense of danger.
+
+She had laid aside her six-gun, but she had not abandoned it.  She had
+laid aside her anger, but she could resume it again as swiftly as she
+could take up her revolver.
+
+He exulted in the touch of victory, but it was as a man who rides a
+horse that paces docilely beneath him but may plunge into a fury of
+bucking in a moment.  She was closer--very close, and somehow he knew
+that at his pleasure he could make her smile or tremble by speaking.
+Yet he would not speak.  The five minutes were not yet up.
+
+She cried with a little burst of rage: "Pierre, you are making a game
+of me!"
+
+But seeing that he did not change she altered swiftly and caught his
+hand in both of hers.  She spoke the name which she always used when
+she was greatly moved.
+
+"Ah, Pierre le Rouge, what have I done?"
+
+His silence tempted her on like the smile of the sphinx.
+
+And suddenly she was inside his arms, though how she separated them he
+could not tell, and crying: "Pierre, I am unhappy.  Help me, Pierre!"
+
+It was true, then, and Wilbur had won his bet.  But how could it have
+happened?  He took the arms that encircled his neck and brought them
+slowly down, and watched her curiously.  Something was expected of him,
+but what it was he could not tell, for women were as strange to him as
+the wild sea is strange to the Arab.
+
+He hunted his mind, and then: "One of the boys has angered you, Jack?"
+
+And she said, because she could think of no way to cover the confusion
+which came to her after the outbreak: "Yes."
+
+He dropped her arms and strode a pace or two up and down the room.
+
+"Gandil?"
+
+"N-no!"
+
+"You're lying.  It was Gandil."
+
+And he made straight for the door.
+
+She ran after him and flung herself between him and the door.  Clearly,
+as if it were a painted picture, she saw him facing Gandil--saw their
+hands leap for the guns--saw Gandil pitch face forward on the
+floor--writhe all his limbs--and then lie still.  "Pierre--for God's
+sake!"
+
+Her terror convinced him partially, and the furor went back from his
+eyes as a light goes back in a long, dark hall.
+
+"On your honor, Jack, it's not Gandil?"
+
+"On my honor."
+
+"But some one has broken you up."
+
+"No, I--"
+
+"Don't lie.  Why, even while you look at me your color changes.  You're
+pale one minute and red the next.  Some one has crossed you, Jack.  And
+whoever crosses you crosses me, by God!  Out with his name!  Is it
+Branch?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then it's big Patterson."
+
+"No."
+
+"I have it!  Mansie!  There's always something of the sneak about him
+that I never liked."
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"It is!  He came up to you and whispered some dog's remark for you to
+hear.  Damn him--I never trusted Mansie!"
+
+He pushed her away from the door and set his hand on the knob, but he
+could not keep her back.  She was upon him again and twisted between
+him and the entrance to the room.
+
+"Pierre, upon my honor, it was none of these men."
+
+He could not help but believe.
+
+"Only Wilbur is left.  Jack, I'd rather raise my hand against myself
+than to harm Dick, but if--"
+
+"I'll never tell you who it was.  Don't you see?  It would be like a
+murder in cold blood if I were to send you after him."
+
+"But he's here--he's one of us, this man who's bothered you."
+
+She could not help but answer: "Yes."
+
+He scowled down at the floor.
+
+"You would never be able to guess who it is.  Give it up.  After all--I
+can live through it--I guess."
+
+"It's something that has saddened you.  Do you know, we've been so much
+together that I can almost read your mind, in a way.  Why are you
+smiling?"
+
+"I wish that you could read it--Pierre--at times."
+
+He took her face between his hands and frowned down into her eyes.  At
+his touch she grew very pale and trembled as If a wind were striking
+against her.
+
+"You see, you've been so near to me, and so dear to me all these years,
+Jack, that you're like a sister, almost."
+
+"And you to me, Pierre."
+
+"But different--nearer even than a sister."
+
+"So much nearer!"
+
+"It's queer, isn't it?  But you can't forget this trouble you've had.
+The tears come up in your eyes again.  Tell me his name, Jack, and the
+dog--"
+
+She said: "Only let me go.  Take your hands away, Pierre."
+
+He obeyed her, deeply worried, and she stood for a moment with a hand
+pressed over her eyes, swaying.  He had never seen her like this; he
+was like a pilot striving to steer his ship through an unfathomable
+fog.  Following what had become an instinct with him, he raised his
+left hand and touched the cross beneath his throat.  And inspiration
+came to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+PARTNERS
+
+"Whether you want to or not, Jack, we'll go to this dance to-night."
+
+Jacqueline's hand fell away from her eyes.  She seemed suddenly glad
+again.
+
+"Do you want to take me, Pierre?"
+
+He explained: "Of course.  Besides, we have to keep an eye on Wilbur.
+This girl with the yellow hair--"
+
+She had altered swiftly again.  There was no understanding her or
+following her moods this day.  He decided to disregard them, as he had
+often done before.
+
+"Black Gandil swears that I'm bringing bad luck to the boys at last.
+Patterson has disappeared; Wilbur has lost his head about a girl.
+We've got to save Dick."
+
+He knew that she was fond of Wilbur, but she showed no enthusiasm now.
+
+"Let him go his own way.  He's big enough to take care of himself."
+
+"But it's common talk, Jack, that the end of Wilbur will come through a
+woman.  It was that that sent him on the long trail, you know.  And
+this girl with the yellow hair--"
+
+"Why do you harp on her?"
+
+"Harp on her?"
+
+"Every other word--nothing but yellow hair.  I'm sick of it.  I know
+the kind--faded corn color--dyed, probably.  Pierre, you are all blind,
+and you most of all."
+
+This being obviously childish, Pierre brushed the consideration of it
+from his mind.
+
+"And for clothes, Jack?"
+
+They were both dumb.  It had been years since she had worn the clothes
+of a woman.  She had danced with the men of her father's gang many a
+time while some one whistled or played on a mouth-organ, and there was
+the time they rode into Beulah Ferry and held up the dance-hall, and
+Jim Boone and Mansie lined up the crowd with their hands held high
+above their heads while the sweating musicians played fast and furious
+and Jack and Pierre danced down the center of the hall.
+
+She had danced many a time, but never in the clothes of a woman; so
+they stared, mutely puzzled.
+
+A thought came first to Jacqueline.  It obliterated even the memory of
+the yellow-haired girl and set her eyes dancing.  She stepped close and
+murmured her suggestion in the ear of Pierre.  Whatever it was, it made
+his jaw set hard and brought grave lines into his face.
+
+She stepped back, asking: "Well?"
+
+"We'll do it.  What a little demon you are, Jack!"
+
+"Then we'll have to start now.  There's barely time."
+
+They ran from the room together, and as they passed through the room
+below Wilbur called after them: "The dance?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Wait and go with me."
+
+"We ride in a roundabout way."
+
+They were through the door as Pierre called back, and a moment later
+the hoofs of their horses scattered the gravel down the hillside.
+Jacqueline rode a black stallion sired by her father's mighty Thunder,
+who had grown old but still could do the work of three ordinary horses
+in carrying the great bulk of his master.  The son of Thunder was
+little like his sire, but a slender-limbed racer, graceful, nervous,
+eager.  A clumsy rider would have ruined the horse in a single day's
+hard work among the trails of the mountain-desert, but Jacqueline,
+fairly reading the mind of the black, nursed his strength when it was
+needed and let him run free and swift when the ground before him was
+level.
+
+Now she picked her course dexterously down the hillside with the
+cream-colored mare of Pierre following half a length behind.
+
+After the first down-pitch of ground was covered they passed into
+difficult terrain, and for half an hour went at a jog trot, winding in
+and out among the rocks, climbing steadily up and up through the hills.
+
+Here the ground opened up again, and they roved on at a free gallop,
+the black always half a length in front.  In all the length of the
+mountain-desert there was no other picture which could compare with
+these two in their youth and their pride and their fearlessness.
+
+They rode alert, high-headed like their horses, and there was about
+them a suggestion of the patience which carries a man endlessly after
+one purpose, and a suggestion of the eagerness, too, which makes him
+strike swift and hard and surely when the time for action comes.
+
+Along the ridge of a crest, an almost level stretch of a mile or more,
+Jack eased the grip on the reins, and the black responded with a sudden
+lengthening of stride and lowered his head with ears pressed back flat
+while he fairly flew over the ground.
+
+Nothing could match that speed.  The strong mare fell to the rear,
+fighting gamely, but beaten by that effort of the stallion.
+
+Jack swerved in the saddle and looked back, laughing her triumph.
+Pierre smiled grimly in response and leaned forward, shifting his
+weight more over the withers of Mary.  He spoke to her, and one of her
+pricking ears fell back as if to listen to his voice.  He spoke again
+and the other ear fell back, her neck straightened, she gave her whole
+heart to her work.
+
+First she held the stallion even, then she began to gain.  That was the
+meaning of those round, strong hips, and the breadth of the chest.  She
+needed a half-mile of running to warm her to her work, and now the
+black came back to her with every leap.
+
+The thunder of the approaching hoofs warned the girl.  One more glance
+she cast in apprehension over her shoulder, and then brought her spurs
+into play again and again.  Still the rush of hoofs behind her grew
+louder and louder, and now there was a panting at her side and the head
+of cream-colored Mary drew up and past.
+
+She gave up the battle with a little shout of anger and slowed up her
+mount with a sharp pull on the reins.  It needed only a word from
+Pierre and his mare drew down to a hand-gallop, twisting her head a
+little toward the black as if she called for some recognition of her
+superiority.
+
+"It's always this way," cried Jack, and jerked at the reins with a
+childish impotence of anger.  "I beat you for the first quarter of a
+mile and then this fool of a horse--I'm going to give him away."
+
+"The black," said Pierre, assuming an air of quiet and superior knowing
+which always aggravated her most, "is a good second-rate cayuse when
+some one who knows horses is in the saddle.  I'd give you fifty for him
+on the strength of his looks and keep him for a decoration."
+
+She could only glare her speechless rage for a moment.  Then she
+changed swiftly and threw out her hands in a little gesture of
+surrender.
+
+"After all, what difference does it make?  Your Mary can beat him in a
+long run or a short one, but it's your horse, Pierre, and that takes
+the sting away.  If it were any one else's I'd--well, I'd shoot either
+the horse or the rider.  But my partner's horse is my horse, you know."
+
+She broke into song, the clear voice flinging back from the
+mountainside to the canon that dropped on their right:
+
+  "My partner's horse is my horse, bunky--
+    From his fetlock to the bucking-strap,
+    From his flying hoofs to the saddle-flap--
+  My partner's horse is my horse, bunky.
+
+  "My partner's gun is my gun, bunky--
+    From the chamber to the trigger-guard;
+    And the butt like a friend's hand gripping hard--
+  My partner's gun is my gun, bunky.
+
+  "My partner's heart is my heart, bunky--
+    And like matched horses galloping well,
+    They will beat together through heaven and hell--
+  My partner's heart is my heart, bunky."
+
+
+He swerved his mare sharply to the left and took her hand with a strong
+grip.
+
+"Jack, of all the men I've ever known, I'd rather walk with you, I'd
+rather talk with you, I'd rather ride with you, I'd rather fight for
+you.  Jack, you're the best pal that ever wore spurs, and the gamest
+sport."
+
+"Of all the men you ever knew," she said, "I suppose that I am."
+
+He did not hear the low voice, for he was looking out over the canon
+and whistling the refrain of her song happily.  A few moments later
+they swung out onto the very crest of the range.
+
+On all sides the hills dropped away through the gloom of the evening,
+brown near by, but falling off through a faint blue haze and growing
+blue-black with the distance.  A sharp wind, chill with the coming of
+night, cut at them.  Not a hundred feet overhead shot a low-winging
+hawk back from his day's hunting and rising only high enough to clear
+the range and then plunge down toward his nest.
+
+Like the hawks they peered down from their point of vantage into the
+profound gloom of the valley below.  They shaded their eyes and studied
+it with a singular interest for long moments, patient, silent, quiet as
+the hawk when he steadies himself in leisurely circles high in the
+heart of heaven and fixes his eyes surely on his prey far, far
+below--then folds his wings and shoots suddenly down, a veritable bolt
+from the blue.
+
+So these two marauders stared until she raised a hand slowly and then
+pointed down.  He followed the direction she indicated, and there,
+through the haze of the evening, he made out a glimmer of lights.
+
+He said sharply: "I know the place, but we'll have a devil of a ride to
+get there."
+
+And like the swooping hawk they started down the slope.  It was
+precipitous in many places, but Pierre kept almost at a gallop, making
+the mare take the slopes often crouched back on her haunches with
+forefeet braced forward, and sliding many yards at a time.
+
+In between the boulders he darted, twisting here and there, and always
+erect and jaunty in the saddle, swaying easily with every movement of
+Mary.  Not far behind him came the girl.  Fine rider that she was, she
+could not hope to compete with such matchless horsemanship where man
+and horse were only one piece of strong brawn and muscle, one daring
+spirit.  Many a time the chances seemed too desperate to her, but she
+followed blindly where he led, setting her teeth at each succeeding
+venture, and coming out safe every time, until they swung out at last
+through a screen of brush and onto the level floor of the valley.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+FULL DRESS
+
+In the heart of that valley two roads crossed.  Many a year before a
+man with some imagination and illimitable faith was moved by the
+crossing of those roads to build a general merchandise store.
+
+Time justified his faith, in a small way, and now McGuire's store was
+famed for leagues and leagues about, for he dared to take chances with
+all manner of novelties, and the curious, when their pocketbooks were
+full, went to McGuire's to find inspiration.
+
+Business was dull this night, however; there was not a single patron at
+the bar, and the store itself was empty, so he went to put out the big
+gasoline lamp which hung from the ceiling in the center of the room,
+and was on the ladder, reaching high above his head, when a singular
+chill caught him in the center of his plump back and radiated from that
+spot in all directions, freezing his blood.  He swallowed the lump in
+his throat and with his arms still stretched toward the lamp he turned
+his head and glanced behind.
+
+Two men stood watching him from a position just inside the door.  How
+they had come there he could never guess, for the floor creaked at the
+lightest step.  Nevertheless, these fantoms had appeared silently, and
+now they must be dealt with.  He turned on the ladder to face them, and
+still he kept the arms automatically above his head while he descended
+to the floor.
+
+However, on a closer examination, these two did not seem particularly
+formidable.  They were both quite young, one with dark-red hair and a
+somewhat overbright eye; the other was hardly more than a boy, very
+slender, delicately made, the sort of handsome young scoundrel whom
+women cannot resist.
+
+Having made these observations McGuire ventured to lower his arms by
+jerks; nothing happened; he was safe.  So he vented his feelings by
+scowling on the strangers.
+
+"Well," he snapped, "what's up?  Too late for business.  I'm closin'
+up."
+
+The two quite disregarded him.  Their eyes were wandering calmly about
+the place, and now they rested on the pride of McGuire's store.  The
+figure of a man in evening clothes, complete from shoes to gloves and
+silk hat, stood beside a girl of wax loveliness.  She wore a low-cut
+gown of dark green, and over her shimmering, cold white shoulders was
+draped a scarf of dull gold.  Above, a sign said: "You only get married
+once; why don't you do it up right?"
+
+"That," said the taller stranger, "ought to do very nicely for us, eh?"
+
+And the younger replied in a curiously light, pleasant voice: "Just
+what we want.  But how'll I get away with all that fluffy stuff, eh?"
+
+The elder explained: "We're going to a bit of a dance and we'll take
+those evening clothes."
+
+The heart of McGuire beat faster and his little eyes took in the
+strangers again from head to foot.
+
+"They ain't for sale," he said.  "They's just samples.  But right over
+here--"
+
+"This isn't a question of selling," said the red-headed man.  "We've
+come to accept a little donation, McGuire."
+
+The storekeeper grew purple and white in patches.  Still there was no
+show of violence, no display of guns; he moved his hand toward his own
+weapon, and still the strangers merely smiled quietly on him.  He
+decided that he had misunderstood, and went on: "Over here I got a line
+of goods that you'll like.  Just step up and--"
+
+The younger man, frowning now, replied: "We don't want to see any more
+of your junk.  The clothes on the models suit us all right.  Slip 'em
+off, McGuire."
+
+"But--" began McGuire and then stopped.
+
+His first suspicion returned with redoubled force; above all, that head
+of dark red hair made him thoughtful.  He finished hoarsely: "What the
+hell's this?"
+
+"Why," smiled the taller man, "you've never done much in the interests
+of charity, and now's a good time for you to start.  Hurry up, McGuire;
+we're late already!"
+
+There was a snarl from the storekeeper, and he went for his gun, but
+something in the peculiarly steady eyes of the two made him stop with
+his fingers frozen hard around the butt.  A mighty sickness overwhelmed
+McGuire, and before his eyes there swam a dark mist.
+
+He whispered: "You're Red Pierre?"
+
+"The clothes," repeated Pierre sternly, "on the jump, McGuire."
+
+And with a jump McGuire obeyed.  His hands trembled so that he could
+hardly remove the scarf from the shoulders of the model, but afterward
+fear made his fingers supple.  He lifted up the green gown; white,
+filmy clothes showed underneath.
+
+There came a sharp cry from Jack: "Turn away, Pierre; turn quick and
+don't dare to look.  I'll take care of McGuire."
+
+And Pierre le Rouge turned, grinning.  When she told him that he could
+look again, he found her with a bright spot of color in either cheek,
+and her eyes avoided his.  It thrilled Pierre, and yet it troubled him,
+for she seemed changed, all at once, less of a comrade, and strangely
+aloof.  McGuire was doing up the clothes in two bundles.
+
+Jacqueline took one of them and Pierre the other under his left arm;
+with his right hand he drew out some yellow coins.
+
+"I didn't buy these clothes because I didn't have the time to dicker
+with you, McGuire.  I've heard you talk prices before, you know.  But
+here's what the clothes are worth to us."
+
+And into the quaking hands of McGuire he poured a chinking stream of
+gold pieces.
+
+Relief, amazement, and a very wholesome fear struggled in the face of
+McGuire as he saw himself threefold overpaid.  At that little yellow
+heap he remained staring, unheeding the sound of the retreating
+outlaws.  At it he still stared with fascinated eyes while the door
+banged and the clatter of galloping hoofs began.
+
+"It ain't possible," he said at last, "thieves have begun to pay."
+
+His eyes sought the ceiling.
+
+"So that's Red Pierre?" said McGuire.
+
+As for Pierre and Jacqueline, they were instantly safe in the black
+heart of the mountains.  Many a mile of hard riding lay before them,
+however, and already the dance must be nearly ready to begin in the
+Crittenden schoolhouse.  There was no road, not even a trail that they
+could follow.  They had never even seen the Crittenden schoolhouse;
+they knew its location only by vague descriptions.
+
+But they had ridden a thousand times in places far more bewildering and
+less known to them.  Like all true denizens of the mountain-desert,
+they had a sense of direction as uncanny as that of an Eskimo.  Now
+they struck off confidently through the dark and trailed up and down
+through the mountains until they reached a hollow in the center of
+which shone a group of dim lights.  It was the schoolhouse near the
+Barnes place, the scene of the dance.
+
+So they turned back behind the hills and in the covert of a group of
+cottonwoods they kindled two more little fires, shading them on three
+sides with rocks and leaving them open for the sake of light on the
+fourth.
+
+They worked busily for a time, without a word spoken by either of them.
+The only sound was the rustling of Jacqueline's stolen silks and the
+purling of a small stream of water near them, some meager spring.
+
+But presently: "P-P-Pierre, I'm f-freezing."
+
+He himself was numbed by the chill air and paused in the task of
+thrusting a leg into the trousers, which persisted in tangling and
+twisting under his foot.
+
+"So'm I.  It's c-c-cold as the d-d-d-devil."
+
+"And these--th-things--aren't any thicker than spider webs."
+
+"Wait.  I'll build you a great big fire."
+
+And he scooped up a number of dead twigs.
+
+"P-P-Pierre!  D-d-d-don't you d-d-dare c-come in s-sight of m-me."
+
+"D-d-damn it!  I don't want to see you."
+
+"P-Pierre!  Aren't you ash-sh-sh-shamed to talk like that?"
+
+"Jack, this damned collar won't button."
+
+"K-k-eep t-t-t-trying."
+
+"Come help me."
+
+"Pierre!  How can I come dressed like th-th-this?"
+
+"I'm n-n-not going to the dance."
+
+"P-P-P-Pierre!"
+
+"I'm not."
+
+"Then I am."
+
+"W-w-w-without me?"
+
+"Y-y-yes."
+
+"Jack, you're a flirt."
+
+"I hate you, Pierre!"
+
+"Thank G-G-G-God!  The collar's on."
+
+"I can't tie this--th-th-thing."
+
+"I'll come help you."
+
+"N-n-n-no!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"The thing that g-g-goes around me."
+
+"C-c-c-corset?"
+
+A silence.
+
+"Pierre!"
+
+"W-well?"
+
+"It's t-t-tied!"
+
+"But this damned tie isn't!"
+
+"I'll do it for you."
+
+And then: "N-n-no.  Go b-b-b-back!"
+
+He fixed the eye-glass on his nose and laughed at the thought of
+himself.
+
+"Pierre."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I've got the dress on."
+
+"Then I can come?"
+
+He was warm enough now, with the suit on and even the tie knotted,
+after a fashion.
+
+"No.  I st-t-till feel just n-n-n-naked, Pierre."
+
+"Is there something missing?"
+
+"Yes.  Around the shoulders."
+
+"Take the scarf."
+
+There was an interlude of more rustling, then:
+
+"P-P-Pierre."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I wish I had a m-m-m-mirror."
+
+"Jack, are you vain?"
+
+A cry of delight answered him.  He threw caution to the winds and
+advanced on her.  He found her kneeling above a pool of water fed by
+the soft sliding little stream from the spring.  With one hand she held
+a burning twig by way of a torch, and with the other she patted her
+hair into shape and finally thrust the comb into the glittering, heavy
+coils.
+
+She started, as if she felt his presence without looking, and knelt
+with body erect.
+
+"P-P-Pierre!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"C-c-c-close your eyes."
+
+He obeyed.
+
+"Look!"
+
+She stood with the torch high overhead, and he saw a beauty so glorious
+that he closed his eyes involuntarily and still he saw the vision in
+the dull-green gown, with the scarf of old gold about her shoulders and
+the skin peering out here and there, dazzling white.  And there were
+two lights, the barbaric red of the jewels in her hair, and the black
+shimmer of her eyes.  He drew back a step more.  It was a picture to be
+looked at from a distance.
+
+She ran to him with a cry of dismay:
+
+"Pierre, what's wrong with me?"
+
+His arms went round her of their own accord.  It was the only place
+they could go.  And all this fragrant, marvelous beauty was held in the
+circle of his will.
+
+"It isn't that, but you're so wonderful, Jack, so glorious, that I
+hardly know you.  You're like a different person."
+
+He felt the warm body trembling, and the thought that it was not
+entirely from the cold set his heart beating like a trip-hammer.  What
+he felt was so strange to him that he stepped back in a vague alarm,
+and then laughed.  She stood with a half whimsical half expectant smile.
+
+"Jack, how am I to risk you in the arms of all the strangers in that
+dance?"
+
+The light of Alexander when he dreamed of new worlds to conquer came
+into those wide black eyes.
+
+"It's late.  Listen!"
+
+She cupped a hand at her ear and leaned to listen.  Up from the hollow
+below them came a faint strain of music, a very light sound that was
+drowned a moment later by the solemn rushing of the wind through the
+great trees above them.
+
+They looked up of one accord.
+
+"Pierre, what was that?"
+
+"Nothing; the wind in the branches, that's all."
+
+"It was a hushing sound.  It was like--it was like a warning, almost."
+
+But he was already turning away, and she followed him hastily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE DANCE
+
+Jacqueline could never back a horse in that gown, or even sit sidewise
+in the saddle without hopelessly crumpling it, so they walked to the
+schoolhouse.  It was a slow progress, for she had to step lightly and
+carefully for fear of the slippers.  He took her bare arm and helped
+her; he would never have thought of it under ordinary conditions, but
+since she had put on this gown she was greatly changed to him, no
+longer the wild, free rider of the mountain-desert, but a defenseless,
+strangely weak being.  Her strength was now something other than the
+skill to ride hard and shoot straight and quick.
+
+Greatest wonder of all, she accepted the new relation tacitly, and
+leaned more and more weight on his hand, and even looked up and laughed
+with pleasure when he almost lifted her over a muddy runlet.  It was
+all new, very strange, and, oddly enough, not unpleasant.  Each was
+viewing the other from such an altered point that neither spoke.
+
+So they came to the schoolhouse in this silence, and reached the long
+line of buggies, buckboards, and, most of all, saddled horses.  They
+flooded the horse-shed where the school children stabled their mounts
+in the winter weather.  They were tethered to the posts of the fence;
+they were grouped about the trees.
+
+It was a prodigious gathering, and a great affair for the
+mountain-desert.  They knew this even before they had set foot within
+the building.
+
+They stopped here and adjusted their masks carefully.  They were made
+from a strip of black lining which Jack had torn from one of the coats
+in the trunk which lay far back in the hills.
+
+Those masks had to be tied firmly and well, for some jester might try
+to pull away that of Pierre, and if his face were seen, it would be
+death--a slaughter without defense, for he had not been able to conceal
+his big Colt in these tight-fitting clothes.  Even as it was, there was
+peril from the moment that the lights within should shine on that head
+of dark-red hair.
+
+As for Jack, there was little fear that she would be recognized.  She
+was strange even to Pierre every time he looked down at her, for she
+had ceased to be Jack and had become very definitely "Jacqueline."  But
+the masks were on; the scarf adjusted about the throat and bare,
+shivering shoulders of Jack, and they stood arm in arm before the door
+out of which streamed the voices and the music.
+
+"Are you ready?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Pierre--if they should find us out--"
+
+"Never in a thousand years.  Are you ready?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+But she was trembling so, either from fear, or excitement, or both,
+that he had to take a firm hold on her arm and almost carry her up the
+steps, shove the door open, and force her in.
+
+A hundred eyes were instantly upon them, practised, suspicious eyes,
+accustomed to search into all things and take nothing for granted; eyes
+of men who, when a rap came at their door, looked to see whether or not
+the shadow of the stranger fell full in the center of the crack beneath
+the door.  If it fell to one side the man might be an enemy, and
+therefore they would stand at one side of the room, their hands upon
+the butt of the six-gun, and shout: "Come in."  Such was the battery of
+glances from the men, and the color of Pierre altered, paled.
+
+He knew some of those faces, for those who hunt and are hunted never
+forget the least gestures of their enemies.  There was a mighty
+temptation to turn back even then, but he set his teeth and forced
+himself to stand calmly, adjust the absurd eye-glass on his nose, and
+stare about the room.
+
+The chuckle which replied to this maneuver freed him for the moment.
+Suspicion was lulled.  Moreover, the red-jeweled hair of Jacqueline and
+her lighted eyes called all attention almost immediately upon her.  She
+shifted the golden scarf--the white arms and breast flashed in the
+light--a gasp responded.  There would be talk to-morrow; there were
+whispers even now.
+
+It was not the main hall that they stood in, for this school, having
+been built by an aspiring community, contained two rooms; this smaller
+room, used by the little ones of the school, was now converted into a
+hat-and-cloak room, and here also were a dozen baskets and boxes filled
+with comforters and blankets.
+
+It was because of what lay in those baskets that the men and the women
+walked and talked softly in this room.  They were wary lest they should
+arouse a sound which not even the loudest music could quite drown--a
+sound which makes all women sit up straight and sniff like hunted
+animals at bay, and makes all men frown and glance about for places of
+refuge.
+
+Now and then some girl came panting and flushed from the dance-hall
+within and tiptoed to one of these baskets, and raised an edge of a
+blanket and looked down at the contents with a singular smile.  Pierre
+hung up his hat, removed his gloves slowly, nerving himself to endure
+the sharp glances, and opened the door for Jacqueline.
+
+If she had held back tremulously before, something she had seen in the
+eyes of those in the first room, something in the whisper and murmur
+which rose the moment she started to leave, gave her courage.  She
+stepped into the dance-hall like a queen going forth to address devoted
+subjects.
+
+The second ordeal was easier than the first.  There were many times
+more people in that crowded room, but each was intent upon his own
+pleasure.  A wave of warmth and light swept upon them, and a blare of
+music, and a stir and hum of voices, and here and there the sweet sound
+of a happy girl's laughter.  They raised their heads, these two wild
+rangers of the mountain-desert, and breathed deep of the fantastic
+scene.
+
+It was marvelous, indeed, that so much gay life could exist within the
+arms of those gaunt, naked hills beyond the windows.  There was no
+attempt at beauty in the costumes of the masqueraders.  Here and there
+some girl achieved a novel and pleasing effect; but on the whole they
+strove for cheaper and more stirring things in the line of the
+grotesque.
+
+Here passed a youth wearing a beard made from the stiff, red bristles
+of the tail of a sorrel horse.  Another wore a bear's head cunningly
+stuffed, the grinning teeth flashing over his head and the skin draped
+over his shoulders.  A third disfigured himself horribly by painting
+after the fashion of an Indian on the war-path, with crimson streaks
+down his forehead and red and black across his cheeks.
+
+But not more than a third of all the assembly made any effort to
+masquerade, beyond the use of the simple black mask across the upper
+part of the face.  The rest of the men and women contented themselves
+with wearing the very finest clothes they could afford to buy, and
+there was through the air a scent of the general merchandise store
+which not even a liberal use of cheap perfume and all the drifts of
+pale-blue cigarette smoke could quite overcome.
+
+As for the music, it was furnished by two very old men, relics of the
+days when there were contests in fiddling; a stout fellow of middle
+age, with cheeks swelled almost to bursting as he thundered out
+terrific blasts on a slide trombone; a youth who rattled two sticks on
+an overturned dish-pan in lieu of a drum, and a cornetist of real skill.
+
+In an interlude, before very long, he would amuse with a solo,
+including all sorts of runs and whistling notes, and be a source of
+talk for many a month to come.
+
+There were hard faces in the crowd, most of them, of men who had set
+their teeth against hard weather and hard men, and fought their way
+through, not to happiness, but to existence, so that fighting had
+become their pleasure.
+
+Now they relaxed their eternal vigilance, their eternal suspicion.
+Another phase of their nature weakened.  Some of them were smiling and
+laughing for the first time in months, perhaps, of bitter labor and
+loneliness on the range.  With the gates of good-nature opened, a
+veritable flood of gaiety burst out.  It glittered in their eyes, it
+rose to their lips in a wild laughter.  They seemed to be dancing more
+furiously fast in order to forget the life which they had left, and to
+which they must return.
+
+And through all the cheapness there was a great note of poetry as well;
+but one caught this only by a sense of intuition, or by remembering
+that these were the conquerors of the bitter nature of the
+mountain-desert.  There was beauty here, the beauty of strength in the
+men and a brown loveliness in the girls; just as in the music, the
+blatancy of the rattling dish-pan and the blaring trombone were more
+than balanced by the real skill of the violinists, who kept a high,
+sweet, singing tone through all the clamor.
+
+One could close his ears to the rest of the noise, if he strove to do
+so, and hear nothing but that harmonious moaning of the strings, steady
+and clear, like the aspirations of a man divorced from the facts of his
+weakness and his crudeness in practical life.
+
+And Pierre le Rouge and Jacqueline?  They stood aghast for a moment
+when that crash of noise broke around them; but they came from a life
+where there was nothing of beauty except the lonely strength of the
+mountains and the appalling silences of the stars that roll above the
+desert.  Almost at once they caught the overtone of human joyousness,
+and they turned with strange smiles to each other, and it was "Pierre?"
+"Jack?"  Then a nod, and she was in his arms, and they glided into the
+dance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE OVERTONE
+
+When a crowd gathers in the street, there rises a babel of voices, a
+confused and pointless clamor, no matter what the purpose of the
+gathering, until some man who can think as well as shout begins to
+speak.  Then the crowd murmurs a moment, and after a few seconds
+composes itself to listen.
+
+So it was with the noise in the hall when Pierre and Jacqueline began
+to dance.  First there were smiles of derision and envy around them,
+but after a moment a little hush came where they moved, and then men
+began to note the smile of the girl and the whiteness of that round
+throat, and the grace of the bare, tapering arms.
+
+So a whisper went around the room, and there began a craning of necks
+and an exchange of nods.  All that crowd became in a moment no more
+than the chorus which fills the background of the stage when the
+principals step out from the wings.
+
+They could not help but dance well, for they had youth and grace and
+strength, and the glances of applause and envy were like wine to
+quicken their blood, while above all they caught the overtone of the
+singing violins, and danced by that alone.  The music ended with a long
+flourish just as they whirled to a stop in a corner of the room.  At
+once an eddy of men started toward them.
+
+"Who shall it be?" smiled Pierre.  "With whom do you want to dance?
+It's your triumph, Jack."
+
+She was alight and alive with the victory, and her eyes roved over the
+crowd.
+
+"The big man with the tawny hair."
+
+"But he's making right past us."
+
+"No; he'll turn and come back."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+For answer she glanced up and laughed, and he realized with a singular
+sense of loneliness that she knew many things which were beyond his
+ken.  Some one touched his arm, and a voice, many voices, beset him:
+
+"How's the chances for a dance with the girl, partner?"
+
+"My name's McCormack.  Riley?  Glad to know you.  I've got a flask on
+the hip, Riley; what's the chance of making a trade on this next dance?"
+
+"How do we swap partners?  Mine is the rangy girl with the red topknot.
+Not much on looks, Bill, but a cayuse don't cover ground on his looks.
+Dance?  Say, Bill, she'll rock you to sleep!"
+
+"This dance is already booked," Pierre answered, and kept his eyes on
+the tall man with the scarred face and the resolute jaw.  He wondered
+profoundly why Jacqueline had chosen such a partner.
+
+At least she had prophesied correctly, for the big man turned toward
+them just as he seemed about to head for another part of the hall.  The
+crowd gave way before him, not that he shouldered them aside, but they
+seemed to feel the coming of his shadow before him, and separated as
+they would have done before the shadow of a falling tree.
+
+In another moment Pierre found himself looking up to the giant.  No
+mask could disguise him, neither cover that long, twisting mark of
+white down his cheek, nor hide the square set of the jaw, nor dim the
+keen steady eyes.  Upon him there was written at large: "This is a man."
+
+And there came to Pierre an exceedingly great uneasiness in his right
+hand, and a twitching of the fingers low down on his thigh where the
+familiar holster should have hung.  His left hand rose, following the
+old instinct, and touched beneath his throat where the cold cross lay.
+
+He was saying easily: "This is your dance, isn't it?"
+
+"Right, Bud," answered the big man in a mellow voice as great as his
+size.  "Sorry I can't swap partners with you, but I hunt alone."
+
+An overwhelming desire to get a distance between himself and this huge
+unknown came to Pierre.
+
+He said: "There goes the music.  You're off."
+
+And the other, moving toward Jack, leaned down a little and murmured at
+the ear of the outlaw: "Thanks, Pierre."
+
+Then he was gone, and Jacqueline was laughing over his shoulder back to
+Pierre.
+
+Through his daze and through the rising clamor of the music, a voice
+said beside him: "You look sort of sick, dude.  Who's your friend?"
+
+"Don't you know him?" asked Pierre.
+
+"No more than I do you; but I've ridden the range for ten years around
+here, and I know that he's new to these parts.  If I'd ever glimpsed
+him before, I'd remember him.  He'd be a bad man in a mix, eh?"
+
+And Pierre answered with devout earnestness: "He would."
+
+"But where 'd you buy those duds, pal?  Hey, look!  Here's what I've
+been waiting for--the Barneses and the girl that's visitin' 'em from
+the East."
+
+"What girl?"
+
+"Look!"
+
+The Barnes group was passing through the door, and last came the
+unmistakable form of Dick Wilbur, masked, but not masked enough to hide
+his familiar smile or cover the well-known sound of his laughter as it
+drifted to Pierre across the hall, and on his arm was a girl in an
+evening dress of blue, with a small, black mask across her eyes, and
+deep-golden hair.
+
+Pausing before she swung into the dance with Wilbur, she made a gesture
+with the white arm, and looked up laughing to big, handsome Dick.
+Pierre trembled, and his heart beat once and stopped.
+
+As he watched, the song which Dick had sung came like a monotonous,
+religious chant within him:
+
+  They call me poor, yet I am rich
+    In the touch of her golden hair;
+  My heart is filled like a miser's hands
+    With the red-gold of her hair.
+
+  The only sky I ride beneath
+    Is the dear blue of her eyes,
+  The only heaven I desire
+    Is the blue of her dear eyes.
+
+
+But even the memory of the song died in him while he watched her dance,
+and saw the lights and shadows flit across the smooth shoulders; and
+when he saw the hands of Wilbur about her, a red rage came up in him.
+
+Dick in passing, marked that stare above the heads of the crowd, and
+frowned with trouble.  The hungry eyes of Pierre followed them as they
+circled the hall again; and this time Wilbur, perhaps fearing that
+something had gone wrong with Pierre, steered close to the edge of the
+dancing crowd and looked inquisitively across.
+
+He leaned and spoke to the girl, and she turned her head, smiling, to
+Pierre.  Then the smile went out, and even despite the mask, he saw
+that her eyes had widened.  The heart of Pierre grew thunderous with
+music.  She had stopped and slipped from the arm of Wilbur, and came
+step by step slowly toward him like one walking in her sleep.
+
+There, by the edge of the dancers, with the noise of the music and the
+laughter and the shuffling feet to cover them, they met.  The hands she
+held to him were cold and trembling.  He only knew that they were
+marvelously soft, and that they faltered and closed strongly about his
+own.
+
+"Is it you?"
+
+"It is I."
+
+That was all; and then the shadow of Wilbur loomed above them.
+
+"What's this?  Do you know each other?  It isn't possible!  Pierre, are
+you playing a game with me?"
+
+But under the glance of Pierre he fell back a step, and reached for the
+gun which was not there.  They were alone once more.
+
+"Mary--Mary Brown!"
+
+"Pierre!"
+
+"But you are dead!"
+
+"No, no!  But you--Pierre----"
+
+"It was a miracle--the cross--that saved me."
+
+"Where can we go?"
+
+"Outside."
+
+"Pierre."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Hold my arm close--so I'll know it isn't just dreaming.  And go
+quickly!"
+
+"They are staring at us--the fools--as if they were trying to
+understand."
+
+"We'll be followed?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Do you need a wrap?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But it is cold outside, and your shoulders are bare."
+
+"Then take that cloak.  But quickly, Pierre, before we're followed."
+
+He drew it about her; he led her through the door; it clicked shut;
+they were alone with the sweet, frosty air about them.  She tore away
+the mask, and her beauty struck him like the moon when it drops
+suddenly through a mist of clouds.
+
+"And yours, Pierre?"
+
+"Not here."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because there are people.  Hurry.  Now here, with just the trees
+around us----"
+
+And he tore off the mask.
+
+The white, cold moon shone over them, slipping down between the dark
+tops of the trees, and the wind stirred slowly through the branches
+with a faint, hushing sound, as if once more a warning were coming to
+Pierre this night.  He looked up, his left hand at the cross.
+
+"Look down.  You are afraid of something, Pierre.  What is it?"
+
+"With your arms around my neck, there's nothing in the world I fear.
+Mary, I loved you all this time."
+
+"Pierre--and I----"
+
+"But you have grown so tall--so strange--I can hardly feel----"
+
+"And you--so stern and old."
+
+"I never dreamed I could love anything more than the little girl who
+lay in the snow, and died there that night."
+
+"And I never dreamed I could smile at any man except the boy who lay by
+me that night.  And he died."
+
+"What miracle saved you?"
+
+She said: "It was wonderful, and yet very simple.  You remember how the
+tree crushed me down into the snow?  Well, when the landslide moved, it
+carried the tree before it; the weight of the trunk was lifted from me.
+Perhaps it was a rock that struck me over the head then, for I lost
+consciousness.  The slide didn't bury me, but the rush carried me
+before it like a stick before a wave, you see.
+
+"When I woke I was almost completely covered with a blanket of debris,
+but I could move my arms, and managed to prop myself up in a sitting
+posture.  It was there that my father and his searching party found me;
+he had been combing that district all night.  They carried me back,
+terribly bruised, but without even a bone broken.  It was a miracle
+that I escaped, and the miracle must have been worked by your cross; do
+you remember?"
+
+He shuddered and threw a hand up before his eyes.
+
+"Dearest----"
+
+"It's nothing--but the cross--for every good fortune it has brought me,
+it has brought bad luck to others."
+
+"Hush, Pierre.  Put your arms around me.  I am all yours--all.  You
+must not think of the trouble or the cross."
+
+He obeyed and drew her close to him, and the warm slender body gave to
+him and lay close against his; and her head went back, and the curve of
+her soft lips was close to his.  He kissed her, reverently, and then,
+with passion, the lips, the eyes, the throat, that quivered as if she
+were singing.
+
+"Pierre, I have said good night to you every time before I went to
+sleep all these years."
+
+"And I've looked for you in the face of every woman."
+
+"And I used to think that a still, small voice answered me out of the
+night."
+
+"Oh, my dear, there was a voice; for I've loved you so hard that it
+must have been like a hand at your shoulder tapping, and asking you to
+remember me.  Mary, you are crying."
+
+"I'm so happy; I can't help it.  It's as if--as if--Pierre----"
+
+"Dear, my dear."
+
+"Hold me closer.  I want to feel your strength around me, so that I
+know I can never lose you again."
+
+"Never."
+
+"Tell me again that you love me."
+
+"I love you."
+
+"I love you, Pierre."
+
+Then the wind spoke for them, using the trees for a harp above them.
+She looked up to him, and saw the nodding branches above his head, and
+higher still, the cold and changeless radiance of the stars.  He bent
+back her head and stared so grimly down into her eyes that her smile
+ceased tremulously.
+
+"Mary, what is the perfume?"
+
+"None, except the scent of the pines and the sweet, cold air of the
+night, Pierre."
+
+"There is something more.  It's as if the wind had taken all the
+fragrance from a thousand miles of wild flowers, and brought them
+blended and faint and sweeter than anything else in the world.  It is
+you, Mary, you are so beautiful.  How many men have told you that you
+are beautiful?"
+
+"None have told me; at least I've listened to them with only half my
+heart."
+
+"What have they told you?"
+
+"Nothing, except words about eyes and lips, and things like that."
+
+"And your hair?"
+
+"Oh, yes, they never forget that."
+
+"Then there is nothing left for me to say, except that God made you so
+that I could love you with all my heart.  And while I hold you here and
+hunt for things to say, my mind goes rushing out to great things--the
+sea, the mountains, the wind, the cold, quiet, beautiful stars.  But
+you are unhappy to hear me.  Look!  The big tears come one by one in
+your eyes, and roll down your face."
+
+"I'm so happy, Pierre, that I cannot help but be sad a little."
+
+"But never after this.  We will always be happy."
+
+"Always and always."
+
+"Mary, I have ridden all day over a burning hot desert and come under
+the mountains at night and looked up, and I've seen the white, pure
+snow with the blue of the sky behind it.  You are like that to me.  But
+you will be cold out here; I musn't go on saying nothings like this."
+
+"I love it, Pierre.  I won't have you stop."
+
+"Sit here on this stump--now, I'll sit at your feet."
+
+"No, beside me, please, Pierre."
+
+"I will not move.  Give me your hands.  Now, when I look up your face
+is framed by a tree-top that goes nodding from one side to the other,
+and I look up at your eyes and past them at the stars until I know that
+our love is like them, and free as the wind.  Mary, my dearest, your
+cold hand that I kiss is more to me than oceans of silver, or mountains
+of gold."
+
+"Now, if we could both die, this would never end.  But it will never
+end in spite of to-morrow, will it?  You will go back home with me."
+
+"Go home with you?"
+
+"Take my hand again.  Pierre, what has happened?  What have I done?
+What have I said?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE FEAR OF THE LIVING
+
+But he only stared gravely up to her with such a sorrow that her heart
+went cold.
+
+"Nothing--but I've remembered."
+
+"What?"
+
+"It's the cross.  It brings luck and bad fortune together.  Mary, I'll
+throw it away, now--and then--no, it makes no difference.  We are done
+for."
+
+"Pierre!"
+
+"Don't you see, Mary, or are you still blind as I was ever since I saw
+you tonight?  It's all in that name--Pierre."
+
+"There nothing in it, Pierre, that I don't love."
+
+He rose, and she with him.  His head was bowed as if with the weight of
+the doom which he foresaw.
+
+"You have heard of the wild men of the mountains, and the long-riders?"
+
+He knew that she nodded, though she could not speak.
+
+"I am Red Pierre."
+
+"_You_!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Yet he had the courage to raise his head and watch her shrink with
+horror.  It was only an instant.  Then she was beside him again, and
+one arm around him, while she turned her head and glanced fearfully
+back at the lighted schoolhouse.  The faint music mocked them.
+
+"And you dared to come to the dance?  We must go.  Look, there are
+horses!  We'll ride off into the mountains, and they'll never find
+us--we'll----"
+
+"Hush!  One day's riding would kill you--riding as I ride."
+
+"I'm strong---very strong, and the love of you, Pierre, will give me
+more strength.  But quickly, for if they knew you, every man in that
+place would come armed and ready to kill.  I know, for I've heard them
+talk.  Tell me, are one-half of all the terrible things they say----"
+
+"They are true, I guess."
+
+"I won't think of them.  Whatever you've done, it was not you, but some
+devil that forced you on.  Pierre, I love you more than ever.  Will you
+go East with me, and home?  We will lose ourselves in New York.  The
+millions of the crowd will hide us."
+
+"Mary, there are some men from whom even the night can't hide me.  If
+they were blind their hate would give them eyes to find me."
+
+"Pierre, you are not turning away from me--Pierre!"
+
+"God help me."
+
+"He will.  There's some ghost of a chance for us.  Will you take that
+chance and come with me?"
+
+He thought of many things, but what he answered was: "I will."
+
+"Then let's go at once.  The railroad----"
+
+"Not that way.  No one in that house suspects me now.  We'll go back
+and put on our masks again, and--hush, what's there?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"There is--a man's step."
+
+And she, seeing the look on his face, covered her eyes in nameless
+horror.  When she looked up a great form was looming through the dark,
+and then the voice of Wilbur came, hard and cold.
+
+"I've looked everywhere for you.  Miss Brown, they are anxious about
+you in the schoolhouse.  Will you go back?"
+
+"No--I----"
+
+But Pierre commanded: "Go back."
+
+So she turned, and he ordered again: "I think our friend has something
+to say to me.  You can find your way easily.  To-morrow----"
+
+"To-morrow, Pierre?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I shall be waiting."
+
+With what a voice she said it!  And then she was gone.
+
+He turned quietly to big Dick Wilbur, on whose contorted face the
+moonlight fell.
+
+"Say it, Dick, and have it out in cursing me, if that 'll help."
+
+The big man stood with his hands gripped hard behind him, fighting for
+self-control.
+
+"Pierre, I've cared for you more than I've cared for any other man.
+I've thought of you like a kid brother.  Now tell me that you haven't
+done this thing, and I'll believe you rather than my senses.  Tell me
+you haven't come like a thief in the night and stolen the girl I love
+away from me; tell me----"
+
+"If you keep on like that, you'll end by jumping at my throat.  Hold
+yourself, Dick."
+
+"I will if you'll tell me that you haven't----"
+
+"I love her, Dick."
+
+"Damn you!  And she?"
+
+"She'll forget me; God knows I hope she'll forget me."
+
+"I brought two guns with me.  Here they are."
+
+He held out the weapons.
+
+"Take your choice."
+
+"Does it have to be this way?"
+
+"If you'd rather have me shoot you down in cold blood?"
+
+"I suppose this is as good a way as any."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Nothing.  Give me a gun."
+
+"Here.  This is ten paces.  Are you ready?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Pierre.  God forgive you for what you've done.  She liked me, I know.
+If it weren't for you, I would have won her and a chance for real life
+again--but now--damn you!"
+
+"I'll count to ten, slowly and evenly.  When I reach ten we fire?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll trust you not to beat the count, Dick."
+
+"And I you.  Start."
+
+He counted quietly, evenly: "One, two, three, four, five six, seven,
+eight, nine--ten."
+
+The gun jerked up in the hand of Wilbur, but he stayed the movement
+with his finger pressing still upon the trigger.  The hand of Pierre
+had not moved.
+
+He cried: "By God, Pierre, what do you mean?"
+
+There was no answer.  He strode across the intervening space dropped
+his gun, and caught the other by the shoulders.  Out of the nerveless
+fingers of Pierre the revolver slipped and crushed a dead twig on the
+ground, and a pair of lifeless eyes stared up to Dick Wilbur.
+
+"In the name of God, Pierre, what has happened to you?"
+
+"Dick, why didn't you fire?"
+
+"Fire?  Murder you?"
+
+"You shoot straight--I know--it would have been over quickly."
+
+"What is it, boy?  You look dead--there's no color in your face, no
+light in your eyes, even your voice is dead.  I know it isn't fear.
+What is it?"
+
+"You're wrong.  It's fear."
+
+"Fear and Red Pierre.  The two don't mate."
+
+"Fear of living, Dick."
+
+"So that's it?  God help you.  Pierre, forgive me.  I should have known
+that you had met her before, but I was mad, and didn't know what I was
+doing, couldn't think."
+
+"It's over and forgotten.  I have to go back and get Jack.  Will you
+ride home with us?"
+
+"Jack?  She's not in the hall.  She left shortly after you went, and
+she means some deviltry.  There's a jealous fiend in that girl.  I
+watched her eyes when they followed you and Mary from the hall."
+
+"Then we'll ride back alone."
+
+"Not I.  Carry the word to Jim that I'm through with the game.  I'm
+going to wash some of the grime off my conscience and try to make
+myself fit to speak to this girl again."
+
+"It's the cross," said Pierre.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Nothing.  The bad luck has come to poor old Jim at last, because he
+saved me out of the snow.  Patterson has gone, and now you, and perhaps
+Jack--well, this is good-by, Dick?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Their hands met, a long, strong grip.
+
+"You forgive me, Dick?"
+
+"With all my heart, old fellow."
+
+"I'll try to wish you luck.  Stay close to her.  Live clean for her
+sake and worship her like a saint.  Perhaps you'll win her."
+
+"I'll do what one man can."
+
+"But if you succeed, ride out of the mountain-desert with her--never
+let me hear of it."
+
+"I don't understand.  Will you tell me what's between you, Pierre?
+You've some sort of claim on her.  What is it?"
+
+"I've said good-by.  Only one thing more.  Never mention my name to
+her."
+
+So he turned and walked out into the moonlight in the immaculate
+dress-suit and big Wilbur stared after him until he disappeared beyond
+the shoulder of a hill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE LUCK OF THE SHIPWRECKED
+
+It was early morning before Pierre reached the refuge of Boone's gang,
+but there was still a light through the window of the large room, and
+he entered to find Boone, Mansie, and Gandil grouped about the fire,
+all ominously silent, all ominously wakeful.  They looked up to him and
+big Jim nodded his gray head.  Otherwise there was no greeting.
+
+From a shadowy corner Jacqueline rose and went toward the door.  He
+crossed quickly and barred the way.
+
+"What is it, Jack?"
+
+"Get out of the way."
+
+"Not till you tell me what's wrong."
+
+A veritable devil of fury came blazing in her eyes, and her hand
+twitched nervously back to her hip where the dark holster hung.  She
+said in a voice that shook with anger: "Don't try your bluff on me.  I
+ain't no shorthorn, Pierre le Rouge."
+
+He stepped aside, frowning.
+
+"To-morrow I'll argue the point with you, Jack."
+
+She turned at the door and snapped back: "You?  You ain't fast enough
+on the draw to argue with me!"
+
+And she was gone.  He turned to face the mocking smile of Black Gandil
+and a rapid volley of questions.
+
+"Where's Patterson?"
+
+"No more idea than you have."
+
+"And Branch?"
+
+"What's become of Branch?  Hasn't he returned?"
+
+"No.  And Dick Wilbur?"
+
+"Boys, he's done with this life and I'm glad of it.  He's starting on a
+new track."
+
+"After a woman?" sneered Bud Mansie.
+
+"Shut up, Bud," broke in Boone, and then slowly to Pierre: "Patterson
+is gone for two days now.  You ought to know what that means.  Branch
+ought to have returned from looking for him, and Branch is still out.
+Wilbur is gone.  Out of seven we're only four left.  Who's next?"
+
+He stared gloomily from face to face, and Gandil snarled: "A fellow who
+saves a shipwrecked man--"
+
+"Damn you, keep still, Gandil."
+
+"Don't damn me, Pierre le Rouge, but damn the luck you've brought to
+Jim Boone."
+
+"Jim, do you chalk all this up against me?"
+
+"I, lad?  No, no!  But it's queer.  Patterson's done for; there's no
+doubt of that.  Good-natured Garry Patterson.  God, boy, how we'll miss
+him!  And Branch seems to have gone the same way.  If neither of them
+show up before morning we can cross 'em off the list.  Now Wilbur has
+gone and Jack has ridden home looking like a small-sized thunder storm,
+and now you come with a white face and a blank eye.  What hell is
+trailin' us, Pierre, what hell is in store for us.  You've seen
+something, and we want to know what it is."
+
+"A ghost, Jim, that's all.  Just a ghost."
+
+Bud Mansie said softly: "There's only one ghost that could make you
+look like this.  Was it McGurk, Pierre?"
+
+Boone commanded: "No more of that, Bud.  Boy's we're going to turn in,
+and to-morrow we'll climb the hills looking for the two we've lost.
+But there's something or some one after us.  Lads, I'm thinking our
+good days are over.  The seven of us have been too many for a small
+posse and too fast for a big one, but the seven are down to four.  The
+good days are over."
+
+And the three answered in a solemn chorus: "The good days are over."
+
+All eyes fixed on Pierre, and his glance was settled on the floor.
+
+The morning brought them no better cheer, for Jack, whose singing
+generally wakened them, was not to be coaxed into speech, and when
+Pierre entered the room she rose and left the breakfast-table.  The sad
+eyes of Jim Boone followed her and then turned to Pierre.  No
+explanation was forthcoming, and he asked for none.  The old fatalist
+had accepted the worst, and now he waited for doom to descend.
+
+They took their horses after breakfast and rode out to search the
+hills, for it was quite possible that an accident had crippled at least
+one of the two lost men, either Patterson or Branch.  Not a gully
+within miles was left unsearched, but toward evening they rode back,
+one by one, with no tidings.
+
+One by one they rode up, and whistled to announce their coming, and
+then rode on to the stable to unsaddle their horses.  About the supper
+table all gathered with the exception of Bud Mansie.  So they waited
+the meal and each from time to time stole a glance at the fifth plate
+where Bud should sit.
+
+It was Jack who finally stirred herself from her dumb gloom to take up
+that fifth and carry it out of the room.  It was as if she had
+announced the death of Mansie.
+
+After that, they ate what they could and then went back around the
+fire.  The evening waned, but it brought no sign of any of the missing
+three.  The wood burned low in the fire.  The first to break the long
+silence was Jim Boone, with "Who brings in the wood?"
+
+And Black Gandil answered: "We'll match, eh?"
+
+In an outburst of energy the day before he disappeared Garry Patterson
+had chopped up some wood and left a pile of it at the corner of the
+house.  It was a very little thing to bring in an armful of that wood,
+but long-riders do not love work, and now they started the matching
+seriously.  The odd man was out, and Pierre went out on the first toss
+of the coins.
+
+"You see," said Gandil.  "Bad luck to every one but himself."
+
+At the next throw Jacqueline was the lucky one, and her father
+afterward.  Gandil rose and stretched himself leisurely, yet as he
+sauntered toward the door his backward glance at Pierre was black
+indeed.  He glanced curiously toward Jack--who looked away sharply--and
+then turned his eyes to her father.
+
+The latter was considering him with a gloomy, foreboding stare and
+considering over and over again, as Pierre le Rouge well knew, the
+prophecy of Black Morgan Gandil.
+
+He fell in turn into a solemn brooding, and many a picture out of the
+past came up beside him and stood near till he could almost feel its
+presence.  He was roused by the creaking of the floor beneath the
+ponderous step of Jim Boone, who flung the door open and shouted: "Oh,
+Morgan."
+
+In the silence he turned and stared back at Pierre.
+
+"What's up with Gandil?"
+
+"God knows, not I."
+
+Pierre rose and ran from the room and around the side of the building.
+There by the woodpile lay the prostrate body.  It was a mere limp
+weight when he turned and raised it in his arms.  So he walked back
+into the house carrying all that was left of Black Morgan Gandil, and
+placed his burden on a bunk at the side of the room.
+
+There had been no outcry from either Jim Boone or his daughter, but
+they came quickly to him, and Jacqueline pressed her ear over the heart
+of the hurt man.
+
+She said; "He's still alive, but nearly gone.  Where's the wound?"
+
+They found it when they drew off his coat--a small cut high on the
+right breast, and another lower and more to the left.  Either of them
+would been fatal, and about each the flesh was discolored where the
+hilt of the knife or the fist of the striker had driven home the blade.
+
+They stood back and made no hopeless effort to save him.  It was
+uncanny that Black Morgan Gandil, after all of his battles, should die
+without a struggle in this way.  And it had been no cowardly attack
+from the rear.  Both wounds were in the front.  A hope came to them
+when his color increased at one time, but it was for only a moment; it
+went out again as if some one were erasing paint from his cheeks.
+
+But just as they were about to turn away his body stirred with a slight
+convulsion, the eyes opened wide, and he strove to speak.  A red froth
+came on his lips.  He made another desperate effort, and twisting
+himself onto one elbow pointed a rigid arm at Pierre.  He gasped:
+"McGurk--God!" and dropped.  He was dead before his head touched the
+blanket.
+
+It was Jacqueline who closed the staring eyes, for the two men were
+frozen where they stood.  They had heard the story of Patterson and
+Branch and Mansie in one word from the lips of the dying man.
+
+McGurk was back.  McGurk was prowling about the last of the gang of
+Boone, and the lone wolf had pulled down four of the band one by one on
+successive days.  Only two remained, and these two looked at one
+another with a common thought.
+
+"The lights!" cried Jacqueline, turning from the body of Gandil.  "He
+can shoot us down through the windows at his leisure."
+
+"But he won't," said her father.  "I've lived too long with the name of
+McGurk in my ears not to know the man.  He'll never kill by stealth,
+but openly and man to man.  I know him, damn him.  He'll wait till he
+meets us alone, and then we'll finish as poor Gandil, there, or
+Patterson and Branch and Bud Mansie, all of them fallen somewhere in
+the mountains with the buzzards left to bury 'em.  That's how we'll
+finish with McGurk on our trail.  And you--Gandil was right--it's you
+that's brought him on us.  A shipwrecked man--by God, Gandil was right!"
+
+His right hand froze on the butt of his gun and his face convulsed with
+impotent rage, for he knew, as both the others knew, that long before
+that gun was clear of the holster the bullet from Pierre's gun would be
+on its way.  But Pierre threw his arms wide, and standing so, his
+shadow made a black cross on the wall behind him.  He even smiled to
+tempt the big man further.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+JACQUELINE WAITS
+
+Jacqueline ran between and caught the hand of her father, crying:
+
+"Are you going to finish the work of McGurk before he has a chance to
+start it?  He hunted the rest down one by one.  Dad, if you put out
+Pierre what is left?  Can you face that devil alone?"
+
+And the old man groaned: "But it's his luck that's ruined me.  It's his
+damned luck which has broken up the finest fellowship that ever mocked
+at law on the ranges.  Oh, Jack, the heart in me's broken.  I wish to
+God that I lay where Gandil lies.  What's the use of fighting any
+longer?  No man can stand up against McGurk!"
+
+And the cold which had come in the blood of Pierre agreed with him.  He
+was a slayer of men, but McGurk was a devil incarnate.  His father had
+died at the hand of this lone rider; it was fitting, it was fate that
+he himself should die in the same way.  The girl looked from face to
+face, and sensed their despondency.  It seemed that their fear gave her
+the greater courage.  Her face flushed as she stood glaring her scorn.
+
+"The yellow streak took a long time in showin', but it's in you, all
+right, Pierre le Rouge."
+
+"You've hated me ever since the dance, Jack.  Why?"
+
+"Because I knew you were yellow--like this!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders like one who gives up the fight against a
+woman, and seeing it, she changed suddenly and made a gesture with both
+hands toward him, a sudden gesture filled with grace and a queer
+tenderness.
+
+She said: "Pierre, have you forgotten that when you were only a boy you
+stood up to McGurk and drew blood from him?  Are you afraid of him now?"
+
+"I'll take my chance with any man--but McGurk--"
+
+"He has no cross to bring him luck."
+
+"Aye, and he has no friends for that luck to ruin.  Look at Gandil,
+Jack, and then speak to me of the cross."
+
+"Pierre, that first time you met you almost beat him to the draw.  Oh,
+if I were a man, I'd--Pierre, it was to get McGurk that you rode out to
+the range.  You've been here six years, and McGurk is still alive, and
+now you're ready to run from his shadow."
+
+"Run?" he said hotly.  "I swear to God that as I stand here I've no
+fear of death and no hope for the life ahead."
+
+She sneered: "You're white while you say it.  Your will may be brave,
+but your blood's a coward, Pierre.  It deserts you."
+
+"Jack, you devil--"
+
+"Aye, you can threaten me safely.  But if McGurk were here--"
+
+"Let him come."
+
+"Pierre!"
+
+"I mean it."
+
+"Then give me one promise."
+
+"A thousand of 'em."
+
+"Let me hunt him with you."
+
+He stared at her with a mute wonder.  She had never been so beautiful.
+
+"Jack, what a heart you have!  If you were a man we could rule the
+mountains, you and I."
+
+"Even as I am, what prevents us, Pierre?"
+
+And looking at her he forgot the sorrow which had been his ever since
+he looked up to the face framed with red-gold hair and the dark tree
+behind and the cold stars steady above it.  It would come to him again,
+but now it was gone, and he murmured, smiling: "I wonder?"
+
+They made their plans that night, sitting all three together.  It was
+better to go out and hunt the hunter than to wait there and be tracked
+down.  Jack, for she insisted on it, would ride out with Pierre the
+next morning and hunt through the hills for the hiding-place of McGurk.
+
+Some covert he must have, so as to be near his victims.  Nothing else
+could explain the ease with which he kept on their track.  They would
+take the trail, and Jim Boone, no longer agile enough to be effective
+on the trail, would guard the house and the body of Gandil in it.
+
+There was little danger that even McGurk would try to rush a hostile
+house, but they took no chances.  The guns of Jim Boone were given a
+thorough overhauling, and he wore as usual at his belt the
+heavy-handled hunting knife, a deadly weapon in a hand-to-hand fight.
+Thus equipped, they left him and took the trail.
+
+They had not ridden a hundred yards when a whistle followed them, the
+familiar whistle of the gang.  They reined short and saw big Dick
+Wilbur riding his bay after them, but at some distance he halted and
+shouted: "Pierre!"
+
+"He's come back to us!" cried Jack.
+
+"No.  It's only some message."
+
+"Do you know?"
+
+"Yes.  Stay here.  This is for me alone."
+
+And he rode back to Wilbur, who swung his horse close alongside.
+However hard he had followed in the pursuit of happiness and the golden
+hair of Mary Brown, his face was drawn with lines of age and his eyes
+circled with shadows.
+
+He said: "I've kept close on her trail, Pierre, and the nearest she has
+come to kindness has been to send me back with a message to you."
+
+He laughed without mirth, and the sound stopped abruptly.
+
+"This is the message in her own words: 'I love him, Dick, and there's
+nothing in the world for me without him.  Bring him back to me.  I
+don't care how; but bring him back.'  So tell Jack to ride the trail
+alone to-day and go back with me.  I give her up, not freely, but
+because I know there's no hope for me."
+
+But Pierre answered: "Wherever I've gone there's been luck for me and
+hell for every one around me.  I lived with a priest, Dick, and left
+him when I was nearly old enough to begin repaying his care.  I came
+South and found a father and lost him the same day.  I gambled for
+money with which to bury him, and a man died that night and another was
+hurt.  I escaped from the town by riding a horse to death.  I was
+nearly killed in a landslide, and now the men who saved me from that
+are done for.
+
+"It's all one story, the same over and over.  Can I carry a fortune
+like that back to her?  Dick, it would haunt me by day and by night.
+She would be the next.  I know it as I know that I'm sitting in the
+saddle here.  That's my answer.  Carry it back to her."
+
+"I won't lie and tell you I'm sorry, because I'm a fool and still have
+a ghost of a hope, but this will be hard news to tell her, and I'd
+rather give five years of life than face the look that will come in her
+eyes."
+
+"I know it, Dick."
+
+"But this is final?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Then good-bye again, and--God bless you, Pierre."
+
+"And you, old fellow."
+
+They swerved their horses in opposite directions and galloped apart.
+
+"It was nothing," said Pierre to Jack, when he came up with her and
+drew his horse down to a trot.  But he knew that she had read his mind,
+and for an hour they could not look each other in the face.
+
+But all day through the mazes of canon and hill and rolling ground they
+searched patiently.  There was no cranny in the rocks too small for
+them to reconnoiter with caution.  There was no group of trees they did
+not examine.
+
+Yet it was not strange that they failed.  In the space of every square
+mile there were a hundred hiding-places which might have served McGurk.
+It would have taken a month to comb the country.  They had only a day,
+and left the result to chance, but chance failed them.  When the
+shadows commenced to swing across the gullies they turned back and rode
+with downward heads, silent.
+
+One hill lay between them and the old ranch-house which had been the
+headquarters for their gang so many days, when they saw a faint drift
+of smoke across the sky--not a thin column of smoke such as rises from
+a chimney, but a broad stream of pale mist, as if a dozen chimneys were
+spouting wood-smoke at once.
+
+They exchanged glances and spurred their horses up the last slope.  As
+always in a short spurt, the long-legged black of Jacqueline
+out-distanced the cream-colored mare, and it was she who first topped
+the rise of land.  The girl whirled in her saddle with raised arm,
+screamed back at Pierre, and rode on at a still more furious pace.
+
+What he saw when he reached a corresponding position was the
+ranch-house wreathed in smoke, and through all the lower windows was
+the red dance of flames.  Before him fled Jacqueline with all the speed
+of the black.  He loosened the reins, spoke to the mare, and she
+responded with a mighty rush.  Even that tearing pace could not quite
+take him up to the girl, but he flung himself from the saddle and was
+at her side when she ran across the smoking veranda and wrenched at the
+front door.
+
+The whole frame gave back at her, and as Pierre snatched her to one
+side the doorway fell crashing on the porch, while a mighty volume of
+smoke burst out at them like a puff from the pit.
+
+They stood sputtering, coughing, and choking, and when they could look
+again they saw a solid wall of red flame, thick, impenetrable,
+shuddering with the breath of the wind.
+
+While they stared a stronger breath of that wind tore the wall of
+flames apart, driving it back in a raging tide to either side.  The
+fire had circled the walls of the entire room, but it had scarcely
+encroached on the center, and there, seated at the table, was Boone.
+
+He had scarcely changed from the position in which they last saw him,
+save that he was fallen somewhat deeper in the chair, his head resting
+against the top of the back.  He greeted them, through that infernal
+furnace, with laughter, and wide, steady eyes.  At least it seemed
+laughter, for the mouth was agape and the lips grinned back, but there
+was no sound from the lips and no light in the fixed eyes.
+
+Laughter indeed it was, but it was the laughter of death, as if the
+soul of the man, in dying, recognized its natural wild element and had
+burst into convulsive mirth.  So he sat there, untouched as yet by the
+wide river of fire, chuckling at his destiny.  The wall of fire closed
+across the doorway again and the work of red ruin went on with a
+crashing of timbers from the upper part of the building.
+
+As that living wall shut solidly, Jacqueline leaped forward, shouting,
+like a man, words of hope and rescue; Pierre caught her barely in
+time--a precarious grasp on the wrist from which she nearly wrenched
+herself free and gained the entrance to the fire.  But the jerk threw
+her off balance for the least fraction of an instant, and the next
+moment she was safe in his arms.
+
+Safe?  He might as well have held a wildcat, or captured with his bare
+hands a wild eagle, strong of talon and beak.  She tore and raged in a
+wild fury.
+
+"Pierre, coward, devil!"
+
+"Steady, Jack!"
+
+"Are you going to let him die?"
+
+"Don't you see?  He's already dead."
+
+"You lie.  You only fear the fire!"
+
+"I tell you, McGurk has been here before us."
+
+Her arm was freed by a twisting effort and she beat him furiously
+across the face.  One blow cut his lip and a steady trickle of hot
+blood left a taste of salt in his mouth.
+
+"You young fiend!" he cried, and grasped both her wrists with a
+crushing force.
+
+She leaned and gnashed at his hands, but he whirled her about and held
+her from behind, impotent, raging still.
+
+"A hundred McGurks could never have killed him!"
+
+There was a sharp explosion from the midst of the fire.
+
+"See!  He's fighting against his death!"
+
+"No!  No!  It's only the falling of a timber!"
+
+Yet with a panic at his heart he knew that it was the sharp crack of a
+firearm.
+
+"Liar again!  Pierre, for God's sake, do something for him.  Father!
+He's fighting for his life!"
+
+Another and another explosion from the midst of the fire.  He
+understood then.
+
+"The flames have reached his guns.  That's all, Jack.  Don't you see?
+We'd be throwing ourselves away to run into those flames."
+
+Realization came to her at last.  A heavy weight slumped down suddenly
+over his arms.  He held her easily, lightly.  Her head had tilted back,
+and the red flare of the fire beat across her face and throat.  The
+roar of the flames shut out all other thought of the world and cast a
+wide inferno of light around them.
+
+Higher and higher rose the fires, and the wind cut off great fragments
+and hurried them off into the night, blowing them, it seemed, straight
+up against the piled thunder of the clouds.  Then the roof sagged,
+swayed, and fell crashing, while a vast cloud of sparks and livid fires
+shot up a hundred feet into the air.  It was as if the soul of old
+Boone had departed in that final flare.
+
+It started the girl into sudden life, surprising Pierre, so that she
+managed to wrench herself free and ran from him.  He sprang after her
+with a shout, fearing that in her hysteria she might fling herself into
+the fire, but that was not her purpose.  Straight to the black horse
+she ran, swung into the saddle with the ease of a man, and rode
+furiously off through the falling of the night.
+
+He watched her with a curious closing of loneliness like a hand about
+his heart.  He had failed, and because of that failure even Jacqueline
+was leaving him.  It was strange, for since the loss of the girl of the
+yellow hair and those deep blue eyes, he had never dreamed that another
+thing in life could pain him.
+
+So at length he mounted the mare again and rode slowly down the hill
+and out toward the distant ranges, trotting mile after mile with
+downward head, not caring even if McGurk should cross him, for surely
+this was the final end of the world to Pierre le Rouge.
+
+About midnight he halted at last, for the uneasy sway of the mare
+showed that she was nearly dead on her feet with weariness.  He found a
+convenient place for a camp, built his fire, and wrapped his blanket
+about him without thinking of food.
+
+He never knew how long he sat there, for his thoughts circled the world
+and back again and found all a prospect of desert before him and
+behind, until a sound, a vague sound out of the night startled him into
+alertness.  He slipped from beside the fire and into the shadow of a
+steep rock, watching with eyes that almost pierced the dark on all
+sides.
+
+And there he saw her creeping up on the outskirts of the firelight,
+prone on her hands and knees, dragging herself up like a young wildcat
+hunting prey; it was the glimmer of her eyes that he caught first
+through the gloom.  A cold thought came to him that she had returned
+with her gun ready.
+
+Inch by inch she came closer, and now he was aware of her restless
+glances probing on all sides of the camp-fire.  Silence--only the
+crackling of a pitchy stick.  And then he heard a muffled sound, soft,
+soft as the beating of a heart in the night, and regularly pulsing.  It
+hurt him infinitely, and he called gently: "Jack, why are you weeping?"
+
+She started up with her fingers twisted at the butt of her gun.
+
+"It's a lie," called a tremulous voice.  "Why should I weep?"
+
+And then she ran to him.
+
+"Oh, Pierre, I thought you were gone!"
+
+That silence which came between them was thick with understanding
+greater than speech.  He said at last:
+
+"I've made my plan.  I am going straight for the higher mountains and
+try to shake McGurk off my trail.  There's one chance in ten I may
+succeed, and if I do then I'll wait for my chance and come down on him,
+for sooner or later we have to fight this out to the end."
+
+"I know a place he could never find," said Jacqueline.  "The old cabin
+in the gulley between the Twin Bears.  We'll start for it to-night."
+
+"Not we," he answered.  "Jack, here's the end of our riding together."
+
+She frowned with puzzled wonder.
+
+He explained: "One man is stronger than a dozen.  That's the strength
+of McGurk--that he rides alone.  He's finished your father's men.
+There's only Wilbur left, and Wilbur will go next--then me!"
+
+She stretched her hands to him.  She seemed to be pleading for her very
+life.
+
+"But if he finds us and has to fight us both--I shoot as straight as a
+man, Pierre!"
+
+"Straighter than most.  And you're a better pal than any I've ever
+ridden with.  But I must go alone.  It's only a lone wolf that will
+ever bring down McGurk.  Think how he's rounded us up like a herd of
+cattle and brought us down one by one."
+
+"By getting each man alone and killing him from behind."
+
+"From the front, Jack.  No, he's fought square with each one.  The
+wounds of Black Gandil were all in front, and when McGurk and I meet
+it's going to be face to face."
+
+Her tone changed, softened: "But what of me, Pierre?"
+
+"You have to leave this life.  Go down to the city, Jack.  Live like a
+woman; marry some lucky fellow; be happy."
+
+"Can you leave me so easily?"
+
+"No, it's hard, devilish hard to part with a pal like you, Jack; but
+all the rest of my life I've got hard things to face, partner."
+
+"Partner!" she repeated with an indescribable emphasis.  "Pierre, I
+can't leave you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I'm afraid to go.  Let me stay!"
+
+He said gloomily: "No good will come of it."
+
+"I'll never trouble you--never!"
+
+"No, the bad luck comes on the people who are with me, but never on me.
+It's struck them all down, one by one; your turn is next, Jack.  If I
+could leave the cross behind--"
+
+He covered his face, and groaned: "But I don't dare; I don't dare!  I
+have to face McGurk.  Jack, I hate myself for it, but I can't help it.
+I'm afraid of McGurk, afraid of that damned white face, that lowered,
+fluttering eyelid, that sneering mouth.  Without the cross to bring me
+luck, how could I meet him?  But while I keep the cross there's ruin
+and hell without end for every one with me."
+
+She was white and shaking.  She said: "I'm not afraid.  I've one friend
+left; there's nothing else to care for."
+
+"So it's to be this way, Jack?"
+
+"This way, and no other."
+
+"Partner, I'm glad.  My God, Jack, what a man you would have made!"
+
+Their hands met and clung together, and her head had drooped, perhaps
+in acquiescence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A GAME OF SUPPOSE
+
+Dick Wilbur, telling Mary how Pierre had cut himself adrift, did not
+even pretend to sorrow, and she listened to him with her eyes fixed
+steadily on his own.  As a matter of fact, she had shown neither hope
+nor excitement from the moment he came back to her and started to tell
+his message.  But if she showed neither hope nor excitement for
+herself, surely she gave Dick still fewer grounds for any optimistic
+foresights.
+
+So he finished gloomily: "And as far as I can make out, Pierre is
+right.  There's some rotten bad luck that follows him.  It may not be
+the cross--I don't suppose you believe in superstition like that, Miss
+Brown?"
+
+She said: "It saved my life."
+
+"The cross?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then Pierre--you mean--you met before the dance--you mean--"
+
+He was stammering so that he couldn't finish his thoughts, and she
+broke in: "If he will not come to me, then I must go to him."
+
+"Follow Pierre le Rouge?" queried Wilbur.  "Miss Brown, you're an
+optimist.  But that's because you've never seen him ride.  I consider
+it a good day's work to start out with him and keep within sight till
+night, but as for following and overtaking him--ha, ha, ha, ha!"
+
+He laughed heartily at the thought.
+
+And she smiled a little sadly, answering: "But I have the most
+boundless patience in the world.  He may gallop all the way, but I will
+walk, and keep on walking, and reach him in the end.  I am not very
+strong, but--"
+
+Her hands moved out as though testing their power, gripping at the air.
+
+"Where will you go to hunt for him?"
+
+"I don't know.  But every evening, when I look out at the sunset hills,
+with the purple along the valleys, I think that he must be out there
+somewhere, going toward the highest ranges.  If I were up in that
+country I know that I could find him."
+
+"Never in a thousand years."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because he's on the trail--"
+
+"On the trail?"
+
+"Of McGurk."
+
+She started.
+
+"What is this man McGurk?  I hear of him on all sides.  If one of the
+men rides a bucking horse successfully, some one is sure to say: 'Who
+taught you what you know, Bud--McGurk?'  And then the rest laugh.  The
+other day a man was pointed out to me as an expert shot.  'Not as fast
+as McGurk,' it was said, 'but he shoots just as straight.'  Finally I
+asked some one about McGurk.  The only answer I received was: 'I hope
+you never find out what he is.'  Tell me, what is McGurk?"
+
+Wilbur considered the question gravely.
+
+He said at last: "McGurk is--hell!"
+
+He expanded his statement: "Think of a man who can ride anything that
+walks on four feet, who never misses with either a rifle or a revolver,
+who doesn't know the meaning of fear, and then imagine that man living
+by himself and fighting the rest of the world like a lone wolf.  That's
+McGurk.  He's never had a companion; he's never trusted any man.
+Perhaps that's why they say about him the same thing that they say
+about me."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"You will smile when you hear.  They say that McGurk will lose out in
+the end on account of some woman."
+
+"And they say that of you?"
+
+"They say right of me.  I know it myself.  Look at me now?  What right
+have I here?  If I'm found I'm the meat of the first man who sights me,
+but here I stay, and wait and watch for your smiles--like a love-sick
+boy.  By Jove, you must despise me, Mary!"
+
+"I don't try to understand you Westerners," she answered, "and that's
+why I have never questioned you before.  Tell me, why is it that you
+come so stealthily to see me and run away as soon as any one else
+appears?"
+
+He said with wonder: "Haven't you guessed?"
+
+"I don't dare guess."
+
+"But you have, and your guess was right.  There's a price on my head.
+By right, I should be out there on the ranges with Pierre le Rouge and
+McGurk.  There's the only safe place; but I saw you and I came down out
+of the wilds and can't go back.  I'll stay, I suppose, till I run my
+head into a halter."
+
+She was too much moved to speak for a moment, and then: "You come to me
+in spite of that?  Dick, whatever you have done, I know that it's only
+chance which made you go wrong, just as it made Pierre.  I wish--"
+
+The dimness of her eyes encouraged him with a great hope.  He stole
+closer to her.
+
+He repeated: "You wish--"
+
+"That you could be satisfied with a mere friendship.  I could give you
+that, Dick, with all my heart."
+
+He stepped back and smiled somewhat grimly on her.
+
+She went on: "And this McGurk--what do you mean when you say that
+Pierre is on his trail?"
+
+"Hunting him with a gun."
+
+She grew paler and trembled, but her voice remained steady.  It was
+always that way; at the very moment when he expected her to quail, some
+inner strength bore her up and baffled him.
+
+"But in all those miles of mountains they may never meet?"
+
+"They can't stay apart any more than iron can stay away from a magnet.
+Listen: half a dozen years ago McGurk had the reputation of bearing a
+charmed life.  He had been in a hundred fights and he was never touched
+with either a knife or a bullet.  Then he crossed Pierre le Rouge when
+Pierre was only a youngster just come onto the range.  He put two
+bullets through Pierre, but the boy shot him from the floor and wounded
+him for the first time.  The charm of McGurk was broken.
+
+"For half a dozen years McGurk was gone; there was never a whisper
+about him.  Then he came back and went on the trail of Pierre.  He has
+killed the friends of Pierre one by one; Pierre himself is the next in
+order--Pierre or myself.  And when those two meet there will be the
+greatest fight that was ever staged in the mountain-desert."
+
+She stood straight, staring past Wilbur with hungry eyes.
+
+"I knew he needed me.  I have to save him, Dick.  You see that?  I have
+to bring him down from the mountains and keep him safe from McGurk.
+McGurk! somehow the sound means what 'devil' used to mean to me."
+
+"You've never traveled alone, and yet you'd go up there and brave
+everything that comes for the sake of Pierre?  What has he done to
+deserve it, Mary?"
+
+"What have I done, Dick, to deserve the care you have for me?"
+
+He stared gloomily on her.
+
+"When do you start?"
+
+"To-night."
+
+"Your friends won't let you go."
+
+"I'll steal away and leave a note behind me."
+
+"And you'll go alone?"
+
+She caught at a hope.
+
+"Unless you'll go with me, Dick?"
+
+"I?  Take you--to Pierre?"
+
+She did not speak to urge him, but in the silence her beauty pleaded
+for her.
+
+He said: "Mary, how lovely you are.  If I go I will have you for a few
+days--for a week at most, all to myself."
+
+She shook her head.  From the window behind her the sunset light flared
+in her hair, flooding it with red-gold against which her skin was
+marvelously delicate and white, and the eyes of the deepest blue.
+
+"All the time that we are gone, you will never say things like this,
+Dick?"
+
+"I suppose not.  I should be near you, but terribly far away from your
+thoughts all the while.  Still, you will be near.  You will be very
+beautiful, Mary, riding up the trail through the pines, with all the
+scents of the evergreens blowing about you, and I--well, I must go back
+to a second childhood and play a game of suppose--"
+
+"A game of what?"
+
+"Of supposing that you are really mine, Mary, and riding out into the
+wilderness for my sake."
+
+She stepped a little closer, peering into his face.
+
+"No matter what you suppose, I'm sure you'll leave that part of it
+merely a game, Dick!"
+
+He laughed suddenly, though the sound broke off as short and sharp as
+it began.
+
+"Haven't I played a game all my life with the fair ladies?  And have I
+anything to show for it except laughter?  I'll go with you, Mary, if
+you'll let me."
+
+"Dick, you've a heart of gold!  What shall I take?"
+
+"I'll make the pack up, and I'll be back here an hour after dark and
+whistle.  Like this--"
+
+And he gave the call of Boone's gang.
+
+"I understand.  I'll be ready.  Hurry, Dick, for we've very little
+time."
+
+He hesitated, then: "All the time we're on the trail you must be far
+from me, and at the end of it will be Pierre le Rouge--and happiness
+for you.  Before we start, Mary, I'd like to--"
+
+It seemed that she read his mind, for she slipped suddenly inside his
+arms, kissed him, and was gone from the room.  He stood a moment with a
+hand raised to his face.
+
+"After all," he muttered, "that's enough to die for, and--"  He threw
+up his long arms in a gesture of infinite resignation.
+
+"The will of God be done!" said Wilbur, and laughed again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE TRAIL
+
+She was ready, crouched close to the window of her room, when the
+signal came, but first she was not sure, because the sound was as faint
+as a memory.  Moreover, it might have been a freakish whistling in the
+wind, which rose stronger and stronger.  It had piled the
+thunder-clouds high and higher, and now and again a heavy drop of rain
+tapped at her window like a thrown pebble.
+
+So she waited, and at last heard the whistle a second time,
+unmistakably clear.  In a moment she was hurrying down to the stable,
+climbed into the saddle, and rode at a cautious trot out among the
+sand-hills.
+
+For a time she saw no one, and commenced to fear that the whole thing
+had been a gruesomely real, practical jest.  So she stopped her horse
+and imitated the signal whistle as well as she could.  It was repeated
+immediately behind her--almost in her ear, and she turned to make out
+the dark form of a tall horseman.
+
+"A bad night for the start," called Wilbur.  "Do you want to wait till
+to-morrow?"
+
+She could not answer for a moment, the wind whipping against her face,
+while a big drop stung her lips.
+
+She said at length: "Would a night like this stop Pierre--or McGurk?"
+
+For answer she heard his laughter.
+
+"Then I'll start.  I must never stop for weather."
+
+He rode up beside her.
+
+"This is the start of the finish."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Nothing.  But somewhere on this ride, I've an idea a question will be
+answered for me."
+
+"What question?"
+
+Instead of replying he said: "You've got a slicker on?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then follow me.  We'll gallop into the wind a while and get the horses
+warmed up.  Afterward we'll take the valley of the Old Crow and follow
+it up to the crest of the range."
+
+His horse lunged out ahead of hers, and she followed, leaning far
+forward against a wind that kept her almost breathless.  For several
+minutes they cantered steadily, and before the end of the gallop she
+was sitting straight up, her heart beating fast, a faint smile on her
+lips, and the blood running hot in her veins.  For the battle was
+begun, she knew, by that first sharp gallop, and here at the start she
+felt confident of her strength.  When she met Pierre she could force
+him to turn back with her.
+
+Wilbur checked his horse to a trot; they climbed a hill, and just as
+the rain broke on them with a rattling gust they swung into the valley
+of the Old Crow.  Above them in the sky the thunder rode; the rain
+whipped against the rocks like the rattle of a thousand flying hoofs;
+and now and again the lightning flashed across the sky.
+
+Through that vast accompaniment they moved on in the night straight
+toward the heart of the mountains which sprang into sight with every
+flash of the lightning and seemed toppling almost above them, yet they
+were weary miles away, as she knew.
+
+By those same flashes she caught glimpses of the face of Wilbur.  She
+hardly knew him.  She had seen him always big, gentle, handsome,
+good-natured; now he was grown harder, with a stern set of the jaw, and
+a certain square outline of face.  It had seemed impossible.  Now she
+began to guess how the law could have placed a price upon his head.
+For he belonged out here with the night and the crash of the storm,
+with free, strong, lawless things about him.
+
+An awe grew up in her, and she was filled half with dread and half with
+curiosity at the thought of facing him, as she must many a time, across
+the camp-fire.  In a way, he was the ladder by which she climbed to an
+understanding of Pierre le Rouge, Red Pierre.  For that Pierre, she
+knew, was to big Wilbur what Dick himself was to the great mass of
+law-abiding men.  Accident had cut Wilbur adrift, but it was more than
+accident which started Pierre on the road to outlawry; it was the sheer
+love of dangerous chance, the glory in fighting other men.  This was
+Pierre.
+
+What was the man for whom Pierre hunted?  What was McGurk?  Not even
+the description of Wilbur had proved very enlightening.  Her thought 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.  Suppose we camp here, eat, get a bit
+of sleep, and then start again?"
+
+As if she had waited for permission, fighting against her weariness,
+she now let down the bars of her will, and a tingling stupor swept over
+her body and broke in hot, numbing waves on her brain.
+
+"Whatever you say.  I'm afraid I couldn't ride much further to-night."
+
+"Look up at me."
+
+She raised her head.
+
+"No; you're all in.  But you've made a game ride.  I never dreamed
+there was so much iron in you.  We'll make our fire just inside the
+trees and carry water up from the river, eh?"
+
+A scanty growth of the evergreens walked over the hills and skirted
+along the valley, leaving a broad, sandy waste in the center where the
+river at times swelled with melted snow or sudden rains and rushed over
+the lower valley in a broad, muddy flood.
+
+At the edge of the forest he picketed the horses in a little open space
+carpeted with wet, dead grass.  It took him some time to find dry wood.
+So he wrapped her in blankets and left her sitting on a saddle.  As the
+chill left her body she began to grow delightfully drowsy, and vaguely
+she heard the crack of his hatchet.  He had found a rotten stump and
+was tearing off the wet outer bark to get at the dry wood within.
+
+After that it was only a moment before a fire sputtered feebly and
+smoked at her feet.  She watched it, only half conscious, in her utter
+weariness, and seeing dimly the hollow-eyed face of the man who stooped
+above the blaze.  Now it grew quickly, and increased to a sharp-pointed
+pyramid of red flame.  The bright sparks showered up, crackling and
+snapping, and when she followed their flight she saw the darkly nodding
+tops of the evergreens above her.
+
+With the fire well under way, he took the coffee-pot to get water from
+the river, and left her to fry the bacon.  The fumes of the frying meat
+wakened her at once, and brushed even the thought of her exhaustion
+from her mind.  She was hungry--ravenously hungry.
+
+So she tended the bacon slices with care until they grew brown and
+crisped and curled at the edges.  After that she removed the pan from
+the fire, and it was not until then that she began to wonder why Wilbur
+was so long in returning with the water.  The bacon grew cold; she
+heated it again and was mightily tempted to taste one piece of it, but
+restrained herself to wait for Dick.
+
+Still he did not come.  She stood up and called, her high voice rising
+sharp and small through the trees.  It seemed that some sound answered,
+so she smiled and sat down.  Ten minutes passed and he was still gone.
+A cold alarm swept over her at that.  She dropped the pan and ran out
+from the trees.
+
+Everywhere was the bright moonlight--over the wet rocks, and sand, and
+glimmering on the slow tide of the river, but nowhere could she see
+Wilbur, or a form that looked like a man.  Then the moonlight glinted
+on something at the edge of the river.  She ran to it and found the
+coffee-can half in the water and partially filled with sand.
+
+A wild temptation to scream came over her, but the tight muscles of her
+throat let out no sound.  But if Wilbur were not here, where had he
+gone?  He could not have vanished into thin air.  The ripple of the
+water washing on the sand replied.  Yes, that Current might have rolled
+his body away.
+
+To shut out the grim sight of the river she turned.  Stretched across
+the ground at her feet she saw clearly the impression of a body in the
+moist sand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+A HINT OF WHITE
+
+The heels had left two deeply defined gouges in the ground; there was a
+sharp hollow where the head had lain, and a broad depression for the
+shoulders.  It was the impression of the body of a man--a large man
+like Wilbur.  Any hope, any doubt she might have had, slipped from her
+mind, and despair rolled into it with an even, sullen current, like the
+motion of the river.
+
+It is strange what we do with our big moments of fear and sorrow and
+even of joy.  Now Mary stooped and carefully washed out the coffee-pot,
+and filled it again with water higher up the bank; and turned back
+toward the edge of the trees.
+
+It was all subconscious, this completing of the task which Wilbur had
+begun, and subconscious still was her careful rebuilding of the fire
+till it flamed high, as though she were setting a signal to recall the
+wanderer.  But the flame, throwing warmth and red light across her
+eyes, recalled her sharply to reality, and she looked up and saw the
+dull dawn brightening beyond the dark evergreens.
+
+Guilt, too, swept over her, for she remembered what big, handsome Dick
+Wilbur had said: He would meet his end through a woman.  Now it had
+come to him, and through her.
+
+She cringed at the thought, for what was she that a man should die in
+her service?  She raised her hands with a moan to the nodding tops of
+the trees, to the vast, black sky above them, and the full knowledge of
+Wilbur's strength came to her, for had he not ridden calmly, defiantly,
+into the heart of this wilderness, confident in his power to care both
+for himself and for her?  But she!  What could she do wandering by
+herself?  The image of Pierre le Rouge grew dim indeed and sad and
+distant.
+
+She looked about her at the pack, which had been distributed expertly,
+and disposed on the ground by Wilbur.  She could not even lash it in
+place behind the saddle.  So she drew the blanket once more around her
+shoulders and sat down to think.
+
+She might return to the house--doubtless she could find her way back.
+And leave Pierre in the heart of the mountains, surely lost to her
+forever.  She made a determination, sullen, like a child, to ride on
+and on into the wilderness, and let fate take care of her.  The pack
+she could bundle together as best she might; she would live as she
+might; and for a guide there would be the hunger for Pierre.
+
+So she ended her thoughts with a hope; her head nodded lower, and she
+slept the deep, deep sleep of the exhausted mind and the lifeless body.
+She woke hours later with a start, instantly alert, quivering with fear
+and life and energy, for she felt like one who has gone to sleep with
+voices in his ear.
+
+While she slept some one had been near her; she could have sworn it
+before her startled eyes glanced around.
+
+And though she kept whispering, with white lips, "No, no; it is
+impossible!" yet there was evidence which proved it.  The fire should
+have burned out, but instead it flamed more brightly than ever, and
+there was a little heap of fuel laid conveniently close.  Moreover,
+both horses were saddled, and the pack lashed on the saddle of her own
+mount.
+
+Whatever man or demon had done this work evidently intended that she
+should ride Wilbur's beautiful bay.  Yes, for when she went closer,
+drawn by her wonder, she found that the stirrups had been much
+shortened.
+
+Nothing was forgotten by this invisible caretaker; he had even left out
+the cooking-tins, and she found a little batter of flapjack flour mixed.
+
+The riddle was too great for solving.  Perhaps Wilbur had disappeared
+merely to play a practical jest on her; but that supposition was too
+childish to be retained an instant.  Perhaps--perhaps Pierre himself
+had discovered her, but having vowed never to see her again, he cared
+for her like the invisible hands in the old Greek fable.
+
+This, again, an instinctive knowledge made her dismiss.  If he were so
+close, loving her, he could not stay away; she read in her own heart,
+and knew.  Then it must be something else; evil, because it feared to
+be seen; not wholly evil, because it surrounded her with care.
+
+At least this new emotion obscured somewhat the terror and the sorrow
+of Wilbur's disappearance.  She cooked her breakfast as if obeying the
+order of the unseen, climbed into the saddle of Wilbur's horse, and
+started off up the valley, leading her own mount.
+
+Every moment or so she turned in the saddle suddenly in the hope of
+getting a glimpse of the follower, but even when she surveyed the
+entire stretch of country from the crest of a low hill, she saw
+nothing--not the least sign of life.
+
+She rode slowly, this day, for she was stiff and sore from the violent
+journey of the night before, but though she went slowly, she kept
+steadily at the trail.  It was a broad and pleasant one, being the
+beaten sand of the river-bottom; and the horse she rode was the finest
+that ever pranced beneath her.
+
+His trot was as smooth and springy as the gallop of most horses, and
+when she let him run over a few level stretches, it was as if she had
+suddenly been taken up from the earth on wings.  There was something
+about the animal, too, which reminded her of its vanished owner; for it
+had strength and pride and gentleness at once.  Unquestionably it took
+kindly to its new rider; for once when she dismounted the big horse
+walked up behind and nuzzled her shoulder.
+
+The mountains were much plainer before the end of the day.  They rose
+sheer up in wave upon frozen wave like water piled ragged by some
+terrific gale, with the tops of the waters torn and tossed and then
+frozen forever in that position, like a fantastic and gargantuan mask
+of dreaming terror.  It overawed the heart of Mary Brown to look up to
+them, but there was growing in her a new impulse of friendly
+understanding with all this scalped, bald region of rocks, as if in
+entering the valley she had passed through the gate which closes out
+the gentler world, and now she was admitted as a denizen of the
+mountain-desert, that scarred and ugly asylum for crime and fear and
+grandeur.
+
+Feeling this new emotion, the old horizons of her mind gave way and
+widened; her gentle nature, which had known nothing but smiles,
+admitted the meaning of a frown.  Did she not ride under the very
+shadow of that frown with her two horses?  Was she not armed?  She
+touched the holster at her hip, and smiled.  To be sure, she could
+never hit a mark with that ponderous weapon, but at least the pistol
+gave the seeming of a dangerous lone rider, familiar with the wilds.
+
+It was about dark, and she was on the verge of looking about for a
+suitable camping-place, when the bay halted sharply, tossed up his
+head, and whinnied.  From the far distance she thought she heard the
+beginning of a whinny in reply.  She could not be sure, but the
+possibility made her pulse quicken.  In this region, she knew, no
+stranger could be a friend.
+
+So she started the bay at a gallop and put a couple of swift miles
+between her and the point at which she had heard the sound; no living
+creature, she was sure, could have followed the pace the bay held
+during that distance.  So, secure in her loneliness, she trotted the
+horse around a bend of the rocks and came on the sudden light of a
+camp-fire.
+
+It was too late to wheel and gallop away; so she remained with her hand
+fumbling at the butt of the revolver, and her wide, blue eyes fixed on
+the flicker of the fire.  Not a voice accosted her.  As far as she
+could peer among the lithe trunks of the saplings, not a sign of a
+living thing was near.
+
+Yet whoever built that fire must be near, for it was obviously, newly
+laid.  Perhaps some fleeing outlaw had pitched his camp here and had
+been startled by her coming.  In that case he lurked somewhere in the
+woods at that moment, his keen eyes fixed on her, and his gun gripped
+hard in his hand.  Perhaps--and the thought thrilled her--this little
+camp had been prepared by the same power, human or unearthly, which had
+watched over her early that morning.
+
+All reason and sane caution warned her to ride on and leave that camp
+unmolested, but an overwhelming, tingling curiosity besieged her.  The
+thin column of smoke rose past the dark trees like a ghost, and
+reaching the unsheltered space above the trees, was smitten by a light
+wind and jerked away at a sharp angle.
+
+She looked closer and saw a bed made of a great heap of the tips of
+limbs of spruce, a bed softer than down and more fragrant than any
+manufactured perfume, however costly.
+
+Possibly it was the sight of this bed which tempted her down from the
+saddle, at last.  With the reins over her arm, she stood close to the
+fire and warmed her hands, peering all the while on every side, like
+some wild and beautiful creature tempted by the bait of the trap, but
+shrinking from the scent of man.
+
+As she stood there a broad, yellow moon edged its way above the hills
+and rolled up through the black trees and then floated through the sky.
+Beneath such a moon no harm could come to her.  It was while she stared
+at it, letting her tensed alertness relax little by little, that she
+saw, or thought she saw, a hint of moving white pass over the top of
+the rise of ground and disappear among the trees.
+
+She could not be sure, but her first impulse was to gather the reins
+with a jerk and place her foot in the stirrup; but then she looked back
+and saw the fire, burning low now and asking like a human voice to be
+replenished from the heap of small, broken fuel near by; and she saw
+also the softly piled bed of evergreens.
+
+She removed her foot from the stirrup.  What mattered that imaginary
+figure of moving white?  She felt a strong power of protection lying
+all about her, breathing out to her with the keen scent of the pines,
+fanning her face with the chill of the night breeze.  She was alone,
+but she was secure in the wilderness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+JACK
+
+For many a minute she waited by that camp-fire, but there was never a
+sign of the builder of it, though she centered all her will in making
+her eyes and ears sharper to pierce through the darkness and to gather
+from the thousand obscure whispers of the forest any sounds of human
+origin.  So she grew bold at length to take off the pack and the
+saddles; the camp was hers, built for her coming by the invisible power
+which surrounded her, which read her mind, it seemed, and chose
+beforehand the certain route which she must follow.
+
+She resigned herself to that force without question, and the worry of
+her search disappeared.  It seemed certain that this omnipotence,
+whatever it might be, was reading her wishes and acting with all its
+power to fulfill them, so that in the end it was merely a question of
+time before she should accomplish her mission--before she should meet
+Pierre le Rouge face to face.
+
+That night her sleep was deep, indeed, and she only wakened when the
+slant light of the sun struck across her eyes.  It was a bright day,
+crisp and chill, and through the clear air the mountains seemed leaning
+directly above her, and chief of all two peaks, almost exactly similar,
+black monsters which ruled the range.  Toward the gorge between them
+the valley of the Old Crow aimed its course, and straight up that
+diminishing canon she rode all day.
+
+The broad, sandy bottom changed and contracted until the channel was
+scarcely wide enough for the meager stream of water, and beside it she
+picked her way along a narrow bridle-path with banks on either side,
+which became with every mile more like cliffs, walling her in and
+dooming her to a single destination.
+
+It was evening before she came to the headwaters of the Old Crow, and
+rode out into the gorge between the two mountains.  The trail failed
+her here.  There was no semblance of a ravine to follow, except the
+mighty gorge between the two peaks, and into the dark throat of this
+pass she ventured, like some maiden of medieval romance riding through
+a solemn gate with the guarding towers tall and black on either side.
+
+The moment she was well started in it and the steep shadow of the
+evening fell across her almost like night from the west, her heart grew
+cold as the air of that lofty region.  A sense of coming danger filled
+her, like a little child when it passes from a lighted room into one
+dark and still.  Yet she kept on, holding a tight rein, throwing many a
+fearful glance at the vast rocks which might have concealed an entire
+army in every mile of their extent.
+
+When she found the cabin she mistook it at first for merely another
+rock of singular shape.  It was at this shape that she stared, and
+checked her horse, and not till then did she note the faint flicker of
+a light no brighter or more distinct than the phosphorescent glow of
+the eyes of a hunted beast.
+
+All her impulse was to drive her spurs home and pass that place at a
+racing gallop, but she checked the impulse sharply and began to reason.
+In the first place, it was doubtless only the cabin of some prospector,
+such as she had often heard of.  In the second place, night was almost
+upon her, and she saw no desirable camping-place, or at least any with
+the necessary water at hand.
+
+What harm could come to her?  Among Western men, she well knew a woman
+is safer than all the law and the police of the settled East can make
+her, so she nerved her courage and advanced toward the faint, changing
+light.
+
+The cabin was hidden very cunningly.  Crouched among the mighty
+boulders which earthquakes and storms of some wilder, earlier epoch had
+torn away from the side of the crags above, the house was like another
+stone, leaning its back to the mountain for support.
+
+When she drew very close she knew that the light which glimmered at the
+window must come from an open fire, and the thought of a fire warmed
+her very heart.  She hallooed, and receiving no answer, fastened the
+horses and entered the house.  The door swung to behind her, as if of
+its own volition it wished to make her close prisoner.
+
+The place consisted of one room, and not a spacious one at that, but
+arranged as a shelter, not a home.  The cooking, apparently, was done
+over the open hearth, for there was no sign of any stove, and,
+moreover, on the wall near the fireplace hung several soot-blackened
+pans and the inevitable coffee-pot.
+
+There were two bunks built on opposite sides of the room, and in the
+middle a table was made of a long section split from the heart of a log
+by wedges, apparently, and still rude and undressed, except for the
+preliminary smoothing off which had been done with a broad-ax.
+
+The great plank was supported at either end by a roughly constructed
+saw-buck.  It was very low, and for this reason two fairly square
+boulders of comfortable proportions were sufficiently high to serve as
+chairs.
+
+For the rest, the furniture was almost too meager to suggest human
+habitation, but from nails on the wall there depended a few shirts and
+a pair of chaps, as well as a much-battered quirt.  But a bucket of
+water in a corner suggested cleanliness, and a small, round, highly
+polished steel plate, hanging on the wall in lieu of a mirror, further
+fortified her decision that the owner of this place must be a man
+somewhat particular as to his appearance.
+
+Here she interrupted her observations to build up the fire, which was
+flickering down and apparently on the verge of going out.  She worked
+busily for a few minutes, and a roaring blaze rewarded her; she took
+off her slicker to enjoy the warmth, and in doing so, turned, and saw
+the owner of the place standing with folded arms just inside the door.
+
+"Making yourself to home?" asked the host, in a low, strangely pleasant
+voice.
+
+"Do you mind?" asked Mary Brown.  "I couldn't find a place that would
+do for camping."
+
+And she summoned her most winning smile.  It was wasted, she knew at
+once, for the stranger hardened perceptibly, and his lip curled
+slightly in scorn or anger.  In all her life Mary had never met a man
+so obdurate, and, moreover, she felt that he could not be wooed into a
+good humor.
+
+"If you'd gone farther up the gorge," said the other, "you'd of found
+the best sort of a campin' place--water and everything."
+
+"Then I'll go," said Mary, shrinking at the thought of the strange,
+cold outdoors compared with this cheery fire.  But she put on the
+slicker and started for the door.
+
+At the last moment the host was touched with compunction.  He called:
+"Wait a minute.  There ain't no call to hurry.  If you can get along
+here just stick around."
+
+For a moment Mary hesitated, knowing that only the unwritten law of
+Western hospitality compelled that speech; it was the crackle and flare
+of the bright fire which overcame her pride.
+
+She laid off the slicker again, saying, with another smile: "For just a
+few minutes, if you don't mind."
+
+"Sure," said the other gracelessly, and tossed his own slicker onto a
+bunk.
+
+Covertly, but very earnestly, Mary was studying him.  He was hardly
+more than a boy--handsome, slender.
+
+Now that handsome face was under a cloud of gloom, a frown on the
+forehead and a sneer on the lips, but it was something more than the
+expression which repelled Mary.  For she felt that no matter how she
+wooed him, she could never win the sympathy of this darkly handsome,
+cruel youth; he was aloof from her, and the distance between them could
+never be crossed.  She knew at once that the mysterious bridges which
+link men with women broke down in this case, and she was strongly
+tempted to leave the cabin to the sole possession of her surly host.
+
+It was the warmth of the fire which once more decided against her
+reason, so she laid hands on one of the blocks of stone to roll it
+nearer to the hearth.  She could not budge it.  Then she caught the
+sneering laughter of the man, and strove again in a fury.  It was no
+use; for the stone merely rocked a little and settled back in its place
+with a bump.
+
+"Here," said the boy, "I'll move it for you."
+
+It was a hard lift for him, but he set his teeth, raised the stone in
+his slender hands, and set it down again at a comfortable distance from
+the fire.
+
+"Thank you," smiled Mary, but the boy stood panting against the wall,
+and for answer merely bestowed on her a rather malicious glance of
+triumph, as though he gloried in his superior strength and despised her
+weakness.
+
+Some conversation was absolutely necessary, for the silence began to
+weigh on her.  She said: "My name is Mary Brown."
+
+"Is it?" said the boy, quite without interest.  "You can call me Jack."
+
+He sat down on the other stone, his dark face swept by the shadows of
+the flames, and rolled a cigarette, not deftly, but like one who is
+learning the mastery of the art.  It surprised Mary, watching his
+fumbling fingers.  She decided that Jack must be even younger than he
+looked.
+
+She noticed also that the boy cast, from time to time, a sharp, rather
+worried glance of expectation toward the door, as if he feared it would
+open and disclose some important arrival.  Furthermore, those old worn
+shirts hanging on the wall were much too large for the throat and
+shoulders of Jack.
+
+Apparently, he lived there with some companion, and a companion of such
+a nature that he did not wish him to be seen by visitors.  This
+explained the lad's coldness in receiving a guest; it also stimulated
+Mary to linger about a few more minutes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE WHISPER OF THE KNIFE
+
+Not that she stayed there without a growing fear, but she still felt
+about her, like the protection of some invisible cloak, the presence of
+the strange guide who had followed her up the valley of the Old Crow.
+
+It seemed as if the boy were reading her mind.
+
+"See you got two horses.  Come up alone?"
+
+"Most of the way," said Mary, and tingled with a rather feline pleasure
+to see that her curtness merely sharpened the interest of Jack.
+
+The boy puffed on his cigarette, not with long, slow breaths of
+inhalation like a practised smoker, but with a puckered face as though he
+feared that the fumes might drift into his eyes.
+
+"Why," thought Mary, "he's only a child!"
+
+Her heart warmed a little as she adopted this view-point of her surly
+host.  Being warmed, and having much to say, words came of themselves.
+Surely it would do no harm to tell the story to this queer urchin, who
+might be able to throw some light on the nature of the invisible
+protector.
+
+"I started with a man for guide."  She fixed a searching gaze on the boy.
+"His name was Dick Wilbur."
+
+She could not tell whether it was a tremble of the boy's hand or a short
+motion to knock off the cigarette ash.
+
+"Did you say 'was' Dick Wilbur?"
+
+"Yes.  Did you know him?"
+
+"Heard of him, I think.  Kind of a hard one, wasn't he?"
+
+"No, no!  A fine, brave, gentle fellow--poor Dick!"
+
+She stopped, her eyes filling with tears at many a memory.
+
+"H-m!" coughed the boy.  "I thought he was one of old Boone's gang?  If
+he's dead, that made the last of 'em--except Red Pierre."
+
+It was like the sound of a trumpet call at her ear.  Mary sat up with a
+start.
+
+"What do you know of Red Pierre?"
+
+The boy flushed a little, and could not quite meet her eye.
+
+"Nothin'."
+
+"At least you know that he's still alive?"
+
+"Sure.  Any one does.  When he dies the whole range will know about
+it--damn quick.  I know _that_ much about Red Pierre; but who doesn't?"
+
+"I, for one."
+
+"You!"
+
+Strangely enough, there was more of accusation than of surprise in the
+word.
+
+"Certainly," repeated Mary.  "I've only been in this part of the country
+for a short time.  I really know almost nothing about the--the legends."
+
+"Legends?" said the boy, and laughed with a voice of such rich, light
+music that it took the breath from Mary.  "Legend?  Say, lady, if Red
+Pierre is just a legend the Civil War ain't no more'n a fable.  Legend?
+You go anywhere on the range an' get 'em talking about that legend, and
+they'll make you think it's an honest-to-goodness fact, and no mistake."
+
+Mary queried earnestly: "Tell me about Red Pierre.  It's almost as hard
+to learn anything of him as it is to find out anything about McGurk."
+
+"What you doing?" asked the boy, keen with suspicion.  "Making a study of
+them two for a book?"
+
+He wiped a damp forehead.
+
+"Take it from me, lady, it ain't healthy to join up them two even in
+talk!"
+
+"Is there any harm in words?"
+
+The boy was so upset for some unknown reason that he rose and paced up
+and down the room in a nervous tremor.
+
+"Lots of harm in fool words."
+
+He sat down again, and seemed a little anxious to explain his unusual
+conduct.
+
+"Ma'am, suppose you had a well plumb full of nitroglycerin in your back
+yard; suppose there was a forest fire comin' your way from all sides;
+would you like to have people talk about the nitroglycerin and that
+forest fire meeting?  Even the talk would give you chills.  That's the
+way it is with Pierre and McGurk.  When they meet there's going to be a
+fight that'll stop the hearts of the people that have to look on."
+
+Mary smiled to cover her excitement.
+
+"But are they coming your way?"
+
+The question seemed to infuriate young Jack, who cried: "Ain't that a
+fool way of talkin'?  Lady, they're coming every one's way.  You never
+know where they'll start from or where they'll land.  If there's a
+thunder-cloud all over the sky, do you know where the lightning's going
+to strike?"
+
+"Excuse me,", said Mary, but she was still eager with curiosity, "but I
+should think that a youngster like you wouldn't have anything to fear
+from even those desperadoes."
+
+"Youngster, eh?" snarled the boy, whose wrath seemed Implacable.  "I can
+make my draw and start my gun as fast as any man--except them two,
+maybe"--he lowered his voice somewhat even to name them--"Pierre--McGurk!"
+
+"It seems hopeless to find out anything about McGurk," said Mary, "but at
+least you can tell me safely about Red Pierre."
+
+"Interested in him, eh?" said the boy dryly.
+
+"Well, he's a rather romantic figure, don't you think?"
+
+"Romantic?  Lady, about a month ago I was talking with a lady that was a
+widow because of Red Pierre.  She didn't think him none too romantic."
+
+"Red Pierre had killed the woman's husband?" repeated Mary, with pale
+lips.
+
+"Yep.  He was one of the gang that took a chance with Pierre and got
+bumped off.  Had three bullets in him and dropped without getting his gun
+out of the leather.  Pierre sure does a nice, artistic job.  He serves
+you a murder with all the trimmings.  If I wanted to die nice and polite
+without making a mess, I don't know who I'd rather go to than Red Pierre."
+
+"A murderer!" mused Mary, with bowed head.
+
+The boy opened his lips to speak, but changed his mind and sat regarding
+the girl with a somewhat sinister smile.
+
+"But might it not be," said Mary, "that he killed one man in self-defense
+and then his destiny drove him, and bad luck forced him into one bad
+position after another?  There have been histories as strange as that,
+you know."
+
+Jack laughed again, but most of the music was gone from the sound, and it
+was simply a low, ominous purr.
+
+"Sure," he said.  "You can take a bear-cub and keep him tame till he gets
+the taste of blood, but after that you got to keep him muzzled, you know.
+Pierre needs a muzzle, but there ain't enough gun-fighters on the range
+to put one on him."
+
+Something like pride crept into the boy's voice while he spoke, and he
+ended with a ringing tone.  Then, feeling the curious, judicial eyes of
+Mary upon him, he abruptly changed the subject.
+
+"You say Dick Wilbur is dead?"
+
+"I don't know.  I think he is."
+
+"But he started out with you.  You ought to know."
+
+"It was like this: We had camped on the edge of the trees coming up the
+Old Crow Valley, and Dick went off with the can to get water at the
+river.  He was gone a long time, and when I went out to look for him I
+found the can at the margin of the river half filled with sand, and
+beside it there was the impression of the body of a big man.  That was
+all I found, and Dick never came back."
+
+They were both silent for a moment.
+
+"Could he have fallen into the river?"
+
+"Sure.  He was probably helped in.  Did you look for the footprints?"
+
+"I didn't think of that."
+
+Jack was speechless with scorn.
+
+"Sat down and cried, eh?"
+
+"I was dazed; I couldn't think.  But he couldn't have been killed by some
+other man.  There was no shot fired; I should have heard it."
+
+Jack moistened his lips.
+
+"Lady, a knife don't make much sound either going or coming out--not much
+more sound than a whisper, but that whisper means a lot.  I got an idea
+that Dick heard it.  Then the river covered him up."
+
+He stopped short and stared at Mary with squinted eyes.
+
+"D'you mean to tell me that you had the nerve to come all the way up the
+Old Crow by yourself?"
+
+"Every inch of the way."
+
+Jack leaned forward, sneering, savage.
+
+"Then I suppose you put the hitch that's on that pack outside?"
+
+"No."
+
+Jack was dumfounded.
+
+"Then you admit--"
+
+"That first night when I went to sleep I felt as if there were something
+near me.  When I woke up there was a bright fire burning in front of me
+and the pack had been lashed and placed on one of the horses.  At first I
+thought that it was Dick, who had come back.  But Dick didn't appear all
+day.  The next night--"
+
+"Wait!" said Jack.  "This is gettin' sort of creepy.  If you was the
+drinking kind I'd say you'd been hitting up the red-eye."
+
+"The next evening," continued Mary steadily, "I came about dark on a
+camp-fire with a bed of twigs near it.  I stayed by the fire, but no one
+appeared.  Once I thought I heard a horse whinny far away, and once I
+thought that I saw a streak of white disappear over the top of a hill."
+
+The boy sprang up, shuddering with panic.
+
+"You saw what?"
+
+"Nothing.  I thought for a minute that it was a bit of something white,
+but it was gone all at once."
+
+"White--vanished at once--went into the dark as fast as a horse can
+gallop?"
+
+"Something like that.  Do you think it was some one?"
+
+For answer the boy whipped out his revolver, examined it, and spun the
+cylinder with shaking hands.  Then he said through set teeth: "So you
+come up here trailin' _him_ after you, eh?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"McGurk!"
+
+The name came like a rifle shot and Mary rose in turn and shrank back
+toward the wall, for there was murder in the lighted black eyes which
+stared after her and crumbling fear in her own heart at the thought of
+McGurk hovering near,--of the peril that impended for Pierre.  Of the
+nights in the valley of the Crow she refused to let herself think.  Cold
+beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead.
+
+"You fool--you fool!  Damn your pretty pink-and-white face--you've done
+for us all!  Get out!"
+
+Mary moved readily enough toward the door, her teeth chattering with
+terror in the face of this fury.
+
+Jack continued wildly: "Done for us all; got us all as good as under the
+sod.  I wish you was in--  Get out quick, or I'll forget--you're a woman!"
+
+He broke into a shrill, hysterical laughter, which stopped short and
+finished in a heart-broken whisper: "Pierre!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+LAUGHTER
+
+At that Mary, who stood with her hand on the latch, whirled and stood
+wide-eyed, her astonishment greater than her fear, for that whisper
+told her a thousand things.
+
+Through her mind all the time that she stayed in the cabin there had
+passed a curious surmise that this very place might be the covert of
+Pierre le Rouge--he of the dark red hair and the keen blue eyes.  There
+was a fatality about it, for the invisible Power which had led her up
+the valley of the Old Crow surely would not make mistakes.
+
+In her search for Pierre, Providence brought her to this place, and
+Providence could not be wrong.  This, a vague emotion stirring in her
+somewhere between reason and the heart, grew to an almost certain
+knowledge as she heard the whisper, the faint, heartbroken whisper:
+"Pierre!"
+
+And when she turned to the boy again, noting the shirts and the chaps
+hanging at the wall, she knew they belonged to Pierre as surely as if
+she had seen him hang them there.
+
+The fingers of Jack were twisted around the butt of his revolver, white
+with the intensity of the pressure.
+
+Now he cried: "Get out!  You've done your work; get out!"
+
+But Mary stepped straight toward the murderous, pale face.
+
+"I'll stay," she said, "and wait for Pierre."
+
+The boy blanched.
+
+"Stay?" he echoed.
+
+The heart of Mary went out to this trusty companion who feared for his
+friend.
+
+She said gently: "Listen; I've come all this way looking for Pierre,
+but not to harm him, or to betray him, I'm his friend.  Can't you trust
+me, Jack?"
+
+"Trust you?  No more than I'll trust what came with you!"
+
+And the fierce black eyes lingered on Mary and then fled past her
+toward the door, as if the boy debated hotly and silently whether or
+not it would be better to put an end to this intruder, but stayed his
+hand, fearing that Power which had followed her up the valley of the
+Old Crow.
+
+It was that same invisible guardian who made Mary strong now; it was
+like the hand of a friend on her shoulder, like the voice of a friend
+whispering reassuring words at her ear.  She faced those blazing, black
+eyes steadily.  It would be better to be frank, wholly frank.
+
+"This is the house of Pierre.  I know it as surely as if I saw him
+sitting here now.  You can't deceive me.  And I'll stay.  I'll even
+tell you why.  Once he said that he loved me, Jack, but he left me
+because of a strange superstition; and so I've followed to tell him
+that I want to be near no matter what fate hangs over him."
+
+And the boy, whiter still, and whiter, looked at her with clearing,
+narrowing eyes.
+
+"So you're one of them," said the boy softly; "you're one of the fools
+who listen to Red Pierre.  Well, I know you; I've known you from the
+minute I seen you crouched there at the fire.  You're the one Pierre
+met at the dance at the Crittenden schoolhouse.  Tell me!"
+
+"Yes," said Mary, marveling greatly.
+
+"And he told you he loved you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+It was a fainter voice now, and the color was going up her cheeks.
+
+The lad fixed her with his cold scorn and then turned on his heel and
+slipped into an easy position on the bunk.
+
+"Then wait for him to come.  He'll be here before morning."
+
+But Mary followed across the room and touched the shoulder of Jack.  It
+was as if she touched a wild wolf, for the lad whirled and struck her
+hand away in an outburst of silent fury.
+
+"Why shouldn't I stay?  He hasn't--he hasn't changed--Jack?"
+
+The insolent black eyes looked up and scanned her slowly from head to
+foot.  Then he laughed in the same deliberate manner.  It was to Mary
+as if her clothes had been torn from her body and she were exposed to
+the bold eyes of a crowd, like a slave put up for sale.
+
+"No, I guess he thinks as much of you now as he ever did."
+
+"You are lying to me," said the girl faintly, but the terror in her
+eyes said another thing.
+
+"He thinks as much of you as he ever did.  He thinks as much of you as
+he does of the rest of the soft-handed, pretty-faced fools who listen
+to him and believe him.  I suppose----"
+
+He broke off to laugh heartily again, with a jarring, forced note which
+escaped Mary.
+
+"I suppose that he made love to you one minute and the next told you
+that bad luck--something about the cross--kept him away from you?"
+
+Each slow word, like a blow of a fist, drove the girl quivering back.
+She closed her eyes to shut out the scorn of that handsome, boyish
+face; closed her eyes to summon out from the dark of her mind the
+picture of Pierre le Rouge as he had knelt before her and told her of
+his love; of Pierre le Rouge as he had lain beside her with the small,
+shining cross held high above his head, and waited for death to come
+over them both.  She saw all this, and then she heard the voice of
+Pierre renouncing her.
+
+She opened her eyes again.  She cried:
+
+"It is all a lie!  If he is not true, there's no truth in the world."
+
+"If you come down to that," said the boy coldly, "there ain't much
+wasted this side of the Rockies.  It's about as scarce as rain."
+
+He continued in an almost kindly tone: "What would you do with a wild
+man like Red Pierre?  Run along; git out of here; grab your horse, and
+beat it back to civilization; there ain't no place for you up here in
+the wilderness."
+
+"What would I do with him?" cried the girl.
+
+"Love him!"
+
+It seemed as though her words, like whips, lashed the boy back to his
+murderous anger.  He lay with blazing eyes, watching her for a moment,
+too moved to speak.  At last he propped himself on one elbow, shook a
+small, white-knuckled fist under the nose of Mary, and cried: "Then
+what would he do with you?"
+
+He went on: "Would he wear you around his neck like a watch charm?"
+
+"I'd bring him back with me--back into the East, and he would be lost
+among the crowds and never suspected of his past."
+
+"_You'd_ bring Pierre anywhere?  Say, lady, that's like hearing the
+sheep talk about leading the wolf around by the nose.  If all the men
+in the ranges can't catch him, or make him budge an inch out of the way
+he's picked, do you think you could stir him?"
+
+Jeering laughter shook him; it seemed that he would never be done with
+his laughter, yet there was a hint of the hysterically mirthless in it.
+It came to a jarring stop.
+
+He said: "D'you think he's just bein' driven around by chance?  Lady,
+d'you think he even wants to get out of this life of his?  No, he loves
+it!  He loves the danger.  D'you think a man that's used to breathing
+in a whirlwind can get used to living in calm air?  It can't be done!"
+
+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-raced, 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 of blue-black hair.  The firelight flickered
+and danced across the silken shimmer of it.  It swept wildly past the
+waist, a glorious, night-dark tide in which the heart of a strong man
+could be tangled and lost.  With quivering lips Jacqueline cried: "Look
+at me!  Am I worthy of him?"
+
+Short step by step Mary went back, staring with fascinated eyes as one
+who sees some devilish, midnight revelry, and shrinks away from it lest
+the sight should blast her.  She covered her eyes with her hands but
+instantly strong grips fell on her wrists and her hands were jerked
+down from her face.  She looked up into the eyes of a beautiful tigress.
+
+"Answer me--your yellow hair against mine--your child fingers against
+my grip--are you equal with me?"
+
+But the strength of Jacqueline faded and grew small; her arms fell to
+her side; she stepped back, with a rising pallor taking the place of
+the red.  For Mary, brushing her hands, one gloved and one bare, before
+her eyes, returned the stare of the mountain girl with a calm and equal
+scorn.  Her heart was breaking, but a mighty loathing filled up her
+veins in place of strength.
+
+"Tell me," she said, "was--was this man living with you when he came to
+me and--and made speeches--about love?"
+
+"Bah!  He was living with me.  I tell you, he came back and laughed
+with me about it, and told me about your baby-blue eyes when they
+filled with tears; laughed and laughed and laughed, I tell you, as I
+could laugh now."
+
+The other twisted her hands together, moaning: "And I have followed
+him, even to the place where he keeps his--woman?  Ah, how I hate
+myself; how I despise myself.  I'm unclean--unclean in my own eyes!"
+
+"Wait!" called Jacqueline.  "You are leaving too soon.  The night is
+cold."
+
+"I am going.  There is no need to gibe at me."
+
+"But wait--he will want to see you!  I will tell him that you have been
+here--that you came clear up the valley of the Old Crow to see him and
+beg him on your knees to love you--he'll be angry to have missed the
+scene!"
+
+But the door closed on Mary as she fled with her hands pressed against
+her ears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+A TALE OF A CARELESS MAN
+
+Jacqueline ran to the door and threw it open.
+
+"Ride down the valley!" she cried.  "That's right.  He's coming up, and
+he'll meet you on the way.  He'll be glad--to see you!"
+
+She saw the rider swing sharply about, and the clatter of the galloping
+hoofs died out up the valley; then she closed the door, dropped the
+latch, and, running to the middle of the room, threw up her arms and
+cried out, a wild, shrill yell of triumph like the call of the old
+Indian brave when he rises with the scalp of his murdered enemy
+dripping in his hand.
+
+The extended arms she caught back to her breast, and stood there with
+head tilted back, crushing her delight closer to her heart.
+
+And she whispered:  "Pierre!  Mine, mine!  Pierre!"
+
+Next she went to the steel mirror on the wall and looked long at the
+flushed, triumphant image.  At length she started, like one awakening
+from a happy dream, and hurriedly coiled the thick, soft tresses about
+her head.  Never before had she lingered so over a toilet, patting each
+lock into place, twisting her head from side to side like a peacock
+admiring its image.
+
+Now she looked about hungrily for a touch of color and uttered a little
+moan of vexation when she saw nothing, till her eyes, piercing through
+the gloom of a dim corner, saw a spray of autumn leaves, long left
+there and still stained with beauty.  She fastened them at the breast
+of her shirt, and so arrayed began to cook.
+
+Never was there a merrier cook, not even some jolly French chef with a
+heart made warm with good red wine, for she sang as she worked, and
+whenever she had to cross the room it was with a dancing step.  Spring
+was in her blood, warm spring that loosens the muscles about the heart
+and makes the eyes of girls dim and sets men smiling for no cause
+except that they are living, and rejoicing with the whole awakening
+world.
+
+So it was with Jacqueline.  Ever and anon as she leaned over the pans
+and stirred the fire she raised her head and remained a moment
+motionless, waiting for a sound, yearning to hear, and each time she
+had to look down again with a sigh.
+
+As it was, he took her by surprise, for he entered with the soft foot
+of the hunted and remained an instant searching the room with a careful
+glance.  Not that he suspected, not that he had not relaxed his guard
+and his vigilance the moment he caught sight of the flicker of light
+through the mass of great boulders, but the lifelong habit of
+watchfulness remained with him.
+
+Even when he spoke face to face with a man, he never seemed to be
+giving more than half his attention, for might not some one else
+approach if he lost himself in order to listen to any one voice?  He
+had covered half the length of the room with that soundless step before
+she heard, and rose with a glad cry: "Pierre!"
+
+Meeting that calm blue eye, she checked herself mightily.
+
+"A hard ride?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing much."
+
+He took the rock nearest the fire and then raised a glance of inquiry.
+
+"I got cold," she said, "and rolled it over."
+
+He considered her and then the rock, not with suspicion, but as if he
+held the matter in abeyance for further consideration; a hunted man and
+a hunter must keep an eye for little things, must carry an armed hand
+and an armed heart even among friends.  As for Jacqueline, her color
+had risen, and she leaned hurriedly over a pan in which meat was frying.
+
+"Any results?" she asked.
+
+"Some."
+
+She waited, knowing that the story would come at length.
+
+He added after a moment: "Strange how careless some people get to be."
+
+"Yes?" she queried.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Another pause, during which he casually drummed his fingers on his
+knee.  She saw that he must receive more encouragement before he would
+tell, and she gave it, smiling to herself.  Women are old in certain
+ways of understanding in which men remain children forever.
+
+"I suppose we're still broke, Pierre?"
+
+"Broke?  Well, not entirely.  I got some results."
+
+"Good."
+
+"As a matter of fact, it was a pretty fair haul.  Watch that meat,
+Jack; I think it's burning."
+
+It was hardly beginning to cook, but she turned it obediently and hid
+another slow smile.  Rising, she passed behind his chair, and pretended
+to busy herself with something near the wall.  This was the environment
+and attitude which would make him talk most freely, she knew.
+
+"Speaking of careless men," said Pierre, "I could tell you a yarn,
+Jack."
+
+She stood close behind him and made about his unconscious head a
+gesture of caress, the overflow of an infinite tenderness.
+
+"I'd sure like to hear it, Pierre."
+
+"Well, it was like this: I knew a fellow who started on the range with
+a small stock of cattle.  He wasn't a very good worker, and he didn't
+understand cattle any too well, so he didn't prosper for quite a while.
+Then his affairs took a sudden turn for the better; his herd began to
+increase.  Nobody understood the reason, though a good many suspected,
+but one man fell onto the reason: our friend was simply running in a
+few doggies on the side, and he'd arranged a very ingenious way of
+changing the brands."
+
+"Pierre--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"What does 'ingenious' mean?"
+
+"Why, I should say it means 'skilful, clever,' and it carries with it
+the connotation of 'novel.'"
+
+"It carries the con-conno--what's that word, Pierre?"
+
+"I'm going to get some books for you, Jack, and we'll do a bit of
+reading on the side, shall we?"
+
+"I'd love that!"
+
+He turned and looked up to her sharply.
+
+He said: "Sometimes, Jack, you talk just like a girl."
+
+"Do I?  That's queer, isn't it?  But go on with the story."
+
+"He changed the brands very skilfully, and no one got the dope on him
+except this one man I mentioned; and that man kept his face shut.  He
+waited.
+
+"So it went on for a good many years.  The herd of our friend grew very
+rapidly.  He sold just enough cattle to keep himself and his wife
+alive; he was bent on making one big haul, you see.  So when his
+doggies got to the right age and condition for the market, he'd trade
+them off, one fat doggie for two or three skinny yearlings.  But
+finally he had a really big herd together, and shipped it off to the
+market on a year when the price was sky-high."
+
+"Like this year?"
+
+"Don't interrupt me, Jack!"
+
+From the shadow behind him she smiled again.
+
+"They went at a corking price, and our friend cleared up a good many
+thousand--I won't say just how much.  He sank part of it in a ruby
+brooch for his wife, and shoved the rest into a satchel.
+
+"You see how careful he'd been all those years while he was piling up
+his fortune?  Well, he began to get careless the moment he cashed in,
+which was rather odd.  He depended on his fighting power to keep that
+money safe, but he forgot that while he'd been making a business of
+rustling doggies and watching cattle markets, other men had been making
+a business of shooting fast and straight.
+
+"Among others there was the silent man who'd watched and waited for so
+long.  But this silent man hove alongside while our rich friend was
+bound home in a buckboard.
+
+"'Good evening!' he called.
+
+"The rich chap turned and heard; it all seemed all right, but he'd done
+a good deal of shady business in his day, and that made him suspicious
+of the silent man now.  So he reached for his gun and got it out just
+in time to be shot cleanly through the hand.
+
+"The silent man tied up that hand and sympathized with the rich chap;
+then he took that satchel and divided the paper money into two bundles.
+One was twice the size of the other, and the silent man took the
+smaller one.  There was only twelve thousand dollars in it.  Also, he
+took the ruby brooch for a friend--and as a sort of keepsake, you know.
+And he delivered a short lecture to the rich man on the subject of
+carelessness and rode away.  The rich man picked up his gun with his
+left hand and opened fire, but he'd never learned to shoot very well
+with that hand, so the silent man came through safe."
+
+"That's a bully story," said Jack.  "Who was the silent man?"
+
+"I think you've seen him a few times, at that."
+
+She concealed another smile, and said in the most businesslike manner:
+"Chow-time, Pierre," and set out the pans on the table.
+
+"By the way," he said easily, "I've got a little present for you, Jack."
+
+And he took out a gold pin flaming with three great rubies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+A COUNT TO TEN
+
+She merely stared, like a child which may either burst into tears or
+laughter, no one can prophesy which.
+
+He explained, rather worried: "You see, you are a girl, Jack, and I
+remembered that you were pleased about those clothes that you wore to
+the dance in Crittenden Schoolhouse, and so when I saw that pin
+I--well--"
+
+"Oh, Pierre!" said a stifled voice, "Oh, Pierre!"
+
+"By Jove, Jack, aren't angry, are you?  See, when you put it at the
+throat it doesn't look half bad!"
+
+And to try it, he pinned it on her shirt.  She caught both his hands,
+kissed them again and again, and then buried her face against them as
+she sobbed.  If the heavens had opened and a cloudburst crashed on the
+roof of the house, he would have been less astounded.
+
+"What is it?" he cried.  "Damn it all--Jack--you see--I meant--"
+
+But she tore herself away and flung herself face down on the bunk,
+sobbing more bitterly than ever.  He followed, awestricken--terrified.
+
+He touched her shoulder, but she shrank away and seemed more distressed
+than ever.  It was not the crying of a weak woman: these were
+heart-rending sounds, like the sobbing of a man who has never before
+known tears.
+
+"Jack--perhaps I've done something wrong--"
+
+He stammered again: "I didn't dream I was hurting you--"
+
+Then light broke upon him.
+
+He said: "It's because you don't want to be treated like a silly girl;
+eh, Jack?"
+
+But to complete his astonishment she moaned: "N-n-no!  It's b-b-because
+you--you n-n-never _do_ t-treat me like a g-g-girl, P-P-Pierre!"
+
+He groaned heartily: "Well, I'll be damned!"
+
+And because he was thoughtful he strode away, staring at the floor.  It
+was then that he saw it, small and crumpled on the floor.  He picked it
+up--a glove of the softest leather.  He carried it back to Jacqueline.
+
+"What's this?"
+
+"Wh-wh-what?"
+
+"This glove I found on the floor?"
+
+The sobs decreased at once--broke out more violently--and then she
+sprang up from the bunk, face suffused, and eyes timidly seeking his
+with upward glances.
+
+"Pierre, I've acted a regular chump.  Are you out with me?"
+
+"Not a bit, old-timer.  But about this glove?"
+
+"Oh, that's one of mine."
+
+She took it and slipped it into the bosom of her shirt--the calm blue
+eye of Pierre noted.
+
+He said: "We'll eat and forget the rest of this, if you want, Jack."
+
+"And you ain't mad at me, Pierre?"
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+There was just a trace of coldness in his tone, and she knew perfectly
+why it was there, but she chose to ascribe it to another cause.
+
+She explained: "You see, a woman is just about nine-tenths fool,
+Pierre, and has to bust out like that once in a while."
+
+"Oh!" said Pierre, and his eyes wandered past her as though he found
+food for thought on the wall.
+
+She ventured cautiously, after seeing that he was eating with appetite:
+"How does the pin look?"
+
+"Why, fine."
+
+And the silence began again.
+
+She dared not question him in that mood, so she ventured again: "The
+old boy shooting left-handed--didn't he even fan the wind near you?"
+
+"That was another bit of carelessness," said Pierre, but his smile held
+little of life.  "He might have known that if he _had_ shot close--by
+accident--I might have turned around and shot him dead--on purpose.
+But when a man stops thinking for a minute, he's apt to go on for a
+long time making a fool of himself."
+
+"Right," she said, brightening as she felt the crisis pass away, "and
+that reminds me of a story about--"
+
+"By the way, Jack, I'll wager there's a more interesting story than
+that you could tell me."
+
+"What?"
+
+"About how that glove happened to be on the floor."
+
+"Why, partner, it's just a glove of my own."
+
+"Didn't know you wore gloves with a leather as soft as that."
+
+"No?  Well, that story I was speaking about runs something like this--"
+
+And she told him a gay narrative, throwing all her spirit into it, for
+she was an admirable mimic.  He met her spirit more than half-way,
+laughing gaily; and so they reached the end of the story and the end of
+the meal at the same time.  She cleared away the pans with a few
+motions and tossed them clattering into a corner.  Neat housekeeping
+was not numbered among the many virtues of Jacqueline.
+
+"Now," said Pierre, leaning back against the wall, "we'll hear about
+that glove."
+
+"Damn the glove!" broke from her.
+
+"Steady, pal!"
+
+"Pierre, are you going to nag me about a little thing like that?"
+
+"Why, Jack, you're red and white in patches.  I'm interested."
+
+He sat up.
+
+"I'm more than interested.  The story, Jack."
+
+"Well, I suppose I have to tell you.  I did a fool thing to-day.  Took
+a little gallop down the trail, and on my way back I met a girl sitting
+in her saddle with her face in her hands, crying her heart out.  Poor
+kid!  She'd come up in a hunting party and got separated from the rest.
+
+"So I got sympathetic--"
+
+"About the first time on record that you've been sympathetic with
+another girl, eh?"
+
+"Shut up, Pierre!  And I brought her in here--right into your cabin,
+without thinking what I was doing, and gave her a cup of coffee.  Of
+course it was a pretty greenhorn trick, but I guess no harm will come
+of it.  The girl thinks it's a prospector's cabin--which it was once.
+She went on her way, happy, because I told her of the right trail to
+get back with her gang.  That's all there is to it.  Are you mad at me
+for letting any one come into this place?"
+
+"Mad?" he smiled.  "No, I think that's one of the best lies you ever
+told me, Jack."
+
+Their eyes met, hers very wide, and his keen and steady.  The she
+gripped at the butt of her gun, an habitual trick when she was very
+angry, and cried:
+
+"Do I have to sit here and let you call me--that?  Pierre, pull a few
+more tricks like that and I'll call for a new deal.  Get me?"
+
+She rose, whirled, and threw herself sullenly on her bunk.
+
+"Come back," said Pierre.  "You're more scared than angry.  Why are you
+afraid, Jack?"
+
+"It's a lie--I'm not afraid!"
+
+"Let me see that glove again."
+
+"You've seen it once--that's enough."
+
+He whistled carelessly, rolling a cigarette.  After he lighted it he
+said: "Ready to talk yet, partner?"
+
+She maintained an obstinate silence, but that sharp eye saw that she
+was trembling.  He set his teeth and then drew several long puffs on
+his cigarette.
+
+"I'm going to count to ten, pal, and when I finish you're going to tell
+me everything straight.  In the mean time don't stay there thinking up
+a new lie.  I know you too well, and if you try the same thing on me
+again--"
+
+"Well?" she snarled, all the tiger coming back in her voice.
+
+"You'll talk, all right.  Here goes the count: One--two--three--four--"
+
+As he counted, leaving a long drag of two or three seconds between
+numbers, there was not a change in the figure of the girl.  She still
+lay with her back turned on him, and the only expressive part that
+showed was her hand.  First it lay limp against her hip, but as the
+monotonous count proceeded it gathered to a fist.
+
+"Five--six--seven--"
+
+It seemed that he had been counting for hours, his will against her
+will, the man in him against the woman in her, and during the pauses
+between the sound of his voice the very air grew charged with waiting.
+To the girl the wait for every count was like the wait of the doomed
+traitor when he stands facing the firing-squad, watching the glimmer of
+light go down the aimed rifles.
+
+For she knew the face of the man who sat there counting; she knew how
+the firelight flared in the dark-red of his hair and made it seem like
+another fire beneath which the blue of the eyes was strangely cold and
+keen.  Her hand had gathered to a hard-balled fist.
+
+"Eight--nine--"
+
+She sprang up, screaming: "No, no, Pierre!"
+
+And threw out her arms to him.
+
+"Ten."
+
+She whispered: "It was the girl with yellow hair--Mary Brown."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+TIGER-HEART
+
+It was as if she had said: "Good morning!" in the calmest of voices.
+There was no answer in him, neither word nor expression, and out of ten
+sharp-eyed men, nine would have passed him by without noting the
+difference; but the girl knew him as the monk knows his prayers or the
+Arab his horse, and a solemn, deep despair came over her.  She felt
+like the drowning, when the water closes over their heads for the last
+time.
+
+He puffed twice again at the cigarette and then flicked the butt into
+the fire.  When he spoke it was only to say: "Did she stay long?"
+
+But his eyes avoided her.  She moved a little so as to read his face,
+but when he turned again and answered her stare she winced.
+
+"Not very long, Pierre."
+
+"Ah," he said, "I see!  It was because she didn't dream that this was
+the place I lived in."
+
+It was the sort of heartless, torturing questioning which was once the
+crudest weapon of the inquisition.  With all her heart she fought to
+raise her voice above the whisper whose very sound accused her, but
+could not.  She was condemned to that voice as the man bound in
+nightmare is condemned to walk slowly, slowly, though the terrible
+danger is racing toward him, and the safety which he must reach lies
+only a dozen steps, a dozen mortal steps away.
+
+She said in that voice: "No; of course she didn't dream it."
+
+"And you, Jack, had her interests at heart--her best interests, poor
+girl, and didn't tell her?"
+
+Her hands went out to him in mute appeal.
+
+"Please, Pierre--don't!"
+
+"Is something troubling you, Jack?"
+
+"You are breaking my heart."
+
+"Why, by no means!  Let's sit here calmly and chat about the girl with
+the yellow hair.  To begin with--she's rather pleasant to look at,
+don't you think?"
+
+"I suppose she is."
+
+"H-m! rather poor taste not to be sure of it.  Well, let it go.  You've
+always had rather queer taste in women, Jack; but, of course, being a
+long-rider, you haven't seen much of them.  At least her name is
+delightful--Mary Brown!  You've no idea how often I've repeated it
+aloud to myself and relished the sound--Mary Brown!"
+
+"I hate her!"
+
+"You two didn't have a very agreeable time of it?  By the way, she must
+have left in rather a hurry to forget her glove, eh?"
+
+"Yes, she ran--like a coward."
+
+"Ah?"
+
+"Like a trembling coward.  How can you care for a white-faced little
+fool like that?  Is she your match?  Is she your mate?"
+
+He considered a moment, as though to make sure that he did not
+exaggerate.
+
+"I love her, Jack, as men love water when they've ridden all day over
+hot sand without a drop on their lips--you know when the tongue gets
+thick and the mouth fills with cotton--and then you see clear, bright
+water, and taste it."
+
+"She is like that to me.  She feeds every sense; and when I look in her
+eyes, Jack, I feel like the starved man on the desert, as I was saying,
+drinking that priceless water.  You knew something of the way I feel,
+Jack.  Isn't it a little odd that you didn't keep her here?"
+
+She had stood literally shuddering during this speech, and now she
+burst out, far beyond all control: "Because she loathes you; because
+she hates herself for ever having loved you; because she despises
+herself for having ridden up here after you.  Does that fill your cup
+of water, Pierre, eh?"
+
+His forehead was shining with sweat, but he set his teeth, and, after a
+moment, he was able to say in the same hard, calm voice: "I suppose
+there was no real reason for her change.  She can be persuaded back to
+me in a moment.  In that case just tell me where she has gone and I'll
+ride after her."
+
+He made as if to rise, but she cried in a panic, and yet with a wild
+exultation: "No, she's done with you forever, and the more you make
+love to her now the more she'll hate you.  Because she knows that when
+you kissed her before--when you kissed her--you were living with a
+woman."
+
+"I--living with a woman?"
+
+Her voice had risen out of the whisper for the outbreak.  Now it sank
+back into it.
+
+"Yes--with me!"
+
+"With you?  I see.  Naturally it must have gone hard with her--Mary!
+And she wouldn't see reason even when you explained that you and I are
+like brothers?"
+
+He leaned a little toward her and just a shade of emotion came in his
+voice.
+
+"When you carefully explained, Jack, with all the eloquence you could
+command, that you and I have ridden and fought and camped together like
+brothers for six years?  And how I gave you your first gun?  And how
+I've stayed between you and danger a thousand times?  And how I've
+never treated you otherwise than as a man?  And how I've given you the
+love of a blood-brother to take the place of the brother who died?  And
+how I've kept you in a clean and pure respect such as a man can only
+give once in his life--and then only to his dearest friend?  She
+wouldn't listen--even when you talked to her like this?"
+
+"For God's sake--Pierre!"
+
+"Ah, but you talked well enough to pave the way for me.  You talked so
+eloquently that with a little more persuasion from me she will know and
+understand.  Come, I must be gone after her.  Which way did she
+ride--up or down the valley?"
+
+"You could talk to her forever and she'd never listen.  Pierre, I told
+her that I was--your woman--that you'd told me of your scenes with
+her--and that we'd laughed at them together."
+
+She covered her eyes and crouched, waiting for the wrath that would
+fall on her, but he only smiled bitterly on the bowed head, saying:
+"Why have I waited so long to hear you say what I knew already?  I
+suppose because I wouldn't believe until I heard the whole abominable
+truth from your own lips.  Jack, why did you do it?"
+
+"Won't you see?  Because I've loved you always, Pierre!"
+
+"Love--you--your tiger-heart?  No, but you were like a cruel, selfish
+child.  You were jealous because you didn't want the toy taken away.  I
+knew it.  I knew that even if I rode after her it would be hopeless.
+Oh, God, how terribly you've hurt me, partner!"
+
+It wrung a little moan from her.  He said after a moment: "It's only
+the ghost of a chance, but I'll have to take it.  Tell me which way she
+rode?  No?  Then I'll try to find her."
+
+She leaped between him and the door, flinging her shoulders against it
+with a crash and standing with outspread arms to bar the way.
+
+"You must not go!"
+
+He turned his head somewhat.
+
+"Don't stand in front of me, Jack.  You know I'll do what I say, and
+just now it's a bit hard for me to face you."
+
+"Pierre, I feel as if there were a hand squeezing my heart small, and
+small, and small.  Pierre, I'd die for you!"
+
+"I know you would.  I know you would, partner.  It was only a mistake,
+and you acted the way any cold-hearted boy would act if--if some one
+were to try to steal his horse, for instance.  But just now it's hard
+for me to look at you and be calm."
+
+"Don't try to be!  Swear at me--curse--rave--beat me; I'd be glad of
+the blows, Pierre.  I'd hold out my arms to 'em.  But don't go out that
+door!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because--if you found her--she's not alone."
+
+"Say that slowly.  I don't understand.  She's not alone?"
+
+"I'll try to tell you from the first.  She started out for you with
+Dick Wilbur for a guide."
+
+"Good old Dick, God bless him!  I'll fill all his pockets with gold for
+that; and he loves her, you know."
+
+"You'll never see Dick Wilbur again.  On the first night they camped
+she missed him when he went for water.  She went down after a while and
+saw the mark of his body on the sand.  He never appeared again."
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Listen.  The next morning she woke up and found that some one had
+taken care of the fire while she slept, and her pack was lashed on one
+of the saddles.  She rode on that day and came at night to a camp-fire
+with a bed of boughs near it and no one in sight.  She took that camp
+for herself and no one showed up.
+
+"Don't you see?  Some one was following her up the valley and taking
+care of the poor baby on the way.  Some one who was afraid to let
+himself be seen.  Perhaps it was the man who killed Dick Wilbur without
+a sound there beside the river; perhaps as Dick died he told the man
+who killed him about the lonely girl and this other man was white
+enough to help Mary.
+
+"But all Mary ever saw of him was that second night when she thought
+that she saw a streak of white, traveling like a galloping horse, that
+disappeared over a hill and into the trees--"
+
+"A streak of white--"
+
+"Yes, yes!  The white horse--McGurk!"
+
+"McGurk!" repeated Pierre stupidly; then: "And you knew she would be
+going out to him when she left this house?"
+
+"I knew--Pierre--don't look at me like that--I knew that it would be
+murder to let you cross with McGurk.  You're the last of seven--he's a
+devil--no man--"
+
+"And you let her go out into the night--to him."
+
+She clung to a last thread of hope: "If you met him and killed him with
+the luck of the cross it would bring equal bad luck on some one you
+love--on the girl, Pierre!"
+
+He was merely repeating stupidly: "You let her go out--to him--in the
+night!  She's in his arms now--you devil--you tiger--"
+
+She threw herself down and clung about his knees with hysterical
+strength.
+
+"Pierre, you shall not go.  Pierre, you walk on my heart if you go!"
+
+He tore the little cross from his neck and flung it into her upturned
+face.
+
+"Don't make me put my hands on you, Jack.  Let me go!"
+
+There was no need to tear her grasp away.  She crumpled and slipped
+sidewise to the floor.  He leaned over and shook her violently by the
+shoulder.
+
+"Which way did she ride?  Which way did they ride?"
+
+She whispered: "Down the valley, Pierre; down the valley; I swear they
+rode that way."
+
+And as she lay in a half swoon she heard the faint clatter of galloping
+hoofs over the rooks and a wild voice yelling, fainter and fainter with
+distance:
+
+"McGurk!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+JACK HEARS A SMALL VOICE
+
+It came back to her like a threat; it beat at her ears and roused her,
+that continually diminishing cry: "McGurk!"  It went down the valley,
+and Mary Brown, and McGurk with her, perhaps, had gone up the gorge,
+but it would be a matter of a short time before Pierre le Rouge
+discovered that there was no camp-fire to be sighted in the lower
+valley and whirled to storm back up the canon with that battle-cry:
+"McGurk!" still on his lips.
+
+And if the two met she knew the result.  Seven strong men had ridden
+together, fought together, and one by one they had fallen, disappeared
+like the white smoke of the camp-fire, jerked off into thin air by the
+wind, until only one remained.
+
+How clearly she could see them all!  Bud Mansie, meager, lean, with a
+shifting eye; Garry Patterson, of the red, good-natured face; Phil
+Branch, stolid and short and muscled like a giant; Handsome Dick Wilbur
+on his racing bay; Black Gandil, with his villainies from the South
+Seas like an invisible mantle of awe about him; and her father, the
+stalwart, gray Boone.
+
+All these had gone, and there remained only Pierre le Rouge to follow
+in the steps of the six who had gone before.
+
+She crawled to the door, feeble in mind and shuddering of body like a
+runner who has spent his last energy in a long race, and drew it open.
+The wind blew up the valley from the Old Crow, but no sound came back
+to her, no calling from Pierre; and over her rose the black pyramid of
+the western peak of the Twin Bears like a monstrous nose pointing
+stiffly toward the stars.
+
+She closed the door, dragged herself back to her feet, and stood with
+her shoulders leaning against the wall.  Her weakness was not
+weariness--it was as if something had been taken from her.  She
+wondered at herself somewhat vaguely.  Surely she had never been like
+this before, with the singular coldness about her heart and the feeling
+of loss, of infinite loss.
+
+What had she lost?  She began to search her mind for an answer.  Then
+she smiled uncertainly, a wan, small smile.  It was very clear; what
+she had lost was all interest in life and all hope for the brave
+to-morrow.  Nothing remained of all those lovely dreams which she had
+built up by day and night about the figure of Pierre le Rouge.  He was
+gone, and the bright-colored bubble she had blown vanished at once.
+
+She felt a slight pain at her forehead and then remembered the cross
+which Pierre had thrown into her face.  Casting that away he had thrown
+his faintest chance of victory with it; it would be a slaughter, not a
+battle, and red-handed McGurk would leave one more foe behind him.
+
+But looking down she found the cross and picked up the shining bit of
+metal; it seemed as if she held the greater part of Pierre le Rouge in
+her hands.  She raised the cross to her lips.
+
+When she fastened the cross about her throat it was with no exultation,
+but like one who places over his heart a last memorial of the dead; a
+consecration, like the red sign or the white which the crusaders wore
+on the covers of their shields.
+
+Then she took from her breast the spray of autumn leaves.  He had not
+noticed them, yet perhaps they had helped to make him gay when he came
+into the cabin that night, so she placed the spray on the table.  Next
+she unpinned the great rubies from her throat and let her eye linger
+over them for a moment.  They were chosen stones, each as deeply
+lighted as an eye, if there ever were eyes of this blood-red, and they
+looked up at her with a lure and a challenge at once.
+
+The first thought of what she must do came to Jacqueline then, but not
+in an overwhelming tide--it was rather a small voice that whispered in
+her heart.
+
+Last, she took from her bosom the glove of the yellow-haired girl.
+Compared with her stanch riding gloves, how small was this!  Yet, when
+she tried it, it slipped easily on her hand.  This she laid in that
+little pile, for these were the things which Pierre would wish to find
+if by some miracle he came back from the battle.  The spray, perhaps,
+he would not understand; and yet he might.  She pressed both hands to
+her breast and drew a long breath, for her heart was breaking.  Through
+her misted eyes she could barely see the shimmer of the cross.
+
+That sight made her look up, searching for a superhuman aid in her woe,
+and for the first time in her life a conception of God dawned on her
+wild, gay mind.  She made a picture of him like a vast cloud looming
+over the Twin Bear peaks and breathing an infinite calm over the
+mountains.  The cloud took a faintly human shape--a shape somewhat like
+that of her father when he lived, for he could be both stern and
+gentle, as she well knew, and such gray Boone had been.
+
+Perhaps it was because of this that another picture came out of her
+infancy of a soft voice, of a tender-touching hand, of brooding,
+infinitely loving eyes.  She smiled the wan smile again because for the
+first time it came to her that she, too, even she, the wild, the
+"tiger-heart," as Pierre himself had called her, might one day have
+been the mother of a child, his child.
+
+But the ache within her grew so keen that she dropped, writhing, to her
+knees, and twisted her hands together in agony.  It was prayer.  There
+were no words to it, but it was prayer, a wild appeal for aid.
+
+That aid came in the form of a calm that swept on her like the flood of
+a clear moonlight over a storm-beaten landscape.  The whisper which had
+come to her before was now a solemn-speaking voice, and she knew what
+she must do.  She could not keep the two men apart, but she might reach
+McGurk before and strike him down by stealth, by craft, any way to kill
+that man as terrible as a devil, as invulnerable as a ghost.
+
+This she might do in the heart of the night, and afterward she might
+have the courage left to tell the girl the truth and then creep off
+somewhere and let this steady pain burn its way out of her heart.
+
+Once she had reached a decision, it was characteristic that she moved
+swiftly.  Also, there was cause for haste, for by this time Pierre must
+have discovered that there was no one in the lower reaches of the gorge
+and would be galloping back with all the speed of the cream-colored
+mare which even McGurk's white horse could not match.
+
+She ran from the cabin and into the little lean-to behind it where the
+horses were tethered.  There she swung her saddle with expert hands,
+whipped up the cinch, and pulled it with the strength of a man,
+mounted, and was off up the gorge.
+
+For the first few minutes she let the long-limbed black race on at full
+speed, a breathless course, because the beat of the wind in her face
+raised her courage, gave her a certain impulse which was almost
+happiness, just as the martyrs rejoiced and held out their hands to the
+fire that was to consume them; but after the first burst of headlong
+galloping, she drew down the speed to a hand-canter, and this in turn
+to a fast trot, for she dared not risk the far-echoed sound of the
+clattering hoofs over the rock.
+
+And as she rode she saw at last the winking eye of red which she longed
+for and dreaded.  She pulled her black to an instant halt and swung
+from the saddle, tossing the reins over the head of the horse to keep
+him standing there.
+
+Yet, after she had made half a dozen hurried paces something forced her
+to turn and look again at the handsome head of the horse.  He stood
+quite motionless, with his ears pricking after her, and now as she
+stopped he whinnied softly, hardly louder than the whisper of a man.
+So she ran back again and threw the reins over the horn of the saddle;
+he should be free to wander where he chose through the free mountains,
+but as for her, she knew very certainly now that she would never mount
+that saddle again, or control that triumphant steed with the touch of
+her hands on the reins.  She put her arms around his neck and drew his
+head down close.
+
+There was a dignity in that parting, for it was the burning of her
+bridges behind her.  When "King-Maker" Richard of Warwick, betrayed and
+beaten on the field, came to his last stand by the forest, he
+dismounted and stabbed his favorite charger.  Very different was this
+wild mountain girl from the armored earl who put kings up and pulled
+them down again at pleasure, but her heart swelled as great as the
+heart of famous Warwick; he gave up a kingdom, and she gave up her love.
+
+When she drew back the horse followed her a pace, but she raised a
+silent hand in the night and halted him; a moment later she was lost
+among the boulders.
+
+It was rather slow work to stalk that camp-fire, for the big boulders
+cut off the sight of the red eye time and again, and she had to make
+little, cautious detours before she found it again, but she kept
+steadily at her work.  Once she stopped, her blood running cold, for
+she thought that she heard a faint voice blown up the canon on the
+wind: "McGurk!"
+
+For half a minute she stood frozen, listening, but the sound was not
+repeated, and she went on again with greater haste.  So she came at
+last in view of a hollow in the side of the gorge.  Here there were a
+few trees, growing in the cove, and here, she knew, there was a small
+spring of clear water.  Many a time she had made a cup of her hands and
+drunk here.
+
+Now she made out the fire clearly, the trees throwing out great spokes
+of shadow on all sides, spokes of shadows that wavered and shook with
+the flare of the small fire beyond them.  She dropped to her hands and
+knees and, parting the dense underbrush, began the last stealthy
+approach.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+A VOICE IN THE NIGHT
+
+Up the same course which Jacqueline followed, Mary Brown had fled
+earlier that night with the triumphant laughter of Jack still ringing
+in her ears and following her like a remorseless, pointed hand of shame.
+
+There is no power like shame to disarm the spirit.  A dog will fight if
+a man laughs at him; a coward will challenge the devil himself if he is
+whipped on by scorn; and this proud girl shrank and moaned on the
+saddle.  She had not progressed far enough to hate Pierre.  That would
+come later, but now all her heart had room for was a consuming loathing
+of herself.
+
+Some of that torture went into the spurs with which she punished the
+side of the bay, and the tall horse responded with a high-tossed head
+and a burst of whirlwind speed.  The result was finally a stumble over
+a loose rock that almost flung Mary over the pommel of the saddle and
+forced her to draw rein.
+
+Having slowed the pace she became aware that she was very tired from
+the trip of the day, and utterly exhausted by the wild scene with
+Jacqueline, so that she began to look about for a place where she could
+stop for even an hour or so and rest her aching body.
+
+Thought of McGurk sent her hand trembling to her holster.  Still she
+knew she must have little to fear from him.  He had been kind to her.
+Why had this scourge of the mountain-desert spared her?  Was it to
+track down Pierre?
+
+It was at this time that she heard the purl and whisper of running
+water, a sound dear to the hearts of all travelers.  She veered to the
+left and found the little grove of trees with a thick shrubbery growing
+between, fed by the water of that diminutive brook.  She dismounted and
+tethered the horses.
+
+By this time she had seen enough of camping out to know how to make
+herself fairly comfortable, and she set about it methodically, eagerly.
+It was something to occupy her mind and keep out a little of that
+burning sense of shame.  One picture it could not obliterate, and that
+was the scene of Jacqueline and Pierre le Rouge laughing together over
+the love affair with the silly girl of the yellow hair.
+
+That was the meaning, then, of those silences that had come between
+them?  He had been thinking, remembering, careful lest he should forget
+a single scruple of the whole ludicrous affair.  She shuddered,
+remembering how she had fairly flung herself into his arms.
+
+On that she brooded, after starting the little fire.  It was not that
+she was cold, but the fire, at least, in the heart of the black night,
+was a friend incapable of human treachery.  She had not been there long
+when the tall bay, Wilbur's horse, stiffened, raised his head, arched
+his tail, and then whinnied.
+
+She started to her feet, stirred by a thousand fears, and heard, far
+away, an answering neigh.  At once all thought of shame and of Pierre
+le Rouge vanished from her mind, for she remembered the man who had
+followed her up the valley of the Old Crow.  Perhaps he was coming now
+out of the night; perhaps she would even see him.
+
+And the excitement grew in her pulse by pulse, as the excitement grows
+in a man waiting for a friend at a station; he sees first the faint
+smoke like a cloud on the skyline, and then a black speck beneath the
+smoke, and next the engine draws up on him with a humming of the rails
+which grows at length to a thunder.
+
+All the while his heart beats faster and faster and rocks with the sway
+of the approaching engine; so the heart of Mary Brown beat, though she
+could not see, but only felt the coming of the stranger.
+
+The only sign she saw was in the horses, which showed an increasing
+uneasiness.  Her own mare now shared the restlessness of the tall bay,
+and the two were footing it nervously here and there, tugging at the
+tethers, and tossing up their heads, with many a start, as if they
+feared and sought to flee from some approaching catastrophe--some vast
+and preternatural change--some forest fire which came galloping faster
+than even their fleet limbs could carry them.
+
+Yet all beyond the pale of her campfire's light was silence, utter and
+complete silence.  It seemed as if a veritable muscular energy went
+into the intensity of her listening, but not a sound reached her except
+a faint whispering of the wind in the dark trees above her.
+
+But at last she knew that the thing was upon her.  The horses ceased
+their prancing and stared in a fixed direction through the thicket of
+shrubbery; the very wind grew hushed above her; she could feel the new
+presence as one feels the silence when a door closes and shuts away the
+sound of the street below.
+
+It came on her with a shock, thrilling, terrible, yet not altogether
+unpleasant.  She rose, her hands clenched at her sides and the great
+blue eyes abnormally wide as they stared in the same direction as the
+eyes of the two horses held.  Yet for all her preparation she nearly
+fainted and a blackness came across her mind when a voice sounded
+directly behind her, a pleasantly modulated voice: "Look this way.  I
+am here, in front of the fire."
+
+She turned about and the two horses, quivering, whirled toward that
+sound.
+
+She stepped back, back until the embers of the fire lay between her and
+that side of the little clearing.  In spite of herself the exclamation
+escaped her.--"McGurk!"
+
+The voice spoke again: "Do not be afraid.  You are safe, absolutely."
+
+"What are you?"
+
+"Your friend."
+
+"Is it you who followed me up the valley?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come into the light.  I must see you."  A faint laughter reached her
+from the dark.
+
+"I cannot let you do that.  If that had been possible I should have
+come to you before."
+
+"But I feel--I feel almost, as if you are a ghost and no man of flesh
+and blood."
+
+"It is better for you to feel that way about it," said the voice
+solemnly, "than to know me."
+
+"At least, tell me why you have followed me, why you have cared for me."
+
+"You will hate me if I tell you, and fear me."
+
+"No, whatever you are, trust me.  Tell me at least what came to Dick
+Wilbur?"
+
+"That's easy enough.  I met him at the river, a little by surprise, and
+caught him before he could even shout.  Then I took his guns and let
+him go."
+
+"But he didn't come back to me?"
+
+"No.  He knew that I would be there.  I might have finished him without
+giving him a chance to speak, girl, but I'd seen him with you and I was
+curious.  So I found out where you were going and why, and let Wilbur
+go.  I came back and looked at you and found you asleep."
+
+She grew cold at the thought of him leaning over her.
+
+"I watched you a long time, and I suppose I'll remember you always as I
+saw you then.  You were very beautiful with the shadow of the lashes
+against your cheek--almost as beautiful as you are now as you stand
+over there, fearing and loathing me.  I dared not let you see me, but I
+decided to take care of you--for a while."
+
+"And now?"
+
+"I have come to say farewell to you."
+
+"Let me see you once before you go."
+
+"No!  You see, I fear you even more than you fear me."
+
+"Then I'll follow you."
+
+"It would be useless--utterly useless.  There are ways of becoming
+invisible in the mountains.  But before I go, tell me one thing: Have
+you left the cabin to search for Pierre le Rouge in another place?"
+
+"No.  I do not search for him."
+
+There was an instant of pause.  Then the voice said sharply: "Did
+Wilbur lie to me?"
+
+"No.  I started up the valley to find him."
+
+"But you've given him up?"
+
+"I hate him--I hate him as much as I loathe myself for ever
+condescending to follow him."
+
+She heard a quick breath drawn in the dark, and then a murmur; "I am
+free, then, to hunt him down!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Listen: I had given him up for your sake; I gave him up when I stood
+beside you that first night and watched you trembling with the cold in
+your sleep.  It was a weak thing for me to do, but since I saw you,
+Mary, I am not as strong as I once was."
+
+"Now you go back on his trail?  It is death for Pierre?"
+
+"You say you hate him?"
+
+"Ah, but as deeply as that?" she questioned herself.
+
+"It may not be death for Pierre.  I have ridden the ranges many years
+and met them all in time, but never one like him.  Listen: six years
+ago I met him first and then he wounded me--the first time any man has
+touched me.  And afterward I was afraid, Mary, for the first time in my
+life, for the charm was broken.  For six years I could not return, but
+now I am at his heels.  Six are gone; he will be the last to go."
+
+"What are you?" she cried.  "Some bloodhound reincarnated?"
+
+He said: "That is the mildest name I have ever been called."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+A MAN'S DEATH
+
+"Give up the trail of Pierre."
+
+And there, brought face to face with the mortal question, even her fear
+burned low in her, and once more she remembered the youth who would not
+leave her in the snow, but held her in his arms with the strange cross
+above them.
+
+She said simply: "I still love him."
+
+A faint glimmer came to her through the dark and she could see deeper
+into the shrubbery, for now the moon stood up on the top of the great
+peak above them and flung a faint radiance into the hollow.  That
+glimmer she saw, but no face of a man.
+
+And then the silence held; every second of it was more than a hundred
+spoken words.
+
+Then the calm voice said: "I cannot give him up."
+
+"For the sake of God!"
+
+"God and I have been strangers for a good many years."
+
+"For my sake."
+
+"But you see, I have been lying to myself.  I told myself that I was
+coming merely to see you once--for the last time.  But after I saw you
+I had to speak, and now that I have spoken it is hard to leave you, and
+now that I am with you I cannot give you up to Pierre le Rouge."
+
+She cried: "What will you have of me?"
+
+He answered with a ring of melancholy: "Friendship?  No, I can't take
+those white hands--mine are so red.  All I can do is to lurk about you
+like a shadow--a shadow with a sting that strikes down all other men
+who come near you."
+
+She said: "For all men have told me about you, I know you could not do
+that."
+
+"Mary, I tell you there are things about me, and possibilities, about
+which I don't dare to question myself."
+
+"You have guarded me like a brother.  Be one to me still; I have never
+needed one so deeply!"
+
+"A brother?  Mary, if your eyes were less blue or your hair less golden
+I might be; but you are too beautiful to be only that to me."
+
+"Listen to me--"
+
+But she stopped in the midst of her speech, because a white head loomed
+beside the dim form.  It was the head of a horse, with pricking ears,
+which now nosed the shoulder of its master, and she saw the firelight
+glimmering in the great eyes.
+
+"Your horse," she said in a trembling voice, "loves you and trusts you."
+
+"It is the only thing which has not feared me.  When it was a colt it
+came out of the herd and nosed my hand.  It is the only thing which has
+not fought me, as all men have done--as you are doing now, Mary."
+
+The wind that blew up the gorge came in gusts, not any steady current,
+but fitful rushes of air, and on one of these brief blasts it seemed to
+Mary that she caught the sound of a voice blown to whistling murmur.
+It was a vague thing of which she could not be sure, as faint as a
+thought.  Yet the head of the white horse disappeared, and the glimmer
+of the man's face went out.
+
+She called: "Whatever you are, wait!  Let me speak!"
+
+But no answer came, and she knew that the form was gone forever.
+
+She cried again: "Who's there?"
+
+"It is I," said a voice at her elbow, and she turned to look into the
+dark eyes of Jacqueline.
+
+"So he's gone?" asked Jack bitterly.
+
+She fingered the butt of her gun.
+
+"I thought--well, my chance at him is gone."
+
+"But what--"
+
+"Bah, if you knew you'd die of fear.  Listen to what I have to say.
+All the things I told you in the cabin were lies."
+
+"Lies?" said Mary evenly.  "No, they proved themselves."
+
+"Be still till I've finished, because if you talk you may make me
+forget--"
+
+The gesture which finished the sentence was so eloquent of hate that
+Mary shrank away and put the embers of the fire between them.
+
+"I tell you, it was all a lie, and Pierre le Rouge has never loved
+anything but you, you milk-faced, yellow-livered--"
+
+She stopped again, fighting against her passion.
+
+The pride of Mary held her stiff and straight, though her voice shook.
+
+"Has he sent you after me with mockery?"
+
+"No, he's given up the hope of you."
+
+"The hope?"
+
+"Don't you see?  Are you going to make me crawl to explain?  It always
+seemed to me that God meant Pierre for me.  It always seemed to me that
+a girl like me was what he needed.  But Pierre had never seen it.
+Maybe, if my hair was yellow an' my eyes blue, he might have felt
+different; but the way it is, he's always treated me like a kid
+brother--"
+
+"And lived with you?" said the other sternly.
+
+"Like two men!  D'you understand how a woman could be the bunky of a
+man an' yet be no more to him than--than a man would be.  You don't?
+Neither do I, but that's what I've been to Pierre le Rouge.  What's
+that?"
+
+She lifted her head and stood poised as if for flight.  Once more the
+vague sound blew up to them upon the wind.  Mary ran to her and grasped
+both of her hands in her own.
+
+"If it's true--"
+
+But Jack snatched her hands away and looked on the other with a mighty
+hatred and a mightier contempt.
+
+"True?  Why, it damn near finishes Pierre with me to think he'd take up
+with--a thing like you.  But it's true.  If somebody else had told me
+I'd of laughed at 'em.  But it's true.  Tell me: what'll you do with
+him?"
+
+"Take him back--if I can reach him--take him back to the East and to
+God's country."
+
+"Yes--maybe he'd be happy there.  But when the spring comes to the
+city, Mary, wait till the wind blows in the night and the rain comes
+tappin' on the roof.  Then hold him if you can.  D'ye hear?  Hold him
+if you can!"
+
+"If he cares it will not be hard.  Tell me again, if--"
+
+"Shut up.  What's that again?"
+
+The sound was closer now and unmistakably something other than the moan
+of the wind.  Jacqueline turned in great excitement to Mary:
+
+"Did McGurk hear that sound down the gorge?"
+
+"Yes.  I think so.  And then he--"
+
+"My God!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Pierre, and he's calling for--d'you hear?"
+
+Clear and loud, though from a great distance, the wind carried up the
+sound and the echo preserved it: "McGurk!"
+
+"McGurk!" repeated Mary.
+
+"Yes!  And you brought him up here with you, and brought his death to
+Pierre.  What'll you do to save him now?  Pierre!"
+
+She turned and fled out among the trees, and after her ran Mary,
+calling, like the other: "Pierre!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+THE WAITING
+
+After that call first reached him, clear to his ears though vague as a
+murmur at the ear of Mary, McGurk swung to the saddle of his white
+horse, and galloped down the gorge like a veritable angel of death.
+
+The end was very near, he felt, yet the chances were at least ten to
+one that he would miss Pierre in the throat of the gorge, for among the
+great boulders, tall as houses, which littered it, a thousand men might
+have passed and repassed and never seen each other.  Only the calling
+of Pierre could guide him surely.
+
+The calling had ceased for some moments, and he began to fear that he
+had overrun his mark and missed Pierre in the heart of the pass, when,
+as he rounded a mighty boulder, the shout ran ringing in his very ears:
+"McGurk!" and a horseman swung into view.
+
+"Here!" he called in answer, and stood with his right hand lifted,
+bringing his horse to a sharp halt, like some ancient cavalier stopping
+in the middle of the battle to exchange greetings with a friendly foe.
+
+The other rider whirled alongside, his sombrero's brim flaring back
+from his forehead, so that McGurk caught the glare of the eyes beneath
+the shadow.
+
+"So for the third time, my friend--" said McGurk.
+
+"Which is the fatal one," answered Pierre.  "How will you die, McGurk?
+On foot or on horseback?"
+
+"On the ground, Pierre, for my horse might stir and make my work messy.
+I love a neat job, you know."
+
+"Good."
+
+They swung from the saddles and stood facing each other.
+
+"Begin!" commanded McGurk.  "I've no time to waste."
+
+"I've very little time to look at the living McGurk.  Let me look my
+fill before the end."
+
+"Then look, and be done.  I've a lady coming to meet me."
+
+The other grew marvelously calm.
+
+"She is with you, McGurk?"
+
+"My dear Pierre, I've been with her ever since she started up the Old
+Crow."
+
+"It will be easier to forget her.  Are you ready?"
+
+"So soon?  Come, man, there's much for us to say.  Many old times to
+chat over."
+
+"I only wonder," said Pierre, "how one death can pay back what you've
+done.  Think of it!  I've actually run away from you and hidden myself
+away among the hills.  I've feared you, McGurk!"
+
+He said it with a deep astonishment, as a grown man will speak of the
+way he feared darkness when 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 the white horse had merely stiffened and raised
+his head high.  Now, with arched neck and flaunting tail he neighed
+loudly, as if he asked a question.  How could he know, dumb brute, that
+what he asked only death could answer?
+
+And as they waited an itching came at the palm of McGurk's hand.  It
+was not much, just a tingle of the blood.  To ease it, he closed his
+fingers and found that his hand was moist with cold perspiration.
+
+He began to wonder if his fingers would be slippery on the butt of the
+gun.  Then he tried covertly to dry them against his shirt.  But he
+ceased this again, knowing that he must be of hair-trigger alertness to
+watch for the stamp of the white horse.
+
+It occurred to him, also, that he was standing on a loose stone which
+might wabble when he pulled his gun, and he cursed himself silently for
+his hasty folly.  Pierre, doubtless, had noticed that stone, and
+therefore he had made the suggestion that they stand where they were.
+Otherwise, how could there be that singular calm in the steady eyes
+which looked across at him?
+
+Also, how explain the hunger of that stare?  Was not he McGurk, and was
+not this a man whom he had already once shot down?  God, what a fool he
+had been not to linger an instant longer in that saloon in the old days
+and place the final shot in the prostrate body!  In all his life he had
+made only one such mistake, and now that folly was pursuing him.  And
+now--
+
+The foot of the white horse lifted--struck the rock.  The sound of its
+fall was lost in the explosion of two guns, and a ring of metal on
+metal.  The revolver snapped from the hand of McGurk, whirled in a
+flashing circle, and clanged on the rocks at his feet.  The bullet of
+Pierre had struck the barrel and knocked it cleanly from his hand.
+
+It was luck, only luck, that placed that shot, and his own bullet,
+which had started first, had travelled wild for there stood Pierre le
+Rouge, smiling faintly, alert, calm.  For the first time in his life
+McGurk had missed.  He set his teeth and waited for death.
+
+But that steady voice of Pierre said: "To shoot you would be a
+pleasure; it would even be a luxury, but there wouldn't be any lasting
+satisfaction in it.  So there lies your gun at your feet.  Well, here
+lies mine."
+
+He dropped his own weapon to a position corresponding with that of
+McGurk's.
+
+"We were both very wild that time.  We must do better now.  We'll stoop
+for our guns, McGurk.  The signal?  No, we won't wait for the horse to
+stamp.  The signal will be when you stoop for your gun.  You shall have
+every advantage, you see?  Start for that gun, McGurk, when you're
+ready for the end."
+
+The hand of McGurk stretched out and his arm stiffened but it seemed as
+though all the muscles of his back had grown stiff.  He could not bend.
+It was strange.  It was both ludicrous and incomprehensible.  Perhaps
+he had grown stiff with cold in that position.
+
+But he heard the voice of Pierre explaining gently: "You can't move, my
+friend.  I understand.  It's fear that stiffened your back.  It's fear
+that sends the chill up and down your blood.  It's fear that makes you
+think back to your murders, one by one.  McGurk, you're done for.
+You're through.  You're ready for the discard.  I'm not going to kill
+you.  I've thought of a finer hell than death, and that is to live as
+you shall live.  I've beaten you, McGurk, beaten you fairly on the
+draw, and I've broken your heart by doing it.  The next time you face a
+man you'll begin to think--you'll begin to remember how one other man
+beat you at the draw.  And that wonder, McGurk, will make your hand
+freeze to your side, as you've made the hands of other men before me
+freeze.  D'you understand?"
+
+The lips of McGurk parted.  The whisper of his dry panting reached
+Pierre, and the devil in him smiled.
+
+"In six weeks, McGurk, you'll take water from a Chinaman.  Now get out!"
+
+And pace by pace McGurk drew back, with his face still toward Pierre.
+
+The latter cried: "Wait.  Are you going to leave your gun?"
+
+Only the steady retreat continued.
+
+"And go unarmed through the mountains?  What will men say when they see
+McGurk with an empty holster?"
+
+But the outlaw had passed out of view beyond the corner of one of the
+monster boulders.  After him went the white horse, slowly, picking his
+steps, as if he were treading on dangerous and unknown ground and would
+not trust his leader.  Pierre was left to the loneliness of the gorge.
+
+The moonlight only served to make more visible its rocky nakedness, and
+like that nakedness was the life of Pierre under his hopeless inward
+eye.  Over him loomed from either side the gleaming pinnacles of the
+Twin Bears, and he remembered many a time when he had looked up toward
+them from the crests of lesser mountains--looked up toward them as a
+man looks to a great and unattainable ideal.
+
+Here he was come to the crest of all the ranges; here he was come to
+the height and limit of his life, and what had he attained?  Only a
+cruel, cold isolation.  It had been a steep ascent; the declivity of
+the farther side led him down to a steep and certain ruin and the dark
+night below.  But he stiffened suddenly and threw his head high as if
+he faced his fate; and behind him the cream-colored mare raised her
+head with a toss and whinnied softly.
+
+It seemed to him that he had heard something calling, for the sound was
+lost against the sweep of wind coming up the gorge.  Something calling
+there in the night of the mountains as he himself had called when he
+rode so wildly in the quest for McGurk.  How long ago had that been?
+
+But it came once more, clear beyond all doubt.  He recognized the voice
+in spite of the panting which shook it; a wild wail like that of a
+heart-broken child, coming closer to him like some one, running:
+"Pierre!  Oh, Pierre!"
+
+And all at once he knew that the moon was broad and bright and fair,
+and the heavens clear and shining with golden points of light.  Once
+more the cry.  He raised his arms and waited.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+THE CROSS GOES ON
+
+So Mary, running through the wilderness of boulders, was guided
+straight and found Pierre, and before the morning came, they were
+journeying east side by side, east and down to the cities of culture
+and a new life; but Jacqueline, a thousand times quicker of foot and
+surer of eye and ear, missed her goal, went past it, and still on and
+on, running finally at a steady trot.
+
+Until at last she knew that she had far overstepped her mark and sank
+down against one of the rocks to rest and think out what next she must
+do.  There seemed nothing left.  Even the sound of a gun fired she
+might not hear, for that sharp call would not travel far against the
+wind.
+
+It was while she sat there, burying Pierre in her thoughts, a white
+shape came glimmering down to her through the moonlight.  She was on
+her feet at once, alert and gun in hand.  It could only be one horse,
+only one rider, McGurk coming down from his last killing with the sneer
+on his pale lips.  Well, he would complete his work this night and kill
+her fighting face to face.
+
+A man's death; that was all she craved.  She rose; she stepped boldly
+out into the center of the trail between the rocks.
+
+There she saw the greatest wonder she had ever looked on.  It was
+McGurk walking with bare, bowed head, and after him, like a dog after
+the master, followed the white horse.  She shoved the revolver back
+into the holster.  This should be a fair fight.
+
+"McGurk!"
+
+Very slowly the head went up and back, and there he stood, not ten
+paces from her, with the white moon full on his face.  The sneer was
+still there; the eyelid fluttered in scornful derision.  And the heart
+of Jacqueline came thundering in her throat.
+
+But she cried in a strong voice: "McGurk, d'you know me?"
+
+He did not answer.
+
+"You murderer, you night-rider!  Look again: it's the last of the
+Boones!"
+
+The sneer, it seemed to her, grew bitterer, but still the man did not
+speak.  Then the thought of Pierre, lying dead somewhere among the
+rocks, burned across her mind.  Her hand leaped for the revolver, and
+whipped it out in a blinding flash to cover him, but with her finger
+curling on the trigger she checked herself in the nick of time.  McGurk
+had made no move to protect himself.
+
+A strange feeling came to her that perhaps the man would not war
+against women; the case of Mary was almost proof enough of that.  But
+as she stepped forward, wondering, she looked at the holster at his
+side and saw that it was empty.  Then she understood.
+
+Understood in a daze that Pierre had met the man and conquered him and
+sent him out through the mountains disarmed.  The white horse raised
+his head and whinnied, and the sound gave a thought to her.  She could
+not kill this man, unarmed as he was; she could do a more shameful
+thing.
+
+"The bluff you ran was a strong one, McGurk," she said bitterly, "and
+you had these parts pretty well at a standstill; but Pierre was a bit
+too much for you, eh?"
+
+The white face had not altered, and still it did not change, but the
+sneer was turned steadily on her.
+
+She cried: "Go on!  Go on down the gorge!"
+
+Like an automaton the man stepped forward, and after him paced the
+white horse.  She stepped between, caught the reins, and swung up to
+the saddle, and sat there, controlling between her stirrups the
+best-known mount in all the mountain-desert.  A thrill of wild
+exultation came to her.  She cried: "Look back, McGurk!  Your gun is
+gone, your horse is gone; you're weaker than a woman in the mountains!"
+
+Yet he went on without turning, not with the hurried step of a coward,
+but still as one stunned.  Then, sitting quietly in the saddle, she
+forgot McGurk and remembered Pierre.  He was happy by this time with
+the girl of the yellow hair; there was nothing remaining to her from
+him except the ominous cross which touched cold against her breast.
+That he had abandoned as he had abandoned her.
+
+What, then, was left for her?  The horse of an outlaw for her to ride;
+the heart of an outlaw in her breast.
+
+She touched the white horse with the spurs and went at a reckless
+gallop, weaving back and forth among the boulders down the gorge.  For
+she was riding away from the past.
+
+The dawn came as she trotted out into a widening valley of the Old
+Crow.  To maintain even that pace she had to use the spurs continually,
+for the white horse was deadly weary, and his head fell more and more.
+She decided to make a brief halt, at last, and in order to make a fire
+that would take the chill of the cold morning from her, she swung up to
+the edge of the woods.  There, before she could dismount, she saw a man
+turn the shoulder of the slope.  She drew the horse back deeper among
+the trees and waited.
+
+He came with a halting step, reeling now and again, a big man, hatless,
+coatless, apparently at the last verge of exhaustion.  Now his foot
+apparently struck a small rock, and he pitched to his face.  It
+required a long struggle before he could regain his feet; and now he
+continued his journey at the same gait, only more uncertainly than
+ever, close and closer.  There was something familiar now about the
+fellow's size, and something in the turn of his head.  Suddenly she
+rode out, crying: "Wilbur!"
+
+He swerved, saw the white horse, threw up his hands high above his
+head, and went backward, reeling, with a hoarse scream which Jacqueline
+would never forget.  She galloped to him and swung to the ground.
+
+"It's me--Jack.  D'you hear?"
+
+He would not lower those arms, and his eyes stared wildly at her.  On
+his forehead the blood had caked over a cut; his shirt was torn to
+rags, and the hair matted wildly over his eyes.  She caught his hands
+and pulled them down.
+
+"It's not McGurk!  Don't you hear me?  It's Jack!"
+
+He reached out, like a blind man who has to see by the sense of touch,
+and stroked her face.
+
+"Jack!" he whispered at last.  "Thank God!"
+
+"What's happened?"
+
+"McGurk--"
+
+A violent palsy shook him, and he could not go on.
+
+"I know--I understand.  He took your guns and left you to wander in
+this hell!  Damn him!  I wish--"
+
+She stopped.
+
+"How long since you've eaten?"
+
+"Years!"
+
+"We'll eat--McGurk's food!"
+
+But she had to assist him up the slope to the trees, and there she left
+him propped against a trunk, his arms fallen weakly at his sides, while
+she built the fire and cooked the food.  Afterward she could hardly
+eat, watching him devour what she placed before him; and it thrilled
+all the woman in her to a strange warmth to take care of the
+long-rider.  Then, except for the disfigured face and the bloodshot
+eyes, he was himself.
+
+"Up there?  What happened?"
+
+He pointed up the valley.
+
+"The girl and Pierre.  They're together."
+
+"She found him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He bowed his head and sighed.
+
+"And the horse, Jack?"  He said it with awe.
+
+"I took the horse from McGurk."
+
+"You!"
+
+She nodded.  After all, it was not a lie.
+
+"You killed McGurk?"
+
+She said coolly: "I let him go the way he let you, Dick.  He's on foot
+in the mountains without a horse or a gun."
+
+"It isn't possible!"
+
+"There the horse for proof."
+
+He looked at her as if she were something more than human.
+
+"Our Jack--did this?"
+
+"We've got to start on.  Can you walk, Dick?"
+
+"A thousand miles now."
+
+Yet he staggered when he tried to rise, and she made him climb up to
+the saddle.  The white horse walked on, and she kept her place close at
+the stirrup of the rider.  He would have stopped and dismounted for her
+a hundred times, but she made him keep his place.
+
+"What's ahead of us, Jack?  We're the last of the gang?"
+
+"The last of Boone's gang.  We are."
+
+"The old life over again?"
+
+"What else?"
+
+"Yes; what else?"
+
+"Are you afraid, Dick?"
+
+"Not with you for a pal.  Seven was too many; with two we can rule the
+range."
+
+"Partners, Dick?"
+
+How could he tell that her voice was gone so gentle because she was
+seeing in her mind's eye another face than his?  He leaned toward her,
+thrilling.
+
+"Why not something more than partners, after a while, Jack?"
+
+She smiled strangely up to him.
+
+"Because of this, Dick."
+
+And fumbling at her throat, she showed him the glittering metal of the
+cross; an instinct made him swerve the horse away from her.
+
+"The cross goes on, but what of you Jack?"
+
+A long silence fell between them.  Words died in the making.
+
+The great weight pressing down on that slender throat was like the iron
+hand of a giant, but slowly one by one the sounds marshalled themselves:
+
+". . . God knows . . ."  It was the passing of Judgment.  "God
+knows . . . not I."
+
+
+
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