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 someone 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 someone 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? Someone was following her up the valley and taking care of the poor baby on the way. Someone 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 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 someone 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.
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 rocks and a wild voice yelling, fainter and fainter with distance: “McGurk!”
CHAPTER 34
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 canyon 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,
