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 37
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 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— 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?”
“It's 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 only a moment before was now unusually quiet. The very postures of the men seemed to turn 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 wobble 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 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—
