as
in! There were cartridges to burn!

The gun came slowly down to an aim, then waved in his hand as he
pulled the trigger.

"Hell!" he muttered.

He tried again, pulling himself together, and gritting his teeth. The
second report rang out, and echoed high among the rocks. The mare's
head fell, her body quivered, one hind foot kicked out; and she was
gone.

Oh, yes! He could hit good horses! But not Sunnysides.

He ejected the exploded cartridges, and filled the chambers with fresh
ones; then lay back and rested again, the gun still clutched in his
hand. And why did he wait? To get strength, for one thing. He wanted
to sit up to do it, since he could not stand. And then--there was
another trouble. Four times before he had tried to do it, and
something had happened,--something different and utterly unexpected
each time had checked him. It had not so much mattered then, because
he could afford to wait. But now--

He drew upon the last of his reserves of strength, and sat up--too
suddenly. An excruciating pain shot through his injured leg, and
radiated like flame through every nerve and tissue of his body. The
revolver, half lifted, fell from his fingers. Swaying, he groped for
it, clutched it again, and frantically raised it to his head. And when
he felt the hard muzzle just above his ear, he pulled the trigger. And
so the third report went ringing through the quiet valley, and Philip
Haig sank backward on the greensward, and lay still.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE MIRACLE

Between two storms, the peace that lay upon the seared and battered
head of Thunder Mountain, like the peace that comes to a sufferer
between paroxysms of pain, was of a kind unknown to lower levels. In
all the range of natural phenomena, in all the gamut of sensation,
there is nothing else at once so beautiful, inspiring, and appalling
as utter silence; and nothing else so rare. To the sea, the desert,
and the peak it is given in few and perfect hours; but neither to the
desert nor to the sea is it given in such transcendency as to the
peak. And on no peak could silence ever have seemed so like a miracle
as on the flat top of Thunder Mountain between two storms.

It were hazardous to say how far Marion was conscious of the
beautiful, inspiring, and appalling nature of that silence. She was
too deeply intent upon her purpose to be conscious of much besides the
material difficulties in her path. She knew that on the gray-black
surface of t