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