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 massiv