he mountains and keep him safe from McGurk.
McGurk! somehow the sound means what 'devil' used to mean to me."

"You've never traveled alone, and yet you'd go up there and brave
everything that comes for the sake of Pierre? What has he done to
deserve it, Mary?"

"What have I done, Dick, to deserve the care you have for me?"

He stared gloomily on her.

"When do you start?"

"To-night."

"Your friends won't let you go."

"I'll steal away and leave a note behind me."

"And you'll go alone?"

She caught at a hope.

"Unless you'll go with me, Dick?"

"I? Take you--to Pierre?"

She did not speak to urge him, but in the silence her beauty pleaded
for her.

He said: "Mary, how lovely you are. If I go I will have you for a few
days--for a week at most, all to myself."

She shook her head. From the window behind her the sunset light flared
in her hair, flooding it with red-gold against which her skin was
marvelously delicate and white, and the eyes of the deepest blue.

"All the time that we are gone, you will never say things like this,
Dick?"

"I suppose not. I should be near you, but terribly far away from your
thoughts all the while. Still, you will be near. You will be very
beautiful, Mary, riding up the trail through the pines, with all the
scents of the evergreens blowing about you, and I--well, I must go back
to a second childhood and play a game of suppose--"

"A game of what?"

"Of supposing that you are really mine, Mary, and riding out into the
wilderness for my sake."

She stepped a little closer, peering into his face.

"No matter what you suppose, I'm sure you'll leave that part of it
merely a game, Dick!"

He laughed suddenly, though the sound broke off as short and sharp as
it began.

"Haven't I played a game all my life with the fair ladies? And have I
anything to show for it except laughter? I'll go with you, Mary, if
you'll let me."

"Dick, you've a heart of gold! What shall I take?"

"I'll make the pack up, and I'll be back here an hour after dark and
whistle. Like this--"

And he gave the call of Boone's gang.

"I understand. I'll be ready. Hurry, Dick, for we've very little
time."

He hesitated, then: "All the time we're on the trail you must be far
from me, and at the end of it will be Pierre le Rouge--and happiness
for you. Before we start, Mary, I'd like to--"

It seemed that she read his mind, for she slipped suddenly inside his
arms, kissed him, a