y had freed his feet from the stirrups.

Pierre threw the saddle over his shoulder and walked eight miles to the
nearest ranchhouse, where he spent practically the last cent of his
money on another horse, and drove on south once more.

There was little hope in him as day after day slipped past. Only the
ghost of a chance remained that Martin Ryder could fight away death for
another fortnight; yet Pierre had seen many a man from the
mountain-desert stave off the end through weeks and weeks of the
bitterest suffering. His father must be a man of the same hard durable
metal, and upon that Pierre staked all his hopes.

And always he carried the picture of the dying man alone with his two
wolf-eyed sons who waited for his eyes to weaken. Whenever he thought
of that he touched his horse with the spurs and rode fiercely for a
time. They were his flesh and blood, the man, and even the two
wolf-eyed sons.

So he came at last to a gap in the hills and looked down on Morgantown
in the hollow, twoscore unpainted houses sprawling along a single
street. The snow was everywhere white and pure, and the town was like
a stain on the landscape with wisps of smoke rising and trailing across
the hilltops.

Down to the edge of the town he rode, left his cow-pony standing with
hanging head outside a saloon, strode through the swinging doors, and
asked of the bartender the way to the house of Martin Ryder.

The bartender stopped in his labor of rubbing down the surface of his
bar and stared at the black-serge robe of the stranger, with curiosity
rather than criticism, for women, madmen, and clergymen have the
right-of-way in the mountain-desert.

He said: "Well, I'll be damned!--askin' your pardon. So old Mart Ryder
has come down to this, eh? Partner, you're sure going to have a rough
ride getting Mart to heaven. Better send a posse along with him,
because some first-class angels are going to get considerable riled
when they sight him coming. Ha, ha, ha! Sure I'll show you the way.
Take the northwest road out of town and go five miles till you see a
broken-backed shack lyin' over to the right. That's Mart Ryder's
place."

Out to the broken-backed shack rode Pierre le Rouge, Pierre the Red, as
every one in the north country knew him. His second horse, staunch
cow-pony that it was, stumbled on with sagging knees and hanging head,
but Pierre rode upright, at ease, for his mind was untired.

Broken-backed indeed was the hous