ore the little cross from his neck and flung it into her upturned
face.

"Don't make me put my hands on you, Jack. Let me go!"

There was no need to tear her grasp away. She crumpled and slipped
sidewise to the floor. He leaned over and shook her violently by the
shoulder.

"Which way did she ride? Which way did they ride?"

She whispered: "Down the valley, Pierre; down the valley; I swear they
rode that way."

And as she lay in a half swoon she heard the faint clatter of galloping
hoofs over the rooks and a wild voice yelling, fainter and fainter with
distance:

"McGurk!"

CHAPTER XXXV

JACK HEARS A SMALL VOICE

It came back to her like a threat; it beat at her ears and roused her,
that continually diminishing cry: "McGurk!" It went down the valley,
and Mary Brown, and McGurk with her, perhaps, had gone up the gorge,
but it would be a matter of a short time before Pierre le Rouge
discovered that there was no camp-fire to be sighted in the lower
valley and whirled to storm back up the canon with that battle-cry:
"McGurk!" still on his lips.

And if the two met she knew the result. Seven strong men had ridden
together, fought together, and one by one they had fallen, disappeared
like the white smoke of the camp-fire, jerked off into thin air by the
wind, until only one remained.

How clearly she could see them all! Bud Mansie, meager, lean, with a
shifting eye; Garry Patterson, of the red, good-natured face; Phil
Branch, stolid and short and muscled like a giant; Handsome Dick Wilbur
on his racing bay; Black Gandil, with his villainies from the South
Seas like an invisible mantle of awe about him; and her father, the
stalwart, gray Boone.

All these had gone, and there remained only Pierre le Rouge to follow
in the steps of the six who had gone before.

She crawled to the door, feeble in mind and shuddering of body like a
runner who has spent his last energy in a long race, and drew it open.
The wind blew up the valley from the Old Crow, but no sound came back
to her, no calling from Pierre; and over her rose the black pyramid of
the western peak of the Twin Bears like a monstrous nose pointing
stiffly toward the stars.

She closed the door, dragged herself back to her feet, and stood with
her shoulders leaning against the wall. Her weakness was not
weariness--it was as if something had been taken from her. She
wondered at herself somewhat vaguely. Surely she had never been like
this