“What's that?”
“You will smile when you hear. They say that McGurk will lose out in the end on account of some woman.”
“And they say that of you?”
“They say right of me. I know it myself. Look at me now. What right have I here? If I'm found I'm the meat of the first man who sights me, but here I stay, and wait and watch for your smiles—like a love-sick boy. By God, you must despise me, Mary!”
“I don't try to understand you Westerners,” she answered, “and that's why I have never questioned you before. Tell me, why is it that you come so stealthily to see me and run away as soon as anyone else appears?”
He said with wonder: “Haven't you guessed?”
“I don't dare guess.”
“But you have, and your guess was right. There's a price on my head. By right, I should be out there on the ranges with Pierre le Rouge and McGurk. There's the only safe place; but I saw you and I came down out of the wilds and can't go back. I'll stay, I suppose, till I run my head into a halter.”
She was too much moved to speak for a moment, and then: “You come to me in spite of that? Dick, whatever you have done, I know that it's only chance which made you go wrong, just as it made Pierre. I wish—”
The dimness of her eyes encouraged him with a hope. He moved closer to her.
He repeated: “You wish—”
“That you could be satisfied with a mere friendship. I could give you that, Dick, with all my heart.”
He stepped back and smiled somewhat grimly on her.
She went on: “And this McGurk—what do you mean when you say that Pierre is on his trail?”
“Hunting him with a gun.”
She grew paler, but her voice remained steady.
“But in all those miles of mountains they may never meet?”
“They can't stay apart any more than iron can stay away from a magnet. Listen: half a dozen years ago McGurk had the reputation of bearing a charmed life. He had been in a hundred fights and he was never touched with either a knife or a bullet. Then he crossed Pierre le Rouge when Pierre was only a youngster just come onto the range. He put two bullets through Pierre, but the boy shot him from the floor and wounded him for the first time. The charm of McGurk was broken.
“For half a dozen years McGurk was gone; there was never a whisper about him. Then he came back and went on the trail of Pierre. He has killed the friends of Pierre one by one; Pierre himself is the next in order—Pierre or myself. And when those two meet there will be the greatest fight that was ever staged in the mountain-desert.”
She stood straight, staring past Wilbur with hungry eyes.
“I knew he needed me. I have to save him, Dick. You see that? I have to bring him down from the 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?”
“Tonight.”
“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.
“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, and was gone from the room. He stood a moment with a hand raised to his face.
“After all,” he muttered, “that's enough to die for, and—” He threw up his long arms in a gesture of resignation.
“The will of God be done!” said Wilbur, and laughed again.
CHAPTER 26
She was ready, crouched close to the window of her room, when the signal came, but first she was not sure, because the sound was as faint as a memory. Moreover, it might have been a freakish whistling in the wind, which rose stronger and stronger. It had piled the thunder-clouds higher and higher, and now and again a heavy drop of rain tapped at her window like a thrown pebble.
So she waited, and at last heard the whistle a second time, unmistakably clear. In a moment she was hurrying down to the stable, climbed into the saddle, and rode at a cautious trot out among the sand-hills.
For a time she saw no one, and commenced to fear that the whole thing had been a gruesomely real, practical jest. So she stopped her horse and imitated the signal whistle as well as she could. It was repeated immediately behind her—almost in her ear, and she turned to make out the dark form of a tall horseman.
“A bad night for the start,” called Wilbur. “Do you want to wait till tomorrow?”
She could not answer for a moment, the wind whipping against her face, while a big drop stung her lips.
She said at length: “Would a night like this stop Pierre—or McGurk?”
For answer she heard his laughter.