e shoulder of the
blacksmith.

"Well?" he asked.

Branch let himself droop back into his chair. His big, dull, colorless
eyes stared up to his friend.

"I dunno, lad. I'm just weary with the sort of tired that you can't
help by sleepin'. Understand?"

Pierre nodded, slowly, because he sympathized. "And the trouble?"

Branch stared about as if searching for a reason.

"Jack's up-stairs sulking; Patterson hasn't come home yet."

And Black Gandil, who heard all things, said without looking up: "A man
that saves a ship-wrecked fellow, he gets bad luck for thanks."

Pierre turned a considering eye on him, and Gandil scowled back.

"You've been croaking for six years, Morgan, about the bad luck that
would come to Jim from saving me out of the snow. It's never happened,
has it?"

Gandil, snarling from one side of his mouth, answered: "Where's
Patterson?"

"Am I responsible if the blockhead has got drunk some place?"

"Patterson doesn't get drunk--not that way. And he knows that we were
to start again to-day."

"There ain't no doubt of that," commented Branch.

"It's the straight dope. Patterson keeps his dates," said Bud Mansie.

The booming bass of Jim Boone broke in: "Shut up, the whole gang of
you. We've had luck for the six years Pierre has been with us. Who
calls him a Jonah?"

And Black Gandil answered: "I do. I've sailed the seas. I know bad
luck when I see it."

"You've been seeing it for six years."

"The worst storms come on a voyage that starts with fair weather.
Patterson? He's gone; he ain't just delayed; he's gone."

It was not the first of these gloomy prophecies which Gandil had made,
but each time a heavy gloom broke over Red Pierre. For when he summed
up the good fortune which the cross of Father Victor had brought him,
he found that he had gained a father, and lost him at their first
meeting; and he had won money on that night of the gambling, but it had
cost the life of another man almost at once. The horse which carried
him away from the vengeance in Morgantown had died on the way and he
had been saved from the landslide, but the girl had perished.

He had driven McGurk from the ranges, and where would the penalty fall
on those who were near and dear to him? In a superstitious horror he
had asked himself the question a thousand times, and finally he could
hardly bear to look into the ominous, brooding eyes of Black Gandil.
It was as if the man had a certain and evil