s, and she
broke in: "If he will not come to me, then I must go to him."

"Follow Pierre le Rouge?" queried Wilbur. "Miss Brown, you're an
optimist. But that's because you've never seen him ride. I consider
it a good day's work to start out with him and keep within sight till
night, but as for following and overtaking him--ha, ha, ha, ha!"

He laughed heartily at the thought.

And she smiled a little sadly, answering: "But I have the most
boundless patience in the world. He may gallop all the way, but I will
walk, and keep on walking, and reach him in the end. I am not very
strong, but--"

Her hands moved out as though testing their power, gripping at the air.

"Where will you go to hunt for him?"

"I don't know. But every evening, when I look out at the sunset hills,
with the purple along the valleys, I think that he must be out there
somewhere, going toward the highest ranges. If I were up in that
country I know that I could find him."

"Never in a thousand years."

"Why?"

"Because he's on the trail--"

"On the trail?"

"Of McGurk."

She started.

"What is this man McGurk? I hear of him on all sides. If one of the
men rides a bucking horse successfully, some one is sure to say: 'Who
taught you what you know, Bud--McGurk?' And then the rest laugh. The
other day a man was pointed out to me as an expert shot. 'Not as fast
as McGurk,' it was said, 'but he shoots just as straight.' Finally I
asked some one about McGurk. The only answer I received was: 'I hope
you never find out what he is.' Tell me, what is McGurk?"

Wilbur considered the question gravely.

He said at last: "McGurk is--hell!"

He expanded his statement: "Think of a man who can ride anything that
walks on four feet, who never misses with either a rifle or a revolver,
who doesn't know the meaning of fear, and then imagine that man living
by himself and fighting the rest of the world like a lone wolf. That's
McGurk. He's never had a companion; he's never trusted any man.
Perhaps that's why they say about him the same thing that they say
about me."

"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. B