n aid in her woe,
and for the first time in her life a conception of God dawned on her
wild, gay mind. She made a picture of him like a vast cloud looming
over the Twin Bear peaks and breathing an infinite calm over the
mountains. The cloud took a faintly human shape--a shape somewhat like
that of her father when he lived, for he could be both stern and
gentle, as she well knew, and such gray Boone had been.

Perhaps it was because of this that another picture came out of her
infancy of a soft voice, of a tender-touching hand, of brooding,
infinitely loving eyes. She smiled the wan smile again because for the
first time it came to her that she, too, even she, the wild, the
"tiger-heart," as Pierre himself had called her, might one day have
been the mother of a child, his child.

But the ache within her grew so keen that she dropped, writhing, to her
knees, and twisted her hands together in agony. It was prayer. There
were no words to it, but it was prayer, a wild appeal for aid.

That aid came in the form of a calm that swept on her like the flood of
a clear moonlight over a storm-beaten landscape. The whisper which had
come to her before was now a solemn-speaking voice, and she knew what
she must do. She could not keep the two men apart, but she might reach
McGurk before and strike him down by stealth, by craft, any way to kill
that man as terrible as a devil, as invulnerable as a ghost.

This she might do in the heart of the night, and afterward she might
have the courage left to tell the girl the truth and then creep off
somewhere and let this steady pain burn its way out of her heart.

Once she had reached a decision, it was characteristic that she moved
swiftly. Also, there was cause for haste, for by this time Pierre must
have discovered that there was no one in the lower reaches of the gorge
and would be galloping back with all the speed of the cream-colored
mare which even McGurk's white horse could not match.

She ran from the cabin and into the little lean-to behind it where the
horses were tethered. There she swung her saddle with expert hands,
whipped up the cinch, and pulled it with the strength of a man,
mounted, and was off up the gorge.

For the first few minutes she let the long-limbed black race on at full
speed, a breathless course, because the beat of the wind in her face
raised her courage, gave her a certain impulse which was almost
happiness, just as the martyrs rejoiced and held o