as a grown man will speak of the
way he feared darkness when he was a child. McGurk moistened his white
lips. The white horse pawed the rocks as though impatient to be gone.

"Listen," said Pierre, "your horse grows restive. Suppose we stand
here--it's a convenient distance apart, you see, and wait with our arms
folded for the next time the white horse paws the rocks, because when I
kill you, McGurk, I want you to die knowing that another man was faster
on the draw and straighter with his bullets than you are. D'you see?"

He could not have spoken with a more formal politeness if he had been
asking the other to pass first through the door of a dining-room. The
wonder of McGurk grew and the sweat on his forehead seemed to be
spreading a chill through his entire body.

He said: "I see. You trust all to the cross, eh, Pierre? The little
cross under your neck?"

"The cross is gone," said Pierre le Rouge. "Why should I use it
against a night rider, McGurk? Are you ready?"

And McGurk, not trusting his voice for some strange reason, nodded.
The two folded their arms.

But the white horse which had been pawing the stones so eagerly a
moment before was now unusually quiet. The very postures of the men
seemed to have frozen him to stone, a beautiful, marble statue, with
the moonlight glistening on the muscles of his perfect shoulders.

At length he stirred. At once a quiver jerked through the tense bodies
of the waiting men, but the white horse had merely stiffened and raised
his head high. Now, with arched neck and flaunting tail he neighed
loudly, as if he asked a question. How could he know, dumb brute, that
what he asked only death could answer?

And as they waited an itching came at the palm of McGurk's hand. It
was not much, just a tingle of the blood. To ease it, he closed his
fingers and found that his hand was moist with cold perspiration.

He began to wonder if his fingers would be slippery on the butt of the
gun. Then he tried covertly to dry them against his shirt. But he
ceased this again, knowing that he must be of hair-trigger alertness to
watch for the stamp of the white horse.

It occurred to him, also, that he was standing on a loose stone which
might wabble when he pulled his gun, and he cursed himself silently for
his hasty folly. Pierre, doubtless, had noticed that stone, and
therefore he had made the suggestion that they stand where they were.
Otherwise, how could there be that