a
man you'll begin to think--you'll begin to remember how one other man
beat you at the draw. And that wonder, McGurk, will make your hand
freeze to your side, as you've made the hands of other men before me
freeze. D'you understand?"

The lips of McGurk parted. The whisper of his dry panting reached
Pierre, and the devil in him smiled.

"In six weeks, McGurk, you'll take water from a Chinaman. Now get out!"

And pace by pace McGurk drew back, with his face still toward Pierre.

The latter cried: "Wait. Are you going to leave your gun?"

Only the steady retreat continued.

"And go unarmed through the mountains? What will men say when they see
McGurk with an empty holster?"

But the outlaw had passed out of view beyond the corner of one of the
monster boulders. After him went the white horse, slowly, picking his
steps, as if he were treading on dangerous and unknown ground and would
not trust his leader. Pierre was left to the loneliness of the gorge.

The moonlight only served to make more visible its rocky nakedness, and
like that nakedness was the life of Pierre under his hopeless inward
eye. Over him loomed from either side the gleaming pinnacles of the
Twin Bears, and he remembered many a time when he had looked up toward
them from the crests of lesser mountains--looked up toward them as a
man looks to a great and unattainable ideal.

Here he was come to the crest of all the ranges; here he was come to
the height and limit of his life, and what had he attained? Only a
cruel, cold isolation. It had been a steep ascent; the declivity of
the farther side led him down to a steep and certain ruin and the dark
night below. But he stiffened suddenly and threw his head high as if
he faced his fate; and behind him the cream-colored mare raised her
head with a toss and whinnied softly.

It seemed to him that he had heard something calling, for the sound was
lost against the sweep of wind coming up the gorge. Something calling
there in the night of the mountains as he himself had called when he
rode so wildly in the quest for McGurk. How long ago had that been?

But it came once more, clear beyond all doubt. He recognized the voice
in spite of the panting which shook it; a wild wail like that of a
heart-broken child, coming closer to him like some one, running:
"Pierre! Oh, Pierre!"

And all at once he knew that the moon was broad and bright and fair,
and the heavens clear and shining with golden