Argosy, Vol. 112, No. 2 — page 142: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

308 this! Yet, when she tried it, it slipped easily on her hand. This she laid in that little pile, for these were the things which Pierre would wish to find if by some miracle he came back from the battle. The spray, per- haps, he would not understand; and yet he might. She pressed both hands to her breast and drew a long breath, for her heart was breaking. Through her misted eyes she could barely see the shimmer of the cross. That sight made her look up, searching for a superhuman aid in her wo, 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 some- what 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 an- other 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 an 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 in 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, THE ARGOSY. 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 out their hands to the fire that was to consume them; but after the first burst of headlong galloping, she drew down the speed to a hand-canter, and this in turn to a fast trot, for she dared not risk the far-echoed sound of the clattering hoofs over the rock. And as she rode she saw at last the winking eye of red which she longed for and dreaded. She pulled her black to an instant halt and swung from the saddle, tossing the reins over the head of the horse to keep him standing there. Yet, after she had made half a dozen hurried paces something forced her to turn and look again at the handsome head of the horse. He stood quite motionless, with his ears pricking after her, and now as she stopped he whinnied softly, hardly louder than the whisper of aman. So she ran back again and threw the reins over the horn of the saddle; he should be free to wander where he chose through the free mountains, but as for her, she knew very certainly now that she would never mount that saddle again, or control that triumphant steed with the touch of her hands on the reins. She put her arms around his neck and drew his head down close. There was a dignity in that parting, for it was the burning of her bridges behind her. When “ King-Maker” Richard of Warwick, betrayed and beaten on the field, came to his last stand by the forest, he dismounted and stabbed his favorite charg- (E@) AMI » DOOKS