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"I don't mind; I want to hear," said Philip, and he edged a little nearer, until they sat shoulder to shoulder. "It's got to be the end," repeated DeBar, in a low voice. "If we get out of this, and fight, and you win, it'll be because I'm dead, Phil. D'ye understand? I'll be dead when the fight ends, if you win. That'll be one end." "But if you win, Bill." A flash of joy shot into DeBar's eyes.
But the blow lacked force, and he staggered back under the other's weight, boiling with rage at the advantage which DeBar had taken of him. The outlaw's hands gripped at his throat and his fingers sank into his neck like cords of steel. With a choking gasp he clutched at DeBar's wrists, knowing that another minute a half-minute of that death clutch would throttle him.
He had felt the breath of DeBar's fourth shot, and now with one cartridge each the men advanced foot by foot, until DeBar stopped and deliberately aimed at twenty paces. Their pistols rang out in one report, and, standing unhurt, a feeling of horror swept over Philip as he looked at the other. The outlaw's arms fell to his side.
"I'm not afraid and I know that you're not, Phil," he went on, with his eyes on the top of the stove, "but I wish it was over, just the same. Somehow I'd a'most rather stay up here another year or two than kill you." "Kill me!" exclaimed Philip, the old fire leaping back into his veins. DeBar's quiet voice, his extraordinary self-confidence, sent a flush of anger into Philip's face.
And through it all it was DeBar's voice that rose in encouragement to the dog limping behind him and to the man limping behind the dog now in song, now in the wild shouting of the sledge-driver, his face thin and gaunt in its starved whiteness, but his eyes alive with a strange fire.
At DeBar's words the blood leaped swiftly through Philip's veins, and he laughed as he flung the outlaw's hand from his arm. "I'm not afraid of death," he cried angrily. "Don't take me for a child, William DeBar. How long since you found this God of yours?"
Nixon was greatly surprised at the result, and at the end of the week he induced Buntline to take him in as a partner in the company. The next week we played at DeBar's Opera House, in St. Louis, doing an immense business. The following week we were at Cincinnati, where the theater was so crowded every night that hundreds were unable to obtain admission.
"The law wouldn't vindicate itself back there ten years ago but I guess it's doing it now." He dropped into DeBar's trail and began to trot. "At least it looks as if you're on the side of the Mighty," he continued. "But we'll see very soon Billy " Ahead of him the trail ran up a ridge, broken and scattered with rocks and stunted scrub, and the sight of it gave him a little hope.
The frost had hardened in the huge footprints of DeBar's big hound; it had built a webby film over the square impressions of his snow-shoe thongs. But what of that? Might not the trail still be old, and DeBar a few hundred yards ahead of him, waiting watching? He went back to the sledge and unstrapped his carbine. In a moment the first picture, the first sympathy, was gone.
Later, when it became lighter, they went on hour after hour, through the night. At dawn the trail was still old. There were the same cobwebs of frost, the same signs to show that DeBar and his Mackenzie hound had preceded them a long time before. During the next day and night they spent sixteen hours on their snow-shoes and the lacework of frost in DeBar's trail grew thinner.
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