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Updated: May 11, 2025
He looked about him, saw Drennen's form and George's through the trees, saw where Ernestine was stamping out the glowing embers of her fire, and began to speak. Something else he saw and forgot, its being of no importance to his brain. It was merely the pipe which Drennen had laid upon a stone near the camp fire and had left there when he had gone away.
All that they knew was to fight, to strike hard and straight from the shoulder, opposing strength with strength, swiftness with swiftness, merciless hatred with a hatred as merciless. And so it happened that both blows landed, two little coughing grunts following close upon the impact telling how mightily, and both men reeled back. There was blood upon Drennen's lower lip.
Now, Madden, having heard the tale of Drennen's dice game with a canvas bag of virgin gold backing his play and of a fight in which Drennen had gone down from a bullet fired by Ernestine Dumont, had made up his mind that in the dugout he would come upon a certain type of man which he knew well. He expected to find Drennen half sodden with liquor, garrulous, boastful and withal easy to handle.
The door at Marquette's was thrown open and half a dozen men rushed out into the road. The girl felt Drennen's arm relax, the right arm about her shoulders. With a quick movement she slipped free of it. "Who shot?" called one of the men. "What's wrong?" Ygerne, two paces from Drennen's side, answered very quietly, her coolness amazing him. "I fired. It was a wager with Mr. Drennen.
Lemarc, running his hand under his coat for his knife, was struck down before the hand could come in sight again. Drennen's searching fist had found the man's forehead and the sound of the blow was like a hammer beating against rock. Either Sefton had no arms upon him or had not the time to draw.
He had lost time but he would lose no more. He still had two hours the best of it; it would take Max fully that long to make the descent. "When he comes up with me," was Drennen's quick thought, "my work will have been done!"
He paid for a room at Joe's for a week in advance, went into solitary session, smoking his blackened pipe thoughtfully, his powerful fingers beating a long tattoo upon the sill of the window through which his eyes could find Drennen's dugout. With full square beard, iron grey hair, massive countenance, there was something leonine about Marshall Sothern.
For a score of seconds Drennen's gaze was unfaltering. Then, with a little sigh, he drew her hand close to him, rested his cheek against it and went to sleep. Sothern, looking now at the girl's face, saw it flush as though with pleasure. Now she was at the dugout almost as much as Marshall Sothern. The long hours of the day she spent at the bedside, going to her own room only when it grew dark.
A little of the brandy added fuel to the flickering fire of life in Marshall Sothern. At his command they propped him up, the rug under him, his shoulders against the wall at the side of the fireplace. Drennen's face again had grown impassive. Max had not opened his lips after his first outburst but in his eyes tears gathered, slowly spilling over upon his brown cheeks.
Over the great, square door was a long slab of wood, carefully cut into a thick board, the marks of the axe blades still showing. And inscribed deep into this board, the letters having been burned there with a red hot iron, were the words: CHÂTEAU BELLAIRE. Drennen's pause was brief. From the low, awkward building there were voices floating out to him. He had come to the end of the long trail.
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