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Updated: May 22, 2025
I am going straight for the higher mountains and try to shake McGurk off my trail. There's one chance in ten I may succeed, and if I do then I'll wait for my chance and come down on him, for sooner or later we have to fight this out to the end." "I know a place he could never find," said Jacqueline. "The old cabin in the gulley between the Twin Bears. We'll start for it to-night."
Having slowed the pace she became aware that she was very tired from the trip of the day, and utterly exhausted by the wild scene with Jacqueline, so that she began to look about for a place where she could stop for even an hour or so and rest her aching body. Thought of McGurk sent her hand trembling to her holster. Still she knew she must have little to fear from him. He had been kind to her.
"Not we," he answered. "Jack, here's the end of our riding together." She frowned with puzzled wonder. He explained: "One man is stronger than a dozen. That's the strength of McGurk that he rides alone. He's finished your father's men. There's only Wilbur left, and Wilbur will go next then me!" She stretched her hands to him. She seemed to be pleading for her very life.
Can you face that devil alone?" And the old man groaned: "But it's his luck that's ruined me. It's his damned luck which has broken up the finest fellowship that ever mocked at law on the ranges. Oh, Jack, the heart in me's broken. I wish to God that I lay where Gandil lies. What's the use of fighting any longer? No man can stand up against McGurk!"
He shrugged his shoulders like one who gives up the fight against a woman, and seeing it, she changed suddenly and made a gesture with both hands toward him, a sudden gesture filled with grace and a queer tenderness. She said: "Pierre, have you forgotten that when you were only a boy you stood up to McGurk and drew blood from him? Are you afraid of him now?"
She turned about and the two horses, quivering, whirled toward that sound. She stepped back, back until the embers of the fire lay between her and that side of the little clearing. In spite of herself the exclamation escaped her. "McGurk!" The voice spoke again: "Do not be afraid. You are safe, absolutely." "What are you?" "Your friend." "Is it you who followed me up the valley?" "Yes."
Because she was, in fact, mistaken and because the O'Connells shared with the Beekmans and the Ginsbergs a tradition reaching back to a period when revenge was justice, and custom of kinsfolk the only law, Shane O'Connell had sought out Red McGurk and had sent him unshriven to his God.
And as she lay in a half swoon she heard the faint clatter of galloping hoofs over the rocks and a wild voice yelling, fainter and fainter with distance: "McGurk!" It came back to her like a threat; it beat at her ears and roused her, that continually diminishing cry: "McGurk!"
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.
He made another desperate effort, and twisting himself onto one elbow pointed a rigid arm at Pierre. He gasped: "McGurk God!" and dropped. He was dead before his head touched the blanket. It was Jacqueline who closed the staring eyes, for the two men were frozen where they stood. They had heard the story of Patterson and Branch and Mansie in one word from the lips of the dying man.
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