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Updated: May 22, 2025
The sneer, it seemed to her, grew bitterer, but still the man did not speak. Then the thought of Pierre, lying dead somewhere among the rocks, burned across her mind. Her hand leaped for the revolver, and whipped it out in a blinding flash to cover him, but with her finger curling on the trigger she checked herself in the nick of time. McGurk had made no move to protect himself.
He put two bullets through Pierre, but the boy shot him from the floor and wounded him for the first time. The charm of McGurk was broken. "For half a dozen years McGurk was gone; there was never a whisper about him. Then he came back and went on the trail of Pierre. He has killed the friends of Pierre one by one; Pierre himself is the next in order Pierre or myself.
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!"
Instantly the door behind him flew open and Boone's men stormed into the room. Once more McGurk fired, but his wound made his aim wide and the bullet merely tore up a splinter beside Pierre's head. A fusillade from Boone and his men answered, but the outlaw had leaped back through the door. "He's hurt," thundered Boone. "By God, the charm of McGurk is broken.
Before they were in their saddles and up with him, he'd be a full three miles out in the hills. Not even black Thunder could make up as much ground as that. So all the fifteen miles to Gaffney's place he urged his horse. The excitement of the race kept the thought of McGurk back in his mind. Only once he lost time when he had to pull up beside a buckboard and inquire the way.
But I've lost my boy, Hal." "Too bad, Jim. I knew Hal; at a distance, of course." "And Pierre is filling Hal's place in the family." "Is that your answer?" "McGurk, are you going to pin me down in this?" And here Jack whirled and cried: "Dad, you won't let Pierre go!" "You see?" pleaded Boone.
"I'll take my chance with any man but McGurk " "He has no cross to bring him luck." "Aye, and he has no friends for that luck to ruin. Look at Gandil, Jack, and then speak to me of the cross." "Pierre, that first time you met you almost beat him to the draw. Oh, if I were a man, I'd Pierre, it was to get McGurk that you rode out to the range.
D'you see?" He could not have spoken with a more formal politeness if he had been asking the other to pass first through the door of a dining-room. The wonder of McGurk grew and the sweat on his forehead seemed to be spreading a chill through his entire body. He said: "I see. You trust all to the cross, eh, Pierre? The little cross under your neck?" "It's gone," said Pierre le Rouge.
I'm afraid of McGurk, afraid of that damned white face, that lowered, fluttering eyelid, that sneering mouth. Without the cross to bring me luck, how could I meet him? But while I keep the cross there's ruin and hell without end for every one with me." She was white and shaking. She said: "I'm not afraid. I've one friend left; there's nothing else to care for." "So it's to be this way, Jack?"
They would take the trail, and Jim Boone, no longer agile enough to be effective on the trail, would guard the house and the body of Gandil in it. There was little danger that even McGurk would try to rush a hostile house, but they took no chances.
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