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In that monotony of landscape, one mile exactly like the other, no landmarks to guide him, no trail to follow, however faintly worn, it was strange to see the cowpuncher strike out through the vast distances of the mountain-desert with as much confidence as if he were travelling on a paved street in a city.
They went. The wounded were dragged to their feet and hoisted to their horses, groaning. At a slow walk they started down through the trees. Evening fell; the shadows slanted about them. They moved faster at a trot at a gallop. They were like men flying from a certain ruin. Beyond the margin of the bright lake they fled and lost themselves in the vast, secret heart of the mountain-desert.
The latter pulled his horse to a quick stop and turned to face the on-comer. He made sure that his six-gun was loose in the holster, for it was always well to be prepared for the unusual in these chance meetings in the mountain-desert. "Hey, Buck!" called the galloping horseman.
But men could not forget that in all his work there rode behind Red Pierre six dauntless warriors of the mountain-desert, while McGurk had been always a single hand against the world, a veritable lone wolf.
He threw out his arm and the posse scattered towards the left. Obviously he was the accepted leader, and indeed few men in the mountain-desert would not willingly have followed Mark Retherton. Another gesture from Retherton, and at once a dozen guns gleaned, and a dozen bullets whizzed perilously close to Barry, then the reports came barking up to him; he was just a little out of range.
He stepped to the wall and hung up his bridle on its peg, which is the immemorial manner of asking hospitality in the mountain-desert. "Hope I ain't puttin' you out, Kate. I see you got company." She started, recalled from her thoughts. "Excuse me, Vic. Vic Gregg, Buck Daniels, Lee Haines." They shook hands, and Vic detained Haines a moment. "Seems to me I've heard of you, Haines." "Maybe."
"Dan Barry!" gasped the marshal, rising, and he reached automatically towards his hip before he remembered that he had laid his belt and guns aside before he entered the dining-room, as etiquette is in the mountain-desert. For it is held that shooting at the table disturbs the appetite. "Good evenin'," said Dan quietly. "Was it Buck Daniels that you seen at Rafferty's place, Marshal Calkins?"
He seemed almost as slender as a girl, and infinitely boyish in his grace a strange figure, surely, to make all these hardened fighters of the mountain-desert crouch, and stiffen their fingers around the butts of their revolvers! His eyes were upon Silent, and how they lighted!
He had built it and furnished it for a woman he loved, and afterward for her sake he had killed a man and fled from a posse and escaped in the steerage of a west-bound ship. Still the law followed him, and he kept on west and west until he reached the mountain-desert which thinks nothing of swallowing men and their reputations.
People came out of curiosity to see Pale Annie behind the bar with his tall silk hat which he could never bring himself to lay aside among the cobwebs of the rafters. They came out of curiosity and they remained to drink which is a habit in the mountain-desert.
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