Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/220

214 a price on my head. By right, I should be out there on the ranges with Pierre le Rouge and McGurk. There's the only safe place; but I saw you and I came down out of the wilds and can't go back. I'll stay, I suppose, till I run my head into a halter."

She was too much moved to speak for a moment, and then: "You come to me in spite of that? Dick, whatever you have done, I know that it's only chance which made you go wrong, just as it made Pierre. I wish—"

The dimness of her eyes encouraged him with a great hope. He stole closer to her. He repeated: "You wish—"

"That you could be satisfied with a mere friendship. I could give you that, Dick, with all my heart."

He stepped back and smiled somewhat grimly on her. She went on: "And this McGurk—what do you mean when you say that Pierre is on his trail?"

"Hunting him with a gun."

She grew paler and trembled, but her voice remained steady. It was always that way; at the very moment when he expected her to quail, some inner strength bore her up and baffled him.

"But in all those miles of mountains they may never meet?"

"They can't stay apart any more than iron can stay away from a magnet. Listen: half a dozen years ago McGurk had the reputation of bearing a charmed life. He had been in a hundred fights and he was never touched with either a knife or a bullet.