Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/74

68 glimmering in the pallid light. She forgot her fear in wonder.

"I gambled with only one coin to lose, and I came out to-night with hundreds and hundreds of dollars because I had the cross. It is a charm against all danger and against all bad fortune. It has never failed me."

Over them the piled mass slid closer. The forehead of Pierre gleamed with sweat, but a strong purpose made him talk on. At least he could take all the foreboding of death from the child, and when the end came it would be swift and wipe them both out at one stroke. She clung to him, eager to believe.

"I've closed my eyes so that I can believe."

"It has never failed me. It saved me once when I fought a big bobcat with only a knife. It saved me again when I fought two men. Both of them were famous fighters, but neither of them had the cross. One of them I crippled and the other died. You see, the power of the cross is as great as that. Do you doubt it now, Mary?"

"Do you believe in it so much—really—Pierre?"

Each time there was a little lowering of her voice, a little pause and caress in the tone as she uttered his name, and nothing in all his life had stirred Red Pierre so deeply with happiness and sorrow.

"Do you believe, Pierre?" she repeated.

He looked up and saw the shuddering mass of the landslide creeping upon them inch by inch. In another moment it would loose itself with a rush and cover them.