“She’s dead, and the past is dead, and now I’ll kill even the memory,” he muttered. “I’ve hung to that card a long time, and it was all I had that suggested her; now even that goes. I don’t want to think about it any more. I didn’t treat her right, and she didn’t treat me right; and—but what’s the use o’ thinkin’? It’s all gone, and dead; and she is dead; and here goes the only thing that’s left to remind me of her.” Again his revolver cracked spitefully in the clear air of the morning. The bullet nicked a hole in the forehead of the picture. He stared at it, his face paling a little. “Just where I got the lance head of old Fire Top that time,” he said. “That was a stem-winder—wonderful that it didn’t finish me! If it was that old heathen who was dead, instead of her! But he’s still livin’ to do more meanness in the world. Yes, I wisht it had been him; or that this card was his ugly, painted mug that I’m shootin’ at. He wouldn’t be waitin’, though, for me to set here and plug him like this; he’d be doin’ something himself, like he did before.” His revolver swung between his knees, in his right hand. With his left he touched significantly the scarlet scar on his forehead. But for that disfiguring scar and the marks of dissipation revealed so plentifully in his countenance, Tom Conover would not have been a bad-looking man. There was a week’s growth of stubble on his face, but with that cut away, his features would have been comely enough. His eyes were of a steely blue. They were watery now, but normally they were keen and farsighted—the eyes of a man long used to looking on the vast reaches of the mountains and deserts, where for so many years he had made his home. He was tall and straight, too, with a symmetry of form which his recent debauch, and the baggy clothing he wore, could not wholly hide. As for his years, he was probably fifty, or near it; and his hair was tinged with gray. It had been black, and round the edges of that livid scar it still showed black, thrusting the scar out by way of contrast, so that it seemed to stand forth as vividly as a cattle brand. His face hardened as he touched the scar with his finger and old memories swept over him, and once more he looked off at the serrated mountains against the sky line. A notch there drew and held his gaze, and in imagination he traveled along it, by way of a trail he knew well, far into the ragged range. There had been strange doings in some of the valleys of those mountains, and he had taken part in them. His mind began to fill with unpleasant pictures. He frowned as they trooped in on him; then, snatching up his revolver, he fired again at the queen of hearts. Shot followed shot in roaring succession, until the revolver was emptied and the playing card was torn into shreds.