He reached out, like a blind man who has to see by the sense of touch, and stroked her face. "Jack!" he whispered at last. "Thank God!" "What's happened?" "McGurk--" A violent palsy shook him, and he could not go on. "I know--I understand. He took your guns and left you to wander in this hell! Damn him! I wish--" She stopped. "How long since you've eaten?" "Years!" "We'll eat--McGurk's food!" But she had to assist him up the slope to the trees, and there she left him propped against a trunk, his arms fallen weakly at his sides, while she built the fire and cooked the food. Afterward she could hardly eat, watching him devour what she placed before him; and it thrilled all the woman in her to a strange warmth to take care of the long-rider. Then, except for the disfigured face and the bloodshot eyes, he was himself. "Up there? What happened?" He pointed up the valley. "The girl and Pierre. They're together." "She found him?" "Yes." He bowed his head and sighed. "And the horse, Jack?" He said it with awe. "I took the horse from McGurk." "You!" She nodded. After all, it was not a lie. "You killed McGurk?" She said coolly: "I let him go the way he let you, Dick. He's on foot in the mountains without a horse or a gun." "It isn't possible!" "There's the horse for proof." He looked at her as if she were something more than human. "Our Jack--did this?" "We've got to start on. Can you walk, Dick?" "A thousand miles now." Yet he staggered when he tried to rise, and she made him climb up to the saddle. The white horse walked on, and she kept her place close at the stirrup of the rider. He would have stopped and dismounted for her a hundred times, but she made him keep his place. "What's ahead of us, Jack? We're the last of the gang?" "The last of Boone's gang. We are." "The old life over again?" "What else?" "Yes; what else?" "Are you afraid, Dick?" "Not with you for a pal. Seven was too many; with two we can rule the range." "Partners, Dick?" How could he tell that her voice was gone so gentle because she was seeing in her mind's eye another face than his? He leaned toward her. "Why not something more than partners, after a while, Jack?" She smiled strangely up to him. "Because of this, Dick." And fumbling at her throat, she showed him the glittering metal of the cross. "The cross goes on, but what of you, Jack?" A long silence fell between them. Words died in the making. The great weight pressing down on that slender throat was like the iron hand of a giant, but slowly, one by one, the sounds marshalled themselves: "...God knows..." It was the passing of Judgment. "God knows...not I." Epilogue But what of the legendary gunfighter, McGurk? How could the spirit of any man survive that terrible defeat at the hands of Red Pierre?