Pierre rose and ran from the room and around the side of the building.
There by the woodpile lay the prostrate body. It was a mere limp
weight when he turned and raised it in his arms. So he walked back
into the house carrying all that was left of Black Morgan Gandil, and
placed his burden on a bunk at the side of the room.
There had been no outcry from either Jim Boone or his daughter, but
they came quickly to him, and Jacqueline pressed her ear over the
heart of the hurt man.
She said: "He's still alive, but nearly gone. Where's the wound?"
They found it when they drew off his coat--a small cut high on the
right breast, and another lower and more to the left. Either of them
would have been fatal, and about each the flesh was discolored where
the hilt of the knife or the fist of the striker had driven home
the blade.
They stood back and made no hopeless effort to save him. It was
uncanny that Black Morgan Gandil, after all of his battles, should die
without a struggle in this way. And it had been no cowardly attack
from the rear. Both wounds were in the front. A hope came to them when
his color increased at one time, but it was for only a moment; it went
out again as if someone were erasing paint from his cheeks.
But just as they were about to turn away his body stirred with a
slight convulsion, the eyes opened wide, and he strove to speak. A red
froth came on his lips. He made another desperate effort, and twisting
himself onto one elbow pointed a rigid arm at Pierre. He gasped:
"McGurk--God!" and dropped. He was dead before his head touched
the blanket.
It was Jacqueline who closed the staring eyes, for the two men were
frozen where they stood. They had heard the story of Patterson and
Branch and Mansie in one word from the lips of the dying man.
McGurk was back. McGurk was prowling about the last of the gang of
Boone, and the lone wolf had pulled down four of the band one by one
on successive days. Only two remained, and these two looked at one
another with a common thought.
"The lights!" cried Jacqueline, turning from the body of Gandil. "He
can shoot us down through the windows at his leisure."
"But he won't," said her father. "I've lived too long with the name of
McGurk in my ears not to know the man. He'll never kill by stealth,
but openly and man to man. I know him, damn him. He'll wait till he
meets us alone, and then we'll finish as poor Gandil, there, or
Patterson and Branch and Bud Mansie, all of them fallen somewhere in
the mountains with the buzzards left to bury 'em. That's how we'll
finish with McGurk on our trail. And you--Gandil was right--it's you
that's brought him on us. A shipwrecked man--by God, Gandil
was right!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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