"Every inch of the way." Jack leaned forward, sneering, savage. "Then I suppose you put the hitch that's on that pack outside?" "No." Jack was dumbfounded. "Then you admit--" "That first night when I went to sleep I felt as if there were something near me. When I woke up there was a bright fire burning in front of me and the pack had been lashed and placed on one of the horses. At first I thought that it was Dick, who had come back. But Dick didn't appear all day. The next night--" "Wait!" said Jack. "This is gettin' sort of creepy. If you was the drinking kind I'd say you'd been hitting up the red-eye." "The next evening," continued Mary steadily, "I came about dark on a camp-fire with a bed of twigs near it. I stayed by the fire, but no one appeared. Once I thought I heard a horse whinny far away, and once I thought that I saw a streak of white disappear over the top of a hill." The boy sprang up, shuddering with panic. "You saw what?" "Nothing. I thought for a minute that it was a bit of something white, but it was gone all at once." "White--vanished at once--went into the dark as fast as a horse can gallop?" "Something like that. Do you think it was someone?" For answer the boy whipped out his revolver, examined it, and spun the cylinder with shaking hands. Then he said through set teeth: "So you come up here trailin' him after you, eh?" "Who?" "McGurk!" The name came like a rifle shot and Mary rose in turn and shrank back toward the wall, for there was murder in the lighted black eyes which stared after her and crumbling fear in her own heart at the thought of McGurk hovering near--of the peril that impended for Pierre. Of the nights in the valley of the Crow she refused to let herself think. Cold beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead. "You fool--you fool! Damn your pretty pink-and-white face--you've done for us all! Get out!" Mary moved readily enough toward the door, her teeth chattering with terror in the face of this fury. Jack continued wildly: "Done for us all; got us all as good as under the sod. I wish you was in--Get out quick, or I'll forget--you're a woman!" He broke into hysterical laughter, which stopped short and finished in a heartbroken whisper: "Pierre!" CHAPTER 30 At that Mary, who stood with her hand on the latch, whirled and stood wide-eyed, her astonishment greater than her fear, for that whisper told her a thousand things. Through her mind all the time that she stayed in the cabin there had passed a curious surmise that this very place might be the covert of Pierre le Rouge. There was a fatality about it, for the invisible Power which had led her up the valley of the Old Crow surely would not make mistakes.