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!”
His right hand froze on the butt of his gun and his
face convulsed with impotent rage, for he knew, as
both the others knew, that long before that gun was
clear of the holster the bullet from Pierre’s
gun would be on its way. But Pierre threw his
arms wide, and standing so, his shadow made a black
cross on the wall behind him. He even smiled
to tempt the big man further.
Jacqueline ran between and caught the hand of her
father, crying:
“Are you going to finish the work of McGurk
before he has a chance to start it? He hunted
the rest down one by one. Dad, if you put out
Pierre what is left? Can you face that devil alone?”
