Can I carry a fortune
like that back to her? Dick, it would haunt me by day and by night.
She would be the next. I know it as I know that I'm sitting in the
saddle here. That's my answer. Carry it back to her."
"I won't lie and tell you I'm sorry, because I'm a fool and still have
a ghost of a hope, but this will be hard news to tell her, and I'd
rather give five years of life than face the look that will come in
her eyes."
"I know it, Dick."
"But this is final?"
"It is."
"Then good-bye again, and--God bless you, Pierre."
"And you, old fellow."
They swerved their horses in opposite directions and galloped apart.
"It was nothing," said Pierre to Jack, when he came up with her and
drew his horse down to a trot. But he knew that she had read his mind.
But all day through the mazes of canyon and hill and rolling ground
they searched patiently. There was no cranny in the rocks too small
for them to reconnoiter with caution. There was no group of trees they
did not examine.
Yet it was not strange that they failed.
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