"Jack, you will not use your strength against me! Jack!"
He saw her eyes in a mist of pain and reproach as he released her. And now she threw back her head; she was smiling in the philosophy of garden nonsense as she cried:
"Good-by, Jack! Luck against the dinosaur! Don't press him too hard when he is turning a sharp corner. Remember he has a long reach with his old paleozoic tail. Luck!" with a laugh through her tears; a laugh with tremulous cheer in it and yet with the ring of a key in the lock of a gate.
Unsteadily he bent over and taking her hands in his pressed his lips to them.
"Yes, luck!" he repeated, and half staggering turned toward the defile.
"Luck!" she called after him when he was out of sight. "Luck!" she called to the silence of the pass.
Three days with the trail and the Eternal Painter mocking him, when the singing of Spanish verses that go click with the beat of horse-hoofs in the sand sounded hollow as the refrain of vain memories, and from the steps of a Pullman he had a final glimpse of Firio's mournful face, with its dark eyes shining in the light of the station lamp. Firio had in his hand a paper, a sort of will and testament given him at the last minute, which made him master in fee simple of the ranch where he had been servant, with the provision that the Doge of Little Rivers might store his overflow of books there forever.