"Run, Pierre—you can save yourself."
With that terror threatening him from above, he rose and started to run down the hill. A moan of woe followed him, and he stopped and turned back, and fought his way through the wind until he was beside her once more.
She was wringing the white, cold hands and weeping:
"Pierre—I couldn't help it—but when you left me the whole world went out, and my heart broke. I couldn't help calling out for you; but now I'm strong again, and I won't have you stay. The whole mountain is shaking and falling toward us. Go now, Pierre, and I'll never make a sound to bring you back."
He said: "Hush! I've something here which will keep us both safe. Look!"
He tore from the chain which held it at his throat the little metal cross, and held it high overhead, glimmering in the pallid light. She forgot her fear in wonder.
"I gambled with only one coin to lose, and I came out to-night with hundreds and hundreds of dollars because I had the cross. It is a charm against all danger and against all bad fortune. It has never failed me."
Over them the piled mass slid closer. The forehead of Pierre gleamed with sweat, but a strong purpose made him talk on. At least he could take all the foreboding of death from the child, and when the end came it would be swift and wipe them both out at one stroke. She clung to him, eager to believe.
"I've closed my eyes so that I can believe."
"It has never failed me. It saved me once when I fought a big bobcat with only a knife. It saved me again when I fought two men. Both of them were famous fighters, but neither of them had the cross. One of them I crippled and the other died. You see, the power of the cross is as great as that. Do you doubt it now, Mary?"