"I'll break the charm, that's all."
"You're only a boy, Pierre."
"I, also, carry a charm with me. Good-by."
He was up in the saddle.
"Then I'll call dad—I'll call them all—if you die they shall all follow you. I swear they shall, Pierre!"
He merely leaned forward and touched the horse with his spurs, but after he had raced the first hundred yards he glanced back. She was running hard for the house, and calling as she went. Pierre cursed and spurred the horse again.
Yet even if Jim Boone and his men started out after him they could never overtake him. Before they were in their saddles and up with him, he'd be a full three miles out in the hills. Not even black Thunder could make up as much ground as that.
So all the fifteen miles to Gaffney's place he urged his horse. The excitement of the race kept the thought of McGurk back in his mind. Only once he lost time when he had to pull up beside a buckboard and inquire the way. After that he flew on again. Yet as he clattered up to the door of Gaffney's crossroads saloon and swung to the ground he looked back and saw a cluster of horsemen swing around the shoulder of a hill and come tearing after him. Surely his time was short.
He thrust open the door of the place and called for a drink. The bartender spun the glass down the bar to him.
"Where's McGurk?"