on in heart-breaking flight.  A swift intuition lashed upon him, leaving in its trail the cold chill of superstition.  The persistence of the shadow he invested with his gambler’s symbolism.  Silent, inexorable, not to be shaken off, he took it as the fate which waited at the last turn when chips were cashed in and gains and losses counted up.  Fortune La Pearle believed in those rare, illuminating moments, when the intelligence flung from it time and space, to rise naked through eternity and read the facts of life from the open book of chance.  That this was such a moment he had no doubt; and when he turned inland and sped across the snow-covered tundra he was not startled because the shadow took upon it greater definiteness and drew in closer.  Oppressed with his own impotence, he halted in the midst of the white waste and whirled about.  His right hand slipped from its mitten, and a revolver, at level, glistened in the pale light of the stars.

“Don’t shoot.  I haven’t a gun.”

The shadow had assumed tangible shape, and at the sound of its human voice a trepidation affected Fortune La Pearle’s knees, and his stomach was stricken with the qualms of sudden relief.

Perhaps things fell out differently because Uri Bram had no gun that night when he sat on the hard benches of the El Dorado and saw murder done.  To that fact also might be attributed the trip on the Long Trail which he took subsequently with a most unlikely comrade.  But be it as it may, he repeated a second time, “Don’t shoot.  Can’t you see I haven’t a gun?”

“Then what the flaming hell did you take after me for?” demanded the gambler, lowering his revolver.

Uri Bram shrugged his shoulders.  “It don’t matter much, anyhow.  I want you to come with me.”

“Where?”

“To my shack, over on the edge of the camp.”

But Fortune La Pearle drove the heel of his moccasin into the snow and attested by his various deities to the madness of Uri Bram.  “Who are you,” he perorated, “and what am I, that I should put my neck into the rope at your bidding?”

“I am Uri Bram,” the other said simply, “and my shack is over there on the edge of camp.  I don’t know who you are, but you’ve thrust the soul from a living man’s body,—­there’s the blood red on your sleeve,—­and, like a second Cain, the hand of all mankind is against you, and there is no place you may lay your head.  Now, I have a shack—­”

“For the love of your mother, hold your say, man,” interrupted Fortune La Pearle, “or I’ll make you a second Abel for the joy of it.  So help me, I will!  With a thousand men to lay me by the heels, looking high and low, what do I want with your shack?  I want to get out of here—­away! away! away!  Cursed swine!  I’ve half a mind to go back and run amuck, and settle for a few of them, the pigs!  One gorgeous, glorious fight, and end the whole damn business!  It’s a skin game, that’s what life is, and I’m sick of it!”