So he came at last to a gap in the hills and looked down on Morgantown
in the hollow, twoscore unpainted houses sprawling along a single
street. The snow was everywhere white and pure, and the town was
like a stain on the landscape with wisps of smoke rising and trailing
across the hilltops.

Down to the edge of the town he rode, left his cow-pony standing with
hanging head outside a saloon, strode through the swinging doors, and
asked of the bartender the way to the house of Martin Ryder.

The bartender stopped in his labor of rubbing down the surface of his
bar and stared at the black-serge robe of the stranger, with curiosity
rather than criticism, for women, madmen, and clergymen have the
right-of-way in the mountain-desert.

He said: "Well, I'll be damned!--askin' your pardon. So old Mart Ryder
has come down to this, eh? Partner, you're sure going to have a rough
ride getting Mart to heaven. Better send a posse along with him,
because some first-class angels are going to get considerable riled
when they sight him coming. Ha, ha, ha! Sure I'll show you the way.
Take the northwest road out of town and go five miles till you see a
broken-backed shack lyin' over to the right. That's Mart
Ryder's place."

Out to the broken-backed shack rode Pierre le Rouge, Pierre the Red,
as everyone in the north country knew him. His second horse, staunch
cow-pony that it was, stumbled on with sagging knees and hanging head,
but Pierre rode upright, at ease, for his mind was untired.

Broken-backed indeed was the house before which he dismounted. The