raw rocks and mud, where a landslide had stripped the hill to
the stone.

As they veered about the ruin and thundered on down to the foot of
the hill, Jim Boone threw up his hand for a signal and brought his
stallion to a halt on back-braced, sliding legs.

For a metallic glitter had caught his eye, and then he saw, half
covered by the pebbles and dirt, the figure of a man. He must have
been struck by the landslide and not overwhelmed by it, but rather
carried before it like a stick in a rush of water. At the outermost
edge of the wave he lay with the rocks and dirt washed over him. Boone
swung from the saddle and lifted Pierre le Rouge.

The gleam of metal was the cross which his fingers still gripped.
Boone examined it with a somewhat superstitious caution, took it from
the nerveless fingers, and slipped it into a pocket of Pierre's shirt.
A small cut on the boy's forehead showed where the stone struck which
knocked him senseless, but the cut still bled--a small trickle--Pierre
lived. He even stirred and groaned and opened his eyes, large and
deeply blue.

It was only an instant before they closed, but Boone had seen. He
turned with the figure lifted easily in his arms as if Pierre had been
a child fallen asleep by the hearth and now about to be carried off
to bed.

And the outlaw said: "I've lost my boy tonight. This here one was
given me by the will of--God."