Then fear came to Pierre, the first real fear of his life. He jerked
his head high and looked about him. The room was utterly empty. He
tiptoed to the door and found even the long bar deserted, littered
with tall bottles and overturned glasses. The cold in his heart
increased. A moment before he had been hand in hand with all the mirth
in that place.

Now the men whose laughter he had repeated with smiles, the men
against whose sleeves his elbow had touched, were further away from
him than they had been when all the snow-covered miles from Morgantown
to the school of Father Victor had laid between them. They were men
who might lose themselves in any crowd, but he was set apart with a
brand, even as Hurley and Diaz had been set apart that eventful evening.

He had killed a man. That fact blotted out the world. He drew his gun
again and stole down the length of the bar. Once he stopped and poised
the weapon before he realized that the white, fierce face that
squinted at him was his own reflection in a mirror.

Outside the door the free wind caught at his face, and he blessed it
in his heart, as if it had been the touch of the hand of a friend.
Beyond the long, dark, silent street the moor rose and passed up
through the safe, dark spaces of the sky.

He must move quickly now. The pursuit was not yet organized, but it
would begin in a space of minutes. From the group of half a dozen
horses which stood before the saloon he selected the best--a tall,
raw-boned nag with an ugly head. Into the saddle he swung, wondering
faintly that the theft of a horse mattered so little to him. His was
the greatest sin. All other things mattered nothing.