Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/285

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JACK HEARS A SMALL VOICE
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slaughter, not a battle, and red-handed McGurk would leave one more foe behind him.

But looking down she found the cross and picked up the shining bit of metal; it seemed as if she held the greater part of Pierre le Rouge in her hands. She raised the cross to her lips.

When she fastened the cross about her throat it was with no exultation, but like one who places over his heart a last memorial of the dead; a consecration, like the red sign or the white which the crusaders wore on the covers of their shields.

Then she took from her breast the spray of autumn leaves. He had not noticed them, yet perhaps they had helped to make him gay when he came into the cabin that night, so she placed the spray on the table. Next she unpinned the great rubies from her throat and let her eye linger over them for a moment. They were chosen stones, each as deeply lighted as an eye, if there ever were eyes of this blood-red, and they looked up at her with a lure and a challenge at once.

The first thought of what she must do came to Jacqueline then, but not in an overwhelming tide—it was rather a small voice that whispered in her heart.

Last, she took from her bosom the glove of the yellow-haired girl. Compared with her stanch riding gloves, how small was this! Yet, when she tried it, it slipped easily on her hand. This she laid in that little pile, for these were the things which Pierre would wish to find if by some miracle he came back from the battle. The spray, perhaps,