In the meantime the terror of his name passed on to him who had broken the "charm" of McGurk.
Not all that grim significance passed on to Red Pierre, indeed, because he never impressed the public imagination as did the terrible ruthlessness of McGurk.

At that he did enough to keep tongues wagging.
Cattlemen loved to tell those familiar exploits of the "two sheriffs," or that "thousand-mile pursuit of Canby," with its half-tragic, half-humorous conclusion, or the "Sacking of Two Rivers," or the "three-cornered battle" against Rodriguez and Blond.
But men could not forget that in all his work there rode behind Red Pierre six dauntless warriors of the mountain-desert, while McGurk had been always a single hand against the world, a veritable lone wolf.
Whatever kept him away through those six years, the memory of the wound he received at Gaffney's place never left McGurk, and now he was coming back with a single great purpose in his mind, and in his heart a consuming hatred for Pierre and all the other of Boone's men.
Certainly if he had sensed the second coming of McGurk, Pierre would not have ridden so jauntily through the hills this day, or whistled so carelessly, or swept the hills with such a complacent, lordly eye.

A man of mark cannot bear himself too modestly, and Pierre, from boots to high-peaked, broad-brimmed sombrero, was the last word in elegance for a rider of the mountain-desert.
Even his mount seemed to sense the pride of his master.

It was a cream-colored mustang, not one of the lump-headed, bony-hipped species common to the ranges, but one of those rare reversions to the Spanish thoroughbreds from which the Western cow-pony is descended.

The mare was not over-large, but the broad hips and generous expanse of chest were hints, and only hints, of her strength and endurance.