It was a little feat, but it would have drawn applause from a circus crowd.
He spoke to the mare while he lighted a match and she dropped to an easy canter, the pace which she could maintain from dawn to dark, eating up the gray miles of the mountain and the desert, and it was then that Red Pierre heard a gay voice singing in the distance.
His attitude changed at once.

He caught a shorter grip on the reins and swung forward a little in the saddle, while his right hand touched the butt of the revolver in its holster and made sure that it was loose; for to those who hunt and are hunted every human voice in the mountain-desert is an ominous token.
The mare, sensing the change of her master through that weird telegraphy which passed down the taut bridle reins, held her head high and flattened her short ears against her neck.
The song and the singer drew closer, and the vigilance of Pierre ceased as he heard a mellow baritone ring out.
"They call me poor, yet I am rich In the touch of her golden hair, My heart is filled like a miser's hands With the red-gold of her hair.
The sky I ride beneath all day Is the blue of her dear eyes; The only heaven I desire Is the blue of her dear eyes." And here Dick Wilbur rode about the shoulder of a hill, broke off his song at the sight of Pierre le Rouge, and shouted a welcome.

They came together and continued their journey side by side.

The half-dozen years had hardly altered the blond, handsome face of Wilbur, and now, with the gladness of his singing still flushing his face, he seemed hardly more than a boy--younger, in fact, than Red Pierre, into whose eyes there came now and then a grave sternness.
"After hearing that song," said Pierre smiling, "I feel as if I'd listened to a portrait." "Right!" said Wilbur, with unabated enthusiasm.

"It's the bare and unadorned truth, Prince Pierre.