He was dead before the boy had freed his feet from the stirrups.
Pierre threw the saddle over his shoulder and walked eight miles to the nearest ranch house, where he spent practically the last cent of his money on another horse, and drove on south once more.
There was little hope in him as day after day slipped past.

Only the ghost of a chance remained that Martin Ryder could fight away death for another fortnight; yet Pierre had seen many a man from the mountain-desert stave off the end through weeks and weeks of the bitterest suffering.

His father must be a man of the same hard durable metal, and upon that Pierre staked all his hopes.
And always he carried the picture of the dying man alone with his two wolf-eyed sons who waited for his eyes to weaken.

Whenever he thought of that he touched his horse with the spurs and rode fiercely for a time.

They were his flesh and blood, the man, and even the two wolf-eyed sons.
So he came at last to a gap in the hills and looked down on Morgantown in the hollow, twoscore unpainted houses sprawling along a single street.