“An’ that’s just th’ chance he’ll never give ye,” retorted Jack. “I wouldn’t be afeerd o’ him, either, if he’d fight fair—I believe y’ could lick him. But he won’t fight fair. Th’ coward’ll hit y’ from behind, if he kin—an’ he’s waitin’ his chance. That’s his kind, as y’ ought t’ know by this time. Oh, if I could only ketch him!”
But since the afternoon that great rock had fallen, Nolan had utterly disappeared from his accustomed haunts. Jack made diligent inquiries, but could get no news of him. The gang of scalawags who were his usual companions professed to be utterly ignorant of his whereabouts. He had been sleeping in a little closet back of one of the low railroad saloons, paying for board and lodging by cleaning out the place every morning, but the proprietor of the place said he had not been near there for a week. So at last Jack dropped his inquiries, hoping against hope that Nolan had taken alarm and left the neighbourhood.
Reddy continued to improve physically from day to day, but mentally he grew worse and worse. His broken arm had healed nicely, and the wound in his head was quite well, but the injury to the brain baffled all the skill of his physicians. He would sit around the house, moping, seemingly taking notice of nothing; then he would suddenly start up and walk rapidly away as though he had just remembered some important engagement. Frequently he would be gone all day, sometimes even all night. He was rarely at home at meal-times, and yet he never seemed to be hungry.
Mrs. Magraw could never find out from him where he spent all this time. He refused to answer her questions, until, seeing how they vexed him, she ceased from bothering him, and let him go his own way. Of her bitter hours of despair and weeping, she allowed him to see nothing, but tried always to present to him the same cheerful and smiling countenance she had worn in the old days before his injury. In spite of this, he grew more and more morose, more and more difficult to get along with. The doctor advised that he be taken to an asylum, but the very word filled his wife with a nameless dread, and she prayed that he might be left in her care a little while longer. Perhaps he might grow better; at any rate, unless he grew worse, she could look after him.
One morning, about a week after the attempt upon Allan’s life, he and Jack were working together on the embankment by the river’s edge, when the foreman stopped suddenly, straightened himself, and, shading his eyes with his hand, gazed long and earnestly across the water. Allan, following his look, saw two men sitting by a clump of willows, talking earnestly together. Their figures seemed familiar, but it was not until one of them leaped to his feet, waving his arms excitedly, that he recognized him as Reddy Magraw.
“Who is the other one?” he asked.
“It’s Dan Nolan,” said the foreman between his teeth. “What deviltry d’ y’ suppose he’s puttin’ int’ that poor feller’s head?”
Allan did not answer, but a strange foreboding fell upon him as he watched Reddy’s excited oratory. Then the two watchers saw Nolan suddenly pull Reddy down, and together they vanished behind the trees.
What could it mean? Allan asked himself. What villainy was Dan Nolan plotting? Was he trying to make poor, half-witted Reddy his instrument for the commission of some crime?
Jack, too, worked away in unaccustomed silence and unusual heaviness of heart, for he was asking himself the same questions. Something must be done; Reddy must not be led into any mischief; and no influence which Nolan might gain over him could be anything but bad. It was like the coward to try to get another man to do what he himself shrank from doing.