For his previous terror had been somewhat tempered with a doubt of Morgan’s veracity. Even when he had seen Morgan reaching for his pistol he had felt the doubt—had felt that Morgan was not Morgan at all, but Woodward, perpetrating a grotesque joke. To be sure, when he had seen that Morgan really intended to kill him, he had been convinced that the man was in deadly earnest. It had been then that he had desperately twisted himself so that Morgan’s bullet had not touched a vital spot.
But now his terror had grown; it was a thing that had got into his soul—for he had had time to meditate over what Morgan’s vengeance meant to him.
It meant that Morgan would kill him, if he caught him; that the life he treasured would be taken from him; that the magnificent body which he had always so greatly admired would be shattered and broken. The mental picture he drew further increased his terror, and he began to mutter incoherent blasphemies as he raced his horse at a breakneck pace toward the Cache.
But when he had ridden several miles and knew from the appearance of the valley that he was nearing the Cache and that he would reach it in safety, there came a change in him.
He grew calmer; he began to feel a rage that sent the blood racing through his veins again. He looked back over the trail as often as formerly, but it was with a new expression—malevolent hatred. And when he finally reached the entrance to the Cache and rode through it, heading toward the building in which, he expected, he would find Deveny, the malevolence in his expression was mingled with triumph and cunning.
CHAPTER XXVII
A DUAL TRAGEDY
Harlan and Morgan had made a thorough search of Haydon’s desk in the latter’s office in the ranchhouse, and they had found letters addressed to Haydon—received at various towns in the vicinity and proving Morgan’s charges against him. And upon several of the letters were names that provided damaging evidence of the connection of influential men with the scheme to gain unlawful possession of much land in the basin.