"So they came into Tanglefoot down the road, and went out of the Cove by this tunnel?"
"Yessir!" she piped. What had befallen her voice? what appalled eerie squeak was this! She cleared her throat timorously. "They couldn't hev done it later in the fall season. Tanglefoot Creek gits ter runnin' with the fust rains."
"An' Tolhurst knew that too! He must have had a guide—a guide that knows the Cove like I know the palm of my hand! Well, I'll catch him yet, sometime. I'll hang him! I'll hang him—if I have to grow a tree a-purpose."
What strange influence had betided the landscape? Around and around circled the great stationary mountains anchored in the foundations of the earth. It was a long moment before they were still again—perhaps, indeed, it was the necessity of guarding her balance on the fiery steed, a new cause of apprehension, that paradoxically steadied Ethelinda's nerves. Ackert had dismounted, throwing the reins over his arm. He had caught sight of the hoofmarks along the moist sandy spaces of the channel, mute witness in point of number, and a guaranty of the truth of her story. A sudden glitter arrested his eyes. He stooped and picked up a broken belt-buckle with the significant initials U.S. yet showing upon it.
"I'll hang that guide yet," he muttered, his eyes dark with angry conviction, his face lowering with fury. "I'll hang him—I won't expect to prove it p'int blank. Jes' let me git a mite o' suspicion, an' I'll guarantee the slipknot!"
She could never understand her motive, her choice of the moment.
"Cap'n Ackert," she trembled forth. There was so much significance in her tone that, standing at her side, he looked up in sudden expectation. "I tole ye the truth whenst I say I seen no guide"—he made a gesture of impatience; he had no time for twice-told tales—"kase—kase the guide war—war—myself."
The clear twilight fell full on his amazed, upturned face and the storm of fury it concentrated.
"What did you do it fur?" he thundered, "you limb o' perdition!"
"Jes' ter help him some. He—he—he—would hev been capshured."