"'Peared like most likely they war makin' fer ther Quarterhouse."
"I'm obleeged ter ye." And Bear Cat was gone again into the darkness.
When he had turned the first bend his walk broke into a run. His mind was racing, too. So Henderson had not only come back, but come back with a reversed allegiance. He was riding with a Towers bodyguard and bound for a Towers stronghold! The name of Sam Carlyle indicated that as definitely as if it had been the name of Black Tom Carmichael. In one way this dropping of all friendly pretense by Jerry made his own task clearer and easier—but it was the most hazardous thing he had ever undertaken. Single handed, he must go into the place where bloodshed was no novelty and take Henderson away, and he went at a run.
Presumably, Jerry Henderson would not stop long in the bar-room, but would be conducted to the presence of Kinnard Towers, and, with all his haste, Bear Cat's speed seemed to himself desperately slow.
He and his father had protected this ingrate against Towers' wrath, he bitterly reflected, and this was their requital. Their guest had used that hospitality to steal the love of Blossom and then to discard her. He had deceived her, compromised her, promised her marriage and fled in the face of danger. Lew Turner had said: "She's been pinin' round like somebody sickenin' ter her death!" That was what her full trust had come to—and if she had trusted that far her trust might have gone farther! Then finally from the secure distance of the city Henderson had made his terms with Kinnard Towers!
Now Blossom was going to be married—a heart-racking groan rumbled in his throat. Blossom's wedding! How he had dreamed of it from his first days of callow love-thoughts! He had fed his imagination upon pictures of the house he had meant to build for her down there by the river! To his nostrils now seemed to come the sweet fragrance of freshly hewn timbers and sawed lumber; incense of home-making! A hundred times he had visualized himself—the ceremony over—riding proudly with his bride on a pillion behind him, as the mountain groom had always brought his bride, from her father's house to his own—and her own!
Now her honor required that an unwilling husband should be brought to her—her honor and her heart's bruised wish—and he, who had planned it all differently, must see the matter accomplished—to-night!
Henderson and his guard had strolled with a fine assumption of carelessness into the barn-like resort and, as the handful of loiterers there recognized them, an abrupt silence fell and glasses, half-raised, were held for a moment poised.
From a huge hearth-cavern at one end of the room leaped the ruddy illumination of burning logs and fagots in the flaming proportions of a bonfire. Wreaths of blue and brown smoke floated in foggy streamers between the dark walls and up to the cobwebbed rafters. The lamps guttered and flared against their tin reflectors, reeking with an oily stench in the stagnation of the unaltered air.