"Lay down betwixt them two saplin's thar," was the next order, and foaming with futile rage, Jake glanced about wildly—and discreetly did as he was told.
Ten minutes later Turner rose from his knees, leaving behind him a man gagged and staked out, Indian fashion, with feet harnessed to one tree-trunk and hands to another.
Lying mute and harrowed with chagrin, he saw his copper coil battered into shapelessness and his mash vat emptied upon the ground. Then he saw Bear Cat Stacy disappear into the shadows, trophy-laden.
Dawn was near once more before Turner reached the Quarterhouse, and from the hitching-rack the last mount had been ridden away. Before him, still muffled against outcry, plodded Black Carmichael, seething with a fury which would ride him like a mania until he had avenged his indignities—but for the moment he was inoffensive.
At the place where the gray horse had been tethered, Turner lashed the rider. Above his head to an over-arching sycamore branch, he swung a maltreated coil of copper tubing. Then he turned, somewhat wearied and aching of muscle, into the timber again.
"I reckon now," he said to himself, "I kin go over thar an' lay down."
CHAPTER XXI
Three times along the way, as the new crusader trudged on to Dog Tate's cabin, the late-setting moon glinted on queerly twisted things suspended from road-side trees—things unlike the fruit of either hickory or poplar.
A grim satisfaction enlivened his tired eyes, but it lingered only for a moment. Before them rose the picture of a girl sitting stricken by a bedside, and his brows contracted painfully with the memory.
From the window of Tate's cabin came a faint gleam of light, and, as he drew cautiously near, a figure rose wearily from the dark doorstep.