It was a night when cabin doors were tight-barred and when families huddled indoors, drawing close to the fires that roasted their faces while their backs were cold from wind hissing through the chinks in wall and puncheon flooring.
Even the drag net of Kinnard Towers' search lay idle to-night in the icy grip of the storm.
Through the wildness of shrieking winds, lashing the tree-tops, some men said that they heard ghostly incantations like the chant of a great company of restless spirits.
Jim Towers, who had been knocked sprawling into his own bonfire before the eyes of his myrmidons, was feeling somewhat appeased in spirit to-night. He dwelt in a two-story house so weatherproof that, for him, the tempest remained an external matter. To-night he had with him some half-dozen friends who had come for counsel earlier in the day and whom the storm had interned there for the night. They were all men who had been with him on the expedition that had gone awry when George Kelly had deserted. Now, as then, the company was defeating tedium with wassail. The drab woman who was Jim's wife, and his slave, had fed them all to repletion with "side-meat" and corn pone and gravy, and had withdrawn to a chair apart, where she sat forgotten.
They had been cursing Bear Cat Stacy and George Kelly until their invectives had been exhausted and the liquor had warmed them into a cheerier mood in which they planned spectacular and complete reprisal.
"Es fer Kelly, I reckon he's got his belly full an' bustin' already," boasted Jim Towers with an unpleasant chuckle. "Charlie Reverdy, hyar, an' me hes seen ter thet right fully. In ther place whar his dwellin'-house stood thar hain't nothin' left but jest a pile of ashes. He dastn't show his face in ther open—an' in due time Kinnard aims ter fo'close on ther ground hitself."
"George Kelly hain't ther only man thet's aidin' an' abettin' him, though," demurred a saturnine guest, whose hair grew down close to his eyebrows. "No man knows how many low-down sons of hussies he's got with him."
Jim Towers laughed and poured from jug to tin-cup. "A single fox kin hide out whar a pack of wolves would hev ter shew themselves," he said. "I estimate thet he's got mebby a half dozen—an' afore long now we'll hev ther hides of ther outfit nailed up an' dryin' out."
At length the host arose and stretched his arms sleepily. "I reckon hit's mighty nigh time ter lay down," he suggested, and as yawning lips assented he added, "Be quiet a minute—I want ter listen. 'Pears like ther storm's done plumb spent hitself an' abated."