"She said he war comin' back," he sullenly reflected. "I'll ... lay for him, right hyar."
He looked cautiously about. His quick ear caught the sound of footsteps coming up the trail.
"Somebody's stirrin', now," he said. "Oh, if it's only him!"
He slipped behind a rock to wait in ambush.
But it was not his enemy who came, now, along the trail. Horace Holton, held to the mountains by his mysterious business, had left the others of the party to go home alone, as they had come, and returned to the neighborhood which housed the girl who owned the land he coveted.
Joe, suspicious of him, as the mountaineer who makes his living as a moonshiner, is, of course, of every stranger who appears within his mountains, stepped forward, suddenly, his rifle in his hand and ready to be used. He had no idea that the man had been a member of the party from the bluegrass.
"Halt, you!" he cried.