"Your name's Lorey," Holton answered, with his keen eyes fixed intently on those of the man who stood there, tensely listening to him, "an' yo' keep a still."
Now Lorey again caught his rifle quickly in both hands; his face showed new apprehension, and a terrible determination, desperate and dreadful. If this stranger knew about the still, was it not certain that he was a government spy and therefore worthy of quick death?
"Keerful!" he said menacingly. "Hyar in th' mountings that word's worth your life!" The youth, with frowning brow and glittering, wolfish eyes, stood facing Holton like an animal at bay, with what amounted to a threat of murder on his lips.
"I'm speakin' it for your own good," the old man answered, throwing into his voice as much of frankness as he could command. "I tell you that th' revemooers have got word about your still."
"Then somebody's spied an' told 'em."
Here was Holton's chance. The vicious scheme came to him in a flash. Layson he hated fiercely; this youth he hated fiercely. What plan could be better than to set the one to hunt the other? If Lorey should kill Layson it would remove Layson from his path and make his way clear to the purchase of Madge Brierly's coal-lands at a small fraction of their value. And, having killed him, Lorey would, of course, be forced to flee the country, for the hue and cry would be far-reaching. Such a killing never would be passed over as an ordinary mountain murder generally is by the authorities. Thus, at once, he might be rid of the young bluegrass gentleman he hated and the young mountaineer he feared.
"You're right," said he. "Somebody's spied an' told 'em. Somebody as stumbled on yore still while he was huntin'."
Lorey looked at him, wide-eyed, infuriated. Instantly he quite believed what Holton said. It dove-tailed with his own grim hate of Layson that Layson should hate him and try to work his ruin by giving information to the revenuers. "Somebody huntin'!" he exclaimed. "Frank Layson! Say it, say it!"
"Promise you'll never speak my name?" said Holton. He had no wish to be mixed up in the tragic matter, and he knew, instinctively, that if Joe Lorey gave his word, moonshiner and lawbreaker as he was, it would be kept to the grim end.
"I promise it, if it air th' truth you're tellin' me," said Lorey.