After the men had gone he went back to his still to view the ruins they had left behind them. His wrath was terrible. Madge, who had, of course, learned what had happened almost instantly, for the still was scarcely out of hearing of her cabin, tried vainly to console, to calm him. He turned on her with a rage of which, in all her life among hot-tempered mountaineers, she had never seen the equal, and chokingly swore vengeance on the man who had given the information which had resulted in the raid.
"They come straight to th' still," he told her, "never falterin', never wonderin' if, maybe, they was on th' right path. Ev'ry inch o' th' hull way had been mapped out for 'em, an' they didn't make a mis-step from th' valley to th' very entrance o' th' cave. I'll git th' chap that planned their course out for 'em thataway! I'll git 'im, Madge! I'll git 'im, sure!"
Her heart sank in her breast like lead. She knew perfectly whom Lorey meant. She knew as perfectly that Layson never had informed upon the moonshiner, but she also knew that Heaven itself could not, then, convince the man of that.
"Who do you mean you'll git, Joe?" she faltered, hoping against hope that she was wrong in her suspicions.
"You know well enough," he answered. "Who would I mean but that damn' furriner, Frank Layson? He warn't satisfied with comin' here an' stealin' you away from me! He had to put th' revenuers on th' track o' th' old still that was my dad's afore me, an' has been th' one thing, siden you, I've ever keered fer in my life."
"You're wrong, Joe," she insisted. "You're shore wrong. Frank Layson'd never do a coward's trick like that!"
"He done it!" Lorey answered doggedly. "He done it, an' as there is a God in Heaven he air goin' to pay th' price fer doin' it!"
With that he stalked off down the trail, his rifle held as ever in the crook of his elbow, his brows as black as human brows could be.
For a time she sat there on a rock, gazing after him, half-stupefied, with eyes wide, terror-stricken. What could a mere girl do to avert the dreadful tragedy impending? Tireless as he was, she knew that he could keep upon the trail for twenty-four hours without a pause, and that such travelling, with the lifts which he would get from mountain teamsters, would take him to the home of the man whose life he had determined to snuff out at any hazard. Beside herself with fright for Frank, she sped back to her cabin, took what food was ready-cooked and could be bundled up to carry on the journey, put on her heaviest shoes and started for the door. But, suddenly, the thought flashed through her mind that, even as Joe Lorey was bound down the trails to meet his rival, so would she be bound down them to meet her own. She could not bear the thought of facing Barbara Holton, clad, as she was now, in rough, half-shapeless, mountain-homespun. She made another bundle, larger than the one which held her food, by many times, and, when she finally set off, this bundle held the finery which she had so laboriously prepared in the mad hope of rivaling the work of the bluegrass belle's accomplished city dressmakers.
Down in the bluegrass home of the ancient Layson family all was excitement in anticipation of the race which was to mean so much to the fortunes of the young master of the fine old mansion which, with pillared porticos and mighty chimneys, dominated the whole section. Layson's heart was filled with confidence whenever he went to the stables to view the really startling beauty of the lovely animal on which his hope was pinned; it sunk into despair, when, seated in his study in the house, away from her, he counted up the cost of all which he would lose if she did not run first in the great race.