So he crouched, a man under whose feet life had crashed, leaving him pinned beneath the wreck, to watch the fire that must creep nearer and nearer.
CHAPTER XXXII THE WHITE HORSE SKIN
Curiosity held Jessica until the evangelist closed his melodeon preparatory to a descent upon the dance-hall. Then, thinking of the growing dark with some trepidation—for the recent "strike" had brought its influx of undesirable characters to the town—she started toward the mountain.
Ahead of her a muffled puff-puff sounded, and the dark bulk of an automobile—the sheriff's, the only one the town of Smoky Mountain boasted—was moving slowly in the same direction, and she quickened her pace, glad of this quasi-company. It soon forged ahead, but she had passed the outskirts of the town then and was not afraid.
A little way up the ascent a cumbrous shadow startled her. She saw in a moment that it was the automobile, halted at the side of the road. Her footsteps made no sound and she was close upon it when she saw the three men it had carried standing near-by. She made to pass them, and had crossed half the intervening space, when some instinct sent her to the shade of the trees. They had stopped opposite the hydraulic concession, where a side path left the main road—it was the same path by which she and Emmet Prendergast had taken their unconscious burden on a night long ago—leading along the hillside, overlooking the snake-like flume, and forming a steeper short-cut to the cabin above. They were conversing in low tones, and as they talked they pointed, she thought toward it.
Jessica had never in her life been an eavesdropper, but her excited senses made her anxious. Moreover, she was in a way committed, for she could not now emerge without being seen. As she waited, a man came from the path and joined the others. The sky had been overcast and gloomy, but the moon drew out just then and she saw that the new-comer, evidently a patrol, carried a rifle in the hollow of his arm. She also saw that one of the first three was the automobile's owner.
For some minutes they conversed in undertones, whose very secrecy inflamed her imagination. It seemed to her that they made some reference to the flume. Had there been another robbery of the sluice-boxes, and could they still suspect Hugh?
Dread and indignation made her bold. When they turned into the path she followed, treading noiselessly, till she was close behind them. They had stopped again, and were looking intently at a shadowy gray something that moved in the bottom below.