At last Young Matt turned to go, when he heard the sound of voices. Someone was coming along the Old Trail that lay in full view on the mountain side not two hundred yards away. Instinctively the woodsman drew back into the thick foliage of the cedars.
The voices grew louder. A moment more and Sammy with Ollie Stewart appeared from around the turn of the hill. They were walking side by side and talking earnestly. The young woman had just denied the claims of her former lover, and was explaining the change in her attitude toward him; but the big fellow on the ledge above could not know that. He could not hear what they were saying. He only saw his mate, and the man who had come to take her from him.
Half crouching on the rocky shelf in the dark shadow of the cedar, the giant seemed a wild thing ready for his spring; ready and eager, yet held in check by something more powerful still than his passion. Slowly the two, following the Old Trail, passed from sight, and Young Matt stood erect. He was trembling like a frightened child. A moment longer he waited, then turned and fairly ran from the place. Leaving the ledge at the Lookout, he rushed down the mountain and through the woods as if mad, to burst in upon the shepherd, with words that were half a cry, half a groan. “He’s come, Dad; he’s come. I’ve just seen him with her.”
Mr. Howitt sprang up with a startled exclamation. His face went white. He grasped the table for support. He tried to speak, but words would not come. He could only stare with frightened eyes, as though Young Matt himself were some fearful apparition.
The big fellow threw himself into a chair, and presently the shepherd managed to say in a hoarse whisper, “Tell me about it, Grant, if you can.”
“I seen them up on Dewey just now, goin’ down the Old Trail from Sammy’s Lookout to her home. I was huntin’ stock.”
The old scholar leaned toward his friend, as he almost shouted, “Saw them going to Sammy’s home! Saw whom, lad? Whom did you see?”
“Why—why—Sammy Lane and that—that Ollie Stewart, of course. I tell you he’s come back. Come to take her away.”
The reaction was almost as bad as the shock. Mr. Howitt gasped as he dropped back into his seat. He felt a hysterical impulse to laugh, to cry out. Young Matt continued; “He’s come home, Dad, with all his fine clothes and city airs, and now she’ll go away with him, and we won’t never see her again.”
As he began to put his thoughts into words, the giant got upon his feet, and walked the floor like one insane. “He shan’t have her,” he cried, clenching his great fists; “he shan’t have her. If he was a man I could stand it, Dad. But look at him! Look at him, will you? The little white-faced, washed out runt, what is he? He ain’t no man, Dad. He ain’t even as much of a man as he was. And Sammy is—God! What a woman she is! You’ve been a tellin’ me that I could be a gentleman, even if I always lived in the backwoods. But you’re wrong, Dad, plumb wrong. I ain’t no gentleman. I can’t never be one. I’m just a man. I’m a—a savage, a damned beast, and I’m glad of it.” He threw back his shaggy head, and his white teeth gleamed through his parted lips, as he spoke in tones of mad defiance.