"It's thirty-five miles for us to make while they're doin' little more 'n twenty, for they've been traveling since dawn. Maybe it'll be your last run ... It may break your heart.... How about it?"
In his desperation, something boyish came into his tone, his manner, and he appealed to his horse as he would have pleaded with another human being. The sorrel looked at him inquiringly, great intelligent eyes unblinking, ears forward with attentiveness and, after a moment, the white patch on his nose twitched and he moved closer against his master as he gave a low little nicker.
"Is that your answer, Abe? Are you sayin' yes?" Bayard asked, and unbuckled his chap belt. "Is it, old timer? You're ... it's all up to you!" He kicked out of his chaps, flung them to the hotel porch, mounted, reined the stallion about and high in the stirrups, a live, flexible weight, rode out of town at a slow trot, holding the horse to the gait that the wind which blew in from the big expanse of country might cool him.
CHAPTER XVII
THE END OF THE VIGIL
Benny Lynch was at work in the face of the Sunset's lower tunnel. He swung his singlejack swiftly, surely, regularly, and each time it struck the drill, his breath whistled through his lips in the manner of mine workers. His candle, its stick secure in a crack above him, lighted the small chamber and under its uncertain, inefficient rays, his face seemed drawn and hard and old.
A fortnight ago, when he rode to the Circle A ranch to share with Bayard the secret that harassed him his countenance had been merely sober, troubled; but now it gave evidence of a severe strain that had endured long enough to wear down his stolidity—the tension that would naturally come to a man who is normally kind and gentle and who, by those same qualities, is driven to hunt a fellow human as he would plot to take the life of a dangerous animal. Through those two weeks he had been waiting alone in the mining camp, working eight hours each day, doing his cooking and housework methodically, regularly, telling himself that he had settled down to the routine of industriously developing property that was rightfully his, when that occupation was only a ruse, a blind, when he was waiting there solely for the opportunity to kill! His watching had not been patient; it was outwardly deliberate, true, but inwardly it kept him in a continual state of ferment; witness the lines about his mouth, the pallor of his skin, the feverish, expectant look in his eyes.
On a spike in the timbering hung an alarm clock ... and a gun belt, weighted with revolver and ammunition. At regular, frequent intervals, the blows of his jack were checked and he sat crouched there, head forward and a trifle to one side, as though he were listening. When no sound save the singing of his candle wick reached his ears, he went on, regularly, evenly, purposeful. Possibly the tension that showed about his mouth became more noticeable after each of these brief periods when he strained to catch sounds.
With a final blow Benny left off the rhythmic swing, wiped his forehead with a wrist, poured water from a small tin bucket into the hole on which he was at work and picked up his jack to resume the swinging. He glanced at the clock.