When Milton Derr made up his mind to join the raiders, he was actuated by the two strongest passions that sway the human heart—love and hate. The first and uppermost one urged him to join the band in order that he might be able to influence the members to spare the New Pike gate, for the present, at least; the second made it evident that, by aiding in the general destruction of toll-houses throughout the county, and the abolishment of tolls, he would be in a position to do his kinsman much damage, and affect the most vulnerable spot in evidence—his pocket. Thus, in Derr's bosom, love and hate held almost equal sway.
All these things passed in hurried view through the rider's excited mind, like a fleeting panorama, brief, yet clear and intense as the glimpse of a surrounding landscape seen by the flash of the lightning's path across the starless heavens.
He once more recalled to mind the conversation that his sweetheart had overheard and repeated to him, which had taken place between his uncle and some unknown man upon the public highway. Could this mysterious person have been Jade Beddow, and had they arranged it between them to have him sent forward so that he might be shot, or taken prisoner? This was evidently the trap that had been so adroitly set, and into which he was now riding, though not without protest.
Won to this belief, he still rode onward unflinchingly toward the toll-house now looming up before him like a ghostly warning, and dimly outlined against the cold gray midnight sky.
Nature herself seemed steeped in profound slumber at this wan, late hour, and neither life nor movement was visible about the place. The solitary horseman appeared to be the only living object in all that cheerless, dimly-defined landscape. There was no sign of danger on any hand, no suspicious movement of a lurking enemy. The deep silence of night's midhour brooded over the quiet scene, and its peace fell heavily upon it like the mantle of darkness round about.
The lone rider began to look about him with growing confidence. It was all so quiet, so still, so filled with the hush of midnight—surely the monition he had received that the gate would be guarded must have been built on mere rumor without the foundation of fact.
When he came to the gate, he found the pole up, as it was wont to be at so late an hour of the night, and after pausing a brief moment, thinking tenderly of one within the darkened toll-house, he passed from under the raised pole, and rode a short distance along the road.
Once again he paused, and looked back, and listened. No sight or sound betrayed the presence of guard or officer. It must be that the posse had failed to materialize, believing the rumor of an impending attack mere idle talk. With a feeling of relief the horseman raised a whistle to his lips and blew a sharp call as a signal that the raiders might advance.
In quick response the clatter of many hoofs came beating down the road in rhythmic measure.
Suddenly—breaking harshly into the musical ring of the hurrying hoof-beats—rang the discordant note of a shot from out the darkness, and quick upon it came another, while the advance rider, startled and surprised by its unexpectedness, heard the bullet singing keenly past his ear.