But the woods sent up to him only the fire-breath. It whispered destruction.
If he only could look up to a bit of blue sky he felt that it might charm the red flare from his eyes.
But the yellow pall that masked the sky was the hue of combat, not peace.
All out-doors seemed full of menace. The nostrils found only bitter air. The smarting eyes saw only the sickly yellow. A normal man would have cursed at the oppression of it all, without exactly knowing why every nerve was on the rack. The recluse of Jerusalem Mountain, out of gear with all the world, with mind diseased by the chronic obsession of bitter injury, stood there under the glowering sky of that day of ravage and ruin, and felt himself becoming a madman. And yet he set a single idea before him for realization, and tried to keep his gaze on that alone, and to be calm. And the idea was an idea of forcing an atonement. How crudely conceived, Lane could not realize, for his mind was passing the stage of clear comprehension.
“I probably haven’t got enough money with me,” went on the timber baron, sullenly. “But my word is good in a matter like this. I don’t want it talked about—you don’t want it talked about. I’ll overlook—you’ll overlook! Give me your figures, and you’ll get every dollar.”
And still Lane was calm, and replied in a voice that quavered from an emotion that Barrett failed to understand.
“When you stole my wife away, Mr. Barrett, there were men that came to me and advised me what they would do if a rich man came along and took a woman from them, just to amuse himself for a little.”
“There are people trying to stick their noses into business that doesn’t concern them, Lane,” snorted the baron, regardless that one edge of this apothegm threatened himself.
“I’ve been alone a good deal since it happened,” went on Lane, in a curious, dull monotone, “and I’ve spent most of my time thinking what I’d say to you and do to you if you stood before me. I hoped it never would happen that you’d stand before me, man to man. I didn’t hunt you up to find out what I’d do or say, for I was afraid.”
He shivered, and Barrett, in his fool’s blindness, stiffened his shoulders with a sudden air of importance, and allowed himself to scowl with a suggestion that perhaps Lane was wise to avoid him.