“You see, I was always making it end up in my mind that I should kill you. There didn’t seem to be any other natural end to it. I had to kill you to square it. And that’s why I was afraid. It was always one way in my thoughts. I never could—never can plan out any other way to end it; and murder is an awful thing, sir.”
Barrett, who had been straightening, crouched farther back on his haunches and lost his important air.
“In my thoughts I always gave you half an hour to think it over, and stayed looking at you, and then killed you.” There was a sudden convulsion of Lane’s features, a smoulder in his eyes, that thrilled Barrett as though some one had whispered in his ear—“Lunatic.”
The warden’s groping hands had clutched the heavy lineman’s climbers dangling from his belt, and were now set about them so tightly that muscles were ridged on the bony surface. Barrett became gray with fear. But Lane’s ferocity disappeared as suddenly as it had flared.
“It all goes to show that in this world most men don’t do what they think they’ll do, when it comes to a big matter. I don’t want to kill you, now that I have you where I want you.” He looked down on the frightened man with a sort of pitying scorn. “It would be like batting a sheep to death. I don’t want even to talk about your taking her away. It—it chokes in my throat! She’s dead—and I guess she wanted to go away with you that time or she wouldn’t have gone. That’s just the way it seems to me now! And that’s why I don’t want to talk about it. It seems funny to feel that way, after all the thinking I’ve done about what I would do to you.”
“The idea is, you’re taking the sensible, business man’s view of it,” stammered Barrett. “I was young then, and up here in the woods, and—oh, as you say, it is better not to talk it over. We all make mistakes.” He was pulling his wallet out of his corduroy coat. He evidently felt that the sight of money would prolong this “sensible, business man’s view” of the situation. He did not want to take any more chances that the other and vengeful view would return, which had shown its flame in Lane’s contorted face. “Now, I’ve got here—”
“To hell with your dirty money!” shrieked the warden, in a frenzy that was a veritable explosion out of his calmness. He kicked the wallet from the hands of the amazed timber baron. And when Barrett tried to stammer something, Lane leaned down and yelled, cracking his fists in the other’s shrinking face:
“That’s the way you and your kind want to cure everything—a dollar bill greased with a grin and stuck onto the sore place! Put that kind of a plaster on your city sneaks if you want to. But do you think I want it—here?” He swung his arm in a huge gesture and embraced the woods. “Your money is no good, John Barrett—here!” Another sweep of the long arm. Then he stooped and scrabbled up a handful of dry leaves. He pushed them into Barrett’s face. “Here, sell me your soul and your decency for that! You won’t? Why not? You get your handfuls of greasy money just as easy! You only grab out and take! I don’t sell for any stuff that’s come at as easy as that.”
“Say what you want, Lane,” stuttered the timber baron, huddling back from this madman.
“You’ll pay in the way I’ll tell you to pay,” raged the creditor, thrusting his fierce face close. “You’ll pay out of your pride and your heart instead of your pocket. That’s the kind of coin you’ve stripped me of! You stole my wife. She’s dead. Settle your accounts with her in hell when you meet her there. But the girl—your young one—yours and hers—that you threw into the woods like you’d leave a blind kitten—”