The next instant, and so quickly that a cat could not have dodged, Lane struck forward with one of the irons. Barrett saw the flash and felt the impact; his brain clanged once like a great bell, and he crumbled together rather than fell.
He was standing when he revived. But his hands were lashed by strips of his torn corduroy coat—drawn behind him around the trunk of a birch and tied securely. Other strips of the cloth bound legs and body close to the tree. Lane mouthed and leaped in front of him—a maniac.
“Enjoy it!” he screamed. “There’s a thousand-acre fire out in that level. Here’s its chimney-flue. It’s going through here on its way to Enchanted. It’s going fast when it comes along, and it will be your first taste of what’s laid up for you in eternity. Burn! And when you’re burning just remember that your daughter set it—set it because you left her to grow up a hyena instead of a woman.”
He whirled and started away at Barrett’s first wild appeal.
“I wouldn’t take your word! You wouldn’t write it! You didn’t intend to keep it!”
CHAPTER XIV
THE MESSAGE OF “PROPHET ELI”
“And the good, kind skipper and all his crew
Got a purse and some medals, tew,
And a lot o’ praise for a-savin’ me
From an awful death in the ragin’ sea.
And I got jawed ’cause I left that way,
And the boss he docked me tew weeks’ pay.”