Then his thoughts ran on: “It is dwelling on factitious things that gives them force. Life presents a Janus aspect of the double-faced at times, but a man must choose his way and ignore the turnings. Glory has pure charm. She has a quick mind and a captivating beauty, but so far as I’m concerned, she is simply out of the picture. I could be mad about her, if I let myself—but presumably I am not adrift on a gulf stream of emotionalism.”
When he had spent an hour in the dusty little town and turned again into the coolness of the hills, he dismounted under the shade of a “cucumber tree” and glanced through those letters that were still unopened. One envelope was addressed in a hand that tantalized memory with a half sense of the familiar, and Spurrier’s brow contracted in perplexity.
Then his face grew abruptly grave. “By heavens!” he exclaimed. “It’s Withers—Major Withers! What can he be writing about?”
He opened it and drew out the sheet of paper, and, as he read, his expression went through the gamut of surprise and incredulity to a settled sternness of purpose that made his face stony.
“If it’s true,” he exclaimed, “the man is mine to kill! No, not to kill, either, but to take alive at all costs.”
He stood for a moment, his sinewy body answering to a tremor of deeply shaken emotion. Had he been mountain-bred and feud-nurtured, the sinister glitter of his eyes could have been no more relentless. He was for that moment a man dedicating himself to the blood oath of vengeance.
Then he composed his features and smoothed out the letter that his clenched fingers had unconsciously crumpled. Again he read what Major Withers had to say:
I am writing because though I infer that you have succeeded in material ways, I have heard nothing of your progress in clearing your name and I know that until that is accomplished, no success will be complete for you.
Quite recently I have had as my striker a fellow named Wiley, who used to be in your platoon—and I have talked with him a good bit. Not long ago he declared to me his belief that Private Grant who is listed as officially dead, did not die in the Islands.
He seems to think that Grant made a clean getaway and went back to the Kentucky mountains from which he came. He confesses that he gets this idea from nothing more tangible than casual hints dropped by Private Severance, whose discharge came shortly after you left us, yet his impression is so strong as to amount to conviction. Possibly if you could trace Severance you might learn something. It’s a vague clew, I admit, but I pass it along to you for whatever it may be worth.
Slowly, as though his tireless limbs had grown suddenly old, Spurrier mounted and rode on with reins hanging. He was so deep in thought that he forgot the other unopened letters in his pocket.