Spurrier went out and studied his door. The hasps that held his padlock were in place, but the woodwork about them had been recently scarred. The lock fastenings had been pulled out and replaced.
With a nervous moisture on his brow the man recognized the fiendish ingenuity of his mysterious enemy. These slithering creatures had come here by human agency as brute accomplices in the murder that had failed from the rifle muzzle. The pertinacity and cunning of the scheme’s anonymous author gave promise of eventfulness hereafter.
Had he been struck, according to the evident intention, as he entered his house, he would probably have died there, unsuccored, leaving the door open. The rattlers would either have found their way out after that, or, when his body was discovered, the open door would have explained their presence inside, and no suspicion of a man’s conspiracy would have remained.
One thing stood out clear in Spurrier’s summing-up. 149 Whatever the source of the enmity which pursued him, it had its nerve center in an ingenious brain and it threw about itself that element of mystery which a timid man would have found terrifying and unendurable. Also it operated with a patience which was a manifest of its unswerving determination. Effort might be expected to follow effort until success came—or the unknown plotter were discovered and disposed of.
Yet the author of these malignant attempts worked with an unflurried deliberation, allowing passive intervals to elapse between activities, like the volcano that rests in the quiet of false security between fatal eruptions.
Of course, the letter with the mention of Private Grant might be a clew of identity, yet calm reflection discounted that assumption as a wild and unconfirmed grasping out after something tangible.
Perhaps Spurrier as nearly approached the absolute in physical fearlessness as it is given to man to come—but the mystery of a pursuing hatred which could not be openly faced, filled him with a sense of futility, and the futility inspired rage which was unsettling and must be combated.
That night he lay long awake, and after he had fallen asleep he came often to a sudden and wide-eyed wakefulness again at the sound of an owl’s call or the creaking of a tree limb.
The next morning found him restless of spirit, and it occurred to him that his secret enemy might be lurking near to inspect the results of his handiwork, so he went down to the road and hung the three dead rattlesnakes along the fence where no passer-by could 150 miss seeing their twisted and mutilated lengths. That should be his retort to any inquiring and hostile eye, that he was alive and the creatures put there to destroy him had paid with their lives.
From a place screened from view he meant to watch that gruesome exhibit and mark its effect upon any one who paused to inspect it. Possibly in that way a clew might be vouchsafed—but he did not at once take cover in the thickets.