The light was perceptibly changing. Faces of men came out of the shadows, pale but visible. The lights of the machine changed from yellow to pale lemon, the flares outside the cabins, the illumination of the windows altered. High up, a tiny fleck of cloud caught the fire of the as yet unseen sun, rolling on to dawn behind the range. Things seemed flat, lacking full definition, lacking shadow. In the east the sky showed gray behind the dark purple crests between which mists were trailing. Men shivered, half from cold, half from tension and lack of sleep.
"Plimsoll," said Sandy. "That peak oveh on Sawtooth Range is goin' to catch the light first. I'll call it sun-up when the sun looks oveh the mesa."
Plimsoll bared his teeth in a fox-grin. Sandy stood with his hands by his sides, covering him with his eyes. Plimsoll looked at the hands that he knew could move swifter than he could follow, he looked at the car with Keith gazing from him to Sandy, he sensed the waiting strain of all the men, waiting to see Sandy shoot—if he did not go, to see him crumple up in the dust, and—he looked at the peak on Sawtooth and his face grayed as the granite suddenly flushed with rose. His will melted, he turned and went inside his cabin. No one followed him, there was no one inside to greet him. His heart was filled with helpless rage, centered against Sandy Bourke. He knew the camp was against him, considering him outbluffed or outmatched. His horse, ready saddled, had been at the door since midnight. He mounted, dug spurs into the beast's flanks and went galloping madly up the slope that rose from the street gulch leading down to the main gulch of Flivver Creek. He was shortcutting for the mesa road, hate in his heart, his blood, his brain; poisoning hate that turned all his secretions to gall. His plans for wealth had been blocked by a man he dared not face. Before Sandy Bourke his spirit flinched as a leaf shrinks and curls from flame. The forced acknowledgment of it was an acid aggravation. He raked his horse's flanks with his rowels and the spirited brute, pick of all Plimsoll's horse herd, tore up the hillside to suit the mad humor of his master, who was permeated with the venom of a man who knows his deeds at once evil and futile, a venom that was bound to spread until the infection mastered him, body and mind and soul, steeped them in a devil's brew that permitted of no other thought but what was dominated by the mad desire to get even.
Some one caught sight of the galloping horse and rider lunging along in a cloud of dust that showed golden as the sun rose and looked over the mesa. He raised a shout that was joined in by the rest, that reached the flying Plimsoll as the view-halloo reaches the fox making for its earth.
CHAPTER XV
CASEY TOWN
The man named Keith called to Sandy Bourke who, for the moment, still stood alone, now rolling a cigarette. He was the only man in the close vicinity of the car and he turned at the sound of Keith's voice.
"You-all talkin' to me?" he inquired mildly.