"Bah!" laughed Poynter, snapping his fingers. "I don't care that for him. If he crosses my path again, or lets me hear any more of his dirty hints, I'll hit him a square blow next, one that he'll not get over so easily as this one. But when he gets up, just give him my compliments, and tell him that if he relishes the specimen, there's plenty more of the same brand at his service," and so saying, Clay Poynter left the room and vanished in the darkness, leaving those behind him still more puzzled at him than before, which is saying a good deal.
CHAPTER II.
THE DOUBLE SHOT.
"What can be keeping Nora, I wonder?" half muttered a man, as he anxiously peered through the leafy screen before him, with a gesture of impatience.
A man, we said, and as he turns his head so that the sun's rays fall beneath the broad-brimmed slouched hat, we can see that it is Clay Poynter, who is there awaiting the arrival of some person. Even had not his muttered exclamation revealed this fact, there was an eager, ardent tinge to his restlessness that would have betrayed his secret—would have told of an appointment with some one a little more than a mere friend.
A woman would have guessed that he was expecting a sweetheart, whom, for some reason, he could not visit openly, and she would have been right. He was awaiting a sweetheart, and her name was Nora McGuire.
Again Poynter peered through the bushes. He saw a small but neat vine-covered log-house, of only one story. Behind this and upon either hand spread the fields of young grain, now a level, waving sea of verdure, with strange forms and figures chasing each other, as the blades were bent by the fitful gusts of wind.
Behind this, again, rose the rugged mounds forming the "Wildcat Range," among whose more difficult recesses the "big game" still could be found, and it was rumored that yet more dangerous customers might there be met with—that many a wild scene of blood and crime those rock-crowned hills had witnessed.
But of this our friend took no heed, for he saw the object of his thoughts step from the cabin door, and after a hasty glance around, trip lightly toward the spot where he was standing. Poynter pushed aside the screen of bushes, and half emerged, but as if by a second thought he drew back, with a muttered curse.