Outside the plain was a vast sheet of snow, over which the cold wind moaned, and out of the east the night was coming.
XXII
THE "KING'S" AWAKENING
When "King" Plummet left Harley and Sylvia on the plain, he strode blindly forward, his heart filled with rage, grief, and self-accusation. He said aloud: "William Plummer, you are fifty years old, and you have made of yourself the damnedest fool in the whole Northwest!"
Hitherto he had always held the belief that if Harley were away she would soon forget him and would be happy as his wife. Now he knew that this could never come to pass, and the truth filled him with dismay.
He had ridden across country with no knowledge of Mr. Grayson's presence in Grafton until he was very near the place; then, when he heard of it, he was overwhelmed with a great desire to see these people and bid them defiance. He was a man who fought his enemies, and he would show them what he could do. So he rode into Grafton, and slipped quietly into a saloon to get a tonic. He was a border man bred in border ways, and usually liquor would have had no effect on him, but to-day it was fire to a brain already on fire. All his grievances now became great wrongs—he was an injured man whom the world persecuted; Grayson, for whom he had done so much in political life, had betrayed him; the girl whom he was going to marry had betrayed him, too, and this young Eastern slip, Harley, was surely laughing at him.
These thoughts were intolerable to the "King," who had hitherto been victorious always, and now his rage centred on Harley; he saw Harley everywhere, at every point of the compass wherever he looked, and when he came out of the saloon and went down the deserted street he saw Harley in reality, strolling along absently, his eyes upon the ground. He thought first that the correspondent was on his way to join the crowd around the speaker's stand, but he soon perceived that he was going in another direction. It was "King" Plummer's first impulse—there was still liquid fire in his veins—to overtake Harley and demand the only kind of satisfaction that such a man as he should have. Then he wished to see where Harley was going, because he had a premonition—false in this case, the meeting was by accident—that he was on his way to Sylvia; so he decided to follow as an animal stalks its game. Only the most powerful emotion conjoined with other circumstances could have made the "King" do such a thing, as his nature was essentially open, and he loved open methods. Yet he trailed his enemy with the skill and cunning of an Indian.
He saw Harley and Sylvia meet, and all his suspicions were confirmed. Again he felt a fierce impulse, and it was to rush upon the guilty pair, but he restrained it and still followed. His perceptions were trained to other things, but he was in no danger of being seen by them; they were too much absorbed in each other, and all the world passed by them unnoticed. The "King," though a rough, blunt man, saw this, and it made the fire in him burn the hotter.