“That’s he, I guess, now,” he said.
Then he turned his face toward the wide prairie unrolling to the westward. Overhanging it were writhing clouds, hurled hither and thither, twisted, frayed, and burst asunder by the titanic forces of the upper air, and all converging with centripetal violence toward one vast maelstrom. Its long, funnel-shaped form dipped and lifted, trailing back and forth like some sensate thing. With it came an increasing roar from the clashing of timber up the valley. The vivid shafts of lightning and the blackness that followed them made the scene terrific with Nature’s majestic madness.
“I must get shelter somewhere,” Jacobs said. “I am 352 sorry Champers failed me. I wanted his counsel before I slipped up on Wyker tonight. I thought I heard him coming just now. Maybe he’s waiting for me under cover. I’ll go down and see.”
The roar of the cyclone grew louder and the long swinging funnel lifted and dipped and lifted again, as the awful forces of the air hurled it onward.
Down at the sharp bend in the road Thomas Smith was crouching, just where the rift in the bank opened to the creek, and the face of the man was not good to look upon nor to remember.
“I’ll show Darley Champers how well my left hand works. There’ll be no telltale scar left on his face when I’m through, and he can tumble right straight down to the water from here and on to hell, and Wyker’s joint may bear the blame. Damned old Dutchman, to turn me out now. I set him up in business when I had money. Here comes Champers now.”
The storm-cloud burst upon the hill at that moment. John Jacobs’ horse leaped forward on the steep slope, slid, and fell to its knees. As it sprang up again the two men could not see each other, for a flash of lightning blinded them and in the crash of thunder that burst at the same instant, filling the valley with deafening roar, the sharp report of a double pistol-shot was swallowed up.
An hour later Darley Champers, drenched with rain, stumbled down the crooked trail in the semi-darkness. The cool air came fanning out of the west and a faint rift along the horizon line gave promise of a glorious April sunset.
As Darley reached the twist in the trail which John 353 Jacobs always dreaded, the place Thaine Aydelot and Leigh Shirley had invested with sweet memories, he suddenly drew his rein and stared in horror.