“By God! but there is a chance!”
At the profane utterance, the speaker reins up; wrenches his horse half round; and scans the path over which he has just passed.
He examines it with the look of one who has conceived a scheme, and is reconnoitring the terrain, to see if it will suit.
At the same time, his fingers close nervously around his rifle, which he manipulates with a feverish impatience.
Still is there irresolution in his looks; and he hesitates about throwing himself into a fixed attitude.
On reflection the scheme is abandoned.
“It won’t do!” he mutters. “There’s too many of them fellows coming after—some that can track, too? They’d find his carcase, sure,—maybe hear the shot?
“No—no. It won’t do!”
He stays a while longer, listening. There is no sound heard either before or behind—only that overhead made by the soft waving of the vulturine wings. Strange, the birds should keep above him!
“Yes—he must be coming on? Damn the crooked luck, that the others should be so close after him! But for that, it would have been just the time to put an end to his spying on me! And so easy, too!”