And as that girl, who had known and ridden from her childhood, was saddling the first one she came to in the stable, I was riding hard and desperately in the dark not a quarter of a mile behind Siwash Jim.
The trail upon which we both were ran from my house, straight up into the mountains for nearly ten miles, and then followed the verge of the Black Cañon for more than a mile farther. When I came up to that place I stayed for one moment, and heard the dull and sullen roar of the broken waters three hundred feet beneath me, and then I rode on again as though I was as irresistibly impelled as they were, and was just as bound to cut my way through what Fate had placed before as they had been to carve that narrow and tremendous chasm in the living rock. And at last I came to a fork in the trail. If I had not been there before with Mr. Fleming, I should most likely have never seen Jim that night, perhaps never again. But we had stayed at that very spot. The left-hand fork was the main track, and led right over the mountains into the Nicola Valley; while the left and disused one, which was partially obliterated by thick-growing weeds, led back through the impassable scrub and rough rocks to the middle of the Black Cañon. I had passed that end of it without thinking, for indeed it was scarcely likely he would have turned off there. The chances seemed a thousand to one that Jim would take the left-hand path, but just because it did seem so certain, I alighted from my horse and struck a light. The latest horse track led to the right hand! He had relied on my taking the widest path, and continuing in it until it was too late to catch a man who had so skillfully doubled on me. I had no doubt that his curses at losing his revolver were changed into chuckles, as he thought of me riding headlong in the night, until my horse was exhausted, while he was returning the way I had come. I stopped to think, and then, getting on my horse, I rode back slowly to where the trails joined at the edge of the Cañon. I would wait for him there. And I waited more than half an hour.
It is strange how such little circumstances alter everything, for not only would Jim's following the Nicola trail have resulted in something very different, but, waiting half an hour, during which I cooled somewhat and lost the first blind rage of passion in which I had set out, set me reflecting as to what I should do. If I had come up with him at full gallop I should have shot him there and then. He would have expected it, and it would have been just vengeance; but now I was quietly waiting for him, and to shoot him when he appeared seemed to me hardly less cowardly conduct than his own. Then, if I gave him warning, he would probably escape me, and I was not so generous as to let him have the chance. Yet, in after years, seeing all that followed from what I did, I think I was more generous than just. I ought to have regarded myself as the avenging arm of the law, and have struck as coolly as an executioner. But I determined to give him a chance for his life, though giving him that was risking my own, which I held dear, if only for Elsie's sake; and so I backed my horse into the brush, where I commanded both trails, and, cocking both revolvers, I sat waiting. In half an hour I heard the tramp of a horse, though at first I could not tell from which way the sound came. But at last I saw that I had been right in my conjecture, and that my enemy was given into my hands. My heart beat fast, but my hands were steady, for I had full command over myself. I waited until he was nearly alongside of me, and then I spoke.
"Throw up your hands, Siwash Jim!" I said, in a voice that rang out over the roar of the waters below us, "or you are a dead man!"
And he threw them up, and as he sat there I could see his horse was wearied out. If it had not been, perhaps my voice would have startled it, and compelled me to fire.
"What are you going to do?" said he, sullenly peering in my direction, for he could barely see me against my background of trees and brush, whereas I had him against the sky.
"I will tell you, you miserable scoundrel!" I answered. "But first, get off your horse, and do it slowly, or I will put two bullets through you! Mind me!"
He dismounted slowly.
"Tie your horse to that sapling, if you will be kind enough," I said further; "and don't be in a hurry about it, and don't attempt to get behind it, or you know what will happen."
When he had done as I ordered, I spoke again.