After awhile the pipe was neglected. His enjoyment of it was merged into something more absorbing. His savage mind was lost in the thing that had brought him to the heart of the great Alaskan hills, and he was gazing on a vision of savage delight. As his hands gripped each other about his knees there was movement in them, nervous, twitching movement. For, in fancy, they were slowly crushing out the life he was determined should know the hideous meaning of prolonged death agony.
His delight was in his darkly brooding eyes as they looked into the flicker of the fire. His mind was teeming with the thing he would say while that life was conscious and could know the terror and agony of those last moments. Oh, yes. It was worth all the waiting and he was glad, glad that now, at last, the moment of his final vengeance was approaching. Sheer insanity was driving, but it was that calm insanity where the border line is passed coldly and calmly with hate the dominating influence. Suddenly he started and leant forward.
His hands parted from about his knees, and, in a moment, he was on his feet crouching and gazing out into the impenetrable snowfall. He moved aside from his fire and crept forward. Then he stood up tall and straight, and his head was turned with an ear to the outer world.
A sound had reached ears trained to the pitch of any forest creature. It had been faint, so faint, yet to Usak it was quite unmistakable. It had come from out there on the water beyond the ground ice, and he knew that some living thing was passing, hidden by the grey of the snowfall.
He stood for a long time listening, his dark eyes no less alert than his ears. Then with something like reluctance he came back to the fire and spread his hands out over it. After awhile he returned to his seat. There was no doubt in his mind. The sound he had heard was the ruffling of the water stirred by the dip of a paddle.
But his shoulders moved in a shrug, and he dismissed the matter. Why not? There were folk in the Valley of the Fire Hills, other folk than those—Yes, far up, there were many of the folk he hated but did not fear—the Euralians.
Usak was standing on the landing almost lost in the billows of smoke surging down upon him. They belched out of the heart of the wood which concealed the clearing, wherein had stood the secret habitation of the man whom he had designed should know his final vengeance.
The whole of the dripping valley seemed to be afire. Behind him the roar and crackle of the burning forest grew louder, and the suffocating smoke grew denser and denser while the heat was blistering.
He stepped quickly into his waiting kyak and pushed out into the stream, vanishing in the twilight of the night. He paddled rapidly till he had cleared the woodland belt and approached the unlovely barrens of the Fire Hills. Then he sought the shelter of the bank and shipped his paddle.