CHAPTER XXIII
TERROR
Eve was alone. Never in all her life had she been so absolutely alone as now. She rocked herself to and fro beside her kitchen stove, her thoughts and fears rioting through body and mind, until she sat shivering with terror in the warmth of her own fireside.
It was nearly nine o’clock in the evening and the vigilantes were due back in the village before midnight. What would be their news? What–––? She paused, listening fearfully. But the sound she heard was only a creaking of the frame of her little home.
The suspense was nerve racking. Would it never end? Yes, she felt it would end––certainly, inevitably. And the conviction produced a fresh shudder in her slight body. Three hours ago she had seen Jim Thorpe and his jaded horse return to the village. She had longed to seek him out––he had gone to Peter Blunt’s hut for the night––and question him. But she had refrained. Whatever Jim’s actual attitude toward her, she must think of him in her calculations as the bitterest enemy. In her tense nervousness she laughed hysterically. Jim, her enemy? How ridiculous it seemed. And a year ago he had been her lover.
For a moment her terror eased. Thoughts of a year ago were far removed from the horror of her present. Jim could be nobody’s enemy unless it were his own. Her 253 enemy? Never. He was too kind, too honest, too much a man. And yet––the haunting of the moment broke out afresh––he must be. In self-defense he must be her enemy. He could not clear his own name otherwise.
She pondered. Her eyes grew less wild, less frightened, and a soft glow welled up in her heart as she thought of the man whom she declared must be her enemy. Just for a moment she thought how different things might have been had only her choice fallen otherwise. Then she stifled her regrets, and, in an instant, was caught again in the toils of the horror that lay before her.
She tried to think out what she must do when the vigilantes returned. What would be her best course? She wanted advice so badly. She wanted to talk it over with somebody, somebody who had clear judgment, somebody who could think with a man’s cool courage. Yes, she wanted a man’s advice. And there was no man to whom she could appeal. Jim?––no, she decided that she could not go to him. She felt that, for safety, she had seen too much of him already. Peter? Ah, yes! But the thought of him only recalled to her mind another trouble with which she was beset. It was one, which, amidst the horror of the matter of the cattle stealing, had, for the moment, been banished from her mind.