LIGHTNING resettled himself upon his box. He was leaning forward in an attitude of alert concentration, his arms folded across his knees, with an elbow grasped in the palm of each of his hands. He remained unmoving, except for the inevitable chew of tobacco which engaged the rusty remains of his teeth. His mind was correspondingly active.
Midnight had long since come and gone. The night was brilliant, and little enough was left for the shadows of night to conceal. The farm and its surroundings were in full view from where he sat. The bluff beyond the grass-trail was sharply silhouetted, a deep, black background to the south and west. Away to the right of him the corral, where the cows were peacefully slumbering on the accumulations of despoiled hay feed, was sharply outlined. So, too, with the hay corral, that stood nearly empty and ready for the new season’s grass. The barn beside him rose sharply against the night sky, where its thatched ridge lifted above the sturdy log walls. And then, beyond that, the whispering tree-tops of the bluff stood up, where once the dead George Marton had confronted the emaciated figure of the starving fugitive from justice.
The air was cool with the threat of ground frost. But Lightning was no more concerned with temperatures than he was with the claims of a weary body. He was awaiting Molly’s return from the party, and, if necessary, he would remain there until day came.
The drift of the man’s thought went on without pause. There was speculation in a hundred directions. There was impatience. There was anger that was even directed at the girl he desired to protect. His mood was one of restlessness and disquiet.
A prowling coyote howled its mournful crescendo. Its melancholy cry died out. The man scarcely noted it. The deep bay of the timber wolf’s reply, with its harsh threat, sufficiently impressed itself. In a moment it focused Lightning’s mind upon the keen, dark eyes and narrow face of the man he felt to be something of a human wolf where women were concerned. He stirred and spat viciously.
He strove to dismiss the personality of McFardell from his thoughts. His understanding of the way things stood with Molly was all sufficient. He was logical enough, even temperate enough, to know he had no right to interfere. But he was equally determined that, at the first sign of what he deemed to be necessity, he would interfere. He would interfere in just such manner as his savage mind prompted.
A grim light shone in his cold eyes as they searched the moonlit scene. His barbaric ruthlessness was astir, contemplating a “short-circuit” of the whole situation as he saw it. If he permitted his guns, which he felt to be yearning to play their part for him, to execute their due mission, it would save so much precious time in preventing the disaster he saw lying ahead.
Molly—Molly would be broken hearted for awhile. Yes, that would surely be so. But he prided himself on his knowledge of women. He remembered the case of a woman in his Arizona days. He had contemplated piloting her through the shoals of life as a more than desirable companion. Tess. She was a swell creature—a real “upstander.” Hair like black silk. A skin like satin. Then she’d those queer, big eyes that set any real man yearning for the trouble that ought to be lying around her anyway. Yes, that was a case in point. When Tug Lennox, her beau, got in front of his guns, and had no time to get away before they went off, what happened? Tess was nearly crazy for one day. Then she beat the trail across the border with Dago Pete, while he, Lightning, was getting over the elegant souse the boys had handed him for ridding Arizona of one of the worst toughs that ever shot up a peaceful township. Yes, Molly would be all in. He was sure of that, but——
He turned suddenly to windward.
No. It wouldn’t last. Those things in a girl were like a summer storm, or—or horse colic, or something. Sunshine got busy and dried things up, and the colic passed swiftly, and left a horse feeling it hadn’t eaten for two days. It seemed to him if he went after Andy McFardell with two guns it would be the best for all concerned. Certainly best for——