CHAPTER XXI
Julian Caspar at Bay
CY LISKARD was squatting on his rolled blankets. The interior of his log shanty was disordered. For all the man’s physical roughness, for all the conditions of the life he lived, his hut on the hills above the Lias River had always been something scrupulous in its neatness. Now its interior was completely dishevelled. It was an atmosphere associated with final departure, with absolute quittance.
But it was something more. It was as if the man had searched it completely with a view to the destruction of everything that could leave a clue to the identity of its occupant. There was a pile of stuff lying upon the hard-beaten earth floor awaiting destruction, and outside the door a large fire was doing its share in the work of concealment. Then, too, down on the creek below there was a great smouldering heap which represented the complete destruction of the elaborate sluice box and the general gear of the gold worker’s craft that could not easily be otherwise removed.
The man had done his work systematically and without apparent haste. And now he sat on his blankets gazing out through the open doorway on the devouring flames of his fire. There was the pile on the floor yet to be consumed. There was the removal of his blankets and kit. Then there was the shanty itself to be disposed of. After that——?
The man’s dead eyes were more than usually expressionless for all the teeming thought of his brain. He was lost in one of those fierce trains of thought which leave the body completely relaxed, inert.
He had returned from the river mouth at a speed that rarely drove him. Apprehension had pursued him every mile of the way. But it was not physical fear. No. It was something deeper, more abiding than that. He was beset with concern for an invisible, intangible threat that seemed to be enveloping him. A threat that was clear enough in its work of despoliation without a sign of how or whence it came. Fury was driving him hard. Fury, and that other thing that left him groping for the thing he must do.
Now as he sat waiting for the fire outside to do its work, he was contemplating the courses that were open to him. And his mind and brutish nature, being what they were, looked first and foremost for some method of retaliation upon an unseen, unknown, but not wholly unguessed agency that was operating for his hurt.
No. It was not unguessed. Two agencies sprang to his mind. There was the memory of those “fool” figures in their hooded white cloaks who had surrounded him while a rawhide rope dangled before his eyes. For all he derided their methods they were not easily forgotten. Then there was that other. The man he had sought to kill, and who, through his friends, had contrived to outwit him. A queer desperation was driving. He knew he must act quickly, at once. But even the feeling of desperation and the uncertainty of the thing about him could not rob him of his lust for vengeance. His lust to kill.
His plans had been urgently completed. He knew he must quit his mountain retreat. He must defy everything and reach Beacon with all speed. His credit was lying at Victor Burns’ bank. That was his, which he believed no power could rob him of. He must collect it at once. It was all that had been left to him. And with that in his possession he would be free to devote himself to the vengeance which looked a thousand times more desirable to him now.
He rose from his seat and replenished the fire outside with the collected heap in the shack. It was the last. He had destroyed the last of his makeshift furnishings, and only his camp outfit and his treasured weapons were left to encumber his journey. And now he sat again, having closed the door to defend himself against the fierce heat and the smoke of his fire.