CHAPTER XIII
The “Come-back”
A RADIANT sky was smiling down upon the forest-clad hills. Somewhere away to the West the sun was lolling just above the horizon. For the moment its glory was lost behind the ranging hills with their garments of every shade of green. There was no cloud to be seen anywhere from the purpling distance of the snow-capped mountains in the East, to the western splendour of the summer sunset.
Cy Liskard was squatting over a camp fire that was built just outside his log home on the hillside. Nearby his dogs were pursuing some evening pastime that appealed to their savage natures. Maybe it was play, but the snarls that were so frequently accompanied by the fierce snapping of ivory-shod jaws suggested the narrow line dividing it from canine warfare.
His ponies were beyond the fence of a small, roughly constructed corral, and they stood close up to it at a point most nearly approaching the home of the man it was their life’s burden to serve. Their shaggy heads, still rough with the remains of a winter coat, which neglect had left clinging to them, were thrust over the log rail. They were clearly waiting with equine patience the long overdue attention to which they had full right.
The man disregarded their appeal; he was in a mood to disregard any duty that might have been his. Even the claims of his own stomach were forgotten in the consuming depths of impotent rage that were driving him. His expressionless eyes gazed out through the smudge of smoke which lolled heavily upon the still, fresh mountain air. His view was over the range of his gold workings, which lay down below upon the wide bank of the creek. But for all, his gaze was for the thing which held him to his mountain solitude, his thought was left all unconcerned for it.
He had returned from Beacon only that noon. The long trail had claimed him for days, as the condition of his fleshless ponies testified. He had driven hard and mercilessly, for there was that behind him which impelled him in a fashion he had never known before. But the thing which had driven him had no relation to fear, or, if it had, his apprehension was utterly lost in the rage that smouldered behind his pale eyes. He had driven his ponies to their last extremity out of an almost crazy desire for speed and movement that he might reach the security of his home for the sole purpose of nursing his fierce desire for swift vengeance upon Ivor McLagan.
He sat with his rough hands clasped about his knees. He remained unmoving. There was room for nothing in the mind behind his stony stare but the fierce longing to hurt, and the method by which it could be achieved.
He felt himself to be beyond the reach of the men of the Aurora Clan. He felt himself free from every threatening human danger, lost in the heart of these distant hills. As for the threat of that which his return to Beacon might mean, he dismissed it without a moment’s consideration. He intended to return to Beacon just whenever it suited him. It might entail watchfulness. It would undoubtedly entail sufficient weapons of defence. But he never moved without these. And in the open and in the daylight fully prepared, he knew himself to be a match for these absurdly tricked out bunglers who sought to impress their will upon a foolish, credulous, awed bunch of white-livered citizens.
No. It was not against the men of the Aurora Clan that his fury was directed. He held them in contempt for all they had forced from him an oath under threat of hanging. He knew well enough the nearness to disaster to which he had been brought. He knew they had meant their threat and would have hanged him out of hand had he failed to yield his oath. Their other doings were not unknown to him. He had heard of Bernard’s and other outrages, but the whole thing had left him unimpressed. When men were driven to spectre-play to achieve their ends he felt that sufficient boldness could defeat them all the time. So these white-shirted creatures with their cedar boughs, and rawhide hanging ropes, were dismissed from his mind leaving him free to contemplate that other who had brought about his undoing at the Speedway.
Ivor McLagan! Oh, he knew the man by reputation. Furthermore, he knew the work he was engaged upon and where that work was being done and this was the man against whom all his rage and desire for vengeance were directed.