Once he released his clasped hands, and, reaching out one heavily booted foot, kicked the embers of his fire together. With the sunset the air of the mountains was chill enough. For all the man’s toughness, for all the thick pilot cloth of his pea-jacket, and the thick flannel he wore underneath, the chill bit harshly and forced him to regard the life of his fire. He flung a number of logs on to it from his near-by stack of fuel and edged closer to the leaping blaze. Then again his arms embraced his knees, and he yielded himself to the schemes and plans which sprang so readily to his mind.
The wound inside his lips was still raw where McLagan’s blow had split open the flesh against his teeth. But he needed no reminder. He never would need reminding. The memory of that night was indelibly fixed upon a mind which was utterly incapable of forgetting an injury. But such evidence as still remained only the more surely drove his headlong desire. He meant to kill Ivor McLagan, and the only problem that presented itself to him was the manner he should prefer for the accomplishment of his purpose.
Oh, yes. He would kill McLagan. He would have killed him at the Speedway, or some time that night, but for the men who had smothered him in their numbers. Well, he was beyond their interference now. He was out in the open. There was only the open between him and McLagan, a vast, rugged back country, where there was no human agency to interfere between him and his vengeance. Yes, out there they were far hidden from the rest of the world with only the hills to fling back the death-cry he would wring from his——
He broke off from his lusting thought. A broad beam of the dying sun’s light drove its way through the loose arms of a woodland bluff. It lit the ground on which he sat, and enveloped his hunched body. He turned with all the alertness he might have displayed in the presence of an enemy, and his expressionless eyes looked into the blaze of light. For a moment the illusion was complete. Low down on the horizon the sun was sinking to its final rest, and as it passed from view it looked like a world of consuming fire devouring the woods which lay in the path of its amazing light.
It was only for an instant that his narrowed eyes confronted the intolerable burden of its fierce light. Then he sprang to his feet and moved away, and his going was something almost precipitate, headlong. In a moment he had vanished within the doorway of his primitive home.
The moon was at the full of its glory. The night was no less cloudless than had been the close of day. The sky was ablaze with stars, but from the heart of the hills no aurora was visible.
Down on the creek below Cy Liskard’s home the world seemed severely limited. On either hand, before and behind, the hills rose sharply in every direction. It was overpowering, overwhelming. The sky above was transformed into a narrow canopy, with the silver of the moon shining directly down upon the bosom of the little creek. The region was brilliantly lit by its ghostly light. Every detail of it was sharply outlined, and it flung the ghostly shadows of the trees in every direction. Then the waters of the creek, still flowing with something of their Spring freedom, were transformed into a perfect ribbon of silver.
Midnight was gone and the small hours were slowly growing. The valley was full of the strange night sounds of a creature world whose day it was. Cries came echoing down through the forest which clothed the hillsides, and the voices of water life kept up an incessant chorus. It was a world of Nature’s unutterable peace—and something else.
There was movement about the banks of the creek. There was movement amongst the gear of the gold-seeker. So, too, was it on the broad hillside about the cabin where Cy Liskard had abandoned himself to the blankets which nightly claimed him. It was the silent, ghostly movement of white-robed figures. They stood out in sharp relief under the brilliant light of the moon. They came and passed on. They paused. They crouched, searching. They moved without haste, or apparent fear of disturbance. And their long white gowns and high-peaked head pieces transformed them from living humanity into the spirits of the night.