The thing that was in progress was plain enough to read. The white-clad figures were searching the valley of the gold workings for information of the “strike” which the sleeping man had made. Their movement made it impossible to estimate their numbers with any accuracy, for the forest, reaching down to the water’s edge in many places, hid up much of it. Possibly there were a dozen. Possibly less. But, whatever the number, the search was utterly exhaustive. The corral, the log hut on the hillside were not left unexplored, and the presence of the man’s dogs only made it something curious that no canine voice had been raised in protest.
There was not a sound to disturb the night or to give alarm to the sleeping man. The dogs lay huddled on the ground as though in the deepest slumber and the man slept on profoundly while the figures moved about the interior of his quarters.
It was all curious. But there was doubtless an answer to it. These men had travelled far and hard under the strictest orders to return with a full report of the gold strike made by Cy Liskard. Their report depended on a complete and uninterrupted investigation. There were many means of accomplishing this. It would have been simple enough to deal with the man himself. In their numbers they could have taken him in his blankets. But perhaps they had no desire that he should be aware of their visitation. In that case there were other measures. Similar measures such as had doubtless silenced the dogs. A whiff of some pungent narcotic and the sleep of these creatures, human as well as canine, would be infallibly prolonged.
The search went on to its conclusion. It was prolonged and completely thorough. And when the movements of the Aurora men ceased and their ghostly figures no longer haunted the valley, the moon had passed from her throne in the heavens and the star-light was already beginning to fade out. Then came darkness, utter and complete. It was the darkness preceding dawn. And the valley of the Lias River was given up wholly to the haunting sounds of the night.
Cy Liskard was ashore at a landing on the river he had made his own. His stout canoe was lying moored to the overhanging trunk of a tree, and it swung away at the end of its rawhide to the easy stream. A roll of blankets lay in the bottom of it while his camp outfit was littered upon the gravelly foreshore about his feet. It was noon or thereabouts, and the day was overcast and threatening. But down here on the river was the pleasant warmth of a summer day.
He was gazing out downstream, and his view was of a great expanse of flowing water moving heavily on towards the sea. There were many miles between him and the coast yet. The journey would run into something approaching one hundred and more, which it would take days to travel. But it was not the distance he had yet to go that preoccupied him. It was not the scene set out before him with its amazing hills and dense forests growing down to the water’s edge. He was literally and perhaps spiritually at the parting of the ways.
Directly ahead of him a hill reared its lofty crest. It stood up an indestructible barrier to the rushing waters hurtling on towards the distant ocean. It had faced the fierce onslaught of the stream throughout the ages. It had yielded nothing but the loose soil about its rocky base. And so the waters which refused denial to their progress had turned sharply away in face of its heroic resistance.
Somewhere to the north of that hill he knew that another river flowed over an almost parallel course. It was a smaller river which owed its source to the same world of hills as that which bred the flood of the Lias. But it was not for its proximity he was concerned. It was not for its relation to his own. It was because, somewhere further down its course, Ivor McLagan’s oil camp was pitched. And Ivor McLagan was the man who had hurt and thwarted him.
Somehow the night had at first wrought a change in the almost insane mood in which Cy Liskard had sought his blankets. He had awakened heavily, with a feeling of unusual depression. He had awakened without any yearning for immediate action against the man who had hurt him. He had found himself contemplating his future outlook without enthusiasm or deep interest, and it was not until he had broken his fast, and perfunctorily executed the simple chores he was accustomed to perform, that his evil spirit returned to its full dominion.