Then the car moved off. It turned about, and finally rolled away. Hendrie saw all this without taking any interest. For some reason his thoughts had been abruptly carried back into a dim past, to a vision of a land of lofty, barren hills, a land of drear woods and shadowed valleys, a land where fierce cold ate into the bones, and strangled the joy of living.
And all the while his eyes were fixed upon the back of the powerful figure that remained turned toward him until the car had passed out of sight. Then the stranger swung about. His narrow eyes were alight with a passion that seemed unaccountable. He raised one hand, and his forefinger pointed a deadly hatred.
"You! Leo!" he cried.
The dreary scenes of the Yukon heights faded abruptly from the millionaire's mind. He looked into that narrow, evilly expressive face with a cold, hard stare.
"Yes," he said. "Well?"
There was no flinching. There was no surprise even. He spoke utterly without emotion, like the echo of those ruthless hills which only a moment before he had contemplated.
"So—I've come up with you at last!" cried Austin Leyburn. "Oh, I knew I should do so some day. It was not possible for it to be otherwise. I've searched. I've sounded every corner of this continent. Some day, I guessed I'd turn the stone under which you were hiding."
For an instant Hendrie's eyes lit. Then they smiled with a contempt for the mind that could suggest his hiding.
"Guess that's my name—has always been my name." said, with an expressive lifting of the shoulders. "Your search sounds better than it could have been in fact. I allow the world has known just where to set its finger on Alexander Hendrie for many years now. Say, p'raps you're not interested in wheat, and so missed finding me."
"You? Alexander Hendrie?" Leyburn cried incredulously.