It was incredible that her lover could come, that he could even know of the evil, until too late to save her. Yet, the thought of his coming subtly cheered her. It persisted in defiance of all reason. And the affrighted girl clung to it with desperate tenacity, as a drowning man to the life line. She kept repeating to herself, “Zeke’ll come! He will, he will!” as if the phrases were a spell for the soothing of terror. She wished that her hands were free to touch the fairy crystal in her bosom.
The outlaw, after uncouth efforts at conversation, which met with no response, relapsed into sullen 220 silence, and he mended the pace until the girl was hard put to it to keep up with his stride. On the first slopes of Stone Mountain, he halted, evidently at a spot where he had camped on other occasions, for presently he produced a skillet and coffee-pot and materials for a rude meal from their concealment in the bushes. But his first care was to place the prisoner on a log, where a sapling at her back served for attaching the loop of the leash. He then busied himself with making a fire and preparing the food, from time to time jeering at the helpless girl, who watched him with smouldering hate in her eyes.
“Hit’s you-all orter be a-doin’ these-hyar chores,” he declared, with a grin. “An’ they’s a good time a-comin’ when ye’ll be plumb tickled to death to wait on yer Danny boy. A good time comin’, cuss ye!”
He devoured his food ravenously, washing it down with the coffee. Finally, he brought slices of bread and bacon to Plutina, and laid them in her lap. He loosened her right hand and so permitted her to feed herself. It was her impulse to refuse the offering, but she resisted the folly, knowing the necessity of food, if she would have energy for the ordeal before her. So, she gulped down the bread and meat, and drank from the dipper full 221 of coffee. Then, her bonds were tightened again, and the two renewed their march.
The going was harder here, up and down the rock-strewn slopes. Fatigue lay very heavy on Plutina, after the strains of the two days. Only her hate of the man at her side bolstered up pride, so that she compelled herself to keep moving by sheer force of will. It was already dusk, when, at last, they issued from the wood and went forward over the shore of the pool at Sandy Creek Falls.
“Wall, hyar we be!” Hodges cried loudly. There was satisfaction in his voice.
That satisfaction aroused Plutina from the apathy into which she had fallen, during the last half-mile of difficult scrambling, made more toilsome by the constraint of her bound wrists. Now, puzzlement provoked interest in her surroundings. She had expected that the outlaw would bear her away to the most convenient or the most inaccessible of the various secret retreats with which rumor credited him. But here was neither cave nor shack—only the level space of sand, the mist-wreathed pool, the rushing volume of the falls, the bleak wall of the cliff which towered above them where they had halted at its base. She knew this place. There could be no cavern at hand. Her eyes searched the space of the inclosure wonderingly. 222 Then, they went to the man, whom she found regarding her bewilderment with a smirk of gratification.
“Hyar we be, right on the door-step, so to say,” he bellowed. “If ye kain’t see the door-step yit, ye will mighty quick, unless thet pore feller ye shot has gone an’ died a-waitin’ fer you-all to come an’ nuss ’im.... Yep, he was a-watchin’, all right,” he added briskly. “Hyar hit comes!”
Plutina’s eyes followed her captor’s and, far above, she made out something that dangled from the slight break in the cliff. It descended slowly and jerkily, with haphazard gyrations. As its end drew closer, she perceived that it was a rudely constructed rope-ladder, with wooden rungs. She watched it fascinated, shivering with new fears.
When the flimsy means of ascent hung at its full length, Hodges bade the girl climb. Unnerved as she already was, the ordeal of such a progress to the mysterious height above seemed too terrible. She refused mutely, shaking her head, and cowering away from the outlaw as far as the thong permitted. But the man had no pity for her timorousness.