CHAPTER VIII
HE went back to the veranda through the unlighted hall, and stood looking across the lawn toward the gate. There was no moon; but the stars were out, and cast a soft radiance over the undulating landscape. Along the steep side of the nearest mountain forest fires in irregular lines pierced the thicker darkness of the distance, and their blue smoke drifted in lowering wisps over the level fields.
“Some'n's surely up, if Trawley wants to see me to-night,” Hoag mused. “I wonder if my men—” He saw a horse and rider emerge from the gloom down the road leading on to Grayson. There was no sound of hoofs, for the animal was moving slowly, as if guided with caution. Nearer and nearer the horse approached, till it was reined in at the barnyard gate.
“That's him,” Hoag muttered, and with a furtive look into the hall behind him he tiptoed softly down the steps, and then, his feet muffled by the grass, he strode briskly down to the gate. As he drew near the horseman, who was a slender young man in a broad-brimmed slouch hat, easy shirt, and wide leather belt, and with a heavy blond mustache, dismounted and leaned on the top-rail of the fence.
“Hello, Cap,” was his greeting. “'Fraid you might not be at home. Henry didn't know whether you would be or not, but I come on—wasn't nothin' else to do. The klan is all worked up in big excitement. They didn't want to move without your sanction; but if you'd been away we'd 'a' had to. Business is business. This job has to go through.”
“What's up now?” Hoag asked, eagerly.
“They've caught that nigger Pete Watson.”
“Who has—my boys?”
“No; the sheriff—Tom Lawler an' three o' his deputies.”