A throb of hate and mad passion quivered through him from crown to heel. Hate, passion, fear! In the twinkling of an eye his rifle was at his shoulder; one glance along its brown tube and the finger on the trigger did its work. When Charles Endicott and Harry Winkle at last stood face to face, Endicott fired the first shot.
Something within seemed to tell him that shot was going home just as he meant it to go; so that, when Winkle threw up his hands and pitched forward upon his face, he was not at all surprised. A stumbling-block and a cause of fear were out of his path. Martin had warned him of this man, and, acting on that warning, he thought he had put him beyond mischief and the power of working it.
He had no time for reflection though. Winkle might lie there a prey for the vultures and coyotes, since Edith Van Payne had passed.
Like lightning his thoughts drove through his brain. Could she gain the mastery over her frantic steed in time to prevent his plunging into certain death? That was the query. Could he aid her? That came next. He knew if she kept straight on it would be certain death. One last long and sharp curve and she came to the end where her choice of ways was a broken, rugged, rocky descent that lay upon one side, the entrance to it almost undiscoverable, and a sheer precipice.
This he thought as he ran.
As the reader has seen, he was a man of both thought and deed, and very often the deed came first; so he was rushing on his errand before some men would have gotten over the first flush of surprise at the woman's appearance. What he had to do was to stop her; then it would be time enough to query how she escaped.
Rothven heard the report of the rifle; when he looked around he saw his comrade dashing past him at full speed. He did not know whether or no there was danger, and Endicott vouchsafed him no explanation. When he had waited in terrible suspense for a few moments, he crept cautiously to the spot where he had left his co-conspirator standing, and peering anxiously around him, at length saw Bill Blaze coming down the cañon.
The spirit of darkness, who, they say, loves his own, must have loaned Endicott wings, and guided his footsteps, too, perhaps. Through brake and brush he dashed, and over rocks and down declivities; and when Edith at last was able, just at the very line of deadly danger, to draw rein, and, quivering and breathless, slip from her saddle, there appeared at her side, as if by magic, with a hand on her bridle-rein and a mocking sneer on his lips, the face and form of the last man she desired to see—Charles Endicott.
Breathless as he was, it took some little time for him to be in speaking condition, and while he was recovering his breath she was recovering her consciousness and courage. The very moment she saw him she argued illy from his presence. To be sure, Bill Blaze was in the vicinity; but she could scarcely give a guess at how near, and when she last caught sight of him he had such a work before him that it might well finish him. The corpse of more than one hunter has lain side by side with the body of a dead grizzly.
"Well, friend Edith, we have met again, as I prophesied we would, and I think that now you are fated to hear my story to the end. I have ridden fast and far for a chance to tell my tale, and I doubt if you will be so cruel as not to hear what I would say to you."