Nemesis
The hills were wrapped in the hush of the close of day. The sun had
long since dropped behind the skyline of mountain-tops. And now the
heavens, which had flamed out in a glorious wake, were faded to the
thin, cold yellow which the purple of evening was deepening every
moment. In a short time the lesser glory of a myriad night-lights would
embark upon its brief, triumphant reign.
Night was already in the heart of the great forests. The last of the
twilit distance had been swallowed up by the advance of hungry shadows.
Now, with darkness reigning, the hush was crowded with the strange
pianissimos of invisible life, and the uneasy creak of tree-trunks,
stirred by the cold breath from the glacial heights, that was
insufficient to do more than provoke a chill shudder down the stately
aisles.
A camp-fire was smouldering comfortingly at the feet of the man
squatting over it. He was a queer, crouching figure, with hands clasped
tightly about his drawn-up knees. His somewhat sunken eyes looked to
shine with a desperate gleam as they caught the ruddy reflection of
fitful flame. A single revolver was strapped about his waist.
His clothes were sufficiently scant for the chill of the night. They
were rough, and worn, and looked to be loose on a body that had lost
some of its wonted robustness. The pipe thrust between his jaws was
unlit, empty. From the crown of his loose-brimmed prairie hat, drawn
low over his head, and his lean cheeks, with their stubble of black
beard and whisker, right down to his long, heavy boots, he looked
unclean, unkempt, something of the “mean-white” so despised by the
manhood of the outworld.
But Andy McFardell’s appearance at the moment did him less than
justice. It was the result of a long, weary trail. The man was
wasted, underfed, hard driven. His life for many days had been little
better than that of some forest beast, for his way had lain unmapped,
unscheduled. He had been moving blindly, searching a region where the
only humanity he was likely to encounter must be avoided. Careless of
himself, careless of everything but his task, now with hope soaring
high, now with despair wringing his heart, he had moved on and on with
tireless purpose.
Near by a rifle lay on the ground, and a few yards away his horse was
tethered at a place where the only possible feed was the green foliage
of a low-growing shrub. The beast was in no better case than its rider.
Even in the uncertain light of the camp-fire the sharp angles of its
quarters were plainly discernible, and the dejected droop of its whole
body was pitiful as it slumbered standing. Close at hand, as near to
the fire as safety permitted, the man’s blanket was lying ready for the
moment when sleep overtook him. But that moment was not yet.
He had no intention of slumbering for hours yet. Sleep just now was the
last thing that concerned him. He wanted to think. He wanted to plan.
He desired to map out to the last detail all that was yet to come. He
was in that condition of mental exaltation when physical needs and
comforts had no place in his consideration. It was sufficient that he
had lived for this moment--this great moment when he saw the man who
had been the first cause of his downfall held absolutely at his mercy.
Mercy? He knew no such word. There was no mercy for Jim Pryse.
There was no mercy for any one. He was fighting for some sort of
worldly salvation for himself. It was the only sort of salvation he
understood, and furthermore, he realised that it looked to be within
his grasp.
He bestirred himself, hardly realising his purpose or the thing he did.
He released his knees and stood up. He moved over to a small pile of
deadwood fuel, which was his whole store. He brought an armful back
with him, and recklessly flung it on the fire. Then he squatted again
upon his haunches.
He sucked at his empty pipe. He had nothing with which to refill it.
But it gave him the taste of tobacco, and, in his present mood, it was
sufficient.
He smiled as he watched the leap of the flames which so readily
devoured the dead, resinous wood. It was a smile of fierce derision--an
ugly smile that played about his loose mouth. What fools those folk
were to have given him such a chance. He would never have found the
place. He could never have hoped to do so.
The smile died out of his eyes as he thought of the prolonged labour
of his search. The weary days, probing, seeking, in a hill country
whose confusion was sufficient to madden the bewildered human mind. The
days of blistering heat. The nights of cheerless solitude. The weary
dispiritment of it all to a man who has given up everything, staked
all upon the chance of things, relying only upon his endurance and the
skill acquired in a police training. No, he would never have discovered
Jim Pryse’s hiding-place but for the folly of those associated with
him. And yet--and yet--there it was, so easy to arrive at. The way was
practically a direct trail from the Marton farm.
His smile returned. He recalled the vision of Lightning as he had
halted at the entrance to the valley of that queer creek. For himself
he had only narrowly escaped the man’s observation. The old man’s
attention had been held in another direction, or surely his discovery
must have been inevitable. Then had come that woman on her black
horse. How he had strained to discover the talk that passed between
them. But it had been impossible to hear from his shelter in the woods.
He could see. Oh, yes, he could see. And when they moved up that queer
creek together he was as close on their heels as safety from discovery
permitted.
Then had come the arrival at the lagoon and the three-way source of the
creek. And then--and then he had watched from a distance the ascent to
the mouth of the cavern out of which the waters cascaded. Even now,
in his mood of tremendous elation, he found the mystery of that weird
inlet into the heart of the hills something profoundly absorbing.
He continued thinking of it all. He wanted to do nothing else. He
remembered his own ultimate passage of that tunnel, and the revelation
beyond. And he wondered how it came that Pryse had first discovered
it. Yes. It certainly was no wonder that the police patrols sent out
in pursuit of the man had returned to report complete failure. No
police patrol could have found it; could ever have hoped to find it. No
trained policeman would have admitted that that cavern mouth could by
any miracle be the entrance to another, higher valley. But they would
learn the facts now surely enough. Oh, yes.
He reached out a foot and kicked the fire together. Then he glanced
over in the direction of his horse. After that he turned an ear to the
sound of the breeze in the foliage overhead. It had increased. And the
chill of the night had increased with it.
He turned again to the fire and shook his head.
No. He would tell them nothing but the fact that he could lead them
to the hiding-place of Jim Pryse, who was due for five years in the
penitentiary--with hard labour. He passed his tongue across his lips
with intense satisfaction. Yes. He would tell Leedham Branch that. And
his price for the man’s recapture would be very definite.
He hugged himself gleefully, for he knew that nothing could be
more sure than that his price would be paid. If he knew the Police
it certainly would. There would be no preliminary payment. But on
fulfilment of his part it would be different. A cold word of approval.
A word to the Sergeant-Major. A regimental order. Reinstatement. And
then his final triumph. He would beg to be allowed to convey the
prisoner to the penitentiary.
He laughed audibly as he wondered if the old kit he had returned into
store would come back to him again. Perhaps.
Oh, it was fine. It was the happiest dream he had dreamed since he had
set out. But it was more than a dream. It was a certainty--a whole,
complete certainty, of which nothing short of death could rob him. With
the first of to-morrow’s daylight he would set out for Calford. He
should make it in two days. His old horse could do it. It would have to
do it.
After awhile he rose again from the fire and replenished it with the
remains of his fuel store. It was his final precaution. Then he rolled
his blanket about his tough body, and, using his saddle for a pillow,
stretched himself out as near to the fire as safety permitted. Far into
the night he lay there, wakeful and thinking. But finally he slumbered
with the dreamlessness of complete weariness.
Not for one moment had a single thought been given to the girl whose
love he had so wantonly betrayed.
* * * * *
The trail lifted gently out of the valley. It was a trail Andy
McFardell knew by heart. In one direction it led to the pleasant
purlieus of Barney Lake’s hotel in Hartspool. In the other it lost
itself somewhere behind him in the foothills he had learned to hate so
cordially.
Somewhere up there, at the top of the incline, where a dense bush
country reached out towards the wide undulations of the prairie beyond,
the trail forked. And it was of that fork that the man was thinking,
for the right-hand trail led to Calford, which was just now his whole
object and purpose in life. He wanted to look once more upon the city
from which he had so long been banished. He wanted to look on it
with the eyes of a victor. For days now he had been living through
a succession of wonderful anticipations. They had grown into almost
grotesque proportions. He felt that his approach to Calford was in the
nature of a triumphal progress.
His only anxiety now was for his horse. There was nothing else that
could hold up the plans he had so carefully made. He had no sympathy
for the well-nigh foundered creature. He cared not a jot that the
poor thing was terribly saddle-galled. It meant nothing to him that
its ribs looked as though the wind must blow through them, and its
quarters were so lean and shrunken that the bones looked to be about to
burst the skin covering them. He wanted to reach Calford. He intended
to reach Calford. And his anxiety was for how the poor, wasted brute
was to negotiate that last fifty miles still remaining. His mood was
merciless. The horse would have to carry him till it dropped. After
that? Well, after that, he would walk. That was all.
The dishevelled outfit topped the valley slope at last, and passed
into something of shade from the brazen light of the sun. The road
had entered a luxuriant spruce bluff that was wholly inviting, and
stirred even the jaded spirits of the horse. The creature broke into
a shuffling amble which by no effort of imagination could have been
regarded as a lope.
The trail went on in its own peculiar winding fashion along the line
of least resistance, and there was not a moment when the horseman could
obtain a view for more than fifty yards ahead. But that was of no
consequence. The road was perfectly familiar. Andy McFardell knew there
was less than half a mile to the fork, and then----
The ambling horse stumbled. The man flung himself back in the saddle
with a shout of blasphemy. With all the strength of arms and body he
sought to keep the falling creature on its feet. It was a vain effort.
The beast was too utterly weary to help itself or be helped. It had
tripped badly over some unseen obstruction, and pitched headlong.
For the second time in his life Andy McFardell found disaster in the
fall of his horse.
The man sprawled clear of the saddle. He was unhurt, and, on the
instant, made to spring to his feet. But he never got beyond a sitting
posture. He was held there motionless and something dumfounded. As once
before, a man was standing over him with a levelled gun. A pair of
stern, merciless eyes were looking down into his. The face of the man
was lined, and burnt to a deep bronze. It was old in years, but alight
with cold purpose. Even the grey hair and the tatter of the whisker
could not lessen the significance of the hate which shone so frigidly
in his sunken eyes.
It was the last man Andy McFardell had thought to encounter. It was
Lightning.