"No good my going farther now. Besides I don't know the trail, not a
foot farther. No help for it but stay here till Borlasse and the boys
come up. They can't be much longer, unless they've had a fight to
detain them; which I don't think at all likely, after what the
half-blood told us. In any case some of them will be this way. Great
God! To think of Sime Woodley being here! And after me, sure, for the
killing of Clancy! Heywood, too, and Harkness along with them! How is
that, I wonder? Can they have met my old jailer on the way, and brought
him back to help in tracing me? What the devil does it all mean? It
looks as if the very Fates were conspiring for my destruction.
"And who the fellow that laid hold of my horse? So like Clancy! I
could swear 'twas he, if I wasn't sure of having settled him. If ever
gun-bullet gave a man his quietus, mine did him. The breath was out of
his body before I left him.
"Sime Woodley's after me, sure! Damn the ugly brute of a backwoodsman!
He seems to have been created for the special purpose of pursuing me?
"And she in my power, to let her so slackly go again! I may never have
another such chance. She'll get safe back to the settlements, there to
make mock of me! What a simpleton I've been to let her go alive! I
should have driven my knife into her. Why didn't I do it? Ach!"
As he utters the harsh exclamation there is blackness on his brow, and
chagrin in his glance; a look, such as Satan may have cast back at
Paradise on being expelled from it.