ez how it wouldn’t be no sort o’ use.”
Bob Thornton got on his feet, and Ward Hammond closed the knife with which he had been whittling.
“Air ye goin’ up thar ter-night?” the younger man drawled.
“It air my ’pinion that it’ll be better,” said Thornton, in a husky tone. “Ef you hev a thing ter do, do it. Them’s my sentiments, an’ I allus acts on ’em. Ef you hev a thing ter do, do it!”
“I do believe there is to be an attempt to murder Frank this very night,” Bruce Browning inwardly groaned, almost afraid to move an eyelid lest it should bring discovery. “I’ve got to get back to the cottages ahead of these fellows, or break my neck trying.”
Then he almost groaned aloud as he thought of the dark woods and the paths that seemed little better than squirrel tracks, where he had already lost himself, and could hardly hope to do better in a wild race for the cottages against these miscreants.
Hammond and Thornton moved away. Bruce heard the third man strike a match, and caught the odor of burning tobacco. Then he noticed that the moon was rising behind him over a shoulder of the mountain, and that the night was growing lighter.
“I can get along with that moon,” he reflected. “But I’m afraid it’s going to puzzle me to get away from this cabin without detection.”
He was on the point of making a dash and trusting to his heels for safety, for, though he was large-limbed and heavy, the bicycle trip across the continent had trained him down into fair condition for running, and the malarial trouble that seemed to have fastened on him had not yet materially affected his strength. But he was kept from this by the voice of Nell Thornton, who entered the cabin at this juncture, singing that old, old song of the backwoods:
“Fair Charlotte lived by the mounting side,
In a wild an’ lonely spot,
No dwellin’ thar fur ten mile ’roun’,
Except her father’s cot!”
The voice was not unmusical, but it had the piping twang of the mountaineers.
“She has been away somewhere, and heard none of that talk,” thought Browning, with a sigh of relief. “I guess her arm was not so badly hurt by that arrow as I fancied. Anyway, she doesn’t seem to be suffering much now, judging by the way she sings.”
He inclined his head toward the cabin wall, expecting to catch the voice of the younger man from the bench under the tree and Nell’s answer to his words. But he heard only Nell singing of that other mountain girl who went sleighing to a dance in defiance of parental authority and was punished for her disobedience by being frozen to death in the sleigh.
Had Browning looked behind him, his thoughts would have been given another turn, for he was never in more peril in his life than at that moment.
The man on the bench, chancing to glance around the corner of the cabin toward the increasing light, had seen Bruce clearly outlined against the moon’s silver rim. His instant thought was that Bruce was the man against whom he and Bob Thornton had been warned – that here was the officer of the revenue service, with head pressed close to the cabin wall, having already spotted Bob Thornton as a moonshiner and tracked him to his home.
The man was a muscular giant of a fellow, as big and as strong in every way as Bruce. He was smoking and nursing a heavy stick, almost a club, which he habitually carried as a cane, but which, in his hands, was a weapon to fell an ox.
He quickly and stealthily slipped out of his shoes, then stole with catlike steps around the building, and approached Browning from the rear.
Step by step he moved forward, as silent as a shadow and as merciless as a red Indian. His face, revealed by the faint moonlight, was distorted with rage and hate, and his grip on the deadly club was so tense that the muscles on his right arm stood out in a knotted mass under the sleeve of his thin, cotton shirt.
Bruce still stood, with head inclined toward the cabin wall, listening for the words he was not to hear, wholly unaware of his peril.
Lifting himself slowly erect, the man poised the club for a brief instant, then brought it down with an inarticulate cry.
That cry saved Bruce’s life, but it did not ward off the terrible blow. Bruce straightened his head and tried to leap back, instinctively throwing up an arm as a shield.
But the club descended, beating down the arm and striking the head a glancing blow, under which Bruce sank down with a hollow groan.
The blow, the groan, the man’s fierce curse as Browning fell, reached the ears of Nell Thornton, stilling the words of the song.
She was out of the cabin in a flash.
“What hev ye done, Sam Turner?” she demanded, as she hurried around the corner of the cabin, and saw the man standing over the senseless form, with the murderous club still in his hands. “Who hev ye killed, hyar, I’d like ter know?”
“Shet yer yawp, Nell Thornton, an’ go back inter the house!” Turner harshly commanded. “Go back inter the house, whar ye belong, stiddy botherin’ with bizness that don’t consarn ye!”
“But it do consarn me, ef murder is bein’ done!” she asserted.
Then her voice rose in a shriek, as she bent over Browning, and recognized in him the youth who had been so kind to her that afternoon.
Browning lay as he had fallen, without movement or sign of life.
“Ye’ve killed him, Sam Turner!” she cried, facing the mountaineer, with white face and flashing eyes. “Ye’ve killed him!”
“That thar’s what I meant ter do!” Turner declared. “An’ I’ll kill ever’ other revnoo spy that the guv’ment sends down hyar ter ’rest me an’ yer dad!”
Nell turned from him, with hot, dry eyes and choking words, and again bent over Browning, even as he had bent over her when she lay in a faint in the wild mountain path.
Then she grasped him by the shoulders and tried to lift him.
“Help me ter git him inter the cabin!” she wildly commanded. “He ain’t no revnoo, Sam Turner! If he’s dead, you’ll hatter answer fur killin’ a man that never harmed ye. You’ll hatter answer fur it ’fore God, and that’ll be wuss’n the jedge at the co’tehouse down in the valley. Holp me ter git him inter the cabin, I tell ye!”
She gave another surging lift at the shoulders, and Bruce groaned.
Sam Turner raised the club again.
“Put that down!” she shrieked, flying at him with the ferocity of an enraged panther.
Turner staggered back under the force of her rush, and she tore the club from his hands and sent it whirling far out into the bushes.
“If ye won’t holp me, I’ll drag him in myself,” she declared, again seeking to lift Browning by the shoulders.
There was another groan from Browning’s lips, and then Sam Turner, moved by curiosity rather than pity, consented to assist Nell in getting the unfortunate lad into the house.
By the light of the kerosene lamp, Turner inspected Bruce’s injuries, while Nell stood by, with clasped hands, in an agony
