Ay, there had been fear in it. Every day at the ranch he had shuddered
at the thought that the destroyer might ride up on that devil of black
silken grace, Satan. But every day he had convinced himself that even
then Dan Barry remembered the past and was cursing himself for the
ingratitude he had shown his old friend. Now the truth swept coldly home
to Buck Daniels. Barry was as fierce as ever upon the trail; and Kate
Cumberland thought that he--Buck Daniels,--had fled like a cur from
danger.
He seized his head between his hands and beat his knuckles against the
corrugated flesh of his forehead. She had thought that!
Desire for action, action, action, beset him like thirst. To close with
this devil, this wolf-man, to set his big fingers in the smooth, almost
girlish throat, to choke the yellow light out of those eyes--or else to
die, but like a man proving his manhood before the girl.
He read the letter again and then in an agony he crumpled it to a ball
and hurled it across the room. Catching up his hat and his belt he
rushed wildly from the room, thundered down the crazy stairs, and out to
the stable.
Long Bess, the tall, bay mare which had carried him through three years
of adventure and danger and never failed him yet, raised her
aristocratic head above the side of the stall and whinnied. For answer
he shook his fist at her and cursed insanely.
The saddle he jerked by one stirrup leather from the wall and flung it
on her back, and when she cringed to the far side of the stall, he
cursed her again, bitterly, and drew up the cinch with a lunge that made
her groan.
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