Part 26

They kept about forty yards behind the team, which went at a steady rate.

"I say, Pincher, the old beast must be laying it onto them horses, to make 'em go like that."

This time Pincher merely laid an ear back in token of sympathy.

"We'll give him a worse trouncing than that, though. Eh, Pincher?"

And Rankin fumbled with cold fingers at the whip-handle in his pocket. The reins lay across Pincher's neck. Rankin did not want his hands to get too cold "for business."

On and on they pounded through the snow; colder and colder it grew. There was a shiver in the stars themselves, and only the snow looked warm.

"If I wasn't so all-fired mad, Pincher, I believe 't would seem kind o' cold."

At these words Pincher took a spurt and had to be held in, lest they should overtake the wagon.

They had crossed the railroad, leaving Wolverton with its handful of twinkling lights to the eastward, and now a line of the Peak was gleaming, a narrow white crescent, above the long, low rise of ground to the west. Once they passed a depression through which the great dome of snow towered in all its grandeur; but that was only for a moment. Rankin's heart beat high at sight of it.

"There's a way out of 'most every place," he muttered, below his breath.

The last three miles of the way the cold had got such a grip on him that he desisted from further social amenities. Pincher quite understood his silence, though she, with her furry coat and hard exercise, was not as near freezing as he.

At length they perceived, close to the road, a dim light shining from a single point in a huddled group of buildings. The wagon turned into a corral, close to a tumble-down shanty, and as Rankin rode up to the opening the children were just disappearing in at the door, while the woman slowly and painfully climbed down over the wheel. Rumpety stood by, jeering at her slow progress.

"Come, horry a little, me foine lady," Rankin heard him say. "Horry, or I'll come and give ye a lift ye'll not thank me for!"

The poor creature's dress had caught in something, and she stood an instant on the hub.

With a sudden movement the brute raised the long whip he held in his hand and gave her a stinging blow across the shoulders. There was a faint moan, a sound of tearing cotton, and the woman fell in a heap to the ground. In another instant she had scrambled to her feet and fled limping into the house.

Ed Rankin felt the blood rush to his heart and then go tingling down into his finger-tips; but he made no sound nor sudden movement. With his teeth set hard, his hand clutching his cowhide whip, he got off his horse and stood on the ground.

"I guess I'll wait till he's given the critters their supper," he muttered in Pincher's ear. "He might forget to do it after I'm done with him."

He stood looking into the enclosure while Rumpety unharnessed "the critters" and put them up in an open shed.

The corral was a comfortless, tumble-down place. The outlines of the crazy huts and sheds which enclosed it on three sides showed clear in the starlight. A gaunt plough-horse stood motionless in the cold shelter of a skeleton haywagon; in one corner a drinking-trough gleamed, one solid mass of ice. And now across this dreary, God-forsaken stage passed the warmly clad, stalwart figure that Fate was waiting for. Rankin noted that he held the whip still in his hand as he made for the door of the cabin.

Suddenly Rankin blocked his path.

"You cur!"

The words were flung like a missile into the face of the brute.

With a cry of inarticulate rage Rumpety raised his long whip, and then, coward that he was, let it fall.

Rankin never had a very clear idea of what happened next. Somehow or other he had torn the coat off the man's back, had bound him with the lasso to a corner of the haywagon, and was standing over him, cowhide in hand, panting with rage and the desire for vengeance. The gaunt horse had moved off a few paces, and stood like an apparition, gazing with spectral indifference at the scene.

Rankin raised his arm and brought the whiplash whistling down upon the broad shoulders. There was a strange guttural sound, and the figure before him seemed to collapse and sink, a dead weight, down into the encircling rope. Rankin's arm was arrested in mid-air.

"Stand up, you hound, or I'll murder you!" he hissed between his teeth.

But the figure hung there like a log. The spectral horse sniffed strangely.

A swift horror seized upon Rankin. He grasped the heavy shoulder and shook it roughly. It was like shaking--hush! he dared not think what!