Hampton could not remember when he
had ever performed such an act before, nor could he have explained why
he did so then, yet he prayed--prayed for the far-off Naida, and for
personal guidance in the stern work lying before him. And when he rose
to his feet and groped his way to the horses, there remained no spirit
of vengeance in his heart, no hatred, merely a cool resolve to succeed
in his strange quest. So, the two animals trailing cautiously behind,
he felt his slow way on foot down the steep bluff, into the denser
blackness of the valley.
CHAPTER III
THE HAUNTING OF A CRIME
Murphy rested on his back in the midst of a thicket of willows, wide
awake, yet not quite ready to ford the Fourche and plunge into the
dense shadows shrouding the northern shore. Crouched behind a log, he
had so far yielded unto temptation as to light his pipe.
Murphy had been amid just such unpleasant environments many times
before, and the experience had grown somewhat prosaic. He realized
fully the imminent peril haunting the next two hundred miles, but such
danger was not wholly unwelcome to his peculiar temperament; rather it
was an incentive to him, and, without a doubt, he would manage to pull
through somehow, as he had done a hundred times before.
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