“I must be going now,” the girl was saying.  “Father pretty near goes crazy when I stay away too long.  You can’t imagine how he loves me and worries about me—­and how fearful he is of me—­”

His mind seemed to leap and gather her words.  It was true:  she was the joy and the pride and the hope of the old man’s life.  All his work, his dreams were for her.  And now he remembered a fact that she had told him on the outward journey:  that Ray Brent, the stronger of Neilson’s two subordinates, loved her too.

“To strike at them indirectly—­through some one they love—­” such had been his greatest wish.  To put them at a disadvantage and overcome his own—­to lead them into his own ambushes.  And was it for the Wolf to care what guiltless creatures fell before his fangs in the gaining of his dreadful ends?  Was the gratification of his hate to be turned aside through pity for an innocent girl?  Mercy and remorse were two things that he had put from him.  It was the way of the Wolf to pay no attention to methods, only to achieve his own fierce desires.  He stood lost in dark and savage reverie.

“Good-by,” the girl was saying.  “I’ll see you soon—­”

He turned toward her, a smile at his lips.  His voice held steady when he spoke.

“It’ll have to be soon, if at all,” he replied.  “I’ve got to really get to work in a few days.  How about a little picnic to-morrow—­a grouse hunt, say—­on the other side of the river?  It’s going to be a beautiful day—­”

The girl’s eyes shone, and the color rose again in her tanned cheeks.  “I’d think that would be very nice,” she told him.

“Then I’ll meet you here—­at eight.”

XVIII

Alone by the fire Ben had opportunity to balance one thing with another and think out the full consequences of his plan.  As far as he could discern, it stood every test.  It meant not only direct and indirect vengeance upon Neilson and his followers; but it would also, past all doubt, deliver them into his hands.  That much was sure.  When finally they came to grips—­if indeed they did not go down to a terrible death before ever that time came—­he would be prepared for them, with every advantage of ground and fortress, able to combat them one by one and shatter them from ambush.  Best of all, they would know at whose hands, and for what crime, they received their retribution.

One by one he checked the chances against him.  First of all, he had to face the great chance of failure and the consequent loss of his own life.  But there was even recompense in this.  He would not die unavenged.  The blow that he would thereby deal to his enemies would be terrible beyond any reckoning, but he would have no regrets.

There were two outstanding points in his favor, one of them being that the river was rapidly falling.  By the time a canoe could be built the river would be wholly unnavigable.  There were no canoes procurable in Snowy Gulch, if indeed a lightning trip could be made there and back to secure one, before the river fell.  The conversation with the frontiersman at the river bank brought out this fact.  Lastly, a raft could not live a moment in the rapids.