CHAPTER XXXV

THE MEETINGS OF TWO STRONG MEN

Matt Barger, riding in the night, intent upon nothing save the chance to deal out his vengeance to Van Buren, had camped beside the river, at the turn where Van and Beth had skirted the bank to the regular fording below.  The convict’s horse, which Beth had lost, was tethered where the water-way had encouraged a meager growth of grass.  Barger himself had eaten a snake and returned to a narrow defile in the range, where his ambush could be made.

To insure himself against all misadventure he rolled a mass of boulders down the hill, to block the trail.  His barrier was crude but efficient.  Neither man nor horse could have scaled it readily, and the slopes on either side were not only well-nigh perpendicular, they were also built of crumbling stone that broke beneath the smallest weight.  He labored doggedly, persistently, despite his half-starved condition, and when he had finished he looked to his gun, proceeded down the trail some fifty yards or more, climbed the slope, and there in the rocks, where the walls gave way to a sandy acclivity, concealed himself to wait.

The sun at noon found Van a mark for punishment.  The day was the hottest of the season.  The earth and rocks irradiated heat that danced in the air before him.  All the world was vibrant, the atmosphere a shimmer, as if in very mockery of the thoughts that similarly rose and gyrated in his brain.  His horse was suffering for water.  The river was still an hour away, so steep was the climb through the range.

The trail he would gladly have avoided, had such a course been practical.  He had ridden here with Beth, and therefore the mockery was all the more intense.  His inward heat and the outward heat combined to make him savage.  There was nothing, however, on which to vent his feelings.  Suvy he loved.  Perhaps, he reflected, the horse was his one faithful friend.  Certainly the broncho toiled most willingly across the zone of lifelessness to bear him on his way.

Up through the narrowing walls of sand and adamant they slowly ascended.  Barger saw them once, far down the trail, then lost them again as they rounded a spur of the shimmering hillside, coming nearer where he lay.  He was up the slope a considerable distance—­farther than he meant to risk a shot.  His breath came hard as he presently beheld Van Buren fairly entering the trap.

Van’s head had fallen forward on his breast.  He looked at nothing.  His face was set and hard.  Barger raised his pistol, sighted down the barrel—­and repressed the impulse to fire as the horseman came onward, unsuspiciously.

No sooner was Van around the turn, where in less than a minute he would find his progress blocked, than Barger arose and ran with all his might down the slope.

He let out a yell of exultation as he came to the trail.  Van turned in his saddle instantly, beholding the man in the pass.  He knew that sinister form.