“Furthermore, judge Price avails himself on this occasion to say that he has no wish to avoid personal conclusions with the murderers and cutthroats who are terrorizing this community; on the contrary, he will continue earnestly to seek such personal conclusions.”

CHAPTER XXIV

THE CABIN ACROSS THE BAYOU

Tom Ware was seated alone over his breakfast.  He had left his bed as the pale morning light crept across the great fields that were alike his pride and his despair—­what was the use of trying to sleep when sleep was an impossibility!  The memory of that tragedy at the church door was a black horror to him; it gave substance to his dreams, it brought him awake with writhing lips that voiced his fear in the dead stillness of the night.  The days were scarcely less terrible.  Steeled and resolute as his will could make him, he was not able to speak of what he had seen with composure.  Being as he was in this terribly perturbed state he had shirked his morning toilet and presented a proportionately haggard and unkempt appearance.  He was about to quit the table when big Steve entered the room to say there was a white fellow at the door wished to see him.

“Fetch him along in here,” said Ware briefly, without lifting his bloodshot eyes.

Brought into his presence the white fellow delivered a penciled note which proved to be from Murrell, and then on Ware’s invitation partook of whisky.  When he was gone, the planter ordered his horse, and while he waited for it to be brought up from the stables, reread Murrell’s note.  The expression of his unprepossessing features indicated what was passing in his mind, his mood was one of sullen rebellion.  He felt Murrell was bent on committing him to an aggregate of crime he would never have considered possible, and all for love of a girl—­a pink-cheeked, white-faced chit of a girl—­disgust boiled up within him, rage choked him; this was the rotten spot in Murrell’s make-up, the man was mad-stark mad!

As Ware rode away from Belle Plain he cursed him under his breath with vindictive thoroughness.  His own inclination toward evil was never very robust; he could have connived and schemed over a long period of years to despoil Betty of her property, he would have counted this a legitimate field for enterprise; but murder and abduction was quite another thing.  He would wash his hands of all further connection with Murrell, he had other things to lose besides Belle Plain, and the present would be as good a time as any to let the outlaw know he could be coerced and bullied no longer.  But he had a saving recollection of the way in which Murrell dealt with what he counted treachery; an unguarded word, and he would not dare to travel those roads even at broad noon-day, while to pass before a lighted window at night would be to invite death; nowhere would he be safe.

Three miles from Belle Plain he entered a bridle path that led toward the river; he was now traversing a part of the Quintard tract.  Two miles from the point where he had quitted the main road he came out upon the shores of a wide bayou.  Looking across this he saw at a distance of half a mile what seemed to be a clearing of considerable extent, it was the first sign of human occupation he had seen since leaving Belle Plain.