Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/92

 career. Good times were ahead of them; the border of the Nation was less than forty-five miles away.

They did not know that a man, whose naturally swift feet were urged on by the double desire to strike a vengeful blow and retrieve his toppled honor at one stroke, was cutting through the weed-grown forest of orchard trees with a high-powered repeating rifle in his hand. They probably would have welcomed the prospect of a little excitement and fun if they had known.

Simpson was careless whether they saw or heard him as he broke through the tangle of horseweeds and morning-glory vines still wet with rain. He angled to cut the road at the farther corner of the orchard, beyond which he could see where it topped the remembered rise. He could hear them, loud-mouthed in their feeling of security, happy over the easy way their ruse had worked. Their horses' feet were noisy in the mud as they trotted heavily on.

When Simpson broke through the wilderness of overgrown orchard the raiders were riding up the foot of the long slope, the top of which he had seen as he scrambled through branches and weeds. He was hot with blue-blazing wrath, which was based not so much on the outrage he had suffered as the affront and obscene familiarity of the scoundrels toward the girl in pants—as his disordered senses still designated her. He had been obliged to stand by and take it, humiliated by his impotency, ramming up against a gun every time he stiffened a muscle to interfere. Dying wouldn't have done either the girl or himself any good. It was one of those times in a fellow's life when he had to clinch his teeth and swallow.