Page:Hugh Pendexter--The young timber-cruisers.djvu/193

 northern Maine but what would be against him, except as ye allow fer Nace and his gang, what’s urging him on in his deviltry. He’d got to stop us testifying agin him; else someone up here would shoot him on sight, or he’d be taken to the settlement and given a long term of years. He must kill us or always keep in hiding. And he knows the Great Northern Lumber and Paper company has a long arm and will spend no end of money to trail him even to Alberta. It’s our lives or his life or freedom.”

As he flung this chilling information over his stooped shoulder he was rapidly taking a zig-zag course away from the mountain so that he might have more room for his fearful game of hide and seek. More than once as he softly sped along he cast a wistful gaze at the western horizon and prayed for night.

Thoroughly alarmed the two youths hung at his heels, darting along like so many shadows. And each knew that behind them, coming hardly less swiftly, was the bowed form of the half-breed hunter, only now he was hunting men. Far ahead, bathed in shifting shadows at its base, illumined by the setting sun at its top, rose Hood mountain. This was Abner’s objective point, but the three knew it could not