Page:Vance--The trey o hearts.djvu/40

24 Indian. Alan delayed long enough to swallow a few mouthfuls of raw food, gulped water from a spring, and set out at a dog-trot on the trail to Spirit Lake.

For hours he blundered on, holding to the trail mainly by instinct—the roaring of the flames ever more loud and ominous, the cloud of smoke ever more dense, the heat moment by moment more intense.

Finally he staggered into a little clearing, tripped over some obstacle, and plunged headlong, so bewildered that he could not have said whether he was tripped or thrown. As he fell a heavy body landed on his back and crushed him savagely to earth.

In less than a minute he was overcome, his wrists hitched together, his ankles bound. When his vision cleared he discovered Jacob squatting on his heels and regarding him with a face as immobile as the bronze it resembled.

Beyond, a woman in a man's hunting costume stood eying the captive as narrowly as the Indian, but with a countenance that seemed exultantly aglow over his downfall.

But for that look he could have believed the face that which had brought him overseas: feature for feature, she counterfeited the woman he loved; only those eyes, aflame with their look of inhuman ruthlessness, denied that the two were one.

He sought to speak. The breath rustled in his throat like wind whispering among dead leaves.