"No sign of Burt?" he asked.
Wilson expressed a mild surprise. "Wal, Snake, you ain't expectin' Burt now?"
"I am, course I am. Why not?" demanded Anson. "Any other time we'd look fer him, wouldn't we?"
"Any other time ain't now.... Burt won't ever come back!" Wilson spoke it with a positive finality.
"A-huh! Some more of them queer feelin's of yourn--operatin' again, hey? Them onnatural kind thet you can't explain, hey?"
Anson's queries were bitter and rancorous.
"Yes. An', Snake, I tax you with this heah. Ain't any of them queer feelin's operatin' in you?"
"No!" rolled out the leader, savagely. But his passionate denial was a proof that he lied. From the moment of this outburst, which was a fierce clinging to the old, brave instincts of his character, unless a sudden change marked the nature of his fortunes, he would rapidly deteriorate to the breaking-point. And in such brutal, unrestrained natures as his this breaking-point meant a desperate stand, a desperate forcing of events, a desperate accumulation of passions that stalked out to deal and to meet disaster and blood and death.
Wilson put a little wood on the fire and he munched a biscuit. No one asked him to cook. No one made any effort to do so. One by one each man went to the pack to get some bread and meat.
Then they waited as men who knew not what they waited for, yet hated and dreaded it.
Twilight in that glen was naturally a strange, veiled condition of the atmosphere. It was a merging of shade and light, which two seemed to make gray, creeping shadows.
Suddenly a snorting and stamping of the horses startled the men.
"Somethin' scared the hosses," said Anson, rising. "Come on."
Moze accompanied him, and they disappeared in the gloom. More trampling of hoofs was heard, then a cracking of brush, and the deep voices of men. At length the two outlaws returned, leading three of the horses, which they haltered in the open glen.
The camp-fire light showed Anson's face dark and serious.
"Jim, them hosses are wilder 'n deer," he said. "I ketched mine, an' Moze got two. But the rest worked away whenever we come close. Some varmint has scared them bad. We all gotta rustle out thar quick."
Wilson rose, shaking his head doubtfully. And at that moment the quiet air split to a piercing, horrid neigh of a terrified horse. Prolonged to a screech, it broke and ended. Then followed snorts of fright, pound and crack and thud of hoofs, and crash of brush; then a gathering thumping, crashing roar, split by piercing sounds.