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It was the voice of Discipline calling to his better judgment, as Bug's innocent pleading spoke to the finer man within him. Under his grip Gresh lay motionless, all power of resistance threshed out of him. "Are you ready to quit?" Vic questioned, hoarsely, bending over the almost lifeless form. The outlaw mumbled assent.
Elinor cried, earnestly. "I have always loved my father's memory for his courage," Victor continued. "He was a believer in law enforcement and he was a terror to the bootleggers who carried whisky into our settlement. A man named Gresh was notorious for selling whisky to the claim holders.
He escaped afterward into Indian Territory. He left his own name, Gresh, scrawled on a piece of paper pinned to my father's coat to show whose revenge was worked out. He was a volcano of human hate that man Gresh.
So surely as tonight, tomorrow, or ever you try to harm her, I'll not show you the mercy Vic Burleigh showed you once." Strange forms the guardian angel takes! Hence we entertain it unawares. Of all Lagonda Ledge, old Bond Saxon, standing between a woman and the peril of her life, looked least angelic. Gresh understood him and turned first in fawning and tempting trickery to his adversary.
The villainous-looking outlaw drew a flask from his pocket. "Have a drink, Saxon. Take the whole bottle," and he thrust it into the old man's hands. Bond wavered a moment, then flung it far into the foamy floods of the Walnut. "Not any more. You shall not get me drunk again while you rob and kill." "You did the killing for me once. Won't you do it again?" Gresh snarled.
Meanwhile Bond Saxon was hurrying north on his work of redemption. At the bend in the river he found Tom Gresh sitting on the flat stone slab. The light was gleaming through the shrubbery of the little cottage, and the homey sounds of evening and the twitter of late-coming birds were in the air. "What are you here for, Gresh?" Bond asked, hoarsely. "I thought you had left for good."
Gresh gained the mastery again, and with a grip on Vic's throat was about to thrust his head, face downward, into the burning embers. Vic understood and strove for his own life with a maniac's might, for he knew that one more wrench would end the thing. "You first, and then the baby; I'll roast you both," Gresh hissed, and Vic smelled the heat of the wood flame. But who had counted on Bug?
He had watched this fearful grapple, motionless and terror-stricken, and now with a child's vision he saw what Gresh meant to do. Springing up, he caught the heavy coat on which he had been sitting and flung it on the fire, smothering the embers and putting the cavern into complete darkness. Vic gained the vantage by this unlooked for movement and the grip shifted.
And then the college discipline put in its work. Vic stopped and reasoned. "Bug isn't down there. He never goes near the river. That strange man is Tom Gresh. He killed my father and he's laid a trap for me. He doesn't want to kill Bug. He wants to keep him to workout vengeance and hate on me. He says he'll send me to my father if I go near him.
Across the stone-floored cave they threshed in fury, until at the farther wall Gresh flung Vic from him against the jagged rock with a force that cut a gash across the boy's head. The blood splashed on both men's faces as they renewed the strife.
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