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He was busy polishing a gun, but that his thoughts were occupied with something less mechanical and not wholly pleasant the slight frown upon his face made evident. "Mr. Layson! Frank!" she cried. The young man turned, on hearing her, and hurried toward her and her father with his hands outstretched in welcome.
As they gazed, before Layson could rush forward to stamp out these sparkling perils, the fire had spread, as the girl, wise in the direful ways of brush-fires, had known at once that it would spread, to the encircling pine-tops, left in a tinder barricade about the clearing by the sawyers and the axemen. "Oh," she said, distressed, "we're ketched!"
The thought seemed quite incredible and the worry of it quite absorbed her for a time and drove away forebodings about the possible hatred of Joe Lorey for Layson and his possible expression of resentment. She even ceased her wonderings about the footsteps which had gone down the road, that morning, and which, so far as she could see, had not come back again.
Layson had heard guns pop in untrained volleys at State Guard manoeuvres, and was instantly impressed by the amazing similarity of sound, but he had never in his life seen anything to be compared to the towering ring of flame-wall which almost instantly encircled them. He lost, perhaps, a minute, in astonished contemplation of the situation.
"I jus' nachelly hab got to speak to dem ar stable boys a minute, fust. Jus' 'scuse me fo' a minute, suh." He vanished hurriedly, hoping that by this diversion he could gain a little time for Madge and for himself. Layson gazed after him with some astonishment, then went and tried the stable door. "Of course the door's locked," he explained, annoyed, "but he'll be back here in a minute."
Down in the bluegrass home of the ancient Layson family all was excitement in anticipation of the race which was to mean so much to the fortunes of the young master of the fine old mansion which, with pillared porticos and mighty chimneys, dominated the whole section.
The young moonshiner stiffened instantly as he neared the group of newly arrived travellers, for the first word he heard from them was the name of him whom, among all foreigners, he hated with most bitterness. An old darky, plainly the servant of the party, and such a darky as the mountain country had never seen before, was inquiring of a bystander where he could find "Marse" Frank Layson.
Never a smile had he for chattering squirrel or scampering chipmunk; fierce, repellant was the brown brow of the mountaineer, despite the glory of the morning, and black the heart within him with sheer hatred of Frank Layson and the class he represented.
"Who would I mean but that damn' furriner, Frank Layson? He warn't satisfied with comin' here an' stealin' you away from me! He had to put th' revenuers on th' track o' th' old still that was my dad's afore me, an' has been th' one thing, siden you, I've ever keered fer in my life." "You're wrong, Joe," she insisted. "You're shore wrong. Frank Layson'd never do a coward's trick like that!"
"Oh, shore, it war Joe Lorey," he protested. "It couldn't 'a' been nobody else. I warns you, here an' now, Layson, that ef you don't set th' law after him he'll be lynched before to-morrer night." Layson was a little angered by the man's persistence.
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