t why bother now? The coal would
stay there, and now he had other plans that made even that find
insignificant. And yet if he bought that coal now--what a bargain! It
was not that the ideals of his college days were tarnished, but he was
a man of business now, and if he would take the old man's land for
a song--it was because others of his kind would do the same! But why
bother, he asked himself again, when his brain was in a ferment with a
colossal scheme that would make dizzy the magnates who would some day
drive their roadways of steel into those wild hills. So he shook himself
free of the question, which passed from his mind only with a transient
wonder as to who it was that had told of him to the old mountaineer, and
had so paved his way for an investigation--and then he wheeled suddenly
in his saddle. The bushes had rustled gently behind him and out from
them stepped an extraordinary human shape--wearing a coon-skin cap,
belted with two rows of big cartridges, carrying a big Winchester over
one shoulder and a circular tube of brass in his left hand. With his
right leg straight, his left thigh drawn into the hollow of his saddle
and his left hand on the rump of his horse, Hale simply stared, his eyes
dropping by and by from the pale-blue eyes and stubbly red beard of the
stranger, down past the cartridge-belts to the man's feet, on which
were moccasins--with the heels forward! Into what sort of a world had he
dropped!

"So nary a soul can tell which way I'm going," said the red-haired
stranger, with a grin that loosed a hollow chuckle far behind it.

"Would you mind telling me what difference it can make to me which way
you are going?" Every moment he was expecting the stranger to ask his
name, but again that chuckle came.

"It makes a mighty sight o' difference to some folks."

"But none to me."

"I hain't wearin' 'em fer you. I know YOU."

"Oh, you do." The stranger suddenly lowered his Winchester and turned
his face, with his ear cocked like an animal. There was some noise on
the spur above.

"Nothin' but a hickory nut," said the chuckle again. But Hale had
been studying that strange face. One side of it was calm, kindly,
philosophic, benevolent; but, when the other was turned, a curious
twitch of the muscles at the left side of the mouth showed the teeth and
made a snarl there that was wolfish.

"Yes, and I know you," he said slowly. Self-satisfaction, straightway,
was ardent in the face.

"I knowed