uld prove troublesome, even should the more immediate danger
be averted; anger at himself for being so blindly precipitous; and a
maddening indecision as to how he should check the man who was following
the tracks that led from Granite Peak to the evident object of his
search. The words of the convict rang in his ears. "This is your job. I
did not agree to commit murder for you."

Murder had no place in the insanity of James Rutlidge To destroy
innocence, to kill virtue, to murder a soul--these are commonplaces in the
insane philosophy of his kind. But to kill--to take a life
deliberately--the thought was abhorrent to him. He was not educated to the
thought of _taking_ life--he was trained to consider its _perversion_. The
heroes in _his_ fiction did not _kill_ men--they _betrayed_ women. The
heroines in his stories did not desire the death of their betrayers--they
loved them, and deserted their husbands for them.

But to stand idly aside and permit Sibyl Andres to be taken from him--to
face the exposure that would inevitably follow--was impossible. If the man
who had struck the trail was alone, there might still be a chance--if he
could be stopped. But how could he check him? What could he do? A
rifle-shot might bring a dozen searchers.

While these thoughts were seething in his hot brain, he was climbing
rapidly toward the cliff at the head of the gorge, across which, he knew,
the man who was following the tracks that led to the cabin below, must
come.

Gaining the end of the ledge that leads across the face of that mighty
wall of rock, less than a hundred feet to the other side, he stopped.
There was no one in sight. Looking down, he saw, a thousand feet below the
tops of the trees in the bottom of the gorge. Lifting his head, he looked
carefully about, searching the mountainsides that slope steeply back from
the rim of the narrow canyon. He looked up at the frowning cliff that
towered a thousand feet above his head. He listened. He was thinking,
thinking. The best of him and the worst of him struggled for supremacy.

A sound on the mountainside, above the gorge, and beyond the other end of
the ledge, caught his ear. With a quick step he moved behind a projecting
corner of the cliff. Rifle in hand, he waited.

Chapter XXXVIII

An Inevitable Conflict

When Aaron King set out to follow the tracks he had found at Granite Peak,
after his long, hard trip along the rugged crest of the Galenas, his
wearin