But the man’s mood was not such as to leave him standing before obstacles. In his half savage heart was a native terror of fire. But just now all that was completely overborne by emotions that were irresistible. The smell of burning flesh was strong in his nostrils, he even fancied he could taste something of it on his lips.
Just for one instant he paused before the doorway measuring the chances of it all. Then he leapt forward and vanished into the smoking ruin.
Jim McLeod was standing in the doorway of his store. He had been roused from sleep by a furious hammering on the door. He had flung on a heavy skin coat over his night clothes and hastily thrust a gun in each pocket of it. Then he had cautiously proceeded to investigate, for the memory of his long talk with Marty Le Gros was still with him.
But his apprehensions had been swiftly allayed, or at least changed, for the harsh deep tones of Usak had replied to his challenge through the barred door.
Now he was listening to the thing the Indian had to say and the horror of the story he listened to found reflection in his pale blue eyes.
“They’ve killed ’em an’ burnt ’em out?” he cried incredulously as the furious man broke off the torrent of the first rush of his story.
Usak’s black eyes were aflame with a light that was bordering on frenzy. The infant Felice, wrapped in a blanket, was in his arms and clinging to him with her tiny arms about the man’s trunk-like neck, silent, wide-eyed, but content with a presence understood and loved.
“Here I tell you. I tell you quick so no time is lost. I work by the farm all night. So. It is the season when I work that way. The young deer need me. Oh, yes. So I work. Then I mak look up in the corral. There is smoke to the west. Smoke. I look some more, an’ I think quick. Smoke? Fire? What burns that way? Two things, maybe. The bluff. The house of Marty Le Gros. So I mak quick getaway. Oh, yes. Very quick. Then I come by the house. It all burn. Yes. No house. Only burning logs all break up. So I stand an’ think. An’ while I stand I smell. So. I smell the cooking of meat. Meat. First I have think Marty an’ Pri-loo mak big getaway to here. Then, when I smell this thing, I think—no. Not getaway.”