A RADIANT sky was smiling down upon the forest-clad hills. Somewhere away to the West the sun was lolling just above the horizon. For the moment its glory was lost behind the ranging hills with their garments of every shade of green. There was no cloud to be seen anywhere from the purpling distance of the snow-capped mountains in the East, to the western splendour of the summer sunset.

Cy Liskard was squatting over a camp fire that was built just outside his log home on the hillside. Nearby his dogs were pursuing some evening pastime that appealed to their savage natures. Maybe it was play, but the snarls that were so frequently accompanied by the fierce snapping of ivory-shod jaws suggested the narrow line dividing it from canine warfare.

His ponies were beyond the fence of a small, roughly constructed corral, and they stood close up to it at a point most nearly approaching the home of the man it was their life’s burden to serve. Their shaggy heads, still rough with the remains of a winter coat, which neglect had left clinging to them, were thrust over the log rail. They were clearly waiting with equine patience the long overdue attention to which they had full right.

The man disregarded their appeal; he was in a mood to disregard any duty that might have been his. Even the claims of his own stomach were forgotten in the consuming depths of impotent rage that were driving him. His expressionless eyes gazed out through the smudge of smoke which lolled heavily upon the still, fresh mountain air. His view was over the range of his gold workings, which lay down below upon the wide bank of the creek. But for all, his gaze was for the thing which held him to his mountain solitude, his thought was left all unconcerned for it.

He had returned from Beacon only that noon. The long trail had claimed him for days, as the condition of his fleshless ponies testified. He had driven hard and mercilessly, for there was that behind him which impelled him in a fashion he had never known before. But the thing which had driven him had no relation to fear, or, if it had, his apprehension was utterly lost in the rage that smouldered behind his pale eyes. He had driven his ponies to their last extremity out of an almost crazy desire for speed and movement that he might reach the security of his home for the sole purpose of nursing his fierce desire for swift vengeance upon Ivor McLagan.

He sat with his rough hands clasped about his knees. He remained unmoving. There was room for nothing in the mind behind his stony stare but the fierce longing to hurt, and the method by which it could be achieved.

He felt himself to be beyond the reach of the men of the Aurora Clan. He felt himself free from every threatening human danger, lost in the heart of these distant hills. As for the threat of that which his return to Beacon might mean, he dismissed it without a moment’s consideration. He intended to return to Beacon just whenever it suited him. It might entail watchfulness. It would undoubtedly entail sufficient weapons of defence. But he never moved without these. And in the open and in the daylight fully prepared, he knew himself to be a match for these absurdly tricked out bunglers who sought to impress their will upon a foolish, credulous, awed bunch of white-livered citizens.

No. It was not against the men of the Aurora Clan that his fury was directed. He held them in contempt for all they had forced from him an oath under threat of hanging. He knew well enough the nearness to disaster to which he had been brought. He knew they had meant their threat and would have hanged him out of hand had he failed to yield his oath. Their other doings were not unknown to him. He had heard of Bernard’s and other outrages, but the whole thing had left him unimpressed. When men were driven to spectre-play to achieve their ends he felt that sufficient boldness could defeat them all the time. So these white-shirted creatures with their cedar boughs, and rawhide hanging ropes, were dismissed from his mind leaving him free to contemplate that other who had brought about his undoing at the Speedway.

Ivor McLagan! Oh, he knew the man by reputation. Furthermore, he knew the work he was engaged upon and where that work was being done and this was the man against whom all his rage and desire for vengeance were directed.

Once he released his clasped hands, and, reaching out one heavily booted foot, kicked the embers of his fire together. With the sunset the air of the mountains was chill enough. For all the man’s toughness, for all the thick pilot cloth of his pea-jacket, and the thick flannel he wore underneath, the chill bit harshly and forced him to regard the life of his fire. He flung a number of logs on to it from his near-by stack of fuel and edged closer to the leaping blaze. Then again his arms embraced his knees, and he yielded himself to the schemes and plans which sprang so readily to his mind.

The wound inside his lips was still raw where McLagan’s blow had split open the flesh against his teeth. But he needed no reminder. He never would need reminding. The memory of that night was indelibly fixed upon a mind which was utterly incapable of forgetting an injury. But such evidence as still remained only the more surely drove his headlong desire. He meant to kill Ivor McLagan, and the only problem that presented itself to him was the manner he should prefer for the accomplishment of his purpose.

Oh, yes. He would kill McLagan. He would have killed him at the Speedway, or some time that night, but for the men who had smothered him in their numbers. Well, he was beyond their interference now. He was out in the open. There was only the open between him and McLagan, a vast, rugged back country, where there was no human agency to interfere between him and his vengeance. Yes, out there they were far hidden from the rest of the world with only the hills to fling back the death-cry he would wring from his——

He broke off from his lusting thought. A broad beam of the dying sun’s light drove its way through the loose arms of a woodland bluff. It lit the ground on which he sat, and enveloped his hunched body. He turned with all the alertness he might have displayed in the presence of an enemy, and his expressionless eyes looked into the blaze of light. For a moment the illusion was complete. Low down on the horizon the sun was sinking to its final rest, and as it passed from view it looked like a world of consuming fire devouring the woods which lay in the path of its amazing light.

It was only for an instant that his narrowed eyes confronted the intolerable burden of its fierce light. Then he sprang to his feet and moved away, and his going was something almost precipitate, headlong. In a moment he had vanished within the doorway of his primitive home.

The moon was at the full of its glory. The night was no less cloudless than had been the close of day. The sky was ablaze with stars, but from the heart of the hills no aurora was visible.

Down on the creek below Cy Liskard’s home the world seemed severely limited. On either hand, before and behind, the hills rose sharply in every direction. It was overpowering, overwhelming. The sky above was transformed into a narrow canopy, with the silver of the moon shining directly down upon the bosom of the little creek. The region was brilliantly lit by its ghostly light. Every detail of it was sharply outlined, and it flung the ghostly shadows of the trees in every direction. Then the waters of the creek, still flowing with something of their Spring freedom, were transformed into a perfect ribbon of silver.

Midnight was gone and the small hours were slowly growing. The valley was full of the strange night sounds of a creature world whose day it was. Cries came echoing down through the forest which clothed the hillsides, and the voices of water life kept up an incessant chorus. It was a world of Nature’s unutterable peace—and something else.

There was movement about the banks of the creek. There was movement amongst the gear of the gold-seeker. So, too, was it on the broad hillside about the cabin where Cy Liskard had abandoned himself to the blankets which nightly claimed him. It was the silent, ghostly movement of white-robed figures. They stood out in sharp relief under the brilliant light of the moon. They came and passed on. They paused. They crouched, searching. They moved without haste, or apparent fear of disturbance. And their long white gowns and high-peaked head pieces transformed them from living humanity into the spirits of the night.

The thing that was in progress was plain enough to read. The white-clad figures were searching the valley of the gold workings for information of the “strike” which the sleeping man had made. Their movement made it impossible to estimate their numbers with any accuracy, for the forest, reaching down to the water’s edge in many places, hid up much of it. Possibly there were a dozen. Possibly less. But, whatever the number, the search was utterly exhaustive. The corral, the log hut on the hillside were not left unexplored, and the presence of the man’s dogs only made it something curious that no canine voice had been raised in protest.

There was not a sound to disturb the night or to give alarm to the sleeping man. The dogs lay huddled on the ground as though in the deepest slumber and the man slept on profoundly while the figures moved about the interior of his quarters.

It was all curious. But there was doubtless an answer to it. These men had travelled far and hard under the strictest orders to return with a full report of the gold strike made by Cy Liskard. Their report depended on a complete and uninterrupted investigation. There were many means of accomplishing this. It would have been simple enough to deal with the man himself. In their numbers they could have taken him in his blankets. But perhaps they had no desire that he should be aware of their visitation. In that case there were other measures. Similar measures such as had doubtless silenced the dogs. A whiff of some pungent narcotic and the sleep of these creatures, human as well as canine, would be infallibly prolonged.

The search went on to its conclusion. It was prolonged and completely thorough. And when the movements of the Aurora men ceased and their ghostly figures no longer haunted the valley, the moon had passed from her throne in the heavens and the star-light was already beginning to fade out. Then came darkness, utter and complete. It was the darkness preceding dawn. And the valley of the Lias River was given up wholly to the haunting sounds of the night.

Cy Liskard was ashore at a landing on the river he had made his own. His stout canoe was lying moored to the overhanging trunk of a tree, and it swung away at the end of its rawhide to the easy stream. A roll of blankets lay in the bottom of it while his camp outfit was littered upon the gravelly foreshore about his feet. It was noon or thereabouts, and the day was overcast and threatening. But down here on the river was the pleasant warmth of a summer day.

He was gazing out downstream, and his view was of a great expanse of flowing water moving heavily on towards the sea. There were many miles between him and the coast yet. The journey would run into something approaching one hundred and more, which it would take days to travel. But it was not the distance he had yet to go that preoccupied him. It was not the scene set out before him with its amazing hills and dense forests growing down to the water’s edge. He was literally and perhaps spiritually at the parting of the ways.

Directly ahead of him a hill reared its lofty crest. It stood up an indestructible barrier to the rushing waters hurtling on towards the distant ocean. It had faced the fierce onslaught of the stream throughout the ages. It had yielded nothing but the loose soil about its rocky base. And so the waters which refused denial to their progress had turned sharply away in face of its heroic resistance.

Somewhere to the north of that hill he knew that another river flowed over an almost parallel course. It was a smaller river which owed its source to the same world of hills as that which bred the flood of the Lias. But it was not for its proximity he was concerned. It was not for its relation to his own. It was because, somewhere further down its course, Ivor McLagan’s oil camp was pitched. And Ivor McLagan was the man who had hurt and thwarted him.

Somehow the night had at first wrought a change in the almost insane mood in which Cy Liskard had sought his blankets. He had awakened heavily, with a feeling of unusual depression. He had awakened without any yearning for immediate action against the man who had hurt him. He had found himself contemplating his future outlook without enthusiasm or deep interest, and it was not until he had broken his fast, and perfunctorily executed the simple chores he was accustomed to perform, that his evil spirit returned to its full dominion.

But even then he had been incapable of rising to the pitch of desire which had stirred him the night before. Perhaps it was the balance of sanity reasserting itself. Perhaps it was the result of that long, deep sleep which had robbed him of the night vision of the movements of the men of the Aurora Clan. Whatever it was, he decided definitely that his vengeance upon Ivor McLagan could wait. There was all the summer for that, and meanwhile, there was urgent work lying ahead of him in another direction. Perhaps a year more of these solitudes and his work would be finished. Yes, in that time he would have completed everything. And the while, McLagan would have forgotten and lulled himself into a sense of security. Then, at his leisure——

So he had gone about his simple preparations. He prepared his boat down on the river. He loaded it with his camp outfit and provisioned it. Then he turned his ponies loose to fend for themselves on such mountain feed as they could find in his absence. And his trail dogs he treated in similar fashion. These creatures were subsidiary. His boat was the thing he knew and understood.

But this more temperate mood had been in the early morning. Since then there had been hours of labour on his journey downstream. And the work of it had lightened the dullness of his earlier inspiration. By high noon he had been completely flung back upon his desire for the life of the man he had encountered in Beacon.

So he stood before the great bend of the river where the angry waters beat impotently against the foot of the mountain and raced away to the south in search of the outlet they refused to be denied. And all his passion for revenge was burning deep behind his soulless eyes.

Why should he wait? Why should he deny himself? There was all summer for the rest as well as for that other. Why not reverse the thing? The rest could wait, far more easily wait than the vengeance he desired. It would be better so. For just so long as Ivor McLagan lived, he, Liskard, would never know peace of mind. What was it? At the most a ten or twelve mile portage to the north of that hill. He had made it before when he had looked to discover for what purpose his neighbours were around. Yes. And the Alsek was an easy river. He could pass down it at his leisure until he came to the oil camp. He could cache his boat while he searched the place for the man whose life he desired. Then, if he were not there but down at the river mouth where he had built his crazy home on the cliffs, he could pass on down beyond the camp in the night and stalk his quarry.

It would be easy—so easy. There would be no need to take chances. His rifle could do the job at his leisure. The man’s home was perched up for long-range shots. He could remain under cover——

Yes, the rest could wait. It must wait. His desire was overwhelming, irresistible. He would eat at once and pass over to the landing he knew of at the foot of the mountain. The water was turbulent enough there. There were rapids of no mean proportions to be negotiated. But they were nothing to him—nothing this river could show him could match his watercraft.

He moved back from the water’s edge. His decision was final. So he prepared a fire for his noon meal.