That hour ago his one great purpose had been to bring
in Black Roger Audemard, alive or dead--Black Roger, the forest
fiend who had destroyed half a dozen lives in a blind passion of
vengeance nearly fifteen years ago. For ten of those fifteen years
it had been thought that Black Roger was dead. But mysterious
rumors had lately come out of the North. He was alive. People had
seen him. Fact followed rumor. His existence became certainty. The
Law took up once more his hazardous trail, and David Carrigan was
the messenger it sent.
"Bring him back, alive or dead," were Superintendent McVane's last
words.
And now, thinking of that parting injunction, Carrigan grinned,
even as the sweat of death dampened his face in the heat of the
afternoon sun. For at the end of those sixty minutes that had
passed since his midday pot of tea, the grimly, atrociously
unexpected had happened, like a thunderbolt out of the azure of
the sky.
II
Huddled behind a rock which was scarcely larger than his body,
groveling in the white, soft sand like a turtle making a nest for
its eggs, Carrigan told himself this without any reservation. He
was, as he kept repeating to himself for the comfort of his soul,
in a deuce of a fix.
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