But against the advent of this unerring nemesis, he banked on at least a few weeks, and probably a few months, during which, he told himself, he might win out and have Belle-Ann ensconced safely in some big city, far removed from the arm of the law and the limits of Kentucky. After that he did not care. He had cast the die, and had staked his life upon the outcome. If by any ill luck the outcome demanded his life, he stood ready to pay the toll. That Lem Lutts should never get Belle-Ann he had fully determined. He regretted that Peter Burton had not killed Lem long ago, as he had always hoped. He would have risked the chance and steered Burton up to the Lutts still, but he could not do so for the ample reason that he did not know where it was. He had known, so long as he had remained a mountaineer in good standing; but old Captain Lutts had moved the still in the early stages of Orlick's mysterious sojourns, and the faction had not since volunteered to tell him its whereabouts, and he was loath to jeopardize his own skin in looking for it. However, while Orlick was serving Burton, he had served himself doubly. The smooth, unruffled manner in which his plans were unfolding up to date filled him with high glee, and his spirits soared to the skies. Wild and desolate as this wilderness country is, it is nevertheless almost impossible for an outsider to invade its precincts without his presence being mysteriously communicated to the denizens of the hills. Whenever an invasion is accomplished secretly it is invariably engineered by some traitor who knows every nook and cranny in the mountains. But Orlick had determined to double-cross Burton and circumvent his plan, if Belle-Ann manifested any substantial symptom of requiting his suit for her hand or yielded to his persuasions. To-day as Orlick halted in the shade of a poplar to rest his spent horse, he rolled a cigarette contemplatively with a half smile on his lips. If Belle-Ann favored him, he told himself that he would remove every seeming obstacle that promised to come between them. This was a compact ratified with himself when he rolled the cigarette and smiled; and if he could not win her, he would at least deprive her of Lem Lutts, through the medium of a quick, desperate coup, the details of which he had already confided to Burton. As Orlick lit his cigarette, cast the match away, and hooked his right leg over the saddle-horn, he gave himself up to the favorite meditation upon which his fancy had fed for months. With a vain-glorious grunt he regarded his new trooper's outfit. He was exuberantly conscious of the great roll of bank-notes bulging in his pocket. And, too, it was all easy money. He confessed this as he muttered above his breath: "Dead easy--easier 'n easy!"