Falling snow to cover the single
track that should lead to this cabin, to bury the dual footprints that
should lead away. The absence of the man was to avoid a clash: not
because Hollister feared that; simply because in his mind the man was
not a factor to be considered, except as the possibility of his
interference should be most easily avoided. Because if he did
interfere he might have to kill him, and that was a complication he
did not wish to invoke. Somehow he felt no grudge against this man,
no jealousy.
The man's absence was a common occurrence. Hollister had observed that
nearly every day he was abroad in the woods with a gun. For the
obscuring storm, the obliterating snowfall, he would have to wait.
All this, every possible contingency, took form as potential action in
his obsessed mind,--with neither perception nor consideration of
consequences. The consummation alone urged him. The most primitive
instinct swayed him. The ultimate consequences were as nothing.
This plan was scarcely formed in Hollister's brain before he modified
it.
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