"That may be so," she admitted, "but life is a sacred thing to me."
"No doubt Tom considered his own life tolerably sacred," he responded. "As an abstract proposition life may be sacred. Practically it's about the cheapest thing on earth. It persists and repeats and increases in spite of war, pestilence, and famine. The principal value of the individual life is its service to other life. Cross wasn't much good. That old Holstein over there in the corral, with her long and honourable record of milk production and thoroughbred calves, is of more real benefit to the world. You see, it was Tom or Cross. One had to go. I'm mighty glad it was Cross."
"Oh, if you put it that way——"
"That's the way to put it. Of course, we aren't sure that he's more than shot up a little. Still, knowing what Tom can do with a gun, I'm inclined to think that Cross is all same good Indian."
For some moments they walked in silence. It was rapidly becoming dark. A heavy bank of cloud, blue-black in the waning light, was slowly climbing into the northwestern sky, partially obscuring the last tints of the sunset. The wind had ceased. The air was hot, oppressive, laden with the scents of dry earth. Sounds carried far in the stillness. The stamp of a horse in a stall, the low, throaty notes of a cow nuzzling her calf, the far-off evening wail of a coyote—all seemed strangely near at hand, borne by some telephonic quality in the atmosphere.
"How still it is!" said Clyde. "One can almost feel the darkness descending."
"Electrical storm coming, I fancy. No such luck as rain."
"I don't suppose it affects you," she remarked, "but out here when night comes I feel lonely. And yet that's scarcely the right word. It's more a sense of apprehension, a realization of my own unimportance. The country is so vast—so empty—that I feel dwarfed by it. I believe I'm afraid of the big, lonely land when the darkness lies on it. Of course, you'll laugh at me."
"No," he assured her. "I know the feeling very well. I've had it myself, not here, but up where the rivers run into the Polar Sea. The vastness oppressed. I wanted the company of men and to see the things man had made. I was awed by the world lying just as it came from the hand of God. The wilderness seemed to press in on me. That's what drives men mad sometimes. It isn't the solitude or the loneliness exactly. It's the constant pressure of forces that can be felt but not described."
"I think I understand."