Her little, uncertain laugh, meant to cheer him, followed him up the trail. Then presently he reached the branch and pushed up swiftly towards the tower. "If I had stopped at Olympia to make the entry at the Land Office, I should have discovered the truth," he thought. "And of course—of course Mill, or some other man, must have taken it long ago, if she had let the opportunity go. Tomorrow, tomorrow—I'll go down and see what she has made of it. I couldn't now. Not tonight."
He stumbled through a darker tangle of undergrowth and came out in the open at the tower. But the forces at work earlier in the Pass had lately been busy here. Suddenly a great crack yawned at his feet. It seemed to mark off, accurately, as though a master hand had drawn the line, the whole jutting front of the cliff, and like the beginnings of a moat enclosed the leaning column. He moved back a few yards to the trees, and found a dry place for his blanket, under the spreading boughs of a fir. Presently the light of his camp-fire cut the gloom, and the air was redolent with the savor of toasting bacon.
Twilight deepened. The voice of the cataract came up the wind. Somewhere a dead bough creaked. He lounged, his elbow on the blanket, his head propped on his hand, and looked off absently across the darkening gorge. Did he not see once more, at the foot of a near and familiar slope, a small tent white and silent under the dew and starshine?
His lips began to breathe a whistle. Presently it rose, still soft, sweet, tender, in Schubert's Serenade.
Music fragment
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE PRESSURE OF THE WILDERNESS
The wilderness has great adaptability. She fits herself to the man; she plays on his moods. To Stratton she became an inquisitor, tireless, implacable. She wracked him with his defeat; she taunted him with memories. At last the hour came, when, far on his retreat to the border, his worst perils past, he turned his horse and started back.
There were nearer approaches to the Sound through the mountains; a day's ride southeastward would have taken him to the railroad on the Columbia, but he chose to recross those miles of hostile country, where, to the horsemen of the plains, Sir Donald had long been a coveted and marked prize. He had not known the full value of Smith's service on those previous trips; his Indian blood had been a passport where a solitary white man could not go; and, while he had something to gain, the outlaw on the night watch had been vigilant, safe. During this last journey it was only through strategy and an incessant fighting off of sleep, that Stratton had been able to save the chestnut, probably his life. And now, returning, he was forced to make wide détours, avoiding his former course. He spent whole days, watchful, under cover of shallow coulees, and pushed on warily at night, riding knee-deep through arid tracts of sage brush, hiding his trail when he could, in the meager channel of a stream, or the rocks of a wash, keeping away, always, from beaten tracks.