"Wayland, this is my jumping off place! A'm at the end of the Track. The Trail where the tracks all point one way. 'Tis na' sensible y'r hangin' back for me! If y'll take the fresh horse an' go on alone, y'll get out! If the railroad is only thirty miles due East, y' can make that. We'll rest a bit here, then after sundown we'll ride on; an' in the dark A'll drop back. If it hurts y' t' think of it, A'll head my horse due East for the railroad! Y'll go on, Wayland! Y'll not turn back for me!"
It took the Ranger a moment to realize what the old frontiersman was trying to say. "I think you'd better take another drink of that brandy," he said. "It seems to me a fool thing to let a good man die for the sake of catching three outlaw blackguards."
"'Tis not for the sake o' three blackguards!" The words came out with a rap. "'Tis to vindicate justice, 'tis to uphold law, an' till every good citizen is willin' to lay down his life hounding outrage to th' very covert o' Hell, t' die protectin' law an' justice an' innocence an' right, y'r Nation wull be ruled by paltroons an' cowards an' white-vested blackguards! Go; go on; go on to the end till ye fall and rot! If th' Devil takes to the open an' the saints take to cover, whose goin' t' fight the battle for right? The Armageddon o' y'r Nation? 'Tis easy t' be a good citizen when the bands are playin' an' the cannon roarin'. 'Tis harder in times o' peace to fight the battle o' the lone man! These outlaws, these blackguards, these cut throats, they're only the tools of the Man Higher Up! Get them, then go on for the Man Higher Up! Leave me, when A drop back in the dark to-night; if A'm in my senses, A'll shout a bravo and give y' a wave! Y'r the Man on the Job, the Nation's job! 'Tis not by bludgeons and bayonets, 'tis by ballots and brains y'll fight this battle out; and fight y' must or y'r freedom will go the way o' the old world despotisms down in a welter. A wish y'd go to the top o' the bank and have a look ahead."
An absurd sense of power, of resolution from despair, of will to do—suddenly swept over the Ranger. He forgot his fatigue. Months afterwards, a fellow student who had become a professor in psychology explained to him that it was a case of consciousness dipping suddenly down to the sublimal reservoirs of unconscious strength that lie in humanity; but then, Wayland had left two factors of explanation untold: first, that the dying trumpet call of the old warrior missionary had opened the doors of consciousness to that night on the Ridge of the Holy Cross; second, that the setting sun tinging all the buttes and hummocks and plains with rose flame somehow tinctured his being with consciousness of her, consciousness of the life drafts he had taken from her lips that night of the Death Watch.
He went across to the pack trees. Picking up the cross trees and blankets, he laid them on the ground as a pillow.
"If you will rest here, sir, I'll go above and have a look."
From the top of the sand bank, the Ranger looked down to see the old man lying with his face to the sky, his head pillowed on the saddle blankets, sound asleep. He looked across the Desert. The sun had sunk behind the azure strip of the mountain sky line. The billows of lava, black and glazed, the ashy silt pink-tinged to the sun-glow, the heaving orange sands . . . lay palpitating infinite almost with a oneness that was of God. Wayland was not given to prayers. Perhaps, like all men of action, he tried to make his life a prayer. Somehow, something within him prayed wordlessly now . . . not for exceptional advantage in the game of life, not for remission of the laws of Nature, not for miracle, but for aptitude to play the game according to rules. His wordless prayer did not end in an "amen." It ended in a little hard laugh. As though Right were such a simple business as just personally being good! or an insurance policy against damnation and guarantee for salvation! What was it the old man had said? Your right must be made into might . . . that was the game of life: the saving of the Nation: the good old-fashioned square deal no matter which party cut the cards. Right made Might, Might made Right; that was what the Nation wanted!
Then, it came again, the touch, the consciousness, the will to power, to do, to fight and overcome. He rose and looked across the Desert. A puff of dust, a swirl and eddy of riders, resolved itself through the terra cotta mist to the forms of three men going over the crest of the sand roll against the red sun-wrack of the sky line; three figures far apart, riding slowly, crawling against the face of the distant sky; one man in advance bent over his pummel; a second rider with a pack horse in tow pulling and dragging on the halter rope, the pack horse white and lame, stopping at every step, the man crunched, huddling fore done, down in his saddle; then dragging far to the rear, just cresting the sky line as the other two disappeared, swaying from side to side, a ragged wreck lying almost forward on his horse's neck; was he being deserted?
Wayland uttered a jubilant low whistle and tumbled down the sand bank to his camp kit.
The wind was at lull and the velvet air palpitating as a human pulse. The after-glow lay on the orange sands cresting all the ridges with cressets of flame. Wayland was riding bare backed.