Bill stood by with the horse. Hal leaped into the saddle.
"Explain it to the boys," he said to McCloud simply. Once more the girl went to him as if she would drag him from the saddle. He leaned down and kissed her and whispered "I'm coming back." Then he put spurs to his horse, and was off.
No one who has not lived on a ranch or in the wilderness apart can ever know what it is—the solemn aching void left by the one who goes away. Hal turned as he reached the hill before descending into the Bad Lands and waved his sombrero to them. Wah-na-gi was standing on the rock, Nat-u-ritch's gravestone, to get the last glimpse of him. Bill and McCloud were standing below. She stood there looking, looking, long after he had disappeared. They had to lift her gently down. Still she stood looking, looking.
"He's gone, Wah-na-gi, child," said John McCloud gently.
"Will he come back?" she said.
CHAPTER XVII
It is a trying moment when we face the wrong answer and realize that we must go back step by step to find the mistake. There is a fascination about the unknown. The future beckons.
Marching always onward, our courage each day finds an uplift in accomplishment. We are farther ahead if only a few inches. Incredible hardships and difficulties are put to flight.
Retracing one's steps, going back, requires more bravery than to go on. Initial enthusiasm looks like a grinning skeleton. It is not the same army in retreat. Doubt, despair hang on its flanks, worry and harass it all the bleeding way.
The moment Hal had decided to go back to England the necessary intermediate processes seemed wholly inadequate. He almost killed a good horse to reach Carbon on the D.&R.G. Railroad, only to find that he had eight hours to wait in that unmitigated by-product of civilization. They were eight heavy, heavy hours. He walked about the station, he gazed at the sage-brush and the water-tank, he went in and out of the "hotel," he attempted unsuccessfully to eat its so-called food, he tried to read its magazines six months old. The only possible object of interest was a very painful object. In the shade of one corner of the veranda on a stretcher lay a coal miner who had been hurt in the company's mines. His breast was heaving as if the life within him was struggling to get out. He was being removed to the company's hospital at Pedro. He had to wait for the train too, and it looked as if his impatient life refused to wait.