The cider, the jealousy in his soul, or the evil in both, probably, made him start after them. A something whispered to take the short-cut across to the junction of the road and Blackberry Valley trail, and face them and have it out. He hurried stumbling over the drifts. He hid in the shade of a great tree. Up the road he heard them coming, heard Dan say, "Oh, well, I was afraid Uncle Andy would be fooled when he took that kid in. Regular chip of the old block; his father went to the bad, and he is going fast. He came from the city slums; none of the brave, true blood of the mountains in his veins. Steer clear of him, Jane." Heard an indistinguishable reply in Jane's voice, felt a blind passion rising within him, clinched his fists, started with a bound for the dark shadows coming up the road, felt a terrible blow on his head, and—well, it must have been a long while before he thought again. Then he was lying down in the depths of a snow-drift, where he had fallen when he started so angrily for Dan and had struck his head against the limb of the old oak at the turn and been hurled back twenty feet down through the snow on the rock of the creek bed.
He hid in the shade of a tree.
He tried to rise, but could not. A broken limb refused to act. He called for help, but the cry rose no higher than the snowbank. He was in an open grave of white on the sharp rocks and bitterly cold ice of the stream. He shivered and shook, then gradually a sort of delightful repose began to steal over him. At first it felt pleasant, then he realized he was freezing, freezing to death! Death! The thought struck terror to his heart. Death! It was the last thing for which he was ready. Memory was unnaturally active. The New England hills, the white church, grandfather, mother, home, all came back to him. He was mother's boy again as in those old days before hate and drink and sin had hurt his life. For a moment the tears came. He forgot himself, he struggled to rise. He would go to mother and put his head in her lap and tell her he loved her still. Then the clouds crept over the stars, the bitter wind whistled above the snow. Mother—ah! He could not go to her; she had gone forever out of his life; never in this world would he see her again. And then, like a knife that cut him through and through, came the bitter consciousness that there was no hope of seeing mother in the world to come; that long ago he had gone away from her and the old innocent life of childhood so far that if she could come back from her grave by the turbid Sacramento, she would not even know her boy.
The night chill crept over him; the tears froze on his cheeks. He thought of Dan and Jane and the life he had lived, and love froze in his heart. And then, alone in the snow-drift, dying, he hated Dan, he hated Jane, he hated all the world and hated God, and waited, with the fear of a lost soul, the outer darkness that was coming—coming nearer and nearer.
They found him there, numb and unconscious, long after midnight, Hans and Tony, Malden's men, who had searched for him.
The snow had melted on the hill-tops and the flowers were peeping above the earth, when Job threw aside his crutches and whistled to Shot that the time had come for another quail hunt.