“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.
And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.
I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:
But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”
A long silence followed the reading of these words. Suddenly it had seemed to Robert Black that nothing he could say could possibly add to the splendid challenge of them to a flagging human spirit. Almost immediately upon reading the last word he had walked away—he had risen to read them, as if such words could be said only by a man upon his feet. He was gone for perhaps ten minutes, and all the while his heart was back there by the ashes of the dead campfire with Red—fighting alone, as a man must fight, no matter how his friend would help him. Somehow Black was sure that he was fighting—it was not in Red—it couldn’t be—to lay down his arms. Or, if he had in this one black hour laid them down, it would be to take them up again—it must be so. All Black’s own dogged will, plus his love and his faith in God and in this man, were back there in the woods with Red.
By and by he went back himself. Red was no longer sitting on the log, he was standing by a tree, at the edge of the plateau, looking off through a narrow vista at the blue hills in the distance all but veiled now in the dimness of the coming night. At the sound of Black’s footsteps on the snapping twigs he turned.
“Well, lad,” he said, in a weary voice which was yet quite his own, “I guess you’ve won out over my particular personal devil this time. I have ‘preached to others’—I expect I’ve got to stand by my own preaching now. It’s all right. I’d got too used to having my own way—or forcing it—that’s all. I’ll try to take my medicine like a man. I’ve been taking it—like a coward. Now—we’ll say no more about it.”
“Not another word. Except—would you mind if I built a little fire, and burned up those chips?”
“I wish you would.”
With quick motions Black made a heap of them on the old campfire ashes, touched them off with the match Red silently handed him—he had matches of his own, but he took Red’s—and stood looking down into the curling flames. The chips burned as merrily and brilliantly as if they had not been the signs of human despair, and the two men watched till the small fire had burned down to a last orange glow of embers.