The Last Rebel

by Joseph A. Altsheler

Convinced that it was no time for idle curiosity about illuminations, I turned my face toward the southwest, determined to carry out my instructions. Yet I saw readily that my problem was not yet wholly solved. I had escaped from the fort, but I had not escaped from the mountains, which at that hour looked very dark, very bleak, and very lonely. I picked out a large clear star burning in the southwest just above the tip of the highest peak, and made it my guide.

It was rough travelling, but the night was cold, and my limbs had been stiffening in confinement. The sharp air and the exercise were a tonic to me. The blood ran freely through my veins, and I felt strong and buoyant. I resolved to walk all night, a resolution born partly of necessity, for I could not lie down and sleep without finding every joint stiffened in the morning by cold.

With my eyes fixed on my star, I tramped steadily to the southwest. It was not an especially dark night, but I kept as closely as I could to the valleys or rifts, and the up-lift of the peaks above me hid half the skies. I am not superstitious, and I think I possess at least average courage, but the silence and solemnity of the mountains awed me and made me lonely and afraid. I seemed to be alone in the universe, save for the misty peaks, which nodded to each other and never noticed me. It may be flattering to one's vanity to feel that he is the only man in the world, but it soon grows tiresome. I longed for company, a chum, somebody to talk to me.

I may be skilful in analyzing the feelings of others, but I have little success with my own. As the chill loneliness thickened around me, I wished again for Fort Defiance. Out of danger now, the danger that I had been in seemed so little, incredible perhaps. After all, I might have yielded too easily to a frightened girl's fears. But she had been frightened on my account. That was a tender thought. I smiled in the darkness at the thought and the memory of that early kiss, for which I was not sorry.

The cold darkness of the mountains and the warm walls of Fort Defiance began to contend for first place in my mind. The belief that in the flush of the interview with his daughter I had overrated the fanaticism of the colonel grew, and my sense of loneliness egged it on until it became conviction.

The strength and courage which I had felt at the start waned. The cold slid into my bones and chilled the marrow. I sat for a few moments on a big stone at the bottom of a great cleft, that I might rest myself. Over the knife-edge of the tallest ridge, a moon very white and cold looked at me as if wondering what I was doing in an otherwise deserted world. To this I could return no answer. All my intentions were failing; I was uncertain of myself. The advice to me to push on continually to the southwest had been clear and decisive, and I had been following it most diligently for at least three hours. But there was my star in the southwest burning as brilliantly as ever and also as far away as ever. Above me were the dusky skies, the moon calm and cold, and about me was the wilderness. I shut my eyes and saw my room in Fort Defiance, a cell still, but sheltered and warm.

The wind began to blow. It had a sharp edge of ice, and I shivered. Then I sprang up in fright as a great groan came down the cleft, passed me, and went on among the mountains, through valley and valley, between cliff and cliff, and from peak to peak. I knew, after my first start, what it was, but it frightened me as if it had been a ghost, though I am a full-grown man, and, as I said before, I think I have at least average courage. It was the wind, gathered and compressed in the narrow deep ravines between the tall cliffs, and driven on by other winds behind, until it cried out like a man in deadly pain. Not until then, when the mountains were awake and groaning, did I comprehend how deep and intense may become the sense of desolation. I had noticed the wonderful repetition of the echoes when I fired my rifle to attract the attention of the colonel, but at night these echoes were deepened and carried faster from peak to peak and ridge to ridge. As the wind gained in strength and swept through the trees and bushes on the slopes and crests as well as through the ravines and valleys, new tones were added, and I listened to the chorus of the mountains. The groan changed to a deep bass; with it were mingled the flutter and rustle of the dry leaves as the wind blew them together, leaf on leaf, and the higher note of a wandering breeze as it escaped from a ravine and swept triumphantly over ridge and peak.

I was content to listen awhile to the music of the mountains, but I found that my joints were growing stiff with cold. One needs more than music, however sublime, on a dark night in November, unsheltered save by the skies. I took out some food, ate it, and resumed my journey without much courage, however, I will confess. My star was still there, but, like the moon, it was unsympathetic and cold, and it travelled due southwest as fast as I.

I think I was a bit shaken by my situation and my inability to drive away the sense of desolation. It is easy enough to say that superstition and all such kindred things are folly, as perhaps they are; but put a man down where I was, let him go through what I had gone through, and he will have a ghost gibbering at him from every peak. So, when I saw a light flaming on a crest where no light had been before, I was not at all sure whether I saw it with eyes real or imaginary. It was no star; the flame was too bright, too red, and flickered too much, for that. Presently a light blazed up on another hill-top, and then on a third, and then on a fourth. They were moved about as if signalling to each other, and I was positive that I was growing light-headed. It would require no common, normal pair of eyes to see so many lights dancing a jig. All the hill-tops seemed to be afire, and I was quite sure that was not natural.

The sound of a trumpet, loud, clear, and penetrating, mingled with the song of the winds, and swept through the mountains, echo after echo. The military note rose above all the rest, and there by the first light, which formed the background for it and made it visible, I saw a human figure. I had no doubt that this was the man who blew the trumpet, and it meant that the colonel and his men were seeking to retake me. The trumpet was blown again, and all the lights except the first were extinguished.