e--only to abandoned prospect
holes--for no mineral had ever been found on the western slope. The
copses held no life other than a few minute squirrels, and no sound
broke the silence save the insolent cry of an occasional jay or
camp-bird. To die here was surely to die alone and to lie alone, as the
fallen cedar lies, wrought upon by the wind and the snows and the rain.

Nevertheless, his suicidal idea persisted. It had become the one final,
overpowering, directing resolution. There is no passion more persistent
than that which leads to self-destruction. In the midst of the blinding
swirl of his thought he maintained his purpose to put himself above the
world of human effort and to become a brother of the clod, to mix
forever with the mould.

Slowly he dragged himself upward, foot by foot, seeking the friendly
shelter and obscurity of a grove of firs just above him. Twice he sank
to his knees, a numbing pain at the base of his brain, his breath
roaring, his lips dry, but each time he rose and struggled on, eager to
reach the green and grateful shelter of the forest, filled with desire
to thrust himself into its solitude; and when at last he felt the chill
of the shadow and realized that he was surely hidden from all the world,
he turned, poised for an instant on a mound where the trail doubled
sharply, gave one long, slow glance around, then hurled himself down the
rocky slope. Even as he leaped his heart seemed to burst and he fell
like a clod and lay without further motion. It was as if he had been
smitten in flight by a rifle-ball.

Around him the small animals of the wood frolicked, and the jay called
inquiringly, but he neither saw nor heard. He was himself but a gasping
creature, with reason entirely engaged in the blind struggle which the
physical organism was instinctively making to continue in its wonted
ways. All the world and all his desires, save a longing for his fair
young wife, were lost out of his mind, and he thought of Bertha only in
a dim and formless way--feeling his need of her and dumbly wondering why
she did not come. In final, desperate agony, he lifted the phial of
strychnine to his lips, hoping that it might put an end to his
suffering; but before this act was completed a sweet, devouring flood of
forgetfulness swept over him, his hand dropped, and the unopened bottle
rolled away out of his reach. Then the golden sunlight darkened out of
his sky, and he died--as the desert lion dies--alone.