d no step, saw no movement; nevertheless, there was
another present at that camp-fire vigil. Duane saw him. He lay there in
the middle of the green brightness, prostrate, motionless, dying. Cal
Bain! His features were wonderfully distinct, clearer than any cameo,
more sharply outlined than those of any picture. It was a hard face
softening at the threshold of eternity. The red tan of sun, the coarse
signs of drunkenness, the ferocity and hate so characteristic of Bain
were no longer there. This face represented a different Bain, showed all
that was human in him fading, fading as swiftly as it blanched white.
The lips wanted to speak, but had not the power. The eyes held an agony
of thought. They revealed what might have been possible for this man
if he lived--that he saw his mistake too late. Then they rolled, set
blankly, and closed in death.

That haunting visitation left Duane sitting there in a cold sweat, a
remorse gnawing at his vitals, realizing the curse that was on him.
He divined that never would he be able to keep off that phantom. He
remembered how his father had been eternally pursued by the furies of
accusing guilt, how he had never been able to forget in work or in sleep
those men he had killed.

The hour was late when Duane's mind let him sleep, and then dreams
troubled him. In the morning he bestirred himself so early that in the
gray gloom he had difficulty in finding his horse. Day had just broken
when he struck the old trail again.

He rode hard all morning and halted in a shady spot to rest and graze
his horse. In the afternoon he took to the trail at an easy trot. The
country grew wilder. Bald, rugged mountains broke the level of the
monotonous horizon. About three in the afternoon he came to a little
river which marked the boundary line of his hunting territory.

The decision he made to travel up-stream for a while was owing to two
facts: the river was high with quicksand bars on each side, and he felt
reluctant to cross into that region where his presence alone meant that
he was a marked man. The bottom-lands through which the river wound to
the southwest were more inviting than the barrens he had traversed. The
rest or that day he rode leisurely up-stream. At sunset he penetrated
the brakes of willow and cottonwood to spend the night. It seemed to
him that in this lonely cover he would feel easy and content. But he
did not. Every feeling, every imagining he had experienced the previous
night