o arrange the light, but did not, sitting silent
instead, just visible, and seeming to watch the death struggle of the
flame. I could find nothing to say to him, and I believed he was now
winning his way back to serenity by himself. He kept his outward man
so nearly natural that I forgot about that cold touch of his hand, and
never guessed how far out from reason the tide of emotion was even now
whirling him. "I remember at Cheyenne onced," he resumed. And he told
me of a Thanksgiving visit to town that he had made with Steve. "We
was just colts then," he said. He dwelt on their coltish doings, their
adventures sought and wrought in the perfect fellowship of youth. "For
Steve and me most always hunted in couples back in them gamesome years,"
he explained. And he fell into the elemental talk of sex, such talk
as would be an elk's or tiger's; and spoken so by him, simply and
naturally, as we speak of the seasons, or of death, or of any actuality,
it was without offense. It would be offense should I repeat it. Then,
abruptly ending these memories of himself and Steve, he went out of the
tent, and I heard him dragging a log to the fire. When it had blazed up,
there on the tent wall was his shadow and that of the log where he sat
with his half-broken heart. And all the while I supposed he was master
of himself, and self-justified against Steve's omission to bid him
good-by.

I must have fallen asleep before he returned, for I remember nothing
except waking and finding him in his blankets beside me. The fire
shadow was gone, and gray, cold light was dimly on the tent. He slept
restlessly, and his forehead was ploughed by lines of pain. While I
looked at him he began to mutter, and suddenly started up with violence.
"No!" he cried out; "no! Just the same!" and thus wakened himself,
staring. "What's the matter?" he demanded. He was slow in getting back
to where we were; and full consciousness found him sitting up with his
eyes fixed on mine. They were more haunted than they had been at all,
and his next speech came straight from his dream. "Maybe you'd better
quit me. This ain't your trouble."

I laughed. "Why, what is the trouble?"

His eyes still intently fixed on mine. "Do you think if we changed our
trail we could lose them from us?"

I was framing a jocose reply about Ounces being a good walker, when the
sound of hoofs rushing in the distance stopped me, and he ran out of the
tent with his rifle. When I followed with m