"There could be but one other way!"

Swiftly, instinctively, the white man turned about, until the face
opposite was hid. Hardened frontiersman as he was, prepared for the
moment as he had thought himself, he could not watch longer. To do so
was sacrilege unqualified. In his youth the man had been a hunter of big
game. Of a sudden now, horribly distinct, he had a vision of the
expression in the eyes of a great moose, mortally wounded, when at the
end he himself had drawn the knife. Under its influence he halted,
waiting, postponing the inevitable.

"There could be but one other way," repeated the voice slowly,
repressedly. "Tell me, please. Let me know all. Am I not right?"

To hesitate longer was needless cruelty; and in infinite pity, the blow
fell.

"Yes, How," said Manning gently, "Bess is dead."

CHAPTER XIX

IN SIGHT OF GOD ALONE

An hour had passed. Manning had gone; and on the horizon to the east
whither he had taken his way not even a dot now indicated his former
presence. Even the close-fed grass whereon the wheels of the old road
waggon had temporarily blazed a trail had returned normally erect.
Suddenly, as a rain cloud forms over the parched earth, the storm had
gathered and broken; and passed on as though it had not been. All about
smiled the sunshine; sarcastic, isolate as though it had seen nothing,
heard nothing. On the surface of the pond the ducks, again returned,
swam and splashed and dawdled in their endless holiday. The eternal
breeze of the prairie noontime, drifting leisurely by, sang its old, old
song of abandon and of peace. Not in the merest detail had nature, the
serene, altered; not by the minutest trifle had she deviated from her
customary course. Man alone it is who changes to conform with the
passing mood. Man alone it was amid this primitive setting who had
altered now.

For How Landor, the Indian, was no longer idle or dreaming. Instead, his
every action was that of one with a definite purpose. Yet even then he
did not hurry. At first he seemed merely to be going about the ordinary
routine of his life. Methodically he kindled a fire and prepared himself
a generous meal. Deliberately, fair in the sunshine, he ate. Then for
the first time an observer who knew him well would have detected the
unusual. Contrary to all precedent the dishes were not washed or even
touched. Instead, the meal complete, he went swiftly toward the tent and
disappeared inside.

For minutes he