es of red
shaggy prairie that stretched before his cabin. He knew it in all
the deceitful loveliness of its early summer, in all the bitter
barrenness of its autumn. He had seen it smitten by all the plagues
of Egypt. He had seen it parched by drought, and sogged by rain,
beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in the grasshopper years he
had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones that the vultures have
left. After the great fires he had seen it stretch for miles and
miles, black and smoking as the floor of hell.

He rose slowly and crossed the room, dragging his big feet heavily
as though they were burdens to him. He looked out of the window into
the hog corral and saw the pigs burying themselves in the straw
before the shed. The leaden gray clouds were beginning to spill
themselves, and the snowflakes were settling down over the white
leprous patches of frozen earth where the hogs had gnawed even the
sod away. He shuddered and began to walk, tramping heavily with his
ungainly feet. He was the wreck of ten winters on the Divide and he
knew what they meant. Men fear the winters of the Divide as a child
fears night or as men in the North Seas fear the still dark cold of
the polar twilight.

His eyes fell upon his gun, and he took it down from the wall and
looked it over. He sat down on the edge of his bed and held the
barrel towards his face, letting his forehead rest upon it, and laid
his finger on the trigger. He was perfectly calm, there was neither
passion nor despair in his face, but the thoughtful look of a man
who is considering. Presently he laid down the gun, and reaching
into the cupboard, drew out a pint bottle of raw white alcohol.
Lifting it to his lips, he drank greedily. He washed his face in the
tin basin and combed his rough hair and shaggy blond beard. Then he
stood in uncertainty before the suit of dark clothes that hung on
the wall. For the fiftieth time he took them in his hands and tried
to summon courage to put them on. He took the paper collar that was
pinned to the sleeve of the coat and cautiously slipped it under his
rough beard, looking with timid expectancy into the cracked,
splashed glass that hung over the bench. With a short laugh he threw
it down on the bed, and pulling on his old black hat, he went out,
striking off across the level.

It was a physical necessity for him to get away from his cabin once
in a while. He had been there for ten years, digging and plowing and
sowing, and