last, it did not matter when.

At length he reached the snow-line where the path ended, and for the
first time he looked back. There I was some two hundred paces behind
him. I, his death, was behind him, and in front of him shone the snow.
For a moment he hesitated, and I heard the heavy breathing of his horse
in the great stillness. Then he turned and faced the slope, driving his
spurs into the brute's sides. The snow was hard, for here the frost bit
sharply, and for a while, though it was so steep, the horse travelled
over it better than he had done along the pathway. Now, as before, there
was only one road that he could take, for we passed up the crest of a
ridge, a pleat as it were in the garment of the mountain, and on either
side were steeps of snow on which neither horse nor man might keep his
footing. For two hours or more we followed that ridge, and as we went
through the silence of the haunted volcan, and the loneliness of its
eternal snows, it seemed to me that my spirit entered into the spirit
of my quarry, and that with its eyes I saw all that was passing in his
heart. To a man so wronged the dream was pleasant even if it were not
true, for I read there such agony, such black despair, such haunting
memories, such terror of advancing death and of what lay beyond it, that
no revenge of man's could surpass their torment. And it was true--I
knew that it was true; he suffered all this and more, for if he had no
conscience, at least he had fear and imagination to quicken and multiply
the fear.

Now the snow grew steeper, and the horse was almost spent, for he could
scarcely breathe at so great a height. In vain did de Garcia drive his
spurs into its sides, the gallant beast could do no more. Suddenly it
fell down. Surely, I thought, he will await me now. But even I had not
fathomed the depth of his terrors, for de Garcia disengaged himself
from the fallen horse, looked towards me, then fled forward on his feet,
casting away his armour as he went that he might travel more lightly.

By this time we had passed the snow and were come to the edge of the ice
cap that is made by the melting of the snow with the heat of the inner
fires, or perhaps by that of the sun in hot seasons, I know not, and
its freezing in the winter months or in the cold of the nights. At least
there is such a cap on Xaca, measuring nearly a mile in depth, which
lies between the snow and the black rim of the crater. Up this ice
climbed de Garci