yielding
up its significance. What then, was his great loss? He could not tell.
The thing was mighty, like the sense of terror and loneliness in the
black night. Not the loss for his farmer neighbors, so true in his hour
of trial! Not the loss of his father, nor the wheat, nor the land, nor
his ruined future! But it must be a loss, incalculable and
insupportable, to his soul. His great ordeal had been the need, a
terrible and incomprehensible need, to kill something intangible in
himself. He had meant to do it. And now the need was shifted, subject to
a baser instinct. If there was German blood in him, poisoning the very
wells of his heart he could have spilled it, and so, whether living or
dead, have repudiated the taint. That was now clear in his
consciousness. But a baser spark had ignited all the primitive passion
of the forebears he felt burning and driving within him. He felt no
noble fire. He longed to live, to have a hundredfold his strength and
fury, to be gifted with a genius for time and place and bloody deed, to
have the war-gods set him a thousand opportunities, to beat with iron
mace and cut with sharp bayonet and rend with hard hand--to kill and
kill and kill the hideous thing that was German.

CHAPTER XIV

Kurt rushed back to the house. Encountering Jerry, he ordered him to run
and saddle a couple of horses. Then Kurt got his revolver and a box of
shells, and, throwing on his coat, he hurried to the barn. Jerry was
leading out the horses. It took but short work to saddle them. Jerry was
excited and talkative. He asked Kurt many questions, which excited few
replies.

When Kurt threw himself into the saddle Jerry yelled, "Which way?"

"Down the trail!" replied Kurt, and was off.

"Aw, we'll break our necks!" came Jerry's yell after him.

Kurt had no fear of the dark. He knew that trail almost as well by night
as by day. His horse was a mettlesome colt that had not been worked
during the harvest, and he plunged down the dim, winding trail as if,
indeed, to verify Jerry's fears. Presently the thin, pale line that was
the trail disappeared on the burned wheat-ground. Here Kurt was at fault
as to direction, but he did not slacken the pace for that. He heard
Jerry pounding along in the rear, trying to catch up. The way the colt
jumped ditches and washes and other obstructions proved his keen sight.
Kurt let him go. And then the ride became both perilous and thrilling.

Kurt could not see anything