Beth Norvell

Never in the after years could Winston clearly recall the incidents of

that night's ride across the sand waste. The haze which shrouded his

brain would never wholly lift. Except for a few detached details the

surroundings of that journey remained vague, clouded, indistinct. He

remembered the great, burning desert; the stars gleaming down above

them like many eyes; the ponderous, ragged edge of cloud in the west;

the irregular, castellated range of hills at their back; the dull

expanse of plain ever stretching away in front, with no boundary other

than that southern sky. The weird, ghostly shadows of cactus and

Spanish bayonet were everywhere; strange, eerie noises were borne to

them out of the void--the distant cries of prowling wolves, the

mournful sough of the night wind, the lonely hoot of some far-off owl.

Nothing greeted the roving eyes but desolation,--a desolation utter and

complete, a mere waste of tumbled sand, by daylight whitened here and

there by irregular patches of alkali, but under the brooding night

shadows lying brown, dull, forlorn beyond all expression, a trackless,

deserted ocean of mystery, oppressive in its drear sombreness.

He rode straight south, seeking no trail, but guiding their course by

the stars, his right hand firmly grasping the pony's bit, and

continually urging his own mount to faster pace. The one thought

dominating his mind was the urgent necessity for haste--a savage

determination to intercept that early train eastward. Beyond this

single idea his brain seemed in hopeless turmoil, seemed failing him.

Any delay meant danger, discovery, the placing of her very life in

peril. He could grasp that; he could plan, guide, act in every way the

part of a man under its inspiration, but all else appeared chaos. The

future?--there was no future; there never again could be. The chasm of

a thousand years had suddenly yawned between him and this woman. It

made his head reel merely to gaze down into those awful depths. It

could not be bridged; no sacrifice, no compensation might ever undo

that fatal death-shot. He did not blame her, he did not question her

justification, but he understood--together they faced the inevitable.

There was no escape, no clearing of the record. There was nothing left

him to do except this, this riding through the night--absolutely

nothing. Once he had guided her into safety all was done,--done

forever; there remained to him no other hope, ambition, purpose, in all

this world. The desert about them typified that forthcoming

existence--barren, devoid of life, dull, and dead. He set his teeth

savagely to keep back the moan of despair that rose to his lips, half

lifting himself in the stirrups to glance back toward her.

If she perceived anything there was not the slightest reflection of it

within her eyes. Lustreless, undeviating, they were staring directly

ahead into the gloom, her face white and almost devoid of expression.

The sight of it turned him cold and sick, his unoccupied hand gripping

the saddle-pommel as though he would crush the leather. Yet he did not

speak, for there was nothing to say. Between these two was a fact,

grim, awful, unchangeable. Fronting it, words were meaningless,

pitiable.