that was on him. He divined that never would he be able to keep
off that phantom. He remembered how his father had been
eternally pursued by the furies of accusing guilt, how he had
never been able to forget in work or in sleep those men he had
killed.

The hour was late when Duane's mind let him sleep, and then
dreams troubled him. In the morning he bestirred himself so
early that in the gray gloom he had difficulty in finding his
horse. Day had just broken when he struck the old trail again.

He rode hard all morning and halted in a shady spot to rest and
graze his horse. In the afternoon he took to the trail at an
easy trot. The country grew wilder. Bald, rugged mountains
broke the level of the monotonous horizon. About three in the
afternoon he came to a little river which marked the boundary
line of his hunting territory.

The decision he made to travel up-stream for a while was owing
to two facts: the river was high with quicksand bars on each
side, and he felt reluctant to cross into that region where his
presence alone meant that he was a marked man. The bottom-lands
through which the river wound to the southwest were more
inviting than the barrens he had traversed. The rest or that
day he rode leisurely up-stream. At sunset he penetrated the
brakes of willow and cottonwood to spend the night. It seemed
to him that in this lonely cover he would feel easy and
content. But he did not. Every feeling, every imagining he had
experienced the previous night returned somewhat more vividly
and accentuated by newer ones of the same intensity and color.