heavily with his ungainly feet. He was the wreck of ten winters on
the Divide and he knew what that 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 reaping what little the hail and the hot
winds and the frosts left him to reap. Insanity and suicide are
very common things on the Divide. They come on like an epidemic in
the hot wind season. Those scorching dusty winds that blow up over
the bluffs from Kansas seem to dry up the blood in men's veins as
they do the sap in the corn leaves. Whenever the yellow scorch