Part 55 (1/2)
”Yep.”
There was a little silence.
”I wish you wouldn't, Colonel.”
”It's dangerous alone--not for two.”
”Yes, it IS dangerous, and you know it.”
”I'm goin' along, laddie.” Seeing the Boy look precious grave and hara.s.sed: ”What's the matter?”
”I'd hate awfully for anything to happen to you.”
The Colonel laughed. ”Much obliged, but it matters uncommon little if I do drop in my tracks.”
”You be blowed!”
”You see I've got a pretty bad kind of a complaint, anyhow.” The Boy leaned over in the firelight and scanned the Colonel's face.
”What's wrong?”
The Colonel smiled a queer little one-sided smile. ”I've been out o'
kelter nearly ten years.”
”Oh, _that's_ all right. You'll go on for another thirty if you stay where you are till the ice goes out.”
The Colonel bent his head, and stared at the smooth-trodden floor at the edge of the buffalo-skin. ”To tell the truth, I'll be glad to go, not only because of--” He hitched his shoulders towards the corner whence came the hoa.r.s.e and m.u.f.fled breathing of the Denver clerk. ”I'll be glad to have something to tire me out, so I'll sleep--sleep too sound to dream. That's what I came for, not to sit idle in a G.o.d-d.a.m.n cabin and think--think--” He got up suddenly and strode the tiny s.p.a.ce from fire to door, a man transformed, with hands clenching and dark face almost evil. ”They say the men who winter up here either take to drink or go mad. I begin to see it is so. It's no place to do any forgetting in.” He stopped suddenly before the Boy with glittering eyes. ”It's the country where your conscience finds you out.”
”That religion of yours is makin' you morbid, Colonel.” The Boy spoke with the detached and soothing air of a sage.
”You don't know what you're talking about.” He turned sharply away. The Boy relapsed into silence. The Colonel in his renewed prowling brought up against the wooden crane. He stood looking down into the fire. Loud and regular sounded the sleeping man's breathing in the quiet little room.
”I did a wrong once to a woman--ten years ago,” said the Colonel, speaking to the back-log--”although I loved her.” He raised a hand to his eyes with a queer choking sound. ”I loved her,” he repeated, still with his back to the Boy. ”By-and-by I could have righted it, but she--she wasn't the kind to hang about and wait on a man's better nature when once he'd shown himself a coward. She skipped the country.”
He leaned his head against the end of the shelf over the fire, and said no more.
”Go back in the spring, find out where she is, and--”
”I've spent every spring and every summer, every fall and every winter till this one, trying to do just that thing.”
”You can't find her?”
”n.o.body can find her.”
”She's dead--”
”She's _not_ dead!”
The Boy involuntarily shrank back; the Colonel looked ready to smash him. The action recalled the older man to himself.