"Very well." Ben Blair spoke as though the occurrence were one of every-day repetition. "Give me your clothes!"
Tom's face settled stubbornly.
"You'll have to take them."
The youth's hand sought his hip, and a bullet spat at the snow within three inches of the other's feet. There was a meaning pause. Slowly the bravado left the other's face.
"Don't keep me waiting!" urged Ben.
Slowly, very slowly, off came the captive's coat and vest. Despite his efforts, the hands which loosened the buttons trembled uncontrollably. Following the vest came the shirt, then a shoe, and the sock beneath. His foot touched the snow. For the first time a faint realization of the thing he was choosing came to him. The vicious bite of the frost upon the bare skin was not a possibility of the future, but a condition of the immediate now; and he weakened. But in the moment of his indecision, the wave of stubbornness and of blinding hate again flooded him, and a rush of hot curses left his lips.
For a moment, the last time in their lives, the two men eyed each other fairly. Indescribable hate was written upon one face; the other was as blank as the surrounding snow. Its very immobility chilled Tom Blair and cowed him into silence. Without a word he replaced shoe and coat and took up his blanket. An advancing step sounded behind him, and, understanding, he moved ahead. After a while the foot-fall again gained upon him, and once more the walk merged into the interminable jog-jog of the back-trail.
It was morning when the two began that last relay. It was four o'clock in the afternoon when they arrived amid the outskirts of the scattered prairie terminus which was their destination. Within ten minutes thereafter the two had separated. The older man, in charge of a lank, unshaven frontiersman, chiefly noticeable from a quid of tobacco which swelled one cheek like an abscess, and a nickle-plated star which he wore on the lapel of his coat, was headed for the pretentious white painted building known as the court-house. The younger, catching sight of a wind-twisted sign lettered "Hotel," made for it as though sighting the promised land. In the office, as he passed through, was a crowd of men entirely too large to have gathered by chance in a frontier hostelry, who eyed him peculiarly; but he took no notice, and five minutes later, upon the bedraggled bed of the unplastered upper room that the landlord gave him, without even his boots removed, he was deep in the realm of oblivion.