Dick had written his note, and placed it where Bassett would be certain

to see it. Then he found his horse and led him for the first half mile

or so of level ground before the trail began to descend. He mounted

there, for he knew the animal could find its way in the darkness where

he could not.

He felt no weariness and no hunger, although he had neither slept nor

eaten for thirty-odd hours, and as contrasted with the night before his

head was clear. He was able to start a train of thought and to follow it

through consecutively for the first time in hours. Thought, however, was

easier than realization, and to add to his perplexity, he struggled

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to place Bassett and failed entirely. He remained a mysterious and

incomprehensible figure, beginning and ending with the trail.

Then he had an odd thought, that brought him up standing. He had only

Bassett's word for the story. Perhaps Bassett was lying to him, or mad.

He rode on after a moment, considering that, but there was something,

not in Bassett's circumstantial narrative but in himself, that refused

to accept that loophole of escape. He could not have told what it was.

And, with his increasing clarity, he began to make out the case for

Bassett and against himself; the unfamiliar clothing he wore, the pad

with the name of Livingstone on it and the sign Rx, the other contents

of his pockets.

He tried to orient himself in Bassett's story. A doctor. The devil's

irony of it! Some poor hack, losing sleep and bringing babies. Peddling

pills. Leading what Bassett had called a life of usefulness! That was a

career for you, a pill peddler. God!

But underlying all his surface thinking was still the need of flight,

and he was continually confusing it with the earlier one. One moment he

was looking about for the snow of that earlier escape, and the next he

would remember, and the sense of panic would leave him. After all he

meant to surrender eventually. It did not matter if they caught him.

But, like the sense of flight, there was something else in his mind,

something that he fought down and would not face. When it came up

he thrust it back fiercely. That something was the figure of Beverly

Carlysle, stooping over her husband's body. He would have died to save

her pain, and yet last night--no, it wasn't last night. It was years and

years ago, and all this time she had hated him.

It was unbearable that she had gone on hating him, all this time.




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