Arizona -- Fiction; Grand Canyon (Ariz.) -- Fiction; Western stories
The sun was not over an hour high when Pablo and Enoch started north
once more, the little horse loaded with supplies and Enoch loaded with
such trail lore as the two Indians could impress upon him in the short
time at their command. Enoch was not deeply impressed by their advice
except as to one point, which they repeated so often that it really
penetrated his distraught and weary mind. He was to keep to the trail.
No matter what or whom he thought he saw in the distance, he was to
keep to the trail. If a sand storm struck him, he was to camp
immediately and on the trail. If he needed water, he was to keep to
the trail in order to find it. At night, he must camp on the trail.
The trail! It was, they made him understand, a tenderfoot's only
chance of life in this section. And, thus equipped, Enoch rode away
into the lonely, shimmering, intriguing morning light of the desert.
He rode all the morning without dismounting. The trail was very
crooked. It seemed to him at such moments as he took note of this
fact, he would save much time by riding due north, but he could not
forget the Indian brothers' reiterated warnings. And, although he
could not throw off a sense of being driven, the desire to arrive
somewhere quickly, still he was strangely content to let Pablo set the
pace.
At noon he dismounted, fed Pablo half the small bag of oats John had
given him, and ate the cold bacon and biscuits John's brother had urged
on him. There was no water for the horse, but Enoch drank deeply from
the canteen and allowed Pablo an hour's rest. Then he mounted and
pushed on, mindful of the necessity of overtaking the miners.
His mind was less calm than it had been the day before, and his
thinking less orderly. He had begun to be nagged by recollections of
office details that he should have settled, of important questions that
awaited his decision. And something deep within him began to tell him
that he was not playing a full man's part in running away. But to this
he replied grimly that he was only seeking for strength to go back.
And finally he muttered that give him two weeks' respite and he would
go back, strength or no strength. And over and about all his broken
thinking played an unceasing sense of loss. The public had invaded his
last privacy. The stronghold wherein a man fights his secret weakness
should be sacred. Not even a clergyman nor a wife should invade its
precincts uninvited. Enoch's inner sanctuary had been laid open to the
idle view of all the world. The newspaper reporter had pried where no
real man would pry. The Brown papers had published that from which a
decent editor would turn away for very compassion. Only a very dirty
man will with no excuse whatever wantonly and deliberately break
another man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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