Wild longings to seize the day's joy came to the Ranger. If the snow flake typified law sculpturing the centuries, law was a process not of a life time, not of a century, but aeons of centuries; and flesh, spirit, humanity's brevity cried out for the trancing joys of the present. If law took billions of years to sculpture its purpose, grinding down the transient lives in its way?--When Wayland came to that _impasse_, he used to get off and walk. He did not know, and it was well he did not know, she was pacing her room two hundred miles back on the other side of the Divide, praying that he might succeed in one breath, that he might come back in another, and praying always that they might both be strong. Every mile was a mile deeper into the eternity of her love . . . he knew that; but he also knew that the fulfilment of duty meant renunciation. Was it the cry of the flesh? Wayland scoffed the thought. Flesh in the frontier West doesn't take the trouble to wear fig-leaf signs. It is blazoning, bold, unashamed, known for what it is; but there is no confusion of values. He who wills takes what he wills and wears the mark. Wayland had been long enough away from the confused values of more civilized lands to know belladonna eyes from starlight; and he knew what his being craved was not carrion. It was what harmonizes both flesh and spirit, and lifts the temporal to eternity. Eternity . . . he laughed again. Eternity was too short; and that was what renunciation meant, giving up a citadel against all the harking cares and hells of hate in life. Where they had picked up the fugitives' trail again on the fourth day from the snow slide, the Ranger had taken stock of provisions. We none of us know just how long the Trail is to be when we set out. Flour and tea enough for a month's travel: of bacon and canned beans, only a day's supply remained. "Yes, on your life, forward, long as there's a mouthful left . . . push on," Matthews had urged. Wayland expostulated: "Do you know what Desert travel means?" "No, an' care less! If y' want to get anywhere, ye don't set out to turn back! Dante's inner circle was ice! A've had that! Now, A'll take a nip of his outer circle and try your blue blazing Desert." "It'll be blue all right, sir! You'll know it when you come to it by the shadows being blue instead of black." And always, the trail had grown rockier, the forests more scattered, the trees scantier and dwarfed, till the way led from clump to clump of scrub pinon amid red buttes and sand hummocks. And always, the valleys widened and lifted to higher table lands, blasted and shrivelled and tremulous of heat, till the mountains lay on the far sky-line silver strips flecked with purple, like shores to an ocean of pure light. And always, it was the trail of fleeing horsemen they followed, with one track running aside from the others picking the softest places.